As we approach the end of 2020, and as 2021 approaches rather rapidly, I wanted to share with you my current thoughts around where I'm hoping to take the server over the next 12 months.
I'm hoping this might help give you all a bit of an idea of my vision here, and to help answer a number of threads that have been raised, but also around a number of other conversations that have been had in the server.
The Forums
One major area of improvement for me has to be that of the forums. I will start off by saying that unfortunately at this stage Proboards is no longer a viable option... We are currently doing some initial testing of alternate software to see what we feel will work best from a technical perspective before we start looking at how we can migrate the existing forum data across and where appropriate look to re-structure things.
We are hoping that early next year we will be in a position to have a beta version of the forums up and running where we can start to get community feedback around the format and structure, and to make sure people are able to effectively use the new software we end up implementing. As we're still at the point of doing initial testing, I am not in a position to say much more on the software we're going to be using or anything like that, but wanted to at least give you an update as to where we are, and to make sure people are aware that it hasn't been forgotten.
New PvP Oriented Gamemode
I'm pleased to announce that work is currently underway to start the development and design of a brand new game mode that will be exclusive to the TF Network shortly. At the moment the game mode is still in it's very early stages and we will be announcing more as the game mode details firm up. This is one of the reasons we moved towards a model where there is a hub in operation.
Splitting The Plot Server Out
Something I'm very keen to do is ultimately allow the FreeOP server to thrive and mixing plots in with that doesn't really feel like an effective way about doing it. At the moment at least from my perspective it feels like we have ended up in a position where the FreeOP Server is needing to be restricted in order to protect things like the plot worlds builds, while the plot world isn't able to unlock the true potential of running plots where we are in a strong position to restrict changes and who can build and where.
My hope is that once the plot server has been split out, we can start then looking to expand the plugin offering that we have on the server. I'm keen to work with the community, development team and master builder team to ensure the plugin selection we work towards on the new plot server will enable a first class building experience for our community which are interested more in the building side to TF.
Website Refresh
One thing that has been noted is that our website is not in the best state, and since moving it to the new hosting setup a lot of the functionality on the site has unfortunately broken. That combined with the moving to a network setup means even if we did have everything working how it should, it wouldn't really be effective in it's current setup.
Moving AdminWorld, MasterBuilder world and the rest of them out
At the moment we have a freedom server that is ultimately trying to run more than just the freedom server. In addition to what I had said earlier around moving the plot world out, we're also starting to look at how we can move things like AdminWorld and the Master Builder's world out into their own servers. This allows us to better utilise those servers and tune the plugins and configurations for those purposes, and will also reduce the current burden on the freedom server in a number of useful ways.
Introduction of a panel
Given this is something that keeps coming up, I thought I'd update to say that yes, throughout 2021 I will be evaluating options for a suitable panel that will meet the ongoing growth from an infrastructure perspective, and which can meet some of the requirements we're looking at. At the moment I have no detail on what the final choice would be, and would ask folks to refrain from making suggestions for specific options and similar, it just slows the process down and I need to tackle things in somewhat of a sane approach!
General Notes
There are a lot of suggestions that have already been approved and are being worked through. I'm in the process of working through everything else that has come in since my last sweep through, and the development team are focused on implementing these changes, and improving the overall stability of the Freedom server experience. They are however volunteers and have lived, so please stick with us while we work on everything.
Please also do continue to raise suggestions to improve the current server experience, your feedback is exceptionally valuable and helps to identify where we can make improvements especially those that I or others may have overlooked historically.
As a final note, I will also try to update you all on this progress, and as we identify additional areas we want to be looking at throughout the next 12 months as we go through 2021. I'm also sure I've missed stuff on this, but I've struggled to find the focus to write this as it is (And it's taken 4-5 hours to write up) so if I do think of stuff I've missed it'll be updated here or will be in a future status update.
Thanks folks.