Some status update!

Hi there! Sorry for the long silence. I was overwhelmed by work in previous weeks, and I wasn't in a mental state of being productive and creating things. Now that I am having things sorted out, I just want to give you some status update on my personal projects and where they will go.

Where will AcademyCraft go?

For every Minecraft modder who is deeply into this, the joyness is always accompanied by bitterness and other complex emotions. AC, released in 2015 (4 yrs ago), being actively developed for about 2 years, then suddenly developement was ceased. It's not until last year that me and my friends picked it back up and decided to give it a second life.

AC has gone a very long way and has become sth we could never imagine. Back then I was a student just entering college, and wanted to create some project that I saw as interesting. But AC has become just too well received, and I'm overwhelmed by players's great expectations. I spend like 1.5 years working tirelessly almost exclusively on this project. The result is amazing: We created something that we and players appreciated, and I know everyone is still eagerly waiting for its update, up to this day. So I'm really glad that my work is not wasted.

But the grinding like that also has consequences. Due to long days of of working overnight, my health status went really bad, and I skipped too many classes to the point I almost can't graduate (I did now, no worries :P). Now that I look back, I see both the joyness of creating something, and the pain and numbness of burning myself out.

I guess for me personally, the initial vision for AC is already finished. A mod that enables people to use super cool abilities, giveing people fun not imagined before in MC. The reasons that I come back to this project are:

* I left project too abruptly, and it still feels like an unfinished product up to this day.
* The players just like this mod too much, that it feels an really bad mistreatment to leave everyone alone.

Just that simple I suppose. I wanted to give this project a proper ending, to give everyone that have expectation to this project a proper answer, to give myself a proper answer. That's why I'm still here, 4 years later.

In a practical matter, I will work on AcademyCraft to solidify its gameplay further, revising existing bad design choices and expand its content in the direction we originally intended. There will be no crazy amount of content updates as that's not where I want to go. TO be precise, we will do:

* Overhaul lots of effects that look lame to me now, and make things look better (e.g. Electromaster's arcs)
* UI could use some style update, and should be more consistent with original MC (pixel cyberpunk vibe?)
* Some skills that we originally imagined, but haven't done yet (Iron sand manipulation, fire manipulation, water manipulation...)
* Rebalancing the skills' data. (Some are too week and some are just too damn strong, they really need overall evaluation)
* Improve the tutorial. (I believe it now has too many useless texts to be considered useful)
* Rewrite the scala part of the mod back to Java, just for consistency.
* ...

I know it must be dissappointing for those who wants to see the mod's continued developement and expansion. But for us the page is turning, and we want to finish this journey with you.

My apologies, and my greatest thanks to everyone that have ever played and enjoyed AcademyCraft. I wish that we finish this project properly and elegantly, and we witness its end together.

What next/else?

Things have really changed for me during the past few years. Developing MC mods brought me into the grand door of game developement, where I saw infinite possibilities. To be a game developer and create something that is truly unique and fun, is becoming my life's pursuit. I am now a full-time game programmer working on a commercial game project. But I really wish to go indie, so I can express more personal and unique stuff in the future. 

In the field of game design and developement, I've been exploring a lot. I learn about flow, gameplay pillars, 'game feel' and many other theories for game design. I start to analyse games that I play more deeply and start to have a better taste for games. Most important of all, I want to use my knowledge to create even more unique and inspiring projects.

Up to this day, as a game programmer and a (self-assigned) game designer, I still feel badly inadequate. There are so many talents out there, who created Journey, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Braid and so many amazing projects. I still struggles to grow my game developement skill, and I hope one day I can really create a unique and inspiring game.

That being said, I still prefer a project-based approach to learn things. The things that I work on now include:

* A voxel-based game, where you land on an inhabitable planet and have to build your own rocket to fly back home; The game is written in Rust programming language.
* A small learning project to learn raytracing and Rust programming language.
* A 2d pixel-style action platformer, with a really interesting sci-fi backsetting. The project is paused now bcuz the artist is working on other projects, but I'm slowly working on its setting :P

Also I participate game-jams often. I've been in 2018 & 2019's Global Game Jam, creating two little game Doomsday Protocol and 流浪地球(Wandering Earth) . Game jams are great events where you hang out with gamedevs and gather new ideas, and I look forward to have another one soon :-)

I will give more updates when I have sth more to share. But for now thats it! Time to tinker, experiment, and witness something new!

Thanks for your continued support!!