Aermail – The Aether Rewrite

Hi everyone, It’s Oz from the Aether Team here,  back with another Aermail video after quite a long   while away. I just wanted to do a quick-fire  presentation going through a lot of the stuff   we’ve been working on and the state of things  with the Aether project over the last year or so.

The first point I’d like to address quickly is  the recent rebranding of our development team.   As you may have noticed already, we’ve dropped  the Gilded Games name and branding from   our social media pages and replaced it  with The Aether Team. I just want to  

Note that we’re the same team that has  always worked on the mod, we’re mainly   just trying to refocus on the Aether Project  with how we present ourselves going forward. So with that out of the way, I’d like to give  an update on what the team has been working  

On since the last couple Aermail videos.  If you’ve been keeping up to date on our   social media or Discord server, you’ve  likely already heard that we’re doing   a major rewrite/remaster of the original  Aether mod for modern Minecraft versions.   This represents the first proper official  update for the Aether mod since around  

2012. We’ve had ports of the Aether for  versions from 1.7.10 to 1.12.2, but they   were originally handled by a separate team and  were mostly maintained purely for preservation,   whereas with this rewrite we’re aiming to  enhance and modernise the original Aether   mod with numerous quality of life improvements,  technical improvements and design rebalances.

I’d like to take a moment to give a little  bit of history of how this project came about,   you all likely remember Aether Legacy, the modern  ports of the original mod handled by the Modding   Legacy team. We readopted Aether Legacy from them  in 2019 and began patching the codebase, intending  

To continue supporting the original mod ourselves.  Unfortunately, though, 1.12.2’s code wasn’t really   compatible with later versions because of large  scale refactors with Forge and the vanilla game,   so we weren’t able to easily port the Aether  Legacy code to versions from 1.13 onwards.

Luckily for us, back in 2020, the developer  behind the Aether Continuation add-on had   started rewriting Aether blocks and items  for 1.14.4 and presented this to us as   an opportunity to rewrite the mod for new  versions. We were very interested in this,  

So we invited them into our development team  with the intent to complete this rewrite of the   original mod. From 2020 to 2021 our focus remained  on patching and improving the 1.7.10 and 1.12.2   releases until we were happy with the state they  were in. Then in 2021, around December sorta time,  

We expanded our development team significantly and  fully prioritised this new rewrite, updating it to   new Minecraft versions as they released, until we  reached the point we’re at now. Where we basically   have a finished mod on 1.19.4, the latest  available Forge version at the time of recording,  

Which is available for testing via our Discord  server. Alongside a public multiplayer server   that allows us to test changes to the codebase  as they happen through our auto-build service. So now that we’ve covered the history of this  rewrite, I think we should now take a look at  

The features and changes we’ve been making  with the project, as this rewrite isn’t just   a straight port but rather something closer to a  full remaster of the original mod. So let’s dive   into the main changes and improvements we’ve made. The first change you’re likely to notice while  

Playing this rewrite is the texture overhaul.  We’ve spent a long time redoing pretty much   every texture, either from scratch or based on  its new vanilla equivalent, so everything matches   the updated look and feel of the vanilla game  following the art overhaul in 1.14. We also offer  

The original textures from both the beta 1.7 and  1.2.5 releases. Which you can access via a set of   pre-packaged resource packs. So players who want  to retain the original look of the mod, or prefer  

Playing the game with programmer art and want the  mod to match, are able to have that as an option. Not only that, but we’ve also been working very  hard to get the terrain generation as close to  

The original mod as possible. As you can see from  the footage here, the Aether terrain has a lot of   unique overhangs, clusters of broken terrain  and sweeping open spaces. We paid particularly   close attention to ensuring exploring the  Aether’s terrain was difficult on foot,  

But exciting via the numerous traversal upgrades  available in the mod’s content. You’ll also find   that Blue Aerclouds make Elytra flight in the  Aether dimension very freeing and exciting. Speaking of generation, our Dungeon structures  have also been a big focus of this rewrite. In  

Previous Aether Legacy releases, it was often very  hard to find Bronze Dungeons as they struggled to   find appropriate areas to generate inside islands.  For this rewrite, we’ve tried to ensure islands   have a wider variety of thickness and mass that  should allow dungeons to more regularly generate  

Inside, as well as making sure dungeon entrances  are exposed and visible more often. Overall,   Bronze dungeons should be much easier  to find on foot during early gameplay. Our floating dungeons have also had  some changes, the main thing we have  

Improved is the variety of conditions a floating  dungeon like the Silver Dungeon can generate in,   before they were only found high in the  air completely separated from land, but   now you can freely find Silver and Gold Dungeons  embedded in the terrain as well, which makes for  

Some really cool and interesting interactions with  our terrain generation, we even made sure that the   entrance doorways are always exposed to air, so  you don’t need to dig through dirt to enter them. Once you enter the dungeons, you’ll also likely  notice that we’ve extensively rebalanced how chest  

Loot works. Looting dungeons should now feel  more varied and rewarding, while still mostly   resembling the original mod’s progression.  The basic idea around these changes is to   make individual dungeon runs more rewarding, while  also making chest loot more varied and exciting.

Loot isn’t the only thing that’s been tweaked  in dungeons though, we’ve also rebalanced and   overhauled the Aether mod’s bosses in an attempt  to bring them up to more modern standards,   while rebalancing them around the recent  changes to Minecraft’s core combat. This  

Should speed up some of the fights compared  to 1.12.2 while also being more exciting   and challenging. The Sun Spirit specifically  has had a large amount of balance changes to   try to address criticisms we’ve collected  about it over the years. We’re excited to  

Hear what everyone thinks of these changes in  the future once you get your hands on the mod. Another feature we’ve overhauled recently is  Advancements. Back in the original Aether mod,   we had custom achievements that marked very  limited progression points in the mod’s  

Content that sort of matched the vibe of the  achievements of the vanilla game at the time,   but once Minecraft further developed their system  into the current advancements we have today,   the Aether mod fell behind somewhat as our  achievements were never really updated to  

Fit the new system. In modern Minecraft versions,  advancements work as a sort of natural tutorial as   well as an achievement system, giving you guidance  and goals throughout the game’s progression and   pushing you towards major steps in the game’s  content. For Aether 1 the achievements we had were  

Basically just a bare-bones content checklist with  not much fluidity or progression between them,   but for this new rewrite we’ve entirely redone  the Aether dimension’s advancements to now better   reflect the progression and goals of the mod’s  content. Which should help a lot for new players  

Who want to discover the mod’s content naturally  within the game itself. We even have some hidden   advancements for players who want to experiment  with more advanced mechanics in the mod. Alright, the last major feature I’d like to  talk about today is our Cosmetic Rewards. For  

People who have contributed significantly to  the project, either through major development   contributions or financially backing the  project’s development. We’ll be offering a   range of visual customisations in both Aether  1 and later on in Aether II. The system isn’t  

Completed yet but by release we’ll have a range of  Moa skins available for supporters of the project,   which you’ll be able to freely switch  between for your current Moa. At launch,   we expect to have two skin packs available,  one for all supporters who have contributed  

$5 or more to the project, and a second pack for  supporters who have contributed more than $10,   which will be yours to keep forever even if  you stop actively supporting the project.   We’re hoping to have a lot of the process of  obtaining skins to be as automated as possible,  

But if you’re not an active supporter in the  Angel or Valkyrie tiers on our Patreon, there may   be some manual review needed for everyone to get  their cosmetic rewards. On top of these two packs,   we’ll likely be releasing periodic skin packs  that will be exclusive to active supporters on our  

Patreon. These Moa skins will be fully multiplayer  compatible, so not only will you have cool skins   for your Moa, but you’ll be able to show them off  to your friends on multiplayer servers! We rely   quite heavily on financial contributions to keep  the project running, so while we don’t ever want  

To encourage anyone who doesn’t have the spare  money to give it to us, we hope these cosmetic   rewards will feel like a suitable thank-you to  people who have decided to financially support us. Now, as you’ve probably noticed from the  footage we’ve been showing in this video,  

The mod is basically done. It’s feature complete,  you can run through the whole content set at this   point. So we’re actually really close to a  public beta release. We still have a few bugs   and design quirks to iron out before we’re  happy releasing this widely, but when we do,  

We will be pushing the Aether rewrite beta to both  Curseforge and Modrinth simultaneously, as we’re   aiming to support as many platforms as possible in  our community going forward. We’d really like this   beta to be as close to perfect as possible before  we release it publicly, so while this will be a  

Beta, and its release will be primarily for the  purpose of finding and squashing further issues,   we do expect the release to be as functional and  stable as we can possibly get it. So we hope you  

All try it out and hopefully enjoy it as much as  possible, but if you do end up finding problems,   we highly encourage players to report bugs and  problems to our GitHub’s issue tracker in the   future, which should help speed up the process of  getting this rewrite completed and fully released.

So with all the Aether rewrite’s major changes,  features and priorities outlined, I’d like to now   talk about the rest of our work outside of Aether  1, starting with the state of Aether II following   our last few videos. So basically, Aether II  has mostly been on pause while we worked on  

Fixing up the previous Aether 1 releases and  created this rewrite. We had done some minor   work on the 1.12.2 Highlands codebase to address  some major concerns, but there were far too many   large scale issues that our current team aren’t  particularly well-equipped to address, given how  

Messy the 1.12 Aether II codebase is. This mostly  means that 1.12 is a bit of an irrecoverable mess,   and the changes we made weren’t enough to  really warrant a public release. Instead,   we chose to shelve work on Aether II until  after the Aether rewrite was complete, then  

Resume development of Aether II primarily using  the experience and technology we had developed   and used in the process of recreating the original  mod. We’re finally re-approaching the point where   we’re likely to be resuming development of  Aether II, which we’re very excited for,  

But there’s still going to be quite a bit of  time between now and when we’ll have something   new and playable for you all with Aether II,  so we appreciate the patience and kind words   you’ve all given us in relation to this project.  And we hope this Aether rewrite fills that gap  

Nicely and sets the tone for our future work  better than our previous 1.12 releases had. Speaking of 1.12 though, we do effectively have  an unreleased update to the Aether II Highlands   alphas sitting on the shelf at the moment. The  main things we had changed were island size and  

Spacing, which helps tremendously with getting  the terrain feeling more like a skylands world,   Edison’s design was reworked into the new  character Eddy, we added unique baby mob models,   we added Irradiated blocks and items  to replace the Continuum ore from 1.7,   which gives you randomised loot when  processed in the icestone cooler,  

As well as some additions and changes to the  guidebook UI with more information available   about our mechanics and systems. The main  reason these changes went unreleased is   because of some pretty critical bugs with  our accessories not syncing up properly,  

Leading to some weird behaviour around equipping  items. These issues were critical enough that we   felt it wouldn’t be appropriate to release them  publicly, but we were also unable to fix them   on the old codebase. So the main thing I wanted  to ask you guys today is; would you like to see  

These changes released on 1.12 before we move  onto resuming development on 1.19+? We wouldn’t   be fixing any of the bugs and the release would be  effectively unsupported, but our design team does   feel the changes and additions are worthwhile for  players who want to get maybe a better indication  

Of what the Aether II content that HAS been  implemented is sort of meant to feel like. As   we were really unhappy with the state the last  build left the project in. So yeah would you   like to see this build be available through some  sort of public archive build? Or would you prefer  

We just focus on making the new versions  of Aether II better and leave 1.12 behind? Another thing we’ve been working on in relation  to the Aether Project is community contributed   translations, we really want the Aether to be  available to as many people as possible and an  

Important part of that is having support  for multiple languages. To achieve this,   we’ll be opening a community driven  translation service at some point during beta,   allowing users who have knowledge of multiple  languages to translate the mod and for other  

Users to be able to verify and improve the  accuracy of translations for us to use within   the mod. We’ll have more updates on our  translation services later during beta. We’re also working on a new Aether wiki! We’ve  switched to using wiki.gg and have been building  

A brand new, much more accurate, wiki page  for the Aether mods. Our focus with the new   wiki will primarily be on having accurate and  updated information about the Aether rewrite,   but as we begin resuming development of  Aether II we will likely shift focus to  

Adding updated information about that  as well. For now, it’s early days,   and we’re still working on formatting and porting  over legacy information, but we hope to have the   wiki in a good state for the full launch of  the Aether rewrite following a beta phase.  

So we hope that’ll become a useful resource  for new and returning players in the future. The last thing we’ve been working on I’d like to  cover is the new Book of Lore forum on our Discord   server. Since Discord’s forum feature launched  we’ve started adding functionality using it to  

Our server, including support forums, community  project showcases via our projects forum, and   now a Book of Lore forum to cover deep dives into  specific world building concepts, short stories,   and character showcases. Those that have been  around for a while likely remember we had a book  

Of lore section on our old forum website where I  would post artwork and short stories related to   upcoming content in Aether II, This new Discord  forum is basically that again but updated to   include not only the new content planned for the  mod, but also hints and teasers for our upcoming  

Aether comic book we have in pre-production. So  if you want to learn a bit about the mod’s world   building and get some teasers and information  about the comic we’ll be working on alongside   Aether II, check out our Discord server and  take a look through the Book of Lore forum.

Now, some of you watching may be thinking how  you can help contribute to the Aether Project,   or maybe want to do more in the community to try  and improve and help the project’s goals. There   are three major ways you can help the project  out, the first is incredibly easy. Just keep  

Playing the mod! Share it around, talk about it  on social media, make fan art, make videos about   it. Just spreading the word and enjoying the mods  we put out helps more than anything else. But if   you want to make a more targeted contribution, we  are always happy to accept financial contributions  

Through our Patreon. As detailed earlier, we’ll be  offering cosmetic rewards both to anyone who has   made financial contributions and active patrons.  Small but regular pledges really help keep the   lights on and make the financial pressure of  making this free project a lot less severe. So  

If you have the money to spare, it would mean the  world to us if you checked out our Patreon page.   We also accept community code contributions  through pull requests via our GitHub,   so if you have Java modding experience and want  to help out, make sure to check our issue tracker  

For open and unassigned issues. Once we resume  development of Aether II we’ll have a much larger   pool of open issues and tasks available as well  as a better idea of what aspects of development   we’re in need of. So we’ll likely begin looking  for new team members during the early days of  

Aether II’s development, and the best way to  get on our radar is to contribute to our GitHub! That about covers everything! Thank you all for  sticking around and sending us a lot of positive   messages and feedback over this past year.  I hope you all check out the Aether rewrite  

Beta when that releases. We’ll likely post a  video quickly advertising its release here,   as well as publishing release posters on our  social channels. Make sure to join our Discord   server to stay up to date on everything, subscribe  for more Aether videos, and stay tuned for the  

Next Aermail, which will likely cover development  of Aether II after we finish this Aether rewrite. Cheers everyone! See ya later!