blog: First Revival Milestone Achieved - Terasology’s Journey Continues (#221)

Author: skaldarnar

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+---
+posttype: blog
+title: "First Revival Milestone Achieved - Terasology’s Journey Continues"
+cover: "./cover.jpg"
+description: "Terasology Revival Milestone 1: Success unlocked! We’re celebrating our achievements and planning our path ahead. Explore it with us and join us for crafting the future together! Your enthusiasm is our fuel!"
+author: "Niruandaleth & Skaldarnar"
+date: "2023-09-10"
+tags: ["Announcement"]
+---
+
+_Terasology Revival Milestone 1: Success unlocked!
+We’re celebrating our achievements and planning our path ahead.
+Explore it with us and join us for crafting the future together!
+Your enthusiasm is our fuel!_
+
+Hey there, fellow adventurers! 
+🚀 Today, we're embarking on a journey through the incredible world of Terasology, a voxel game that has captured the hearts of (mostly) developers (and some gamers alike).
+But before we dive into the exciting details of Terasology's revival, let's take a step back and uncover the roots of this remarkable project.
+
+Terasology was born in 2011 from a Minecraft-inspired tech demo by Benjamin "Begla" Glatzel while researching procedural terrain generation and effective rendering techniques.
+Over the years, it has been a playground for different kinds of technical experiments and proof of concepts.
+But Terasology is not just a game; it's a community.
+A community that values warmth, inclusivity, and respect above all else.
+Within our blocky borders, harassment, attacks, and inappropriate activities find no place, fostering an environment where even the wildest dreams were sought to integrate.
+
+Yet, like all things in life, our project went not only over peaks but also through valleys.
+Our once-thriving community experienced a continuous decline in contributors and contributions over the past years.
+However, amidst the challenging times, a resilient few remained, refusing to let Terasology fade into obscurity.
+Why? Because we’re bound together by our unwavering love for Terasology and our belief in its untapped potential.
+Our shared desire to build a thriving community-driven voxel game sparked the current revival effort.
+
+So welcome aboard, dear fellow gooeys and gooeys-to-be, as we embark on a journey through the evolving tale of Terasology's revival.
+As we reflect on the past weeks, we're thrilled to share our plans and achievements for the first step that we took on our revival path.
+
+
+## 🚀 Goals & Challenges A Pledge to Playability and Collaboration in Complex Terrain
+
+In the early days, Terasology was known for being a tech playground for developers, filled with half-done proof of concepts aiming at realistic implementation of wildlife, weather, technology, and more.
+All of us worked in a corner of the huge codebase we call our engine, focused on our own pet projects, expanding what we built while losing sight of why we built it.
+
+With the revival, we make a solemn pledge to ourselves and our community.
+We commit to transforming Terasology from a mere tech showcase into a fully playable game.
+🎮 Our vision is crystal clear - to create a multiplayer game that revolves around exploration, crafting, and building.
+We want to forge a tight-knit community, united by their love for these very aspects of gameplay.
+We don’t want it to be just about lines of code anymore; we want to make it about shared interests and collaborative development.
+
+Unfortunately, the complexity of and technical debt in our engine codebase forces us to focus on exploring and improving our code base rather than the world we built - for now.
+We need to navigate the labyrinth we built up over years before we can get back to crafting the world of our dreams.
+As a very small team the weight of seemingly overwhelming work looms over us.
+We grapple with the potential for demotivation and energy drain, given the enormity of the task at hand.
+We are a dedicated few, each with our own areas of expertise and interest, but we know that to conquer this mountain, we need to find a way to channel our collective energy effectively. 💪
+
+So how did we do this? What did our first milestone truly entail?  Let's dive into the heart of it and explore the significance of our achievements.
+
+## 📜 Definition of Done: A Checklist of Triumphs
+
+In a collaborative effort, we upgraded Gradle to 8.2 in our engine and several other key libraries required for our project: From Gestalt and TeraNUI over CrashReporter and SplashScreen to JNBullet and JNLua this upgrade sets the stage for smoother operations and enhanced development performance. 🏎️💨
+Special thanks go out to our newest gooeys _@PurityLake_ and _@soloturn_, past preparations for the upgrades by _@keturn_, and consistent support from commit over review to merge by _@BSA_.
+
+_@skaldarnar_ and _@niruandaleth_ bid farewell to VR support and multi-world functionality, streamlining the Terasology experience to focus on what truly matters.
+Some minor related removals are still outstanding and will accompany further engine refactorings in the next milestone.
+In addition, GDrive support was removed from CrashReporter and the ping system underwent a significant refactoring.
+Stay tuned for further streamlining and refactorings to unravel the labyrinthian corridors of our codebase and lay the groundwork for future enhancements. 🛠️
+
+Thanks to _@pollend_ and _@darkweird_, our rendering refactor proof of concept made a significant step forward - the window came up without evaluating any OpenGL code.
+Ensuring reproducibility on different machines remains a goal for the next milestone. 🖥️
+
+Considerations of switching to a mono-repository approach sparked discussions about current and future CI design.
+Together, _@Cervator_ and _@niruandaleth_ recapped and visualized the current setup.
+GitHub issue [#5136] summarizes requirements based on past experiences and outlines proposed future changes.
+For our next milestone, we plan to evaluate progress with these changes achieved via the ongoing CI work by _@Cervator_. 📊
+
+All in all, our first revival milestone was not just a mere stepping stone; it was a checklist of accomplishments that we ticked off with pride and now want to celebrate together.
+We’ve decided to come together for a special community event - playing Valheim, a game with many elements that we envision for Terasology, too, plus the blocks and gooeys of course. 😉
+_@qwc_ will play a central role in making this possible by hosting and providing technical support for this virtual gathering.
+
+## 💡 Lessons Learned and Future Outlook: A Catalyst for Growth
+
+As we stand on the threshold to starting into the second revival milestone, it's a fitting time to reflect on the lessons we've learned during our journey through the first one.
+These lessons help shape the scope of and expectations for our next endeavors.
+
+### 🔄 Mono-Repo vs. Multi-Repo - an Age-old Debate
+
+One of the most significant challenges we've encountered again is the mono-repo versus multi-repo conundrum that has no one-size-fits-all solution.
+While some advocated for the simplicity of a mono-repo setup, others preferred the flexibility of multiple smaller repos.
+In the end, we made a conscious decision not to merge modules into the engine repo because we realized that our main pain points stem from lack of tooling rather than the multi-repo setup.
+
+### 📆 Real Life vs. Voluntary Open Source
+
+In the world of voluntary open-source projects, real-life commitments often take precedence.
+Balancing work, family, and other responsibilities with our passion for Terasology wasn't always easy.
+However, we learned to adapt and support each other, finding ways to work harmoniously with our varying schedules and commitments.
+For example, we switched our community meetings from voice chat back to pure text-based communication to allow exchanging ideas and discussing progress even if you have a toddler or a puppy roaming around you or are otherwise partially occupied.
+
+### 🩹 Addressing Long-Standing Pain Points
+
+One of our most gratifying achievements during our first revival milestone was the initiation of efforts to address long-standing pain points within Terasology.
+These challenges had lingered for too long, and it was high time to modernize the project. 🛠️
+We rolled up our sleeves and started tackling these issues head-on.
+It was and still is a concerted effort to bring Terasology up to date, making it more accessible, efficient, and user-friendly.
+We will continue this effort as a testament to our commitment to the Terasology community.
+
+### 🌱 Exploring the Uncharted Territory
+
+In our quest for improvement, we ventured into the labyrinthian depths of our code base, areas that had largely remained uncharted where few dared to tread.
+And yet, we not only discovered spiders and cobwebs but also found open doors for fresh perspectives and ideas, presenting fertile ground for new contributors to join our ranks.
+We actively encourage you to join our exploration of these uncharted territories: your contributions are a vital part of our growth. 👥
+
+In conclusion, our first revival milestone served as a catalyst for growth and self-discovery.
+It taught us the value of balance, the power of persistence, and the importance of embracing change.
+As we look ahead to the next chapters of our journey, we do so with optimism and a renewed sense of purpose.
+Together, we'll continue to shape the future of Terasology, one milestone at a time. 🌠
+
+---
+
+_This article was written with the help of ChatGPT._
+
+
+[#5136]: https://github.com/MovingBlocks/terasology/issues/5136