I know this news is likely expected by the community, but I have come to the decision that I can no longer support this mod. The main reason here is time. Before release, this game had been my only project for almost a year and a half. During that time, the mod would frequently go out of date while I was in the middle of a new feature or framework, and I would simply sit on it until that was done, then wait for the next slew of updates to finish and port my code over. Obviously with the mod out, I can’t really do that. I have done that, and any community that I might have built up has dwindled as a result. Since the whole reason for doing what I have done with this mod was to build a community, the project is simply no longer serving its intended purpose.
I want to make my intentions completely transparent here. I started this mod because I wanted a different experience than I was getting from the original game, and I felt that I had the capacity to create it. I have proven to myself that I do have that capacity, but somewhere along the project the goal changed. I realized that I really enjoy making games. I have always known that, and I have always made games as a hobby, but this time it was a bit different. This was a game for other people, and the thrill that came along with that was amazing. In order to make better games to release to the world, I needed more time. To get more time, I needed to not have a day job. I decided I would try and make a go of this indie game development thing, and I was going to use my mod to build up some brand recognition to help my first commercial venture be successful.
In making this mod, I learned a lot about the aspects of game development that I hadn’t even thought about before. I am planning on writing a three-part post-mortem series talking about all of that before I move on to my next project. I am glad I did it. Finishing something and releasing it felt good, and it reminded me why I started it in the first place. I would love to see it through to completion, but as it stands I just don’t have the time.
Each Minecraft update requires me to port my code over to the new version. Very little of it transfers, and what does usually works a bit different in each new version, which requires time spent learning the new base code to fix. All said it takes me about 15-20 hours to port the code over each time an update is pushed out, and while I try to treat this as a part time job and put in that 20 hours a week, in all reality I’m lucky to get half of that. Since 1.5 was released and I finished my class and got my free time back, I have attempted to port the code base over three times. With the most recent release from the good guys at Mojang, I took a step back and evaluated what I was really doing with my time.
I understand why this happens, and I knew what I was getting into. I thought I had the stamina to stick with it, and I might actually have it, but it’s simply not worth the time investment any more. I want to apologize to my small community of players, and thank you all for the support you have given me. I also want to thank all of the people who gave me the harsh feedback I needed to learn a valuable lesson about actually getting a game into gamers’ hands. I learned a lot from this, and I will take all of this information with me as I move on to my next project. Stay tuned, the biggest lesson I learned was that I have to be more involved with the community, so this blog is about to get a whole lot more active.
