Hello everyone, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Wyatt Childers, perhaps better known in this community as Dark_Arc – not to be confused with Dark_Arcana. Over the past few years I’ve had both the pleasure and honor of working with some truly brilliant minds. I’ve truly enjoyed my time working on both sk’s plugins, and my own, and while I truly believe Sponge can be something great, and it has perhaps the very best people that could be working on it, doing just that, I think the time has come for me to move on from MineCraft modding.
While many of the other team members remain quite optimistic about the Mojang buyout, I myself cannot convince myself that I should continue to work on MineCraft code. Truthfully, I never anticipated that I would ever say those words, however, like several others in the modding community, I have an extreme distaste, and distrust in regards to Microsoft Corporation.
I’d like to take a moment, and thank notch for creating what became such an amazing part of my life. When I first started playing MineCraft, I knew virtually nothing about programming. I had spent some time playing around with CSS & HTML on a wikia, however, I really had no understanding for anything beyond that.
As a matter of a fact, it wasn’t until I became involved with sk’s plugins, that I begun to learn how to code. At first, I was more or less just throwing some text into my IDE, and hitting the compile button, and watching to see if it did something, to see if it worked. As the days went by, and turned to months, and then to years, I gained an intricate understanding of what I was writing, I became more involved with sk’s plugins, and my own code, before eventually becoming the lead developer on CommandBook.
Over the years I’ve made significant contribution to CommandBook, CraftBook, and LogBlock, in addition to some less significant work on WorldEdit, WorldGuard, and some various other projects. It saddens me however, that the majority of my work was hidden away – until recently – in Aurora, a plugin I wrote which was/is really just a variety of tools, and game play modifications. Regardless, looking back now, it’s all been a great learning experience, and a ton of fun. MineCraft brought me to the end of an awful chapter of my life, and began the start of a new, more promising chapter, working on it gave me so much in regards to my skills with Linux, and Java programming, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget many of the memories made just playing the game.
I’d like to give special thanks to sk89q for the opportunity to contribute to his great plugins, and while I’d love to mention everyone who I’ve worked with over the years, with the exclusion of a few, the list is far too large, so to everyone out there that I’ve worked with, thank you for the memories.
In regards to notch, I hate to see him leave, in his “goodbye post” on his blog, he mentioned how MineCraft was this huge thing, he didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to be responsible for it. I think it’s unfortunate that he sees things this way, in all truthfulness, I think that’s really the best way to look at MineCraft. No one really understands MineCraft, it’s a massive game, filled with the creations, and ideas of millions of minds across the world. To say that you actually understand what MineCraft is, is an absurd statement. Truthfully, the best way to make MineCraft, is to make it your own, to be that “…nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.” I hope Microsoft understands that, and doesn’t forget it. Regardless, notch is a person, and at the end of the day, he has to choose what’s best for him. I understand why he wants to leave, and I wish him the best.
Anyways, thank you guys for letting me be part of this amazing community. I hope that Sponge continues in its development, I know quite a few of the people behind it, and from one community member to another, you’re all in good hands – provided Microsoft doesn’t shackle them.
I’m sure I’ll still be around looking at things, maybe I’ll even do some MineCraft code in the future again, but for the most part, and the foreseeable future I fully anticipate this marks the end of my MineCraft days.