It's been a fun thirteen months. Back in mid-October of last year, SpaceToad passed on the BuildCraft project leadership to me, a person hardly ever involved in
BuildCraft's development process. The move surprised many, myself included, however it was a rather interesting journey and a great learning experience.
When I had joined the team - or, rather, picked up the ashes of what was once the team, BuildCraft was all but abandoned by many, modders and players alike. It
was largely considered a buggy, outdated, unreliable mod and - in general - a bad choice, with numerous "superior" alternatives springing up across the modding
community. The first thing I had done - the move to Redstone Flux - was a necessity and a slight sacrifice, causing a fair amount of controversy when it was first
introduced. Many thought that this is yet another attempt at stirring drama in the community. However, it paid off and let the mod survive in a changing
ecosystem. I spent long hours trying to fix bugs, not having any idea what the future will bring but knowing that it is now my responsibility as a developer, fan
of the mod and the new maintainer to try and save it from extinction. The next months brought many unexpected events: hea3ven turning the robots from a buggy
gimmick to a versatile tool, CyanideX giving us a whole new, unified graphical design, bringing many long-missing features such as the Insertion Pipes and Gate
Copier to vanilla BC, as well as new things like the Lenses and Filters or BuildCraftCompat; modpacks, streamers and LPers rediscovering the mod and finding out
it has indeed grown up a lot from its Tekkit days.
It is an amazing feeling to see a nearly abandoned mod rise from the ashes. I really enjoyed hearing all the positive input coming from the BuildCraft community,
as well as the constructive criticism I had often received. However, it has to be said that over time my dedication to the mod started dying down. The design
flaws I had seen required radical reforms, the kind of which just should not be applied to one of the mods with the longest legacy still on the modding scene. I
believe the fundamentals of BuildCraft should stay unchanged, and a new mod would be fit better to try and carry the vision forward. In addition, bugs kept piling
up and real life also took its own share of my time. Eventually, I found myself unable to work on it as well as I used to.
Looking at packs like Regrowth, Beyond Reality: Divergence or Tekkit Legends, Let's Players like BevoLJ, chilm, chemdork123 and even Direwolf20, the community
we've built and rebuilt around the mod, as well as the countless BuildCraft builds and discussions I've witnessed in the past year, I believe I have largely
succeeded in my mission to rebuild BuildCraft. However, I also think it would be wise to step down instead of clinging to the mod and move on to different
projects closer to my own visions while letting someone more passionate about it - like I once used to be - carry the torch onwards.
Now, this does not mean BuildCraft is dead - I still believe it has an important role in a lot of modern modpacks, as well as being a mod with unique features and
design decisions. I do want to keep the philosophy behind BuildCraft alive and will try to do so in my future modding projects. I will probably keep doing
bugfixes for the time being, as I have done for the last month or two. There is also the prospect of AlexIIL's 1.8/1.9 port becoming the new official version.
Please also remember that pull requests are a thing. All I want to do is let you know my current thoughts, that is that I no longer consider myself fit to carry
the BuildCraft torch. I'm sorry for any trouble this might cause
Thanks for all the memories and lessons, BuildCrafters. Thanks to everyone who had ever contributed to the project. May your quarry keep mining ever after.
~ asie