Interested In The Creative And Technical Process Behind Making Wynncraft, Where Do I Look?

Hello, I am someone who is extremely interested in RPGs and their creation.

I have played Wynncraft on and off for the last year or so (mostly because school and other personal projects have gotten in the way). I have a bit of experience in creating an RPG through D&D, and a bit of coding experience from some of my classes. Recently the prospect of coding a game within another game came to mind, so I revisited Wynncraft to see how much actually went into the process, and what working with a team on a single project looks like (being alone sucks).
I have looked through the GM Google Doc for Wynncraft, and want to know more (Although I have no intention of applying for GM). I was wondering if there is anywhere that I can learn more about the process that the creative and technical teams go through when creating Dungeons, Quests (this one is mostly explained in the GM Doc), Items, and other aspects of the game. Are there old videos that I can find somewhere, or old forum posts, or possibly even people that I can talk to?

Hope this isn't too much trouble to find out.

 

I can present you with some info and references from various categories and medias


o------------------------------------------------------------------------o


As a quick presummary about how the team feels like when compared to an "actual" game development team, a lot of things are quite different with Wynn. For example, development is a lot more lax as a result of no one's livelihood depending on it, and because the content team consists of volunteers, the team is much less prone to corruption from people trying to hog money for themselves. This allows friendships to form more easily, and since the team itself consists mostly of young and passionate people who share similar mindsets, it's more than likely to happen. It's essentially an "everyone knows everyone" type of deal.

The fact that Wynn runs on minecraft supports this wonderfully. One time you might be working on the game, and before you know it, you might seamlessly hop onto Wynn or a minigame server with a few team members and have a good time. Sometimes it might even be fun to just mess around on the build server, as long as you're not causing utter chaos and destruction. This is also aided by weekly events such as game- and work nights, which serve as an opportunity to group up, discuss what people have been working on over the week, and to have fun with eachother by playing games together. No one gets punished for not working, but they are a part of the team after all. So, when it's your turn to tell what new and exciting you've created during the week, you might get a couple of disappointed looks if you've been slacking. It's essentially using people's own psyche as a means of motivating them to push forwards with working on the game.

I'd rather call the content team a good group of friends, if not even a family, than a team.


o------------------------------------------------------------------------o


As for how the game's development itself goes, and how work is distributed across participants...

Because the game is developed with the help of volunteers, good order becomes really important in order to create things on time. Because of this, the team is essentially divided into 3 categories that I like to call the big bois, the managers and the basic content team workers. For the sake of reducing repetition, I'll be referring to the lattermost as just content team, even if that doesn't cover the whole deal.


The big bois:

The big bois are the people who either have a final say in deciding the direction the game is going, and/or take care of the most important aspects of the game. That group includes the founders, head GMs and builder, developers and whatnot.

For example, Salted being one of Wynn's founders, is the head GM who handles designing gameplay elements with his years of experience and research in the matter, and more. Grian on the other hand deals with the lore side of things, such as writing what the game's story should and shouldn't be about, alongside managing the map's design with the help of managers such as Hams. Developers such as Jumla, Crunkle, redx and Colin as of today, take care of the game's and websites' code and other more advanced technical aspects, such as managing the servers. They also provide the content team with sufficient server side tools to work on the game in terms of plugins, wynnscript, etc.


Managers

Managers are essentially like elite content team members. They've reliably worked on the game for a long time, and generally have a lot of experience with what they're doing and how Wynn works. That's why they act like a secondary link between the big bois and the rest of the content team. They actively communicate with both, and distribute work across the team either via directly contacting people they think are suitable for complicated things, or by making simple requests that anyone can claim with a special system, such as "build a cool tower at x and y, yo".

Albeit a very minor thing, they're also in charge of rewarding people alongside higherups with virtual karma points based on the work they do. They're essentially just an arbitrary number next to people's name that shows how much work they've done over their time in the team. Why? Because seeing yourself make progress towards something is motivating, and it also helps managers figure out who'd be a good pick for specific jobs. It's just a wee bit sad that the points got heavily inflated and unbalanced between different roles at one point, which lead into some unhappiness within the team. Guess they worked a bit too well on the motivation aspect, huh.


Content team's normies

In order to get the most out of everyone's capabilities and skillsets, the content team has various different roles for what people do. You already mentioned that you've read some of the docs dedicated for new members, but it probably wouldn't hurt if I included descriptions of these as well.

There's GMs aka Game Masters who write and make quests, NPCs, discoveries, write dialogue and do other things of the like. I'd "value" these as the leading content team members, since they usually work on content that takes the longest, and need the help of all other roles to fulfill their own. Because of this, they essentially work as their own micromanagers. Much like actual managers, they can make requests to accommodate their own work, such as asking a builder to build a house that their NPC lives in, or asking a CMD to create a puzzle for their quest. This works wonderfully for small and simple things, but when something specific is needed, it's not uncommon for GMs to directly ask someone to do the job either.

As was already mentioned, there's also builders, who as their role would suggest, build the game's map. Alongside those, there's also CMDs aka command blockers who create interactive content such as puzzles and animations, either via command blocks or the aforementioned wynnscript. When it comes to gameplay, there's also the item team who try their best at balancing and creating creative weapons, accessories and armor in the game.

Last but definitely not least, there are the not-so gameplay orientated members. Those include composers who create the game's soundtrack, QA aka Quality Assurance people who test content, manage the bug reports section and make sure that issues find their way to someone who can fix them, and artists who work on the resource pack, NPC skins and other art for the website and trailers. As something that I'd call a "sub-role", there's also modelers who use armorstands to create custom mobs, statues and other things to make the world feel a slight bit more unique and lively.

Some people might be fine with working on just one role, but many are also possess the required skills for multiple roles, hence, they're allowed to. Ultimately with all the roles though, good communication between them is the most important thing that makes sure that content turns out the way it should. Another tidbit of information, whether it's obvious or not, is that Wynn's development utilizes the psychology of "the longer and harder someone has worked on the game, the more weight their word has", just to throw that in there. On the side of all of the aforementioned, there are also the moderators who actively manage the community to make sure the game isn't being exploited or being made unfair by hackers.


o------------------------------------------------------------------------o


If you want to take a deeper peek inside Wynn's development, something that you might learn from are interviews and other similar items conducted on the people working on Wynn. For that, I've collected a few sources that might help you by taking a look behind the scenes at aspects of the game that aren't often talked about. Some might be more or less relevant due to their age, and some touch on the game's development and creation more than others, but I'd say they're still pretty good sources of inside information if you don't want to contact them yourself. That being said, the best way to get a perspective of how the game is developed is likely to just get into contact with someone who's either worked on it in the past or still works on it, such as content team members. Heck, you might even shoot the big man a dm on the forums and hope for a response.

Podcast with Salted by HippieCrafting and SoloSnuggles:


Interview with Jumla by GlitchedSlayer, reuploaded by Denna Ellington:


Interview with Grian by MrSebbelonien:


Interview with Hams by MrSebbelonien:


Corkus livestream by Grian, saved by Giames:


A visualization of Wynn's GM github tree over time by Jumla:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oEPjsQRRQ0

Timelapses of the build process behind zombie dungeon and Aldorei valley by Grian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-brXoyqnE0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pthkCZY-0t8

An "ask me anything" by Salted:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WynnCraft/...lted_one_of_wynncraft_owners_ask_me_anything/

A content team stream by Salted, half-assedly recorded by me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqTizjKI0rM

An introduction video to Gavel by Salted and Grian:
https://youtu.be/tQtEIotIkME?t=590

Development logs, blogs and changelogs by Salted and others:
https://forums.wynncraft.com/forums/news-patches.64/

Thread about the creation of Wynn's item system by Salted:
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/the-making-of-the-item-system.106300/

Thread about an unfinished dungeon by XavierEXE:
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/the-gavel-dungeon-that-was-never-finished.252389/


o------------------------------------------------------------------------o


Ultimately, it's a bit hard to narrow down anything specific, but I hope this post answers some of your questions by including as much variety of the topic as possible. I was never anything of significance, but if you'd like my perspective on the development of something particular such as corrupted dungeons, canyon dungeon or fallen factory, quests released between 1.14 and 1.18 or some other content, I can provide those as well, since you specifically mentioned quests and dungeons.

 

Holy cow, Thank you for this post! This was extremely informative and insightful. I will definitely be checking out these clips in a bit (there are quite a bit of them!). If you don't mind too much, I would love to hear the process of creating something as focused as a dungeon. My main questions would concern the time it takes, and the details behind the planning/communication chain within a project that complex, however, I would be delighted to hear any other details relating to the process. In the meantime, I might just

.

Again, Thanks so much for all the insight into the work behind this project!