Roadmap & some news

Hello everyone,

Keeping it short and sweet today.

The poll

Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll. The results were fairly close to what I was expecting, which is good to see. That's also good news because it means you will probably love what is coming up in the pipeline!

The next releases

We have been continuously working on the next set of dungeons which we plan to release this whole time. Recently Frostcone finished compiling the full story, questlines and other details for the story-mode dungeons, and Dali_ has continued working on them as well. In total, there are about 16 planned instanced dungeons / sanctums for it for the first chapter. 

Additionally, Frostcone is now working on the last Primis dungeon - specifically the last boss fight, which happens in an instanced dungeon - and the last Oasis chapter, which is also a boss fight in an instanced dungeon.

Which is a good way to bring up

The bittersweet news

So, if you've been following EliteMobs for a while or have been looking at who gets credited on maps, you will have noticed that overwhelmingly a lot of structures were worked on partially or fully by 69OzCanOfBepis, AKA Max, since the very start.

Max is the one who designed the entirety of the Oasis (except one room) among many other things, and Max has sent the last chapter for the Oasis recently. Sadly, this will be the last piece of content that he will deliver, as he has recently become extremely passionate and single-minded about something he cares very deeply about, and has thus decided to dedicate all of his time doing that. I wish him all the best with his new passion, and will forever be appreciative of all the fun and iconic things he helped me bring to life, and the good times we had together working on them.

The plot twist

So, based on the poll I was planning to probably work on BetterStructures first and then ETD, with FMM being somewhere in there as well as YT videos. But I completely changed my mind when Model Engine 4 got released.

Now, let me just say this upfront: I think ModelEngine 3 was overpriced. It cost $18 to display models in-game, with no functionality built into the plugin and without providing a suite of usable default models (I don't think the three they provided count).

However, it was basically the only option. You could use that, or use ItemsAdder for not quite the same but a somewhat comparable thing, or you could go pound dirt.

This doesn't sit well with me. Custom models is something so basic I believe Minecraft itself should provide the adequate toolset to generate in vanilla Minecraft (and for a long time they did keep promising they would through modding tools which never materialized).

So, even though I try to make EliteMobs content affordable to most, the ability to display custom models remained something that only servers willing to pay $18 to then start paying more money for more models would do.

I really like custom models, but I've rarely invested much effort in making them as I know that even if I make them free, between requiring resource packs and requiring a $18 plugin it would basically mean a very small percentage of EliteMobs users would ever see them.

Now, I think the developer of Model Engine heard me complaining about the price, and decided to do something about it. Unfortunately that something was making the Spigot version obsolete, moving to a third party shop and charging $32 for it. And yes, you have to buy it again if you already had the $18 version.

This is a dick move, the likes of which I can't really say that I've seen done in the Minecraft modding space before.

Now, in no small part thanks to the supporters here, I can afford a $32 plugin, which is really a $50 plugin when you account for the fact I already paid $18 for it. I can do it even though that plugin, on its own, does nothing, and requires other plugins for functionality and requires either paying for or making models to use to any extent, as there is little to no free quality content that can be used. But I don't want to pay for it. It just doesn't sit well with me, and it's been bothering me for a long time. And I know many people who use my plugins can't afford this in the first place.

Now, you might well be aware of my FMM - Free Minecraft Models - plugin. It's free, open source and aims to be an easy replacement for ModelEngine in the long run. As of right now, it is the backbone on which the ETD models are built,  and seems to work rather well in that function. However, it was also the very first release, and I've not had time until now to go back and expand upon it.

I do think that this exact moment is the best moment out of any to resume work on it. At https://www.twitch.tv/magmaguy today I already started working on it, and I got as far as getting the rotations to start working. My current goal is to just get the animations to work properly, and maybe adding a couple of features to make it a useful standalone plugin (such as being able to place custom model furniture).

Some may be surprised, but I don't think this will take very long to get done. I will be trying to stream every day working on it, and I believe that there will be public test builds for it next week.

To be clear here, I don't plan to make the next release of FMM better than Model Engine 4. I don't even plan for the big update after that to be better than it. But it will be free, it will be open source, it will work, it will be easy to use and it will have standalone functionality.

And, no less important, it will have my signature blend of free and premium content. Just like EliteMobs, and BetterStructures, and EternalTD, I aim to make vast amounts of both free and premium content for the plugin, using the sales from the premium content to pay for continuous development and potentially some modelers.

Expanding FMM will also give me the confidence I need to start using more custom models in EliteMobs, not just for bosses but also for cool things like special dungeon decorations and furniture. If the plugin is free, I can reasonably expect that people won't have much of an obstacle in installing it and seeing if they enjoy the custom models.

I want to keep this short, but suffice to say that this opens the doors to several new kinds of features for all of my plugins, and is on its own a great little plugin to have. If we're lucky, there might already be a spooky Halloween decorations pack waiting for you come October 31st!

Asks

I don't usually really ask for anything in these posts, but today is different.

If you know of a good builder team, or of a good builder, and can recommend them to me I would be appreciative. Pointing me to famous teams won't really help, unfortunately, as odds are we would not be able to afford them - EliteMobs maps cost $3.5-$10 on itch, not $35-100. I'm looking for serious people with reasonable normal market prices who can build things of the same level of quality as Primis or The Oasis. They have to be over 18, able to write invoices and I can't stress the serious part hard enough - people just not delivering projects in Minecraft happens more often than not. This is something someone would have to be able to do at the level of a part time job with a lot of consistency. 

With Max gone, we are now down to just Dali, and he's got his work more than cut out for him.

That's all for now. Feel free to drop a comment letting me know what you think!

Happy modeling,

- MagmaGuy