History

Founding
Better Animals Plus was an idea conceived by cybercat5555 in the summer of 2018. She had created models for Better Animal Models, but had also had ideas for new animals and monsters. Over time, art for the initial 1.0.0 release animals was created, accompanied with an Imgur album to show them off. On July 30th, 2018, cyber created two Minecraft Forums threads for Better Animal Models and Better Animals Plus. At this point, Better Animal Models had already been out since February 2018 (pre-2.0, before the mod was fully client-sided), and the BA+ thread was a request for a coder. This thread, however, was unsuccessful in locating a programmer. On July 1st, Cyber posted a request in the MMD discord for coders for both BAM and BA+, as the original coders for BAM had left, and BA+ was still coder-less. This, however, was still unsuccessful (for BA+, BAM was updated to 2.0 shortly after on the 19th of July by Ocelot). On August 3rd, 2018, Cyber posted again in the MMD discord, this time asking only for coders for BA+. This still however, was unsuccessful. Cyber posted one final time in the MMD discord on August 24th, 2018.

After some chatting, its_meow came upon the request post for a coder for Better Animals Plus. Due to his prior experience creating entities on 1.12, he decided to pick up the request.

Pre-Release Development
Better Animals Plus began coding on August 26th, 2018.

The first entities to be added were the Brown Bear and the Black Bear, with this development blooper made the same day The next things added, in order, were: Deer, Lammergeier, Feral Wolf, Coyote, Trillium, Fox, Tarantula, Hirschgeist, Hirschgeist Skull (both the Mob Head and wearable item), and finally the Hand of Fate.

Release
On September 23rd, 2018, Better Animals Plus 1.0.0 released, featuring everything above. Its initial popularity was quite surprising (although cyber posted and talked about it everywhere, so that is most likely why). Upon initial release, many bug reports came in causing the need for a patch with some feature additions, version 1.1.0, which released on October 1st, 2018. Several patches followed afterwards, with 1.1.1 on October 3rd, 2018, 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 on October 7th 2018, and 1.1.4 on October 24th 2018.