Things have been busy for the Sponge team recently; with both Project Leads gone for personal reasons, and staff changes. @blood will continue to be gone for the next few weeks to tend to his family and his new child! However @sk89q has recently returned.

Sponge Status

Over the past week, there have been a few changes within the Sponge staff. The teams are now much more final, and jobs are being properly delegated for development. I personally (@Me4502), have been discussing a Tile Entity API with other team members, and wrote a scheduler API. The estimated date of API release is still slated at November, and we are confident that we can reach it.

Besides the API, our new team member @modwizcode has been working on the implementation of our current API that will be useful for developers to test their code once the API is released.

Forge

We are still waiting on Forge for 1.8, and thanks to LexManos for his continued efforts. If you want to support him, you can donate to him at either his PayPal or Patreon. Also check out the other people who are actively supporting Forge updating for 1.8.

New Website

Thanks to Antariano, we now have a sexy new frontpage! Head on over to http://spongepowered.org and tell us how you feel about it.

If you see any issues, make sure to report them on the issue tracker tagged with the website. We will have a public repo up soon for making changes to the website code.

That’s all for this week, it may not seem like a lot has actually been done towards the finished server, but a lot of internal progress is being made.

##MERGING FROM @Zidane’s post below:

###Couple of things forgotten but relevant to add

As some of you may or may not know, I lead the development side of Sponge and over the weekend I spent the majority of the time I had to make some sweeping changes across the project. I’ll list some various things here:

###Establishing a team

I’ve been contacting developers that have been with us since the beginning to finally delegate out roles. This has led to the formation of the core development team (my team members) and a host of contributors.

Currently, my team members are: @kitskub @progwml6 @modwizcode @Kobata @me4502 @mumfrey @sk89q @turt2live (The mean green “first line of PR defense” machine)

I’ve do not have a full image yet of who will all be acknowledged as contributors. I’m also not going to define what I consider the “requirements” of becoming a contributor or core developer. Basically, I’ll call you if I need you.

I’ve also not fully went through all the dev applications past an initial lookover. Some of you may have gotten an email from @DarkArcana which was part of this process. I plan to finish making final decisions on those soon.

If you feel you are up to becoming part of Sponge development, you can still apply here:

docs.google.com Sponge API developer form This form is to request developers for specific portions of the Sponge API. For more information, please see http://forums.spongepowered.org/t/status-update-26-september-2014-api-developer-form/2859

I will give priority to applications I already have so bear that in mind before nagging me about your app :P.

###Finishing our PR requirements

I’ve been working with turt2live and am happy to say that our PR process is, for the most part, finalized. turt demoed it last night (I’m sure a few of you “got the message”) and so far I like what I see. We’ll tweak it as time marches forward but expect a much quicker PR turnaround (submission to pull) in the future.

###Entity Component System

As a side note, I am still wanting to proceed forward with component-style API but it has no set target for release. I’ve brought on @Zerot and @gratimax to focus solely on https://github.com/SpongePowered/Sponge-ECS (with assistance by me whenever needed). I’ll leave discussion of it up to them to perform in other threads (direct questions to them as needed).

###API Initial Release

This is a question I keep getting from everyone across the board.

####AT THIS TIME WE ARE STILL ON TRACK FOR AN API DEMO SOMETIME IN NOVEMBER

What does this mean? It means that developers will be able to create projects that depend on SpongeAPI and get a feel for how the API will be laid out. For the very brave, you will be able to run Sponge (as a “run configuration”) in your favorite IDE and start to see various API functions work (currently setting a block or broadcasting a message works).

####WHILE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE API DEMO MAY RUN ON 1.7.10 FORGE IT IS NOT OUR TARGET FOR FIRST RELEASE. 1.8.x FORGE IS OUR TARGET

As for Forge and Minecraft 1.8, this has been the biggest update in the history of the game. As such, it has taken longer for LexManos and his team to get it shipped out the door. We ask everyone for patience as all parties involved are working as hard and as fast as they can. We promise it will be worth it :).