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.
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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