Of course, it’s all about personal preference and experiences. That’s the gist. That’s why you can’t just assume that Bukkit will die sooner or later just because Sponge has a better design. CanaryLib was also considered way better than Bukkit and didn’t become more popular…
Honestly it’s a combination of things, Sponge not being complete, developers and server owners who don’t like change, especially server owners, you know if it works why change it. And the fact that Sponge is years late to the game.
Probably a bit bias though because I never really cared for Bukkit. Everything always felt like a workaround when developing plugins and as I said earlier the community doesn’t create warm welcome to outsiders and really had no interest in improving the platform. Suggestions were treated with harsh scrutiny.
That being said the fact can’t be ignored that there’s a possibility that bukkit will always be the go to for most. Howecer there’s a very large group of mod pack server owners that are already relying on the success of this project. The statistics may show low percentage of cauldron users but considering the real size of the Minecraft community ignoring them is ignoring potentially millions and that’s something to be considered.
2 Likes
Considered by who? I’ve looked at Canary and didn’t think much of it. I’d like to read about what was different / better with Canary then Bukkit if you have sources.
No, it’s not about personal preferences.
The fact of the matter is this.
Bukkit/Spigot is already very well established. Sponge is not.
There are a few causes for this:
- Sponge is not actually done yet. There isn’t a release version of Sponge. It it still in Beta, and has been since the beginning of this year.
- There is virtually no plugin support for Sponge at the current moment. The reason is list entry 1 above. Also there hasn’t been enough time.
- Because of list entry 2, there is not any benefit to using Sponge over Spigot right now, other than native Forge Support, which also still has its hiccups.
At some point in the near future, Sponge will actually start looking complete, which means there will be much more plugin support, which means people will actually have a REASON to switch to Sponge. At that point we’ll start seeing a lot more sponge.
8 Likes
One of the principal motivations for the creation, and continuing evolution and development of SpongeAPI and it’s implementations was to create an effective replacement for Cauldron, more so than Craftbukkit. The fact that we have the former lead dev of Cauldron as one of the lead developers of Sponge speaks volumes, and at least gives us the confidence that we’re headed in a sensible direction. That we happen to compete with the surviving Bukkit implementations via SpongeVanilla is a side effect of the process, in some ways.
Sponge could probably do more to boost it’s profile, but that would come at a cost. We really need to have a decent stable, and complete implementation available for the latest MC in order to compete properly, and that is still some way off. Everyone using Sponge implementations at present should be well aware that the whole project is still in-development, and relies on the feedback of users and devs to get where it wants to go. That includes considering the perceptions and quibbles from across the full spectrum of Minecraft communities that could stand to benefit from the project. So it’s good to see a fair comparison being made between these different server platforms, and where they might learn from one another.
10 Likes
Sorry to drag up an old topic but the fact that this topic is old is an example of the problems being faced by many server owners trying to implement Sponge.
I am one of those server owners and whilst I have no problem with change one of the major problems I am experiencing is a severe lack of documentation, not about Sponge specifically but plugin documentation.
There are currently around 100 or so plugins for Sponge, and whilst the main ones are there, they are very lacking in basic features compared to the older bukkit variants.
In addition to this is seems alot of those plugins are discontinued or have been abandoned.
I must confess, I am concerned Sponge may never really get off the ground and that another 1.10+ version of cauldron will be required for us to even get close to what we had available in 1.7.10.
It feels like a serious step backwards in terms of forge servers.
This is not a criticism of Sponge or the Devs, it’s obvious to anyone how much work you guys have put in, I’m just not sure it’s enough when we are used to all the candy that bukkit has given us over the years, bukkit allowed us to customise our servers and make us unique compared to other servers out there, with Sponge and because of the lack of plugins, most 1.10 forge based servers using Sponge are almost identical and offer nothing special compared to the next server out there. This is one of the largest issues regarding Sponge right now I think.
I understand it’s likely impossible to create a bridge between Sponge and bukkit but I am having problems seeing any other solution.
1 Like
Not Quite Impossible. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but some of it is doable.
Feel free to prod developers about absent documentation, that’s always been a common shortcoming with plugins in general. We do our best to document our own stuff, and even that has a number of significant gaps. Assistance is always appreciated.
Resurrecting Cauldron for the purposes of continuing to mash together the Bukkit and Forge APIs is a process fraught with frustration, and that is one of the reasons Sponge even exists. They just plain don’t seem to like each other. Whilst it may be possible to make a bukkit plugin hobble along on a Sponge server using some implementation of Pore, it’s still desirable to port it to Sponge so that it can run more efficiently in the native implementation and also make use of the interoperability that SpongeForge provides to mods in general. Obviously YMMV.
It seems that a major inhibition of porting to Sponge for larger servers is the need to rewrite a large body of custom code, which is how they stand out from the pack. It will take time for a larger body of public plugins to develop, once a few parts of the implementation have stabilised. Hopefully the imminent launch of Ore will help kickstart that process. I guess it very much depends on your needs and wants in a server.
2 Likes
Its not impossible at all. Devco has their servers connected rather well. We have 9 Sponge servers running and still 21 (?) Spigot servers going. The chat is global (This is a private plugin so don’t ask), our store is setup in a way that it works for both Spigot and Sponge… there really isn’t much that isn’t integrated actually.
You basically just need a good development team, or hit the plugin request forums. There is actually a lot of resources available, some people just don’t want to take the time to investigate what is available.
4 Likes
But new servers use Spigot by far more often than Sponge at the moment, too. It’s not simply too much work to switch.
For most people except those who need to run mods, Bukkit suits their needs and they see no reason to try Sponge. It’s not like you can’t do things with SpongeVanilla that you can’t do with Spigot.
@Feuerstern_ That graph is not very representative of the severs running sponge because AFAIK there is no mcstats plugin for sponge.
There is bStats bStats - Global Sponge stats though not all sponge servers will be using a stats plugin
5 Likes
forums.spongepowered.org got 185 new members in the last 30 days, while SpigotMC got >160,000 in the last year. MCStats doesn’t show all Sponge servers, but it doesn’t show all Spigot servers neither. The values are good enough to show the proportions.
[quote=“simon816, post:21, topic:13592, full:true”]there is no mcstats plugin for sponge.
[/quote]
There’s been mcstats for sponge for a year. You just have to include the class in your code and change two lines that are outdated.
Indeed, the Bukkit derivatives have a much bigger profile and are more readily seen by newcomers. They also have the advantage of a large library of pre-existing plugins.
However, a common setup is to add only (bukkit-implementation) + (some version of essentials). Sponge can offer something similar, albeit in a different form. It may be of great service to Sponge if such a package were set up to facilitate new users. As you say,
Agreed. It’s already possible to do more with SpongeVanilla thanks to the SpongeAPI. Although I’ll be the first to admit that there’s still some ways to go to a full-feature overlap.
One caution I have with MCStats: some folks have been dropping it (or disabling), owing to debate about whether or not it will continue as a service. I’ve no doubt the bukkit implementations have the major slice, but the numbers are a little malleable.
2 Likes
MCStats doesn't show all Sponge servers
It actually doesn’t show any Sponge servers - I’m not aware of a single plugin for API 5 or 6 that uses MCStats.
The hardest part for myself was to get the essentials going. I owned a minecraft server two years ago which used bukkit. There were hundreds of guides/videos out there which helped a lot. Even as someone who was completely new to this topic it was not that hard to get a decent server running.
A few days ago I decided to start a server without even being aware of sponge. Did a little research and it seemed like sponge was the only solution for forge + plugins. Took me a few minutes to realize that plugins are now mods as well.
The first problem: Where to start ? I could not quite remember which plugins I had used back in the day but after some help and research I picked a combination of old/new ones. I decided for PM/GP Project Worlds/Project Portals / Aroma Backup. The second Problem: PM and GP don’t work very well together, had to switch to LP. The third Problem: Combination of Permissions/Options/Configs/Flags. Back in the day I had one permission file and the config for every single plugin I used.
Third Problem: Documentation in general - Some Mods/Plugins don’t even have a little hint how to use them. Some wiki’s are really helpful.
What I would have appreciated : Step by Step instruction what to do for the most important plugins. Most people just want to have a few basic permissions, prefix and claim protection. Why don’t write a tutorial on that with example configs. Maybe I will with my basic knowledge 
We won’t complain if you do.
One problem that exists with this process is that there is not a 1:1 correspondence between the commands available in the wider realm of Bukkit plugins, and those available in Sponge plugins. Sometimes the options are lesser, sometimes greater, so decisions and compromises sometimes need to be made about what gets to do what and how.
Also not that our official documentation, including SpongeDocs, avoids any bias toward to against any particular developer, mod or plugin. So we can’t make official recommendations on how to, e.g. port a Bukkit server running essentials to it’s nearest Sponge equivalent. However, third parties are welcome, and even encouraged to do so. Anything that assists in providing a smooth transition to a Sponge powered server is a welcome contribution.
Docs for many plugins could stand to be improved; we’re hoping that the imminent launch of Ore, our very own plugin hosting solution, will help accelerate this process. We’d be happy for users to encourage the various developers whose plugin documentation is lacking to fill in the blanks.
Thanks for all the replies, some very interesting discussions.
I have seen the Ore section and it looks like a very good setup. In terms of plugin documentation, would it be possible/a good idea to add in a requirement for any approved Ore listing to include proper documentation as part of the approval process? Perhaps include a generic format of what kind of information is required? (such as a ‘complete’ list of commands and perms including explanations to what each actually does)
I know this may discourage plugin devs and add more work to thier already busy schedules, but being able to understand how to use plugins I feel is just as important as the plugin itself, it does also go some way to reducing the overall workload for plugin devs who I expect will be pretty tired of answering the same questions over and over.
I know Devco have got ontop of things, (don’t they always) but as mentioned above they do have a dedicated dev team of thier own, whilst this is no doubt essential it can be very difficult for smaller networks like ours to attract volunteers with the required knowledge. I am by no means a java programmer or capable of implementing fixes/plugin updates and/or customisations to fit our requirements as we haven’t really needed to before but I am worried that this will become a requirement for all network owners.
In terms of sponge, we have very few exclusive plugins to make our systems work. Additionally, I release a lot of my plugins in some way, sometimes just on my github. ClearMob is the plugin I started into Sponge with, and it is publicly available here on the forums, (Its a ClearLagg port)
Besides that, we use Pex, and Griefprevention, which are both freely available here. Nucleus as well.
Yes, this will very much be required once Ore is fully launched, right now we are still in a bit of a rollout phase, plugging some holes and what not before we fully facilitate the move from the Plugin Releases section on the forums. You can expect to see more documentation and guidelines on the approval process soon™.
1 Like
Excellent news, thank you!