FTB News - March 13th, 2015

[Big Bad]

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the re-re-rebirth of Weekly FTB News.

First off, let’s talk about our wonderful time at PAX East.

TOURNAMENTS

This last week, FTB continued its tradition of hosting official events at PAX conventions. On Saturday, over 90 individuals signed up to compete on our specially designed map, East 2015, for a chance to win incredible prizes donated by Curse including gaming keyboards, mice, and headsets.

While users were competing, we had some of our friends streaming and playing along over on Twitch. Internet personalities Direwolf20, FireBall1725, PurpleMentat, Quetzi as well as FTB staff members tfox83 and Watchful1 tried their hand at completing the parkour-themed map. However, even with their combined efforts, they couldn’t tame the Beast and eventually conceded defeat. You can watch their attempt over on FireBall1725’s Twitch channel here.

After two hours of competition, we had our four winners. In first place, Blood Magic author WayofTime achieved 20:38.35, followed by Kingfishgames at 34:28.65 for second, goldenback52400 at 51:44.55 in third, and BombTime at 65:21.05 for fourth. Congrats, guys! Regardless of completion time or percentage, all participants were awarded with PAX-exclusive FTB shirts, Curse clothing, and three months free of Curse Premium.

Speaking of challenges, our online PAX map contest recently came to a close. Speedrunner ZaxTheNoob (or zax0ng on our forums) managed to snag a victory with a completion time of 9 minutes, 46 seconds. For his fastest time, he walked home with a shiny new Nvidia GTX 980 video card. Congrats, ZaxTheNoob!

You can watch his winning attempt on his YouTube channel here:

PANEL:

A day before our tournament, we were invited to participate on a panel involving modded Minecraft. FTB’s founder slowpoke101 sat alongside Forge lead programmer LexManos, Youtuber Direwolf20, Twitch streamer Soaryn, Blood Magic mod developer WayofTime, and Equivalent Exchange 3 mod developer Pahimar. The panel was moderated by Twitch streamer and employee, Mindcrack member, and ForgeCraft player Aureylian.

The panelists were asked various questions about their contributions to the world of Modded Minecraft, some of their future endeavors their thoughts on where Minecraft might be heading in the future.

For those of you unable to attend, streamer Fireball1725Dev was able to record and broadcast the panel. You can watch his copy here. Additional video copies were also recorded and we will provide links to those as soon as they’re posted online.​

PARTIES

Even outside the convention hall, the festivities continued throughout the weekend. On Saturday night, Curse hosted an amazing and generous dinner at Fogo de Chao. Members from FTB, Curse, Twitch, YouTube, ForgeCraft, and Mindcrack were in attendance. Food was served, drinks were poured, and the entire event was absolutely top-notch.

In addition, we attended the ForgeCraft dinner organized by Pahimar and Peter from NerdKingdom on Thursday, the Friday Twitch party, and helped organize the Mindcrack party on Sunday.

We would like to thank everyone who made these events possible as well as everyone who was able to attend. You guys made a wonderful weekend even better!​

MODPACKS

But you’re here for the modpack news, right? Right.

Direwolf20 version 1.1.1 and Infinity version 1.2.1 will be moved to ‘Recommended’ very shortly. This update introduces Thermal Dynamics into the world as well a handful of additional content changes and bugfixes in the form of other mod updates. You will be able to download both of these pack updates from the Launcher tomorrow.

Also, we are pleased to be able to tease that there are three new Official FTB packs currently in the works! Trident, Departed, and Relentless are now in official production. More information to come later.

Also note: as development is starting to ramp up on 1.8, many of our 1.7 packs will become either locked (no more updates) or enter maintenance mode (mod updates only, primarily bugfixes).​

GENERAL FTB

We’ve also got some general FTB news to share as well. Firstly, we would like to congratulate GideonSeymour on joining the group as part of our Modpack Development team and tfox83’s promotion to Modpack Development Lead. Congratulations, guys!

Our teams have also been restructured a bit for efficiency. Right now, our organization’s format is as follows:

Modpack Development Team
Modpack Maintenance Team
Mod Development Team
Beta Testing Team
Graphics and Marketing Team
Changelog Team
Literary Team​

STORE

In case you missed it, we’ve got two new designs up on our store. Products and wearables featuring the FTB logo and the Jampacked logo are now for sale. If you haven’t already, go check them out!

FTB logo
Jampacked​

SOCIAL MEDIA

We’ve finally decided to hang up our Walkmans, toss out our Windows95 floppy discs, and finally enter the world of active social media. We have just created two new consolidated content outlets for users.

Official YouTube
Official Twitch Account

With our YouTube page we hope host tutorial videos, pack and event trailers, and news briefs. Similarly, we plan to use the Twitch account to stream events, show off real-time developments on our end, and host other streamers playing our packs.

Our new marketing team will handle the content on both of these sites, as well as our Twitter, Storefront, and News Page.​

OH, AND BEFORE I FORGET:

Stay tuned. This weekend.​

 

[Qazplm601]

Trident, Departed, and Relentless

3 new packs? madness.

 

[4sh0]

3 new packs

Illuminati confirmed.

 

[Golrith]

What I would like to know is when are 3rd party mod packs going to be updated? Been waiting 2 weeks now for my pack to get updated on the launcher. I know there were issues a few weeks back with the repo causing delays/problems with packs being updated, but 2 weeks with no progress or communication? Yes, I know Pax is going on, but there should be some form of communication.

 

[Skyqula]

Also note: as development is starting to ramp up on 1.8, many of our 1.7 packs will become either locked (no more updates) or enter maintenance mode (mod updates only, primarily bugfixes).

Being optimistic I see? ^^

If 1.6/1.7 are anny indication we can savely wait another half year for modded 1.8 packs...

 

[buggirlexpres]

Being optimistic I see? ^^

If 1.6/1.7 are anny indication we can savely wait another half year for modded 1.8 packs...

We probably will, but it's too soon to see how 1.8 will turn out from a Modpack Developer's perspective yet.

 

[Watchful11]

What I would like to know is when are 3rd party mod packs going to be updated? Been waiting 2 weeks now for my pack to get updated on the launcher. I know there were issues a few weeks back with the repo causing delays/problems with packs being updated, but 2 weeks with no progress or communication? Yes, I know Pax is going on, but there should be some form of communication.

I haven't looked, but if you're at two weeks I'm guessing it's because you bumped the thread. That moves it to the back of the queue.

We should be getting caught up over the weekend.

 

[Golrith]

I haven't looked, but if you're at two weeks I'm guessing it's because you bumped the thread. That moves it to the back of the queue.

We should be getting caught up over the weekend.

Ah I did not know or appreciate that. I did indeed "bump" the topic after 4 days as a general enquiry as it seemed very unusual for such a delay, as I've always experienced excellent FTB service with a response within 24 hours, then "rebumped" after another 7 days of no feedback with an update, with again no further progress (until a few hours ago).
During this time there were other pack creators also encountering the same delays, and there was nowhere to go to get any information about these delays.

At least I know now not to try and use that area to ask any general enquiries Keep up the good work!

 

[dmaster8]

Jampacked 2, Hype