Written by
TheNuclearNexus:
I know it's been quiet around here lately (that pesky holiday season), so I thought I'd take time to update everyone on what we hope to do this year!
First and foremost, I want to summarize the amazing progress we made last year! Not only did we completely overhaul the website, rebuild the API layer, and formalize council meetings as an essential part of our development cycle, but we also grew this community into something much more significant. Despite its issues, the SMP brought a lot of new faces and helped to work out numerous bugs in [Radon](https://github.com/Smithed-MC/Radon). We also got to run our first jams!
However, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows last year. Our services went down **a lot**, which was unacceptable, and moving forward, we hope to ensure that the site becomes a reliable tool. Furthermore, the libraries didn't get nearly enough love throughout the 1.20 lifecycle, something we also want to address this year.
Alright, not more negativity; here's what you can expect from us in 2024!
# Bundles
> What do you mean by bundles? Haven't we had bundles for a while?
While bundles have been around for a long time, they've been second-class citizens compared to the packs they contain. Browsing for them isn't possible, and creating them hasn't felt great either.
This year, bundles will receive a significant overhaul and bring their support to the front of the platform.
## Patches
Patches will be packs internal to a bundle, similar to what we do on the SMP; patches will override content within the merged packs. This allows bundle creators to customize, tweak, and add new content without exposing these contents as a publicly accessible pack.
## Bundle Search
Also, bundles will receive their page for browsing - just like packs, opening the door to new kinds of content creators on the platform since bundles will be accessible to people just scrolling through the site. Bundle search will also help boost smaller packs since it can greatly increase their exposure.
## Official Bundles
With all these changes, official bundles are a must. The team will maintain some official bundles that showcase the power you can achieve over data packs with them (think of a curated experience like FTB packs). We plan to start small in scope and slowly grow them into something more. If you're interested in helping us with this, please join the Council via the `Channels & Roles` tab in the [discord](https://smithed.net/discord).
# Improved Minecraft Update Handling
Throughout the year, we had extended periods where the platform was not updated to support the latest Minecraft version. Not only did this annoy the people relying on the platform, it also made the project look extremely unfinished. Therefore, moving forward, we'll put a proper update workflow into place so the platform is ready on the first day the full version is available.
# Minecraft Libraries
Lately, the libraries have been suffering from a few problems, all of which we want to solve.
## Outdated
Many of the libraries have been stuck using technologies from older versions. This is fine for packs like `prevent-aggression`, but other libraries have been suffering, such as `crafter-addon`, which hasn't been updated since **1.17**. We're committed to getting all the libraries onto the latest versions and keeping them there.
## Overwhelming to develop
Our build system is convenient for updating packs on the fly through GitHub workflows, but it can be overwhelming for newcomers. Because of this, we plan on abstracting away most of the pipeline, so contributing is just writing pure `mcfunction`.
# Datapack Moderation
The datapack review process has been on the back burner for a while; this year, it'll make its comeback. For those of you that weren't with the project in early 2023, we had a conventions review process that packs would have to pass to be published on the platform. With the site redesign and API changes, it was removed entirely. The new review process will be more similar to Modrinth's functions. Packs will be initially screened to ensure they aren't malicious or breaking rules. Then, we will conduct convention reviews on them. Packs that don't follow conventions will still be allowed on the platform, so there's no need to panic about getting locked out.
# Community Events
In August, we launched our first-ever SMP, and it was great! The SMP brought in a bunch of new faces and gave life to the community. We followed that up with the Halloween Boss & Build event, which the wonderful MonkeyHue and Jachro carried heavily. We also got the opportunity to host a few general datapacking jams. We loved bringing the community together last year, and we hope to keep doing it.
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You can expect another smaller mini server coming down the pipeline and significant changes to the SMP. Jams will continue this year, with our next one planned for early April!
# Polish
In general, our primary focus across the board is the polish. Every feature will receive touch-ups to ensure the platform's reliability. We had many occurrences of the site going down last year and hope to tackle the instability, so we have significantly fewer outages.
# Closing Thoughts and TL;DR
Thank you for reading this far along into the article. For those of you who didn't read, here's the quick and dirty summary:
- Bundles
- Searching
- Patches (Internal Datapacks)
- Official Bundles
- Libraries
- Clean up
- Easier contribution
- Improved maintenance
- Faster updates to new versions
- Datapack review pipeline
- New community events
- Overall polish
Finally, I want to thank everyone who contributed anything to the platform and community. In particular, a group of people truly committed themselves to helping out last year, and so they deserve some shout-outs.
**BubbleFish** - Without Bubble, the website would still look like trash
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**rx** - The goat, got weld working super well on our backend and setup the libraries pipeline. As well, took charge in leading our meetings
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**BluePsychoRanger** - Helped to direct convention discussions and took some great notes in meetings
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**MonkeyHue** - Cranked out some great content for the server
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**ImCoolYeah105** - Our wonderful server manager and developer of Radon
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**dragoncommands** - Companion mod developer
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**CarbonSmasher** - Got the launcher into a functional state again
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**vdvman1** - Fantastic mod and contributed to some great conversations
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And to everyone else, thank you once again for all you've done for the project!