Hey 'Scapers
We're just over half-way through the year now and we wanted to provide a little insight into a project that has been cooking for most of that time... the API project!
While this is one of the most anticipated projects of the year, we are keen to ensure that it gets its true hype moment when the time it right, so we're not going to spoil too much today... consider today as more of a peek behind the curtain rather than a preview of flashy plugins!
What have we been up to?
From the beginning of this year our team focused on laying a really solid foundation. That means developing the code architecture that will ensure that the project can indeed deliver all the things that our talented community developers will want to tinker with once they get into the system.
From the outset, we embraced Lua as the language of choice in creating plugins for RuneScape, and we can't wait to see the exciting plugins made possible through this flexible development language.
Principles:
One of the bedrocks of the project has been the development of safe and strong plugin guidelines for the overall project - these will ensure that the all community plugins can contribute to maintaining a healthy RuneScape, rather than challenging the game's core principles.
We want you to be able to choose tools to improve their RuneScape experience, comfortable in the knowledge that these tools are authorized, safe and do not contravene any rules. You should trust that plugins available to you have been reviewed, approved and meet Jagex' standards for fairness and integrity.
Fundamental to all of this is the notion that everything you need is accessible through the official RuneScape client and you do not need to search external websites or tools to acquire such plugins. To this end, we will be providing a built-in plugin browser within the RuneScape game client.
When it comes specifically to plugin design, our goal is to build a healthy plugin ecosystem that enhances the game experience, without replacing gameplay itself.
That means that we're looking forward to supporting great plugins that improve clarity and usability, reduce friction and generally help you better understand the game. Innovative ideas for game-modes are of course welcome too. �
On the other hand, what we want to avoid is the trivializing of either the game or player skill. Examples of that include automating gameplay or using hidden information to predict mechanics.
Ensuring that our API project can maintain these principles in future will of course require a dedicated team, which brings us onto our next section:
A Dedicated Team:
We understand that some community developers and players may be thinking about what happens to the API after our official launch of it. What happens if something breaks a few months later... will it be maintained?
The API project for RuneScape is a long-term commitment for Jagex, and we are setting ourselves up to ensure that.
We currently have core RuneScape and RuneTek developers working on the project. However, we are working to supplement this team with extra JMods who will be dedicated entirely to the API, even far beyond its launch. This will ensure that the API is a permanent fixture in RuneScape's eco-system.
We have very recently brought a new Technical Community Manager into the fold: Mod Fable! Here is a short introduction from them:
Hey everyone, I'm Mod Fable!
I've been playing RuneScape for over 22 years, so this game and its community have been a huge part of my life.
As your Technical Community Manager, I'm excited to help bridge the gap between players and developers, making sure conversations are clear, constructive, and accessible whether you're a seasoned creator or installing your very first plugin.
I'm looking forward to getting to know you all, supporting the community, and helping shape the future of the project together.
See you around Gielinor!
It was important for us that we have dedicated Community Manager for this project, but it was equally essential for them to be technically well versed. Mod Fable will be able to speak the language of both the core developer and the player who is installing their first plugin... along with everyone in between.
We are also in the final stages of recruiting a Plugin Moderator, who will help maintain our principles while also working together with community developers to ensure their submissions are compliant, safe and effective.
Community Developers:
Another important aspect of our API project approach is that we are not developing the system in isolation.
As soon as the technical foundation was set and Lua plugin development was ready to go, we worked to bring a number of community developers into the fold.
At this stage, this is a very limited and small group, as we really need to first focus on deeply technical and architectural challenges that the API needs to overcome. However, already at this stage the group involves developers associated with most of the RuneScape third-party tools or extensions that you will be familiar with and may already be using.
This group and their work does remain under NDA at this point in time as we want ensure that the API project maintains its focus on delivering a feature set that will deliver a high-impact reveal when the time is right.
As the project matures we will gradually bring more and more community developers into it, though that will continue to be in a limited and specially targeted approach for now. We are using both the interest registration form that we shared on Discord in January to find qualified partners, but are also pro-actively researching and reaching out to people we think would be a great fit.
If you're eager to get stuck in with developing all manner of plugins, we ask you to be just a little more patient. We want to ensure that, when the time comes to open plugin development up to the wider community, we have a robust development environment in place AND that we have created an extensive knowledge-base filled with documentation that will make it far easier to understand what's what. �
Plugins!
Plugins are of course at the very heart of this entire idea - they're for players like YOU! So, what kind of plugins do you want to see?
Now is a great time to help guide the API project towards realising the plugin ideas or functionality you've always imagined. We expect the obligatory quest helper plugin requests, but are there any ideas beyond that which you've either seen elsewhere or are only dreaming of yourself (bearing the above principles in mind)?
We'd love to hear what's on your mind, as this will help ensure that our developers and partners can be mindful of the ideas that the community is most excited about. Head over to our dedicated Reddit or Discord threads and get involved in the discussions now!
That's it for today, we'll be back in the near enough future with a bit more information on how its going and what you might be able to expect for how this project is shaping up.