Since we are still pretty early in the series it only makes sense to provide more information on my plans for the project and what it current state is.
1. Retrospection
Let's make a quick retrospection of the early days of the project & me playtesting it with some screenshots I took back then. There are A LOT of them, but I hand picked some that stood out.
I started to mess around with Java around February 2023 and worked on another project for a few months until moving onto this. I first made a singular mod with as much easily addable features as possible from the original BTW mod.
I didnāt care too much if what I coded in was 100% true to the original experience, but I wanted to just code whatever, as I liked it a lot. I kept it to simple things only so I donāt deviate too much from what the experience is supposed to be.
Eventually I did not like it that things were too dependent on each other on a modpack level and that It uses other peopleās mods, so I decided to make as much of them as I can on my own.
2. Development Checklist
I decided to make a āDevelopment Checklistā with an outline of what the current plan for making the BTWR Project is. I say current plan because a lot of things will change for the future of the mod and right now some of the mods are still in alpha/beta with (some) semi-working features.
I want to note that some things below are subject to change and I will be collecting information later on for making a special place for information about the mod like a wiki or something similar.
This checklist contains the development phases of the BTWR Project.
š£Phase 0 - Getting Familiar
This phase includes me making the original BTWR mod, as well as learning basic Java through Minecraft modding and getting familiar with the source code in the mean time.
After developing the project for about 3 months (around August/September 2023), I decided to release pre-alpha versions of the project as a modpack privately for people on the BTW Discord.
I continued to update the project for about 2 months while releasing updates every 2 weeks or so, and I was able to add quite a few difficulty raising features. Of course they werenāt absolutely faithful to BTW is, so I didnāt want to leave them like that.
With this approach I was able to keep my interest in learning as I didnāt frustrate myself with too complex tasks.
Of course this lack of effort caught up to me and maybe until a month ago I was kind of lost on the projectās lookout & my Java comprehension, but thankfully everything is starting to slowly come together. The making of all the separate mods and getting them to work together on a modpack level definitely added to the challenge :).
I realized that making a few different mods would be much better approach in terms of customizability and also will allow these mods to be used by other pack makers for their projects. It took me about 5-6 months more until today - having a some mods released and a few more on the way.
Right now there are 3 mods released separately on Modrinth:
š³Phase 1 - Basic Survival
- To clarify once again before we continue further; currently there is no official mod pack release. That will come out later on.
I feel like for most of the early development of the project I will be ābulkā updating all the mods at once as a lot of features are being added or things modified all around the different projects.
This phase will start with the following mods being released:
a) Tough Environment will be released as Alpha.
b) Self Sustainable will be released as Alpha.
For Tough Environment (as of this moment) I think it everything is pretty much decided in terms of what will make it into the final mod, but there may still be additions that I might want to add later on, so for now it will be Alpha release.
Self Sustained will be released with simplified modified campfire, simplified fire starter items and semi working Oven. The point here is to get the mod out there and going. In later updates before official release, it should contain all of those features as they were in the original BTW mod.
I tried for a while to get those features working, but I guess it will take me more time. Of course anyone that wants to help is welcome & can either comment here or @ivangeevo me in the BTW Discord.
Checklist Until Next Phase:
The currently released mods should be:
BTWR: Core v0.23
Sturdy Trees 1.3 Beta
Mobs Always Drop 1.4+ Beta
Tough Environment 1.0 Alpha
Self Sustainable 1.0 Alpha
In addition to the mods above the next testing version of the modpack instance might contain any other small mods that I'm making in the mean time.
Phase X - Future Plans
After we have a simplified yet greatly extended survival experience via the aforementioned mods, we can start working on balancing things added after 1.5.2 - 1.20 Minecraft so that they work in the style of Better Than Wolves.
I have added other features through data packs, recipes & things on the modpack level through KubeJS, but they are too many to list and will be documented fully before the first public modpack release.
I will probably make another post like this once again later on with a more details on what the "roadmap" for the project is, but mostly I want to keep these post about the side mods and the modpack can get another series of it's own eventually when it's starts releasing publicly.