Devlog - FreeMinecraftModels & EliteMobs

Greetings everyone!

Once again, it feels like far too long has passed since the last real updates, but I think you may agree that today's releases make up for that!

ModelEngine is dead (to me)

So let's start with talking about ModelEngine. I never really liked working with ModelEngine - support was slow to non-existent, it cost $18 and I was relying on it for something that is quite high investment - custom models.

And I do mean high investment. Primis will see a release before the end of the month which will include the boss model in it which cost $90, and that was just for the model, no animations. That's 1 model (a really nice looking one). I trust you all can do the math on what would happen if Primis had 10, or 20 of these.

So, obviously, relying on a closed-source plugin like ModelEngine which is premium and has no guarantee of getting updated to display my cool model, and on top of that requiring purchasing ModelEngine for $18 (now $32! or $18+$32 if you already bought the old version and had to update) while only charging $10 for Primis, or $1 if you get the Patreon sub, well, you can see how this never sat well with me.

Now, I mentioned this several times, but ModelEngine has moved to a third party store, and has made its Spigot post a legacy version, meaning it won't get updated to the latest Minecraft versions. Also, it costs $32, which I think is way too much. Personally, I'd put it up for $4.99 if I had to put any price on it at all.

But do I have to put a price on it?

Long live Free Minecraft Models

So, I made Free Minecraft Models because I wanted an alternative for ModelEngine. The plugin originally released in March alongside EternalTD, to make it so you could visualize that plugin's towers without requiring purchasing anything at all.

Since I made the plugin, from scratch (and a fair bit of it live at twitch.tv/magmaguy), I could finally practice what I preach and make it free and open-source, licensed under GPLV3. Let it be know that my beliefs on software are not idealism, I will work towards creating the environment I believe to be best for all so long as I am able to do so.

Originally, the towers did not really require animations, so the models were static. With this latest update, I have added all the components necessary to make dynamic entities with proper hitboxes and animations, and integrating it with EliteMobs such that EliteMobs can use FreeMinecraftModels as a drop-in replacement.

Minor development setbacks

I want to mention here that the development was delayed from my original time estimates for two reasons. The first one is because I had surgery to correct my deviated septum, which I am still recovering from, though at this stage it does not affect my development work.

The second reason is because I stubbornly was trying to reinvent animations for no good reason for about a week. After actually researching how I was supposed to do it in Blender forums, it became very obvious what my issues were (it was related to local vs global rotations), and implementing it was fairly easy.

I did have to rewrite a bit more of the plugin than I originally had hoped for, but all in all the structure that was there originally was quite robust  and the changes were more akin to extensions than fundamental modifications.

Still a work in progress!

While this FreeMinecraftModels plugin has been tested for a little while by me, I am aware that there are some things that need tweaking, and some features that would be good to have. Think of it as the first release with animations, not the last one!

Using Free Minecraft Models

Using FreeMinecraftModels with EliteMobs is easy - you install both plugins, then install the content you want to use through the usual EliteMobs imports folder. As of writing this, I have not published updated resource packs which use FreeMinecraftModels  because I want to give people a few days to download the plugin. So, to get the resource pack, go to the configuration files of FreeMinecraftModels and go to the output folder. You will find the resource pack in there!

Like I mentioned, this will be easier to do in a future update.

But wait, there's more!

While I tried to avoid it, I just couldn't. I fell hopelessly behind on the releases that we wanted to do for dungeons / arenas / other content. Now, the good news is that Frostcone kept working on them, as did Dali_ and a new builder which I will be announcing with the next release!

That means that basically we have a stockpile of unreleased content that, now that this massive project is at least somewhat out of the way, I will be rolling out over the coming days.

I can only apologize that I was just not capable of handling everything at once. I would say I'll try to do better next time, but I honestly don't quite know that there will be a next time which has this level of complexity - this involved working on EliteMobs, FreeMinecraftModels and EasyMinecraftGoals all at once, doing things Minecraft very much was not built to handle, while recovering from a surgery and still managing the other projects we have going in the background and everything else I have to do for my work. I don't think I'll get this swamped again any time soon.

I can reveal at this stage that at the very least the Diamond League Arena will be coming out tomorrow, as we already finished testing and packaging it!

A big thank you

I genuinely want to thank my supporters for being patient with me as I worked on this. I felt a degree of personal investment in developing a free, open source alternative to Model Engine, as it was always a thorn on my side to know the models were locked behind such a pricy plugin.

I genuinely do try to make the content that I make affordable, and even free to create your own content for. 

This is something I've been wanting to do for years, and I am genuinely very happy that, through your continued support, I've been able to finally do it.

Near future plans

Aside from releasing all the content we're been stockpiling, I plan on creating content for Free Minecraft Models which can be used for furniture or decoration - things like carts, skeletons, barrels, piles of books... things that you will be able to place in your own worlds, as you choose, and things that we will be placing in dungeons to improve their theming.

As always, some of the content will be free, and some will be premium!

Further, I plan to release several videos, some guides, some showcases, some devlogs, and more, to make sure that the content is properly documented. It's high time that EliteMobs has a proper video creation guide, for one, and most of my plugins could use an updated video guide at this point.

Some of you showed interest in upgrading to the Partner tier to get your servers promoted at the end of my videos. To you, I'd say this would probably be a good time to do that if you still plan on it.

Also, for those that asked for the physical 3d printed towers, I need you to check your DMs as I have asked for further clarifications. To those that gave those clarifications, I plan to ship the towers in early December - I want to use them in a video that I am planning, so you will probably be able to see them there before you receive them!

Finally, I'd like to end with a minor request: if you enjoy the plugins I make, reviews help me by showing to other people that these plugins are worth (or not) trying out. Plus, I always like reading any review that isn't a support request! If you haven't already, leaving a review on EliteMobs, BetterStructures, FreeMinecraftModels, or really any or all of my plugins, is always appreciated.

Alright everyone, sorry that this post was so long but I've been working on these things for quite a while. I truly hope you enjoy what I've created for you all.

Happy modeling,

- MagmaGuy