Hey there everyone!
Today we celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Aether mod's release! And to mark this celebration we're giving you a detailed update on the state of the Aether Project, as we're nearing a lot of exciting milestones and releases.
To start with Id like to take a moment to fill everyone in on the progress on Aether 1's upcoming release. Following a very productive set of beta releases starting in April of this year, we're continuing to work on stability, technical improvements and supporter systems ready for beta 6. Now as usual we don't have concrete enough development plans to offer release dates and time estimates, but we would like to share some rough percentages to put into perspective how far along our milestones for Aether 1's development are.
(numbers only representative of how we track bug reports on our issue tracker and points on todo lists; this does not take into account how small or large remaining tasks are)
Total Full Release Progress: 97%
beta.6 Update (including only implemented fixes): 40%
beta.6 Update (including fixes pending implementation): 87%
beta.6 Overall Code Cleanup Pull Request Progress: 50%
beta.6 Code Package Cleanup Progress: 83%
As you can see the mod is almost complete, and we have plans to port to 1.19.2 and the latest Minecraft version following the full mod release. But we do still have a fair few tasks left to complete before we reach that point. Hopefully the wait won't be too long now as we continue to work hard on getting a stable, balanced, and worthwhile release ready for you all.
On top of this Aether 1 update, we've also been working on a little side project that we think you'll be very excited about!
Over the years since Aether II's initial alpha builds, we've had many requests to port the 1.7.10 alpha of Aether II, subtitled "Genesis of the Void" to modern versions. For a long time this was not a high priority or a particularly viable project for our team, but given the stability and add-on capabilities of the new Aether beta we're now in a position where we believe an add-on to Aether 1 would be a good place for Genesis of the Void's unique content.
The result of this concept is a new project that we're currently calling "Aether Genesis", an add-on for Aether 1 that aims to port all of the content and experiences from Genesis of the Void into the original Aether dimension. This includes multiple new mobs, new loot, environmental changes such as new trees and plants, as well as eventually new Dungeon content. This project is still in early alpha but we have already remastered most of the visuals to match the updated artwork found in the new Aether update.
We'll have more to share about this project very soon!
You may have also seen the launch of our new wiki recently! I'm happy to share that we've had plenty of helpful contributions and feedback that has continued to develop, refine, and improve our formatting. We've set the wiki up with community contribution in mind, so if you're interested in helping flesh out our community resources, please check out the wiki channel on our Discord and our Wiki Guide here: https://aether.wiki.gg/wiki/Guides/Wiki_Guide
Now as we're nearing the end of development for the Aether 1 update, we're starting to turn our attention back to Aether II. Our first priority, while our art team isn't occupied with the original mod, is on reworking and refining Aether II's art style. To achieve this we have begun creating new models for the existing Aether II mobs, as well as mocking up some additional potential mob designs so we can figure out our goals and guidelines for Aether II's artwork. We hope this refinement of Aether II's artwork addresses a lot of the concerns and feedback we've received with Aether II. Right now we're still being slightly tight lipped on our plans for the project, but as we shift more towards resuming active development we'll begin to share more details and information about what we have in store for the Aether's long awaited sequel!
I'm also happy to announce that we have begun work on the next Aermail video! This new video showcase will go deeper into some of the things discussed in this announcement, such as the Genesis add-on and the wiki page. So keep an eye on our YouTube channel for future videos https://www.youtube.com/@DevAether
Thankyou all for your continued support of this project! I hope you all enjoy the projects we're currently working on! Without your financial support and feedback this project would not be in the state it currently is.
Happy 12 years of The Aether mod!
See you all again soon.
~ Oz Payn