Wow, what’s this? A SpongeVanilla 1.11 build hot off the presses!

Don’t forget to check out our SpongeForge 1.11 build either!

Gfycat.com GIF by anonymous

We’re pleased to announce that we have been able to release SpongeVanilla 1.11 builds within a record time of only 34 hours since 1.11’s official release. In actual fact, we have been testing SpongeVanilla on the weekly snapshot builds thanks to a specially designed custom toolchain developed by Deamon. This highlights both the improved update process we are now using, as well as the dedication of our hard-working dev team. This build should work well enough for development and testing servers, however we do not recommend it for production usage at this time.

Latest Builds are the bleeding edge of Sponge Development and can be experimental and/or unstable. If choosing to migrate existing worlds, WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND DOING A BACKUP FIRST. Additionally, we recommend performing frequent backups of the server in order to minimize any potential damage caused by bugs.

Latest builds are meant to be used to test plugins in a development environment or to try out experimental features and/or bug fixes. If you want to ensure a stable server, please use the Recommended builds instead. When we believe a particular build is stable enough for general use, we will promote it as a Recommended build. We are not responsible for any permanent damage done to your server, software, and/or it’s data.

As always, we must wait for the usual processes to take place before we can begin our SpongeForge update, but we will inform you as soon as this is ready.

Additionally, we’ve got plenty of updates for you across our Forums, Website, Docs and ORE, check them out below!

Forum & IRC Rules Change

We’ve recently updated our Forum & IRC Rules to reflect the fact that we now allow users to post “Devs Wanted” and “Devs Available” threads within their respective subcategories. The rule changes are as follows:

If it comes to our attention that a “lite” version plugin hosted by Sponge is being used as a promotion as a for-sale “premium” version, we reserve the right to remove the plugin listing. What constitutes a “lite” or “premium” version will be decided at the discretion of Sponge Staff.

Do not attempt to make a sale or sell anything on Sponge websites or systems. This includes but is not limited to plugins (mods or any variation of the term), art assets, services, or any work to be provided. We specifically allow offering a bounty in an original post in the Devs Wanted area, and developers may seek commissioned work in the Devs Available category. Any further discussion of payment in these (or any other) threads is prohibited.

Users may post job advertisements (with or without a bounty) within the “Devs Wanted” Category, however they must follow the template and any rules listed here: Service Exchange Template + Guidelines

Users may post job requests (with or without rates) within the “Devs Available” Category, however they must follow the template and any rules listed here: Devs Available Template + Guidelines

[details=Existing Rules]

Follow Support Guidelines (when they exist) for any issues you may have.

Don’t abuse the channel (IRC, Forum, etc). This means don’t spam, multipost, crosspost, or flood it. Be nice and remember that we’re all sharing the same virtual space.

Try to keep the language at least PG-13. We’re not your nanny and we’re not going to give you grief over the odd curse word, but keep it within the bounds of reason and courtesy.

Racism, sexism, bigotry, or hateful language is forbidden. Don’t even try it. This is a strict rule - don’t break it.

Be nice to the operators and admins. They are volunteers, and their time is frequently limited. While they are very often happy to talk with you, please don’t overdo private messages, pinging ops in IRC, and so forth.

Only private message ops/mods if something needs to be kept private, they are not your personal search engine.

Please avoid discussions of politics, religion and similar controversial topics. Not only is it not relevant to Sponge, it tends to create conflict where there doesn’t need to be any.

Don’t bash other projects, Mojang, or people associated with them.

Don’t ask when Sponge will be ready. It’ll be done when it’s done. When it’s done, don’t ask for updates. They come out when they come out. This is a general rule for all open source projects.

Advertising in any form is prohibited on any Sponge system. This includes but is not limited to advertising your favorite server hosting company, the server you play on, some piece of software you use for fun, another game, or whatever. Some exceptions are made in Off-Topic and Server Discussion sections and are solely at the discretion of moderation staff.

Please don’t include Sponge in your plugin name. We reserve the use of Sponge for official SpongePowered works. There are two exceptions: You may append “for Sponge” to the title if your plugin also has versions for other APIs, and you may use Sponge in the title if your plugin primarily concerns the Minecraft block “Sponge”.

We aim to comply entirely with the Mojang EULA, to that end any plugins, services, posts and/or links suspected of violating the EULA may be removed at the discretion of the Sponge Staff or at the request of Mojang AB.

Don’t spread rumors or falsehoods about the Sponge projects, staff members, affiliates or partners of Sponge, or any other defamatory statements that might harm the project.

If you’re banned or suspended, it is for a reason. Don’t evade or attempt to get around bans.

The moderator, administrator or manager(s) of the various communication channels in use by the Sponge project shall have the last word in any dispute.[/details]

Development Update

As many of you know, API 5 for Minecraft 1.10.2 has been released:

API 5 Release, API 6, and Upcoming Dates Announcements Greetings, As some of you may have noticed, we are winding down development on the bleeding codebase by prepping to merge bleeding into master. API 5 marks a big milestone for Sponge as many API bits are now complete and the focus now is in making things work (and in the case of SpongeForge, work with mods). The following are important calendar dates starting with the release: Upcoming Sponge Events (mark your calendars!): October 15th, 2016 API 5 merged into master by 11:59 PM CST. State of…

Due to breaking changes in the Minecraft codebase, 1.11 will use SpongeAPI 6. This may mean that certain PR’s may not be readily merged in time for an early API 6 release, as such they will be pushed to the next minor or major version. Sponge for 1.10.2 will continue to be supported as an LTS build for the foreseeable future, in the same manner as Sponge for 1.8.9 was supported over several months.

1.8.9 had a very good run, however, at this time, we are dedicating our resources to the update to 1.11 and API 6. Additionally, we will be fixing compatibility issues in 1.10.2 and performing associated maintenance. As such, 1.8.9 is no longer going to receive implementation updates and compatibility fixes. For those of you still relying on 1.8.9, our API 4.1 Documentation will remain available.

Docs Update

The crew of the good ship SpongeDocs has been madly scurrying to plug up the leaks and update the docs to API5 but we need your help. If you find any code examples or any advice that doesn’t quite compile or make sense on API5 we are happy to lend an ear over at

GitHub SpongePowered/SpongeDocs Documentation for Sponge and its Implementations. Contribute to SpongePowered/SpongeDocs development by creating an account on GitHub.

Remember there are no stupid questions and the only way we can iterate and improve the Docs is by having people who haven’t been exposed reading it and testing it.

Big couple of changes about to hit, @STDDT has done an amazing job at the permissions PR and is close to being finalized. So if you have been confused it should prove enlightening.

github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeDocs Permission documentation SpongePowered:master ← ST-DDT:Permissions ST-DDT +365 -3

A little further away is the Custom Data documentation for API 5, ZephireNZ has been putting in the work documenting the Data API changes. Feel free to leave some comments or review but it’s currently still being written.

github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeDocs Add Docs for Custom Data SpongePowered:master ← ZephireNZ:feature/custom-data ZephireNZ +544 -2

Ore Update

Ore is almost ready to go live thanks to our fantastic @windy. We are currently sorting out the last few remaining issues and preparing to transition to a production environment soon™. If you can’t wait to check it out, just visit our Ore-Staging Instance.

For those not in the know, Ore is our custom built plugin hosting solution. It will provide a unique and convenient way for content creators to share and make accessible plugins that they have created. For developers, Ore offers a centralized location where their users can download, review, and get support on their plugin. For server administrators, Ore offers a level of safety and security previously lacking from many Minecraft communities by requiring PGP signed uploads, offering two-factor authentication on user accounts, and having our staff carefully review each upload.

Web Update

Due in no small part to @minecrell’s hard work, our Downloads are to be integrated into the SpongeHome website in the near future. We believe that this will allow for easier navigation and a cleaner interface for our community to use, though as always we welcome any feedback you may have.

Staff Changes

Announced recently at State of Sponge we have added to our growing collection of team members, @Lemonous, @HassanS6000, @ryantheleach and @12AwsomeMan34! We really appreciate your efforts in the community and hope you can continue your good work as part of our Support Staff.

SpongeDocs have also dragooned new editors @ZephireNZ and @ST-DDT to accelerate documentation, may their nibs never wear down to nubs.

Minecon

We ran an awesome booth with the help of our awesome friends at MCProHosting, catch up on the photos and action that happened on the Minecon post here:

SpongePowered at Minecon 2016 Announcements SpongePowered is at Minecon! We’re running an awesome booth with the help of our awesome friends at MCProHosting, hopefully we’ll see a bunch of friendly faces around. Stay tuned to our Twitter Feed for more news! We’re also livestreaming our booth at: both Twitch.tv and the exciting new Beam.pro, we’re very keen to see how everyone enjoys the experience, so go check our streams out! Sponge Team Outfits As you can see, we’ve got awesome new team shirts, professionally modeled by our very o…

Summer 2016 Plugin Competition Results

As announced on the State of Sponge XII stream the winners are…

1st place is FreeBlocks by RandomByte!

FreeBlocks - Move blocks freely outside of the coordinate system! WIP Plugins FreeBlocks [APIv5-SNAPSHOT] Winner of ‘Sponge Plugin Competition - Summer 2016’ Concept by koder. See his video about HalfCraft. Description Move blocks. Not not by one block length to one side. Move blocks up to 1/200 length of a normal minecraft block! In every direction! Download this plugin Source Command: freeblocks edit -> permission: freeblocks.edit Sets you as an editor if there currently is none. If you already are the editor it resets you to not be the editor. Screenshots: Execut…

2nd place is SurvivalGames23 by m0pt0pmatt!

[RELEASE] SurvivalGames - Survival Games for Sponge! Sponge Plugin Competition Hello everyone! I am submitting and hope you enjoy it! Github: https://github.com/m0pt0pmatt/SurvivalGames Release: https://github.com/m0pt0pmatt/SurvivalGames/releases/tag/1.0.0 SurvivalGames is a Sponge Plugin which lets you play the classic Minecraft Survival Games game mode on your Sponge Server! You can run multiple survival games at once, and each game is customizable. Config files for survival games can be saved and loaded from file. This plugin was created for the Sponge Summer Plug…

[details=Check out our other entries here!]

State of Sponge

If you missed it, you can watch our last edition of State of Sponge XII.

State of Sponge XIII will be on the 17th of December at 21:00 UTC. We’re very pleased with the great reaction to our new format which made its debut at SoS XII, so come along and enjoy the new and improved State of Sponge!

You’ll be able to join us at: http://www.twitch.tv/SpongePowered