The Forest Update is such an all-encompassing redesign of the MCME vegetation building set and achieved with such new and ever-developing technology that breaking it up into pieces would have been possible but very disadvantageous.
- The graphical features required for our new models to be displayed in the vanilla game were relatively new, undocumented, and incompatible with shader mods. This would have resulted in all leaves, branch systems, bushes, and most cool details being released at the end of the update cycle which would make projects finished with earlier updates feel outdated quickly.
- Deployment work for smaller updates would have constantly interrupted the production flow. This would not be a problem if many of these assets wouldn't have had such long production timelines due to complexity and much-needed design iterations. We had to adapt to this new style of development. Streamlining the whole process where we focus on one part of it at a time (concepting, modeling, texturing, implementation, deployment) seemed more efficient for me. Especially when many of the tasks associated with developing in Minecraft are very repetitive. This also allowed us to use automated tools like scripts to smooth out implementation hell a little.
- While we did not officially support Optifine or Sodium before, we realized the importance of these for our photographers and for the display of our builds so I wanted to make sure we can offer this option once the update is released. I couldn't foresee what a journey that decision would take me on but long story short, after talking to a lot of people in the wider Minecraft community and a lot of work, we finally cracked it earlier this summer. Before that piece fell into place all fancy models had to be put on hold due to uncertainties in the development process after the issue was solved.
It has definitely been an exaggeratedly long development process. The update itself was always supposed to be decently large and most of the vegetation plan made 2 years ago didn't change much despite new possibilities on the graphical side. But never did we think it would take 2 years. I apologize for the delay in RP updates. Here are some upsides from it tho:
- Work delegation: During the development process of the forest update, our development team really began to crystalize and I would say, after many years of teaching, there are quite a few people in the team that I can entrust with doing quite complex things on their own.
- Tooling: Many scripts and small programs for making the development process faster have been developed. This has been a huge improvement in our productivity
- Development pipeline improvements: While development got quite a bit more complex we have also found a very efficient way to add assets fast and iterate on them efficiently. Using this pipeline we've already been able to make great progress on the Mordor Pack for example.
- Feedback from the community: A very important lesson from the Forest Update development was the collaboration with our builders. With constant build testing, we were able to identify design oversights and issues as well as expand the capabilities of our assets by making them more versatile. This is most definitely the best development in our process and has already been carried over to future RP projects.
If you are wondering how future RP projects are going make sure to check out the latest edition of the
MCME Times. I hope this helped answer some questions. and I hope you'll be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor despite the delay.