Creative Future Planning

With each reset of the server, we find new things to refine about how the server is run. The purpose of this page is to collect together all the ideas and issues that come up during the current Creative map in preparation for the next map.

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New Ideas

Terrain

• The most common suggestion is to drop the terrain by x amount of blocks to give more space in the sky. We all want this but has been denied due to a playability bug. Apparently when you try and create maps with too much open space it ends up lagging the server. We saw this happen a few times. We are willing to test out a map like this again in the future --Cmdrtebok 11:59, 23 March 2011 (CDT)
  • Thread here, with somewhat of a BTM config: http://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/539/suggestion-for-the-next-creative-map --Epsy 14:03, 23 March 2011 (CDT)
• No Pyramids or ugly stuff within 200 blocks of spawn. Its BORING and irritating, and there is nothing creative about ANOTHER pyramid (Every mod/admin I have spoken to has agreed with me on this matter).
  • Just remove them. :P DemanRisu 02:02, 27 March 2011 (CDT)
• Allow the use of the tools for us admins and the mods to flatten land for purposes such as 8-Bit and Big Town, so things can be showcased nicely. --Lord_Munkee 17.47, 23 March 2011
  • I strongly object to this idea. it would enable people to grief faster then ever and is something that is not really needed.-- scialex 12:26, 26 March 2011
    • "for us admins and the mods" is the operative phrase here. I love the idea. DemanRisu 02:02, 27 March 2011 (CDT)
      • objection withdrawn. although i still do not support this idea. -- scialex 4:08, 27 March 2011
• It's not exactly terrain, but it would be great if the borderguard walls were made of glass. --Epsy 11:49, 25 March 2011 (CDT)
  • I concur, that would be nicer. DemanRisu 02:02, 27 March 2011 (CDT)

Grid warps

• Have a square grid of preset warps 1000m apart. This would cut down on the number of warps needed on the server for minor creations, but would also ensure a healthy spread of building across the map. Here's how it would work:
• 
  • While I think this is a great idea I think the transit project should take the place of warps, I am weary of setting up too much in advance for the users on the creative map. I think if they want to get out there at first they should build the roads/trains then we set warps. --Cmdrtebok 13:49, 16 February 2011 (CST)
  • I think towns should pop up naturally. Do not force people to certain locations, they are going to build where it is best. This also means that your warp spots might be in the middle of a desert or a lake. Caleberx 20:59, 17 February 2011 (CST)

• Micro-spawn points buildings (podium, park?) of some sort on each of the warp locations.
  • A large protected area around each warp, as to reduce claustrophobia of buildings right around the warp. It's a large map, no harm in having a decent sized area free (50x50, 75x75?)
• With the simplicity of the warp grid layout, we could have a scale map built, with signs on to indicate major buildings.
• Assuming that minecart mania will be available on the new map to make minecart travel more reliable, I would propose making warps temporary and rare and forcing the development of a more robust transport system. Only allow warps for large build projects and only until they are completed. Individuals can still have /home set, perhaps even two or three homes in the future depending on whether that mod can go that direction.

CTA

I've started a page for the new ideas: CTA Future Planning.

Map 13

• For Map 13 - Most of these recommendations can stay and still be put into play. The 4 cardinal directions should continue to be in place a la their current layout (North=Yellow, etc) and lines can branch from there.
  • How about having the lines go up to end up right below the road past a certain point, say 1000 blocks from spawn? Epsy 13:58, 23 March 2011 (CDT)
• CTA Should reconsider "express" lines. They are useful for pre-planning of future areas, but if we keep with the 6,000x6,000 maps, we may end up resetting due to updates and bukkit before people actually start really building on the borders. Going back to all 5x3 would mean easier digs. Just a thought.
  • Umm, if we're going for saving digging time, how about reducing to 3x3 with boosters in the walls? Epsy 13:58, 23 March 2011 (CDT)
    • I agree, it may be uglier but it'll take magnitudes of time less. DemanRisu 02:02, 27 March 2011 (CDT)
• The spawn was built far too fast, and it became extraordinarily confusing to find your way. Something should be put in place to allow people to expand more quickly.

Map 12

• Though it is not our place to tell volunteer organizations like the CTA HOW to build, encourage them to build early and above-ground (without carving the map into too many small spaces in the process) so that the rail systems become a way to see more of the world in the process of moving around.
  • There has been CTA discussion about this already; at the moment, we intend to build below-ground as above ground tracks are easy to accidentally have their functionality broken by dropped items or players. We intend to build early though, with rails running N S E W in the same line color they do currently. Our intention is for stations every 1/3 or so the distance from spawn, and branch out from there. -Pilot
    • The great thing about building the rails early in the server's life is that the layout of the map will follow the organization of the rails, instead of the rails having to follow the "organization" of the map. I think this is a great way to get people to roughly build along gridlines for a more easily navigable server overall. JARS 15:20, 18 February 2011 (CST)

• I see no reason the "mini spawnpoints" for the preset warps couldn't be built to also act as entry points to rail stations for CTA. It would make it very easy to connect the railways, you wouldn't have to worry about crossing people's creations, and with 16 preset warp points, each CTA rail station could have its own color. -MBoffin
• Standards proposal for rail design: CTA Standards
• Assuming that minecart mania will be available on the new map to make minecart travel more reliable, I would propose making warps temporary and rare and forcing the development of a more robust transport system. Only allow warps for large build projects and only until they are completed. Individuals can still have /home set, perhaps even two or three homes in the future depending on whether that mod can go that direction.

Rules command

• I propose, if this functionality is possible, to have a rules system like that of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare servers. If someone types /rules the rules will spam on their screen. The staff will be able to type !rules to spam the rules publicly or /rules [username] to spam the rules for a specific user. If possible, we could also have functionality to spam specific rules: !rule 1 to spam the first rule publicly and, /rule 1 [username] to spam it to a specific user. This would also work for banned items and staff similarly. This way we would not need so many bulky signs in spawn, we could have three signs that say: Rules: /rules, banned items: /banned, staff: /staff, and Please read the rules and banned item list.
  • The main problem of this is the woefully small default chat client, which realistically shows 2 or so lines and then disappears, more if you press the "talk" button again, but it scrolls away as people talk. I would be in favor of a spawn building instead of an open spawn area, facing the rules board, you could then make people exit that building behind the board. The rest of the building could be glass if you want a view of the rest of the spawn area. Edit: The spawn island idea below looks excellent, just make sure the rules board is facing the direction everyone enters the game in. --Tolgar 18:38, 17 February 2011 (CST)
  • Agreed with Tolgar on chat size problem. Best to keep a plugin like that for warning specific users/looking up rules. A board at spawn will let new people read the rules better. --forty_two 20:21, 17 February 2011 (CST)
• I am heavily supportive of an !faq command, which explains the most asked questions, and includes /help. Seriously, new players to the server always ask the same five or so questions. If people don't like a public command clogging up chat (which shouldn't get in the way any more than the 4 people who would answer before), maybe a /faq [name] would be more appropriate, and since this isn't public, it has the added advantage of multiple people spamming the asker with their answer! heh. JARS 15:20, 18 February 2011 (CST)

Another City Idea

NRC spread pretty fast and was triple its initial size within the first 3 days, one of the major problems I had placing roads was, after the initial setup area, you ran into a ton of mountains and non flat areas that needed tunnels/raised highways and what not to encourage people to spread out further. Really close to spawn would be detrimental, you would be griefed more often as you were building/unsure how far you wanted your protection yet. I would be in favor of pretty far from spawn BUT setup a huge area of districts/zones, and police initial construction within. Have districts for shops, skyscrapers, public works buildings (fire/police/hospital, etc) and THEN have a suburb district where people can make their all important "personal house" of specified plot size. Say 20x20 or 30x30 and what not.

NCR started on a bit too small of an area for what it initially became, and by the time the server reached this age, any new construction has no room due to all the other things that butt up against it or we've hit the ocean.

Back to Deman's original idea above about a spawn city though, having a sprawling city around/near spawn would focus new people solely on that, and while it may look initially impressive depending, it's going to limit people's perceptions of what they want to in turn build for themselves.

I would also like to work with ALL the people that are interested in city like construction and make an actual CITY, what we have now for both NRC and New Redditon really just doesn't cut it for me on the map lol. And if we can't make some kind of agreement on the city layouts, then we can at least put the suburb districts in between the 2 or 3 or more, so they are at least connected if we can't reach a design agreement. All we've all made now are small towns that are way over budget for the buildings contained therein =) --Tolgar 19:14, 17 February 2011 (CST)

I want to team up with Deman and Atlass to make one focused city, you guys in? We need a totally different name for it. Skuld 21:51, 18 February 2011 (CST)

As long as we can reserve a certain timeframe to do it in, hell yes. DemanRisu 00:59, 19 February 2011 (CST)

Never mind, didn't realize this was a month+ old Krakola44 12:12, 23 March 2011 (CDT)

Sprite Art (8-Bit) Area

I think we should hold off on an official sprite art creation area at the start of this map if we do not have a functional way to make the creations viewable after creation somewhere besides being all jumbled together. If we DO have this functionality with the new Bukkit assuming all goes well, then we should turn one of the flat map borders into the viewing area. That way no one is going to construct things in the way of where we want to display the stuff, there won't be anything behind the sprites and we can make sure the area in front of them is adequate to view an average sprite without being too far from it. It should be a long while before other people gradually construct up to them and it would look best on the map, (just make sure the border we place it on is actually the border you see clearly on the map itself.) --Tolgar 19:31, 17 February 2011 (CST)

• I just did some figuring, and the top corner of the current creative cartograph is NE, so would either need to be the north edge or east edge of the map, with their backs to the border land. --Tolgar 21:30, 18 February 2011 (CST)
• Run a train along it for viewing :) Skuld 21:11, 17 February 2011 (CST)
  • Can I suggest having two lines of sprite art, so as to maximize the amount of creative space? i.e. as you were going along on the train you'd see sprite art | train track | sprite art DemanRisu 06:25, 18 February 2011 (CST)
• I support the idea of keeping 8bit along one edge of the map. *bit on the previous map was all jumbled and close, even people who wanted to see the creations couldn't because in some cases, murals were only 8 blocks apart on both sides. If we keep everything on one (or two; I like DemanRisu's idea of one row on each side) plane, everything can be seen easily. JARS 15:20, 18 February 2011 (CST)
  • Even crazier idea: have diagonal pixel art! Crazy, I know. DemanRisu 21:36, 18 February 2011 (CST)

Spawn

• A spawn point similar to the one from map revision #8 (Sept-Oct 2010). Large circular lake of water with a smaller circular island in the centre, enclosed with a glass dome. Trees and large rule boards inside. Glass under water tunnel to lead out of the lake.
  • We may have to temporarily start the map on a whitelist (for an hour or so), under hMod with cuboid in order to build a large lake, island and dome.
  • I kind of like the current spawn, maybe give it more space. But having CTA right underneath the spawn was great when I first came on the server. I was not instantly overwhelmed by all the buildings and trying to walk around. I quickly jumped on CTA and rode around. Caleberx 21:06, 17 February 2011 (CST)
• MBoffin created this on a private server and it would be good to have something similar to indicate Rules and Help:

• I saw on another server a thing where you couldn't leave spawn without typing /rules or something like that, and the rules sign had a sign saying to do this, so people are forced to read at least a bit of the rules to get out of spawn... Is this possible? I think it would be cool.

Promotion

• We need a post at the top of /r/Minecraft to get users in. The last map started out as a temporary map.
  • Just a thought.. is it going to trigger some sort of bot/anti-spam code if we get all our active r-mcpublic/forum/mumble/irc users to upvote a post in a short amount of time, and is this against Reddit rules? Skuld 14:25, 16 February 2011 (CST)
    • AFAIK it's against Reddiquette. DemanRisu 06:24, 18 February 2011 (CST)

Suggested Plugins

Essential

• Essentials - All the basic essentials.
• Permissions - Standard permissions (used by many plugins)
• MagicCarpet - Mod tool
• BorderGuard - Map containment
• WorldGuard - Grief protection
• WorldEdit - Needed by WorldGuard

Extra

• Stargate - Transportation Redundant with /warp Skuld 15:44, 16 February 2011 (CST)
• BigBrother - Anti Griefing (Shouldn't this be considered an essential plugin given its incredible success and ease of use? -AwakenedPotato)
• IRC Chat - Interact with IRC
• Minecart Mania - minecraft boosters etc
• Alpha Chest - Gives players a virtual chest for extra storage
• Jail - Jail People
• Cuboid - Cuboid plugin (shovel etc.) Do we really need this? (duplicates worldedit functions) --forty_two 16:27, 16 February 2011 (CST)
• Voting Plugin - Allows votes (could be spammed)

Unsorted

• properTime - Daylight
• Petition - like mod queue
• Mark Log - Marks Logs for easier retrieval.
• Sign Logger - Anti Grief
• Secure Login - Allows people to play even if minecraft is down (user registration)
• GriefAlert - Logs block interactions
• AntiGrief - Stops certain types of blocks being destroyed
• NoNoClip - Prevent flying, speedhack etc.
• MCDocs - /rules etc.

Current Problems

• Many things are broken due to outdated Bukkit.
• Many people complain when they are banned that they didn't know the rules.
  • Is there a way for mods to send an abbreviated list of rules to a player when giving them a warning? 1-and-done warning with a rule list would prevent or alleviate "but I didn't know!" claims in addition to the already proposed re-designed spawn with mega-walls.

Related links

• http://www.reddit.com/r/mcpublic/comments/fmnff/planning_for_the_next_creative_map_reset/
• http://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/165/planning-for-the-next-creative-map-reset