Our first Devblog: What's going on?

Devblogs: A Look Behind the Scenes

With this new format, we aim to involve you, our players, more directly in the development process of Cytooxien. For those who have followed us for a while, you know we prefer to focus on implementing our plans without big announcements. Still, we believe it’s important to bring you along on our journey. Through these devblogs, we’ll provide regular glimpses into our current projects and the ongoing evolution of Cytooxien.

But it’s not just about the technical details—our team has grown into much more than just a group of developers. We want to share the various aspects of our work and make our decisions and changes more transparent for you.

Why a new website?

The forum will gradually be phased out as we shift more toward Discord as our primary communication platform. Over the past months, Discord has already proven itself as an efficient way to engage directly with our community and share updates more effectively.

The lack of flexibility on the old site made it challenging to keep content up to date. You may have noticed that a lot of information was outdated. With the new site, we now have the ability to fully customize it to meet our needs and respond quickly to changes or updates. Additionally, we can make all our content available in multiple languages right from the start.

Plans for the website

The new site is still a work in progress, and some features are not yet complete. Our primary focus has been to get the most essential functions online as quickly as possible. Graphics, texts, and design elements will be further refined over time. We’re always open to feedback to help make the site even better!

Here’s a quick overview of upcoming features:

• New Wiki
  We want to provide players with a resource where they can quickly find important guides and explanations. In addition to general information about our servers and games, there will be beginner’s guides and a catalog of special in-game items.
• Statistics
  While stats are already well-integrated into the game, a new webpage for player statistics is in the works. Although the functionality will be similar to the current version, it will look more polished and remain up-to-date since it’s now easier to maintain.
• Support
  A new support page will serve as a hub for all your questions and issues. Beyond Discord, you’ll also have the option to create tickets directly on the site.

What’s Next for Minecraft?

Minecraft servers have evolved significantly in recent years. At Cytooxien, we’ve also experimented a lot, shaping a clear vision for the future of our network along the way. Apart from a few open-source projects, everything on Cytooxien is based on in-house developments. Additionally, we always use the latest Minecraft version, which is only possible thanks to our abstracted project structure and the experience we’ve gathered over time.

This approach requires significantly more effort in planning and executing our projects. While this additional effort doesn’t yield immediate results, past experience has shown that our projects benefit greatly from this approach in the long run. We’re fully aware that this strategy comes with risks - fewer updates and less content can lead to a decline in playercounts. However, it’s precisely this long-term focus that makes Cytooxien such a unique project.

At this point, a huge thank you to our entire team and community. It’s only through your trust in our work that we’re able to put such plans into action at all.

The expectations for quality, game design, and innovation are higher than ever and this is a fantastic development inside of the Minecraft community. Servers that go the extra mile and create custom solutions now have a greater chance to stand out. However, this also brings challenges: the costs and workload for new features and updates have risen dramatically.

New technical possibilities like resource packs and internationalization have created entirely new areas of work. For each of these, we’ve had to develop solutions and build dedicated teams. Today, every project goes through a complex process involving multiple teams with different responsibilities.

This makes it harder to manage many projects simultaneously. You may have noticed that updates have sometimes lagged in recent months - this is the reason why.

Despite these challenges, we’ve significantly expanded our capacity and team in recent months. Some massive updates and exciting projects are just around the corner. Our long-term goal is to deliver high-quality content updates regularly and fully realize the potential of our servers and games.

We aim to provide our players with something new to explore or play every few weeks. To achieve this, we first need to ensure that all of our servers have a stable, enjoyable, and expandable gameplay loop. Games like Skyblock, City SMP, and Factions are currently still a work in progress.

Closing Words

We know many of you are eagerly awaiting updates and new content. Rest assured, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes - we’re just as excited about releasing new updates and projects as you are! However, our high standards for quality and detail, combined with our limited capacity, mean that we only discuss updates or projects once we’re truly satisfied with the results.

To stay up to date and not miss anything, make sure to join us on Discord!