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Some notes on the direction of ProjectKorra

Mist

Staff member
Administrator
Hello everyone, I wanted to give a couple of quick updates on the future of ProjectKorra. This post will be a bit long, but bear with us.

Over the last week or so we have had many internal discussions on what direction we would like to take the project. Now that we are entering year 3, there are a lot of goals we had set out for and wanted to accomplish but hadn’t gotten to it yet. This post will serve as an update about what has been going on and what’s currently on our agenda.

First and foremost, regarding ProjectKorra (Core):

For the last year or so we have focused on relentlessly expanding ProjectKorra (Core). We are still going to be working on it, but changing our direction. We have several planned features for ProjectKorra (Core) but wanted to do a couple of things first.

First, we are going to work on actually stabilizing Core. The next couple of builds will likely be VERY bug fix heavy as we work to get out large remaining bugs. Simply put, we want to start putting ProjectKorra on as many platforms as possible, but want to get it in the best place to do so first.

From there, we will begin to look at where many parts of the plugin are lacking. We tend to believe, for now, that this is in subelements and our other side projects (such as Probending, Spirits, and more unannounced projects). This will be the focus of much of the summer, making good on many of our side projects.

This is not a feature freeze. Rather, we are shifting our focus toward fixing what we already have before expanding even further on a plugin that has been worked on for three years. We truly believe this will help us expand our community further.

There are plenty of other plans that are still being finalized and I’ll refrain from commenting on it now.

Our Concept Design Department

Our Concept Design Department plays an important role in communicating what is happening between the staff and the community. They will continue to do this. Because we’re going to minimize our implementation of new features, we’re going to be halting the hiring of additional Concept Designers for now. Our current Concept Designers will double up into other staff roles, but will still handle suggestions as they have been.

… With that being said, introducing Junior Developers!

We are opening up a new Department within the Development Department… Junior Developers! Too often we have heard of people not wanting to apply to the Development Department because they feel as if they lack the necessary skillset. This new position is designed to allow people to apply, join the staff, and learn as they go. Junior Developers receive less responsibilities, focus on bug fixes, and work their way into their own tasks.

We’re still designing this program and applications for Junior Developers will open soon.

On top of that, some other neat stuff is happening to our staff:

As we begin to ramp up our server plans we will be expanding our server team. We will be looking for additional Builders and Server Moderators. Keep your eyes posted, applications will probably open within the next week or two.

New Forum Rules

I recently tasked our beloved Community Moderator @floory565 with clearing up our rules and cleaning out some convoluted language. Most of the rules are the same, but the language makes more sense. Read more here: http://projectkorra.com/threads/forum-rules.3/

One final note, a redesign!

We are revisiting the entire design and structure of our forum. I’m a data guy and I was looking at our web analytics and was troubled by what I saw: people were spending far too long looking for downloads or what we really were all about, and left without really doing much on the forum. This should change.

Over the next couple of weeks I will slowly begin implementing changes to our forum and launching the new ProjectKorra landing page. The new design will be pretty clean and make it easier to find the information that you need. This will take a few weeks to finish, but when it’s done we hope to have our Documentation and everything up to date and in ONE place that’s easy to find.

Thank you for reading, please stay tuned for more information on the server and additional development updates.

Edits below this line:

Hey everyone! So there was some confusion in the original post. Here are some updates.

- This is NOT a feature freeze. We are expanding, but are cleaning things up first, plain and simple.
- New unannounced projects does not mean new plugins.
- We aren't going to stop working on Core, we're dividing up some of our resources to work on more than one thing at a time.

Remember, the goal of ProjectKorra was (and still is) to bring the Avatar universe into Minecraft. We're working on that, and that means paying some attention to things that aren't in Core. ProjectKorra is so much more than just ProjectKorra (Core) and we need to catch up. There are so many other aspects to this project that will show itself soon. Trust the process, please, and be nice to each other. We're all here because we love this project, there's no need to be mean and aggressive toward strangers over the internet.
 
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Once again, I love the detailed annoucement and a head-ups you put out for us as what there's is to come and what is already going on. We (same minded) appreciate all the work you guys put it, and all this said things sound great. I believe clearing out rules, introducing minor staff reqruitment department and focusing on halting hiring new reqruits for concept designers is a great start for improving PK (the plugin & the community) even further in this future.

However, great things aside, I felt a concern about the parts (quoted below) which reveals the possible direction PK may take. In all honestly, I got dissapointed...

First, we are going to work on actually stabilizing Core. The next couple of builds will likely be VERY bug fix heavy as we work to get out large remaining bugs. Simply put, we want to start putting ProjectKorra on as many platforms as possible, but want to get it in the best place to do so first.
This is not a feature freeze. Rather, we are shifting our focus toward fixing what we already have before expanding even further on a plugin that has been worked on for three years. We truly believe this will help us expand our community further.
Don't get me wrong. I love and really appreciate that you guys put all the effort and focus onto bug fixes. They are indeed important, and they must be prioritized. However, the Thing is-- with this kind of 'disbalance' (which I like to put it that way) development,by giving more focus on bugs instead of proportional this just returns PK to the past. Even If it slows down the introduction of new mechanics, features and element techniques.

Also, I heard current plants will be stopped, the focus will be shifted to side plugins (the staff can correct me If I'm wrong). That might mean new abilities won't make it to their arrival. Potential Solution: Don't know about upcoming mechanics/features/additons can be in resource page as an earlier peaks, but regarding abilities - Devs could release them in a custom ability formed that's affliated by PK (of course, concept designer given/demanded).

I know we talked over through this on a discord, but I'll leave it as a reminder.
 
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Mist

Staff member
Administrator
Just an update (I edited the original post)

Hey everyone! So there was some confusion in the original post. Here are some updates.

- This is NOT a feature freeze. We are expanding, but are cleaning things up first, plain and simple.
- New unannounced projects does not mean new plugins.
- We aren't going to stop working on Core, we're dividing up some of our resources to work on more than one thing at a time.

Remember, the goal of ProjectKorra was (and still is) to bring the Avatar universe into Minecraft. We're working on that, and that means paying some attention to things that aren't in Core. ProjectKorra is so much more than just ProjectKorra (Core) and we need to catch up. There are so many other aspects to this project that will show itself soon. Trust the process, please, and be nice to each other. We're all here because we love this project, there's no need to be mean and aggressive toward strangers over the internet.
 
*Smashes like button*

Thanks, once again, for clarifying some things.

Though, I'm still concern. While it is not a freeze, I hope it doesn't slow down drastically that progress of introducing features. I hope all it turns out better than my let down expectations meet.

Looking forward for the upcoming redesign of the forums. Jr. Developer department recruitment sounds interesting enough - really helpful for those starting out to code.

If CDs will be doubled, would there be a point? Do they retain the role for CORE plugin?

Išsiųsta naudojantis SM-G313HN Tapatalk 4 Lt
 
I really like the step towards bug fixing.

Having been in Minecraft's "Avatar" community for a long time, something I have noticed from when Orion was still active is that there are just so so so many bugs. Whether they are inconspicuous or not they all contribute to a player's quality of gameplay. I feel like a lot of time is needed to iron out bugs in the core plugin which have been around for quite sometime. I think maybe before adding more and more features everyone needs to focus on making PK as bug free as possible, and then once that happens we can focus on implementing more features. I know a number of server's which want to run this plugin but can't because it is far too heavy duty (for high player counts anyway), wouldn't it be in the best interest's of our community to focus on that? If PK was even a little bit more stable, or easy to use, or bug-free more people would use it. That would mean more players would play bending servers, more people would report bugs, more people would post abilities, etc.

One thing that ProjectKorra has is an active community which is able to contribute to the quality of project_korra_core through side plugins and abilities. This means, that under the circumstance Minecraft stopped updating and PK was glitch-free, the community would continue to introduce plugins and abilities that would make the plugin exciting and evolving. In saying this, I am coming back after like 1-2 years of a MC break, so I have missed a lot. But I remember when I left most announcements said "this is going to be a bug fix" and don't get me wrong, bugs were fixed but the number was small in comparison to the amount there actually were.

I hope that didn't come across as aggressive, rude, spiteful or ungrateful. I really do appreciate the hours of work everyone has put into this plugin; it's just that as a server owner, these bugs are my nightmares. And i'm glad to see a focus on bug-fixing, I just hope it stays a priority. I think a few updates/versions and a lot of time spent solely on bug-fixing could greatly contribute to the plugin and the community.

That's just my two cents :), I hope you find some value in what I have written.
 
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