Time for some news!

Hello everyone!

As January 2023 comes to a close, I want to take a minute to cover some of the latest news associated to my projects, something I apparently only do very rarely.

1) BetterStructures EliteMobs integration

By now you may have noticed that the first BetterStructures pack with EliteMobs integration is out, alongside BetterStructures and EliteMobs updates!

Dali_ has been working on this EliteMobs pack and the premium one we will be releasing next since November, and I ended up spending a substantial amount of time also making sure that the packs worked in new and interesting ways.

I don't want to spend too much time on this, as it is something you can experience right now and entirely for free, but it feels incredibly nice to finally be able to provide people with what are essentially mini-lairs that procedurally generate in your map. This is certainly something that has been asked for since the very start of the dungeon system, and not only does it work but it is some of the highest effort content we've ever made, with each structure having dedicated powers that fit that specific fight (plus loot!).

I went out of my way to make a video covering the installation process, and I am hoping that this is just the first of many videos I will be making over the coming weeks and months.

You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/1z47lSxmyq0 

2) Theme of the next EliteMobs update

As you can see by the screenshot of the poll, it looks like the new & improved item upgrade system won by quite a margin, which makes sense considering just how many questions I get every day on discord about it.

I am closing the poll at this time, so this will certainly be the theme of the next EliteMobs update.

I will be doing something very different from the usual with the new item upgrade system – documenting the process of making it on YouTube. This will be the first time I try to do something like this, but I hope to cover the planning process, the execution process, and the result in action. This will take some inspiration from Sebastian Lague’s excellent videogame creation showcase videos, so we’ll see if the videos are interesting and worth continuing or not.

I’ve talked a little bit on discord about what is planned for this system, but I do not want to spend too much dwelling on it. For now, I just want to tease by saying that it is very inspired in Black Desert online, meaning that you can upgrade your items to a ridiculous amount – but every time they gain in power you risk losing them in the upgrade process.

Work on this will start in February, and will hopefully not take more than a month to complete, though we might get sidetracked by adding particularly fun extras to the upgrade system.

3) Upcoming releases

Before starting work on the upgrade system for EliteMobs, we will be completing the planned releases we currently have.

As is tradition, we are running a little bit late on some of the releases we wanted to do (BetterStructures took a lot of time and energy away from other things), so we will be focusing on releasing a free dungeon, a free sanctum, the Primis update including a brand-new instanced dungeon inside of Primis and two premium sanctums before truly delving deep into the item upgrade system.

It is my hope that most of these releases will be done in the coming days and will not extend much into February. Obviously, this doesn’t mean we will stop releasing new content – it just means we can finally finish clearing the backlog of things we’ve been working on and start creating the next generation of content for EliteMobs and BetterStructures.

4) YouTube & Twitch

I mentioned some of it before, but it is my plan to take YouTube more seriously in the coming months. Many of the systems we’ve made have either no documentation or text-only documentation, and people have been begging for video guides for a while now. I tend to get caught up while editing these videos, as I want to make them as close to perfect as I can (although I always end up making stupid mistakes, like not changing the text of the last video transition of the BetterStructures video).

Additionally, many of the systems we’ve created can not be adequately explained just through text on the Spigot page and lend themselves much better to be seen in action. BetterStructures gained quite a bit of popularity overnight, and I suspect a big part of that was the fact that the video showcased the builds and fights in action.

I will also be making videos covering the process of making some of the things I publish. I am an avid enjoyer of that kind of video and think it can be a great tool to promote the content we have created.

I would appreciate all feedback on the videos that I produce, both for the more utilitarian user guides and the more entertainment-focused development process showcases.

I mention Twitch here only briefly to say: I will only keep streaming occasionally and for my own entertainment. Bepis, chat and I have fun moments on stream, both for development streams and just gaming streams, and unless I discover some kind of new meta that went undiscovered for years (or stop streaming development work), that’s that will ever come from that.

5) Other projects

One of the things I hate most in the world is that there are only 24 hours in a day to work on things. Sometimes I wish days had closer to 72 hours so I can truly work on everything I’d like to work on.

I have a hard time taking time away from EliteMobs to work on other projects, but this is something I should probably be doing more often. The reception to BetterStructures seems to be extremely positive, and I have other plugins – and even non-Minecraft related projects – which I would love to work on.

Based on the success of BetterStructures, I do think I want to move forward with developing some more of the EternalTD plugin. It’s a fun concept, it was a lot of fun to playtest, and it was basically put on a shelf because I had no time to work on it.

I plan to sneak in some hours of work, if only to get it to a public release state. If the plugin is publicly released, and I make a video about it, people will probably show up on discord shake me violently until I put it into my regular work rotation, where it will be guaranteed to get updates more than once a year. I hope to do the same to my old SuperSmashMates plugin later, for those of you who even remember that being a thing.

I have also been learning Godot 4 (free open-source game engine) behind everyone’s back since around November in the little free time I could spare. Not something that will become relevant any time soon but consider this a fun foreshadowing for something that will happen months if not years from now.

5) In closing

As always, I want to thank everyone who supports the projects we work on – there is absolutely no chance we would be able to work on this without you.

One thing that I hope to work on more in 2023 is the content variety that I provide, and the video coverage of the content I work on.

EliteMobs has been the bread and butter of my plugin development efforts for a very long time (6 years!), and it will probably continue to be king throughout 2023, but I want to supplement my plugin development diet with a healthy dose of fun, less complex side projects that are no less fun to both make and consume.

That’s all for now.

Happy adventuring,

- MagmaGuy