Development Changes Effective 1 Jan 2024

For those who do not want to read the entire post, there is a TLDR; at the end of the page.

As mentioned earlier today on Discord, we (FDD or rather Hypherion) will have a new development policy, taking effect on the 1st of January 2024, as well as on any new mods released during the rest of 2023.

First, some background

I started modding way back in 2012, as a way to learn Java and to make content for my friends who used to play on servers I hosted.
During the Covid pandemic, when we were all stuck at home, I got bored and decided to get back into modding, and even ended up publishing my very first public mod, Hyper Lighting.

Now, since it was lockdown, I could sit in front of a PC 24/7 and develop and experiment as much as I wanted to. Even toward the end of lockdown, I was jobless and could still spend all my time behind a pc screen. This allowed me to develop multiple mods, across multiple minecraft versions and even multiple modloaders, without any problems.

For the past 3 years, this was mostly the norm. Mods would be developed on an supported on multiple minecraft versions and modloaders. Occasionally, older minecraft versions got dropped from development, as they became either difficult to maintain, or the amount of users didn’t justify the time spent developing for those versions.

So why the change now? What happend?

A lot has changed in my life since I started publishing mods. I got married, started a new job and even had my first child last year, who is now 8 months old.

For those that don’t know, I also suffer from severe depression and anxiety, both of which has let to multiple “attempts” over the course of my life, with multiple of them almost being successful. After getting a new job and getting married, my mental health has improved so much, that I was happy, could live my life normally and almost be a normal person.

That has changed during the last couple of months. Increasing amounts of stress, real life problems and other personal factors, have led to a sharp decline in my mental health, to the point where I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning and I can’t sleep at night. All this, lead up to me becoming burned out, demotivated and tired in general.

So what are the changes already?

So first and foremost, the biggest change will be how mods are developed for which versions of minecraft.

In the past, multiple of my mods would be developed for 1.16.5, 1.18, 1.19 all the way to 1.20. This is changing. Starting January 2024, mods will only be developed for 1 minecraft version at a time. The exception being, 1 stable mc release and one snapshot.

So for example, 1.20.5 (release) and 1.30 (snapshot). This means, that from January 2024, only the latest version of minecraft will receive feature updates.

Some older versions (as far as 2 versions back), will continue to receive critical bug fixes (critical meaning the bug makes the mod completely unusable, with no working workaround). These versions will not receive any new features.

If someone is willing to contribute to keep an older version alive, they will be helped to do so, and that version will be published, for as long as the contributor remains active. So for example, if your favorite version is 1.19.2, and you continue to backport features from 1.20 to 1.19.2, that version will still be published.

Users of older versions will still receive support from us, in the form of assistance and advice. PR’s on older versions will be accepted.

Closing words

The decisions above has not been made easily, and it’s something I’ve been thinking over for the past year. I’ve been fighting with myself multiple times to not quit modding completely, and to keep going forward and just shutting up, but I can’t any longer.

I am neglecting myself, my personal life, my wife and my child, because I spend every single free minute I have, developing mods and it’s not fair to any of us.

I made this decision so that I can keep making my mods better, instead of having to spend hours backporting features to other minecraft versions, rewriting code because the game code differs a lot and so that I can have more time to myself, more time to spend with my wife and child and most importantly, more time to relax and take care of my mental health, before an attempt becomes a success.

I ask that you please respect my decisions, and that you understand what has led to these decisions being made, just as I respect each and every one of you in our community.

TLDR;

• Starting January 2024, only one minecraft version at a time will receive new mods, new features and constant updates. Mods will no longer be maintained for multiple minecraft versions

• Users will continue to receive support for older MC versions, just like they have in the past

• My mental health is declining severely and I am neglecting my family, because I spend all my free time modding

• Contributors who want to maintain mods for older mc versions are welcomed and so are PR’s for those versions