Sponge Progress Bar

Sponge Sponge Web
1

Hello!

I am a Server Owner/Admin and wanted to use Sponge. After a lot of researching, I found the experimental build for version 1.17.1 and I`m happy with it, but I had the feeling of you wanting to hide this build from me. Obvious I knew it wasn´t the case, but nevertheless I wondered. For this reason I suggest you to post a progress bar on the spongepowered.org Website. I imagine it like this: There is a timeline for each of SpongeVanilla, SpongeForge and the SpongeAPI with Minecraft Versions as timestamps (for the SpongeAPI of course API Versions). Below of the Version stands a Link to the newest Keep-Up-To-Data-Article in the Forum concerning the Version, a little text about what features will be/have been added and how much progress is already made on the version. Maybe also the approximate Releasedate? I think it would be very good for Newcomer to see a clear timeline of the Progress Sponge made and will make and it would make it halfway plannable.

Also I found me very wondered why the experimental Build for 1.17.1 isn`t on the Website under Downloads → experimental Builds and would like you to publish the new experimental Builds also there. I mean, what else is the category for?

Greetings from me

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Hi welcome to sponge. I cannot say about the progress bar as im not a web dev, but I can tell you about a few other things you mentioned.

First of all the downloads for 1.17. The downloads section on sponge is under maintainace, its a long story so I wont go into it, but you cant just put new versions on the download site, as that part is being rebuilt, the 1.16 and 1.17 builds arnt on there, but instead github.

As for hiding it from you, I would argue that because the 1.17.1 builds arnt the focus in the experimental lot, sponge would want to put less focus on them and instead make the 1.16 builds more attention. And at this point in time, the 1.16.2 builds are mainly for developers to test, so it makes sense for them to be highlighted on github (where the source code of sponge is held).

Im not denying that more shouldn’t be done to say “hey, sponge is still alive”, but the team are trying, just take a look at the “announcement” section on the forums as well as discord and the many topics on the forums asking for a MC version X build (this last one, shows how much the info needs to be advertised).

The “release date” is hard to say, the experimental builds for developers are going well, the last one I saw was about 2 weeks old though, so it should be even better now. But to release a polished but of software, you need to get rid of as many bugs as you can (within reason) and more keep showing up, delaying sponge’s release (of course its not just bugs, new developer features keep getting added too).

This of course brings a issue with the progress bar you ask for. Sponge 1.16 being in its final stage before release ready with a number of tasks (which keeps growing), it may give the wrong impression in the fact its not progressing, but instead going the wrong way.

That being said, they are focusing for a early July release as stated in the latest post from “Announcements”

As a plugin developer focusing on Sponge API 8 (1.16), im more then happy to answer any questions you may have, this includes bugs, features, etc going into API 8 or 9 (1.17)

Here is the latest announcement: Status Update - 9th June 2021 - API-8 Soft Freeze and SpongeVanilla 1.17 Day 1 Experimental Builds - #7 by equimox

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A progress bar is very unlikely to happen, even if we had the web-dev manpower to do it. There’s a good reason Spongepowered does not offer ETAs; developing an evolving API is a tricky thing, and any estimates of progress would be rooted in guesswork. However, you are always welcome to join our web development team if you want to help out; the view from inside is always different.

As stated by MoseMister above, the downloads system for Sponge is being re-developed. That should be completed soon, and so we direct users to the nexus repository instead for the time being. But the focus is on 1.16.5, so later versions are going to be on the back-burner until that’s been released.

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