The long wait is over - huge announcements!

FreeMinecraftModels 1.2.0 is finally out. Turns out I was being optimistic before, and has some core flaws in the code. Honestly, I don't even really want to get too much into it. It was a mix of several issues, each of them more frustrating than the prior.

If you've been looking at the announcements, you might already be starting to see that we're starting to kick things into overdrive. I am finally released from my self-imposed jail of matrix rotations, and am blazing through some of the backlog - an EliteMobs update has been made which adds a few neat features and fixes some bugs, simplified Chinese is now fully translated in the wiki and a poll is going on right now on Discord to decide which language I translate next!

I want to take a moment here to announce the things that I plan to work on for the upcoming weeks.

Community contest with $100 prize pool - Create the best community dungeon!

In the upcoming weeks, the focus of my work will be on improving the documentation and visibility of the plugins that I make, and I thought it would be really cool to pair this improvement in documentation with a contest!

The premise is simple: make a cool EliteMobs dungeon! Don't know how to make a dungeon? Well, how convenient is it that not only do we have a wiki, but that we are translating it into the most commonly spoken languages of our community and that I will also be making Youtube videos showing you how to create everything, from a simple item to scripting complex powers, making custom models and packaging everything for distribution!

To enter the contest, release a free community dungeon, correctly packaged, between today (April 13th) and the 1st of July in the community-content section of the Nightbreak discord!

Here are the rules (they may have to change if some kind of abuse happens)

• You must be the creator of 100% of the content you post. This includes the map! If you are not using a map you yourself created, you must have the permission from the map's author to use that map for the contest. If other people help you create the content, credit them!

• Your dungeon can not be a premium dungeon! That means it has to be freely downloadable by the community.

• You are allowed to create custom models for your bosses, relying on FreeMinecraftModels to showcase them

• And, obviously, it has to be an EliteMobs dungeon! You can't use bosses from other plugins for this.

As previously mentioned, there is a $100 prize pool. That means:

• $60 for the first place

• $30 for the second place

• $10 for the third place

If your submission requires splitting the prize pool among several map creators, you must specify that in the post you make with the submission.

The winners will be decided based on popular vote. I have not, as of yet, decided who exactly will be able to vote, but there is a strong chance that the voting will be done by the Patreon supporters, since that is the easiest way of guaranteeing that there is no vote botting (since it requires payment). We'll figure this detail out later, when I make a more dedicated announcement for this.

Resource Pack Revamp!

 Some may recognize this as being a part of something that was announced what feels like a lifetime ago. I have not forgotten about it, and now that I am free from FMM I plan to finally follow through with everything I announced regarding these item models. I won't retread ground here, so I just want to announce some additional details of what I am planning for the resource pack:

• The official EliteMobs pack will be getting custom sounds, made by Agnet, to add some flair to things such as accepting and completing quests, beating dungeons and arenas, opening treasure chests and more

• I will be removing all the preloaded model data from EliteMobs custom models from the official resource pack. The point of having the models preloaded was for the sake of convenience, but time has shown that it is actually fairly inconvenient to do things this way. Instead, I will be focusing my energy on making the FMM output as simple as I can, such that each server can get their own resource pack with as little hassle as possible. In a perfect world, I would love to add a system which hosts server-specific resource packs for all the Patreon supporters (can't make it free due to hosting costs), but such a system is simply too time-consuming to promise right now. For now, I will just focus on lowering the amount of complexity required to get all of your resource packs working.

I'm becoming a professional Youtuber!

 Ok, maybe not. As I mentioned before, I plan to make several Youtube guides on how to create content for my various plugins, starting with EliteMobs (for the contest). However, we're not stopping there. I also want to make more videos both showcasing content and showing the development process of some of the things I work on.

I happen to be a very big fan of Sebastian Lague and other Youtubers who have a talent at making incredibly well-produced development videos of interesting features, and I can't wait to butcher that with my lack of experience and bad code.

Here's the youtube channel, for those unaware I even had one: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_xRlZyYFUCthTpfhmfpR0A

New dungeon releases

 We have one story-mode dungeon which is now entirely finished, and we have another one that should be done some time next week. I plan to release The Quarry, the next story-mode dungeon, tomorrow, with a month-long early release for Patreon supporters.

The next Sanctum, the deep mines, is actually a huge experiment, and it has taken an unusual amount of time to create as a result. It is actually a 2-phase sanctum which is the size of a dungeon, where players are initially chased around by an invulnerable boss down the mines until they reach a spot where the boss is made vulnerable.

Playtesting it has been very interesting and very fun, but we are very much fighting against the Minecraft limitations here, and as such it has taken a bit more time to make. However, as I mentioned, we're hoping to have it ready by next week.

The image teased above is actually from another dungeon which Dali is currently building. All I will say about it is that it is another experiment, and one that involves a ton of custom models. This will definitely be a premium dungeon, and I'm not even convinced we won't just lose money making it, but I really want to make something cool and memorable... so here we are.

The dungeon is actually significantly father along than what the image shows, but I don't want to spoil the surprise too much right now, so you will have to make due with an older screenshot.

Other releases

I have been collecting leads on people who can help us create model packs for FMM which we can use as decorations, as well as people who can help us create some BetterStructures builds which will have a focus on custom objects.

For the FMM model packs, these will be decorative. As a general idea, since we're headed towards the summer time, I will probably be releasing a beach pack of models, with parasols, tiki torches, beach balls, maybe palm trees - decorations that make a server feel more alive.

For BS, the intention is to create neat little decorations in builds that people can discover and take back home. This could be a cool looking chest with a 3d model, a better looking bed, maybe a full-on wardrobe, but also smaller things like plates, globes and other small decorative items that can be used to make a place feel more lived-in.

Unfortunately this is farther out into the future, as we have a lot of work to do before we're quite there, but it is something that I want to start releasing experiments for within the next couple of months.

Alright, I think this is enough rambling, and I don't want to talk about features that might be too far into the future either. It is hard for me, at this time, to guess how long the more documentation-focused work will take, but I want you to know I will be grinding away at it as much as I can. I've been planning for this moment for months at this point, and I am not going to let it slip. I want to make the best use of FMM that I can, and I think it will transform all the content we make in a way that everyone will love.

Finally, I want to thank all the supporters here, without whom we would not be able to make all of this, in a very literal sense. I would not be able to afford spending so much time making free software, nor would I be able to afford full and part time people to work on maps and other content. Your support - and patience ! - is immensely appreciated, and I hope that, in the coming weeks, you will feel like the trust and support you are giving to our projects is more than justified.

That's it for now - I need to get grinding!

Happy Fornite default dancing,

• MagmaGuy