A survival server revamp!?!

[Juwayyid]

Once again, (lets not get off topic guys)

A weekend has gone by now and no objections.  Let's dive into this thing.

We will determine the need for any plugins as the need for them comes up.  Let's start at the basics.  If this world we are creating is going to have a story and a history, let's start there.


There are many new biomes being added in the next update.  I am not familiar with them all.  I feel like knowing the land we are working with will help with the history as history revolves a lot around land and expansion and yadda yadda.

We will call each biome a region and each region can have its own history where needed.  Let's decide on the number if regions and what types of biomes each region will be.

I believe we need a nice big Forrest, desert, jungle, and oceans/islands.  I also believe there does not need to be a specified mountain biome as mountains can run throuout all regions.  Perhaps a need ravine like, canyon region.

What more would you guys like to see?  A region for all biomes?  That works too.  Just list the regions you want to see.  Name them as well if you can.  Names can always be improved on later if need be.

[Butlerbandit]

There are many new biomes being added in the next update.  I am not familiar with them all.  I feel like knowing the land we are working with will help with the history as history revolves a lot around land and expansion and yadda yadda.

We won't know anything about the land untill we have a world and a map generated. If we don't know anything about the land, we can't do much about the history. If we havn't got a history, we havn't got much of a story.

This means that the first order of business is the world. How will we be obtaining it?

Will we be using the vanilla generation of the 1.7 release?

Will we use a world generating plugin to make it more suitable to our needs?

Will we attemp to terraform the entire thing?
(^Not in favor of this: anything we can terraform can't be big enough.)

[Juwayyid]

This is going to be a very controlled server so we will be creating the land the way we need it.  Lets stop getting off topic and get started.

What regions are we looking to include?  Forrest, Jungle, Desert, Islands.  What more?  Names for these?  Be creative.

[Juwayyid]

So we need some new and fun landscapes, divided up into what I'll call regions.  Each region needs it own backstory, short or long.  The regions can also be 1 biome (easiest to organize), or a few biomes.

Example - we decided we want a sky lands region.  This was the most valuable land in the world.  Heaven on earth.  Unfortunately it was not protected from the mobs, and because so many people flocked to this land, so did creepers, causing heavy damage.  The land could not suffer anymore damage and so it removed itself from the world and now floats safely above it.

We need other interesting regions and stories like this.  The story can be motivated by a simple little thing or more complex.  Whatever works and is fun.

Some other regions that we can think about might be a massive jungle, a Great Plains, a desert, islands, anything! 

Some ideas or suggestions?

[Butlerbandit]

We still never actually answered the question of "Where is the map coming from?"

Perhaps we could be a bit more specific?


As for biomes, I would personally like to see (regardless of how we produce the map) a massive forested area, perhaps one that uses multiple forest-ey biomes, such as normal forests, pine forests and the new "roofed forests".

The lore: "For hundreds of years, these forests have been a haven for folks fleeing wars and disease, taking refuge and building settlements and farms along the forest's edge. But the further you go into the forest, the darker and more dangerous it becomes. Travelers and settlers used to push into the woods in droves, hoping to carve out new land for themselves. Those that returned brought with them tales of deep, dark forests, and the bandits and terrifying monsters that hide within."

[Juwayyid]

Love it.

(We are making the map)

[Butlerbandit]

You mean terraforming?

[Juwayyid]

Terra forming, world painting, biome copying, and things as such.

It will take work, but that's not the concern right now.  We need to continue developing what we want this world to be.

Some of us have talked and we came up with a few fun things.

The Skylands

An area of the world that, in its prime, was heaven on earth.  People flocked and flourished in this place.  There was peace and happiness.  Though this world is not a peaceful one.  With a horde of players came a horde of mobs that followed.  The creeper damage upon this beautiful land was devastating, and so the land simply removed itself from the world and from the reach of creepers.  A massive and evil canyon remains below.  Above, the floating chunks of land that managed to escape.  Varrying sizes.

And also

The ocean(s)

Along the coastal lands is a lovely beachfront mountain range full I've water caverns and the like.  But go too deep into these mountains and you'll end up in some shady places.  It's said the old pirates still live in their someplace, so it's best to avoid going too far into those caverns.  But on the bright side there are plenty of tropical islands scattered off shore and into the great blue.  Just keep an eye out for any serpents or pirates while you're out there!

And lastly

The mines

(Somewhat like taverni) the mines are a wonderful world underground where giant mushrooms thrive and caverns are wide and vast.  It's gloomy down there, but if you like your shrooms, it's paradise.


(My goal is to create some very fun landscapes that are very big, leaving out pre built structures and leaving the land for the players to use and abuse.  Yeah, alot of this could get griefed, but we are in control of this game.  If the shroom gods are upset that their shrooms are going to waste, let them have their furry!)

[TheAlmightyVance]

Maybe you should add some stuff like temples or churches that have rare items, kind of like something you see in big dig.

It would be fun!

[Juwayyid]

Yes, that could be fun, but you should read the rest of this thread before you give input that's already been said!

[bren4q]

Will you be doing the terraforming using 1.7 biomes? Planned release is date is soon.

[Jaysers]

As for biomes, I would personally like to see (regardless of how we produce the map) a massive forested area, perhaps one that uses multiple forest-ey biomes, such as normal forests, pine forests and the new "roofed forests"....

This reminds me of something I saw on Avatar: The Last Airbender where the group is at the swamp. It's a huge forest, but somehow all the trees are connected to one big-ass tree. Or something like that.

As for the ideas mentioned for locations, they seem like fun ideas to work with to create an unnecessary story plot with.

Following the previous statement, the villages that surround the Big-ass tree are happy and sufficient. But every now and then, they give up offerings and sacrifices to the people that live way up in the Big-ass tree in hopes that they continue to prosper. So far, nothing's gone wrong, until the communications between the two sides stopped. Worried, people have been attempting to scale the Big-ass tree, but to no avail. And to make matters worse, the surrounding forests have become much darker than usual... What could have brought this sudden change?

What about a city that is flourishing in business due to its most successful exports: items that can only be acquired with creative/power or items that can't be crafted, like name tags or cobwebs or nether portal blocks (can't use them, of course, but you get the idea that these items are not gained from normal play). Everyone knows that the way the city gets these items is illegal, but they turn a blind eye to it. Soon, wars are fought with these implemented items, and each side constantly tries to get the newest/most dangerous items the city has. The city happily sells these items to either side, without bias. Note that the city has no affiliation with any of the staff/OP's/creative powers. The people just seem to get these items from their own means.

What about an underground city based on enchanting? The local population has a reputation of being the world's best enchanters. They've expanded further and further into the depths to create more room for pretty much everything. They've proved time and time again that they create the best enchantment possible. It's as if they're willing the enchantments to become what they want. But for every enchantment they make, something is lost. These "lost" then haunt and curse the locals for damning them for the local's selfishness. As of now, the locals were finally able to set a barrier between the "lost" and them, but at a great cost (for the locals that is). Almost a third of their vast empire is now lost and is wandered by the "lost". Every so often, they decide to send a team in attempt to recover little by little, but always end up in failure. They either return literally empty handed, or bloodied. The locals have for a long time tried to remain peaceful and not instigate any violence towards the "lost", but the "lost" didn't seem to care if the locals wanted peace or not. Now, rumor has it that the locals are at their breaking point and turned to desperate measures...

What about an area that literally has bits and pieces of every biome? That could have interesting results.


EDIT: .... Hm. It seems most of the things I've posted here tend to have more of an idea of stories, rather than ideas about what we could add to the servers. idk. This is just my addition as a piece to the cake we're trying to bake.

[Emperor_Quimby]

What about an underground city based on enchanting? The local population has a reputation of being the world's best enchanters. They've expanded further and further into the depths to create more room for pretty much everything. They've proved time and time again that they create the best enchantment possible. It's as if they're willing the enchantments to become what they want. But for every enchantment they make, something is lost. These "lost" then haunt and curse the locals for damning them for the local's selfishness. As of now, the locals were finally able to set a barrier between the "lost" and them, but at a great cost (for the locals that is). Almost a third of their vast empire is now lost and is wandered by the "lost". Every so often, they decide to send a team in attempt to recover little by little, but always end up in failure. They either return literally empty handed, or bloodied. The locals have for a long time tried to remain peaceful and not instigate any violence towards the "lost", but the "lost" didn't seem to care if the locals wanted peace or not. Now, rumor has it that the locals are at their breaking point and turned to desperate measures...

What about an area that literally has bits and pieces of every biome? That could have interesting results.


EDIT: .... Hm. It seems most of the things I've posted here tend to have more of an idea of stories, rather than ideas about what we could add to the servers. idk. This is just my addition as a piece to the cake we're trying to bake.

Okay so we gonna make ghosts as "The losts"? What plugin does that?

Also for the area of everything of the biomes, I wonder, can we change the biomes? Like there is already temples and pyramids in the world generator, is it possible to spawn buildings like that? could make the work lot easier.

[Butlerbandit]

Will you be doing the terraforming using 1.7 biomes? Planned release is date is soon.

I've been somewhat concerned about how exactly we're going to be making this. The problem is that we'd need to terraform gigantic areas of land, and we'd somehow have to manage to do so without losing quality of land terraformed.

The problem with traditional terraforming methods (like worldedit and voxel sniper) is that they're only skin deep; you can turn a desert into a forest, but there's still residual sand and sandstone a few blocks down. This isn't a problem when you're terraforming for aesthetic purposes, but in a survival world people are going to be tearing the world apart block by block and examining each bit of it, meaning that we'd need to spend a lot of time working on even a small area to make it good enough for a survival world.
We'd absolutely need to figure out how to maintain the quality of the map consistently through all it's parts, because the fact that it's a survival world means that large parts of it will be under intense scrutiny.


Another important question we'll have to answer is who will be allowed to work on the map? If I recall correctly, we had some issues with item smuggling when we allowed the entire community to work on the first map.

[Juwayyid]

I do plan to use 1.7 biomes and I know when we typically terraform it leaves a mess down below.  But we won't be doing our usual terraforming.  Things will be much more controlled.


And I mentioned this earlier.  This new server is going to be mostly for new players.  We are relying on many of our current members to be behind the scenes making this server work.  That means that those who are helping will not be able to participate in most aspects of the map.  The "makers" can play the survival aspect, build a house, play with friends, but when it comes to the story and the quest, they will have made these up.

To clear all that up, the map makers are in charge of keeping the game going.  They won't have time to play on the server nor a real point to play on the server as their job is to make the server for others.


This still isn't sounding like its being told clearly, so it's pretty much this.  If you are making the map you won't be playing the map.  If you want to use the server as a sole survival server, build a house and such, that would be fine. 


If ever this project ever goes live, the map will never be "completed."  Each month we are adding and changing things on it, so the map is always providing something new.