Since @TotiGonzales and I took over from BWOT we've not been very clear about what was going on, because we hadn't figured it out ourselves what we wanted to do and how we'd go about it. A busy period followed which only got us thinking more and more about the future of MCME.
Today I'll try my best to clear up some of the misconception.
Mordor
I'll start with the elephant in the room. Mordor has been called an upcoming project for way too long now, sadly it is not. Back when Gondor was started they never expected it to take 5 years. Now halfway through those 5 years we came to realize our standards had changed a lot. Resulting in the revamp of Dol Amroth and a series of revamps throughout Gondor, delaying Mordor even further. When Toti and I were promoted to head builder we quickly came to realize that Mordor was still far far away, with little development on the resourcepack and even less on the planning. It would take us a long time to make this all work and be up to the new standards we are finally setting in Anorien and Moria. Back then we decided to instead focus texture development on the already started Anorien revamp which was requesting more vegetation textures. We quickly came to realize this was also not an easy task and even though Toti got quite a bit of textures done we decided that we needed something that would not only be for a couple of designers, but something the whole community could work on. More about that is listed below. In other words: Mordor is not going to happen anytime soon.
Avallone
You might remember a contest related to this city on the island of Tol Eressea. This again was a plan started by BWOT to have a hub for MCME. After the Node video and the bungee network implementation we realized that this could be quite useful and decided this could be a better project than Mordor. So we chose to focus our texture team (at that moment only Toti) on this instead. However BWOT wanted a whole island to be done, instead we decided to only go for the city to not have to spread our forces too thin. To this day that's still our plan and I'm currently working on a city layout together with Mershy. Meanwhile Toti realized he could not keep on doing the textures on his own and called for help from the community, resulting in a couple of helping hands. More updates on this project will follow over the next couple of weeks.
Development
As you all undoubtedly know, Eriol has managed to safely convert MCME to 1.14. Updating all our plugins and writing a new one to convert our map to the 1.13 world format. Not only that but all resource packs had to be updated as well and be put in the URPS format (unified resource pack structure). This took a tremendous amount of time and effort and we're very glad it's now mostly over. However development has not ended, Eriol also did the famous Helms Deep battle plugin and spent ages on putting MCME on a bungee network. On top of that he recently replaced a large portion of the item blocks with regular blocks. The development team has recently gained a couple new experienced members, so hopefully not all of the burden will be Eriol's from now on.
Vegetation
As I mentioned Toti finished a fair amount of vegetation textures, however as long as FAWE is not available we'd have little use for these. For now we'll continue work on prepping all streams and other work in Anorien to hopefully be able to implement the vegetation once FAWE is safe to use.
So now what?
For now not much will change. Toti and I will continue to work on textures and planning for Avallone. Eriol will continue his work on development. MCME is much more than just a build server, thus its progress can not be measured in builds finished. We've had so much happen to MCME since the summer we got promoted: The Node video, the reddit/media exposure, the helms deep battle, the bungee network, the 1.13 update... All these developments have taken up a lot of our (the Valar) time. Mordor will still happen but there wouldn't be exciting work for enough people for most of the time within the project and that we would like to rethink the way we go about new projects and our future planning. I hope that we can now find the time back to continue texture development and planning of Avallone. Of course we're only a small team of people, around 3 texturers, this will not be enough to realize everything we want. We still require help on this front, so if you're experienced, dedicated and willing to help out, please reach out to @TotiGonzales .
For any further questions or concerns feel free to reply on this thread, or message me privately.
Today I'll try my best to clear up some of the misconception.
Mordor
I'll start with the elephant in the room. Mordor has been called an upcoming project for way too long now, sadly it is not. Back when Gondor was started they never expected it to take 5 years. Now halfway through those 5 years we came to realize our standards had changed a lot. Resulting in the revamp of Dol Amroth and a series of revamps throughout Gondor, delaying Mordor even further. When Toti and I were promoted to head builder we quickly came to realize that Mordor was still far far away, with little development on the resourcepack and even less on the planning. It would take us a long time to make this all work and be up to the new standards we are finally setting in Anorien and Moria. Back then we decided to instead focus texture development on the already started Anorien revamp which was requesting more vegetation textures. We quickly came to realize this was also not an easy task and even though Toti got quite a bit of textures done we decided that we needed something that would not only be for a couple of designers, but something the whole community could work on. More about that is listed below. In other words: Mordor is not going to happen anytime soon.
Avallone
You might remember a contest related to this city on the island of Tol Eressea. This again was a plan started by BWOT to have a hub for MCME. After the Node video and the bungee network implementation we realized that this could be quite useful and decided this could be a better project than Mordor. So we chose to focus our texture team (at that moment only Toti) on this instead. However BWOT wanted a whole island to be done, instead we decided to only go for the city to not have to spread our forces too thin. To this day that's still our plan and I'm currently working on a city layout together with Mershy. Meanwhile Toti realized he could not keep on doing the textures on his own and called for help from the community, resulting in a couple of helping hands. More updates on this project will follow over the next couple of weeks.
Development
As you all undoubtedly know, Eriol has managed to safely convert MCME to 1.14. Updating all our plugins and writing a new one to convert our map to the 1.13 world format. Not only that but all resource packs had to be updated as well and be put in the URPS format (unified resource pack structure). This took a tremendous amount of time and effort and we're very glad it's now mostly over. However development has not ended, Eriol also did the famous Helms Deep battle plugin and spent ages on putting MCME on a bungee network. On top of that he recently replaced a large portion of the item blocks with regular blocks. The development team has recently gained a couple new experienced members, so hopefully not all of the burden will be Eriol's from now on.
Vegetation
As I mentioned Toti finished a fair amount of vegetation textures, however as long as FAWE is not available we'd have little use for these. For now we'll continue work on prepping all streams and other work in Anorien to hopefully be able to implement the vegetation once FAWE is safe to use.
So now what?
For now not much will change. Toti and I will continue to work on textures and planning for Avallone. Eriol will continue his work on development. MCME is much more than just a build server, thus its progress can not be measured in builds finished. We've had so much happen to MCME since the summer we got promoted: The Node video, the reddit/media exposure, the helms deep battle, the bungee network, the 1.13 update... All these developments have taken up a lot of our (the Valar) time. Mordor will still happen but there wouldn't be exciting work for enough people for most of the time within the project and that we would like to rethink the way we go about new projects and our future planning. I hope that we can now find the time back to continue texture development and planning of Avallone. Of course we're only a small team of people, around 3 texturers, this will not be enough to realize everything we want. We still require help on this front, so if you're experienced, dedicated and willing to help out, please reach out to @TotiGonzales .
For any further questions or concerns feel free to reply on this thread, or message me privately.
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