September, and 1.14.4 RB!

Hello again everyone, Here to give you another update. It finally happened! On September 12th, we released a Recommended Build for Minecraft 1.14.4. You can see the full information here  https://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/topic/75934-forge-281-minecraft-1144/  but sufficient to say this has been a long hard road. I have to apologize to everyone for the delay, I always feel bad about it, but here we are. So with a RB being released, the official supported version of Forge is now 1.14.4. With 1.12.2 as the 'legacy' version. We already have modders updating their mods. Notably Optifine has released a preview version that has support for Forge. I can't speak for other large projects but they seemed to be working towards updates as well.

There are a few major things in the works on Forge's end, one is too early to talk about, but the other one is an idea I need to float by the community.  Since modding began, and then the first Minecraft update was released. People have always complained they don't want to update because old mods haven't updated. Forge's stance on this has always been "too bad, we're developing for the current version". For the most part that will not change. But we have thought about creating an official system with the community to select LTS (Long Term Support) versions of Minecraft. Developing for both that version, and the contemporary version.

The number one issue for this, is manpower. I am only one man, and the 'Forge team' is rather small as well. Especially ones who actually work on Forge's code itself. None of which are full time, and graciously donate their free time. So if we were to do this LTS idea, we would need the community's help. A while back, we introduced a 'triage team' to our git organization. This team is a small group that go through our issues/prs and do all the grunt work making sure they are sane, categorized correctly, simple generic things like codestyle/logs/justifications are done. Unfortunately, this team is small, and is done in everyone's free time by volunteers. So it isn't keeping up with the inflow of issues/prs. So this is my call out to anyone who thinks they can help. Start doing so, and if you are noticed doing a good job on the repos, you will probably be asked to join the Triage Team. This isn't a team you can just walk off the street and join, but if you're helpful, nice, and accurate we will most likely notice you.

So, how would a LTS system work? Well if we get a group of triage members who are able to keep up with the influx of PRs/Issues/Etc, then we would select a couple who have proven themselves to be trustworthy {I have a few in mind already} to be the LTS Team Leads. And they would have permission to pull any PRs they want for old Minecraft versions. But what versions would be considered LTS? Well that would be up to the community managers as a while. This would be discussed and general consensus would arrive. But the idea would be to provide a stable Minecraft target for about 2 years at a time. So if we go back through MC's history we would get something like this:  1.2.5 (18 months) -> 1.6.4 (26 months) -> 1.8.9 (21 months)-> 1.12.2 (24~ months) -> 1.14.x? Once we select the current MC version, to be the next LTS version as soon as Mojang releases a new version, the transition would take place. 

I don't know, this is something we're thinking about, nothing is set in stone, and it all is dependent on if we can find the manpower to do it.  So I figured letting you guys know about it would be a good way for people to decide if they wanted to help or not... We'll see how it works out.

Now, time for a little update related to Patreon itself. So the new month has come, which means people have update/changed their pledges. And sadly, we have fallen below the Adfocus goal. So if we are still there at the end of this month it means Adfocus will be making a return to the Forge download page. Nobody likes ads, but bills need to be paid.... alright enough begging, RB HYPE!