Survival [AC/PMC] Revison 22 Planning Thread

[Tharine]

Whilst we haven't got any solid plans for the new revision's date in mind, I figured it would help us a lot to get some things planned ahead of time so we're not rushed when an appropriate time rolls around. I feel like we're potentially waiting for the 1.6 update, but understandably the upcoming donation drive event may complicate things a little bit so it's good for us to get particular things settled whilst we still have moments to spare.

 

As an early suggestion as well, I would be interested in seeing us move this thread over to the Private Mod Chat section of the forums as soon as possible. I feel like there was nothing we needed to keep private in the previous thread, and anything that would be better as a surprise for the mods (e.g. the locations of the hidden nether portals) we can redact or keep to ourselves. I suppose we can keep a separate thread in each if necessary, but i'd like to see ideas come from a larger group of people and for the mods to have much greater of an input this time around. I can throw out a huge spoiler tag to warn those who don't want to be spoiled for the new revision what they'd be getting into by reading such a thread   Any ideas we settle before opening things up to include the moderators we don't necessarily have to consider as set in stone; I think we're all pretty open to listening to opposing ideas.

 

To kick off some general ideas, i'm gonna steal liberate the formatting Barlimore used in his thread for Creative's next revision:

 

Spawn

 

Whilst not a route we usually end up taking with spawns, kiwi99 has approached us with a design he's been working on for some time that he's been building with s.nerd.nu in mind. It's currently over on another server owned by one of our moderators (so receiving a schematic won't be difficult), but I hopped over today and took a few screenshots of the build as seen here. I apologise for the fuzziness of the pictures, seems to be an issue with some of my screenshot settings, but hopefully you get a nice idea of what it looks like. It's not completed yet, and he's been brainstorming some road designs too, so it will be interesting to see what he comes up with in that department. He's also told me that he's absolutely fine with us editing anything that's necessary, should we use his design. Personally, I quite like it, and I was wondering how others felt about it too.

 

Map/Terrain

 

I think we'll probably end up sticking with another vanilla seed, unless someone is keen on working on a custom map at all? If we go with vanilla, we should be looking for something where the terrain around 0,0 is neither ice/snow, jungle, or an ocean biome, as in my experience those tend to not make the most appealing of starting areas (both to work with and to settle claims on). I really loved the seed from this map, as coupled with the road design, there was something for everyone.

 

Roads / Warps

 

Figured we'd open the question regarding roads to the playerbase when the time comes, and get a thread similar to Dumbo52's going. I'm still not keen on road warps personally, but if we have the tech to (as warp signs still appear to be unusable), I would be interested in introducing (a couple of weeks after the start of the rev, perhaps) warp signs that ported you to one of a few predetermined locations within the spawn square that could help with avoiding spawn camping when no mods are online to handle it. Something like this is what I have in mind, with all of the different coloured circles being different warp-to points.

 

Plugin Features

 

I think we'll have no issues keeping PlumpXP, no-leather books, and the /unenchant command. Most other ones i'd be keen to put to a poll and query how players feel about them. Ones that come to mind are enderpearl cooldown, potentially bringing back beds, /ignore command, and the 60-minute first join PvP protection timer. I know a few of them were proposed in that major thread back in January, but getting a refresher of where people stand is of no harm.

 

Policies

 

Gonna add some policy stuff to this when I have a chance, wanted to submit this post even if i'm not finished so as not to lose what i've written~

[Tharine]

Old thread is old.

 

A lot of things have happened since this post went up, but we're properly getting things under way for Revision 22 now and i'm simultaneously bumping this and moving this thread over to the Mod Chat Private section of the forums.

 

If you would like to keep yourself completely unspoiled as to the design of Revision 22 - stop reading now, we're going to be discussing it in it's entirety from here on out!

 

It’s clearly important to highlight where everything is at with the upcoming revision, as things are a bit all over the place in terms of what’s progressed since I initially made this thread, and we need to kind of reign it in now that we have the ability to work on the actual map itself.

 

I’ve recently updated the results from the poll/discussion thread I made on the forums a few weeks ago, and you can find this here. I’ve noted what things we look like we’ll definitely be going with from that poll, and what things we cannot at this stage include (whether because of high discontent (i.e. ‘no, I would not like this’-type votes), or because responses were mixed, or because we lack the feasibility to include it, etc.), but it’s more in-depth in that post, so please go ahead and read that for better detail.

I’ve spent whatever odd moments in my spare time looking into potential seeds for the new revision’s map, and i’ve asked totemo to set up the one that Draykhar and I both took the most interest in (out of a narrowed down three selections I had initially made) for us to get ready to put in the spawn, roads, and arenas, etc. It's up on event.nerd.nu at the moment, so if you would like to help out and you're not already on the whitelist (not sure if it would've been changed from the CTF planning) and would like to help out, please let us know here (rather than somewhere like IRC or in-game). I think the map for this one is pretty remarkable in terms of some of the land generation it’s produced, so if you’re keen to help get things set up on the new map - whilst you shouldn’t be exploring the map just to take a gander at it anyway - I would advise keeping your eyes focused on what you’re working on so that you don’t spoil yourself on how nice some of the land looks.

 

I would also like to properly say that I would love input from anyone on staff in putting together this revision. Moderator and admin numbers have dwindled significantly this past revision for Survival, and with Draykhar on vacation at the moment, i'm the only Survival admin that's properly available right now. One thing I would definitely love as much input as possible on is the designs i'll be discussing in my comment below, as that definitely requires more opinions than just my own. I would also like to thank the couple of staff members that have already contacted me with their offers to help in any way they can with setting this revision up - I really appreciate it :)

[Tharine]

Submissions for structures to be included in the upcoming revision

 

One thing that we need to definitely get sorted out is which of the designs submitted in this thread we would like to see put into the new revision. I had given until the launch of the end of revision chaos for submissions to be handed in, as suggested here and stated finally in this most recent post. I got the understanding however from talking with one user that the deadline might have slipped by some who weren’t looking out for it (as I mentioned it in various ‘Survival’ subreddit posts and not explicitly in it’s own post on the subreddit), so i’m just going to put out a brief reminder on the subreddit with an allowance of 3 more days for any further people that might not have caught the deadline previously set. I feel we can review what’s already been submitted and just take into consideration any more that come through in the next three days. The submitted designs/ideas are as follows:

 

Spawn

- kiwi99 - Imgur album; screenshots include both his design for a spawn and clan hall submission.

 

- zifnab06 - I know he's being silly with this one, but in the interest of fairness and amusement, here's zifnab06's take on next revision's spawn.

 

- Unce - Located on Creative at 2404, -1135, I took a few screenshots here for easier/quicker viewing.

 

- BSchilli2 - Using this as a placeholder for their design until they provide some screenshots and/or when I can work with them to sort out uploading their schematic/worldfile to look at.

 

- Graymansnel - Provided a world file, I took some screenshots here.

 

- AverageDuck expresses concerns over making spawn much simpler this time around.

 

- PeteLucas makes a few suggestions for what we can include in spawn.

 

Arena(s)

- Ozomahtlii - Imgur album; At the time of posting claims to be working on the stands and control box still, but there's enough here for a proper submission as is.

 

- Hydralisk - Imgur album; Hydralisk sent me the world file for his entry through the reddit mail system, so the screenshots are my own and I hope they capture it well enough. Of important note (as it's not quite as clear from screenshots alone) is that there is only one lever in the control box and it operates the box gates only. Adding in additional redstone to operate other things is not too difficult to do (should we go with this design), but I thought this was worth mentioning now.

 

- Unce - Located on Creative at 161, -330, I again took some screenshots here. The 'lift' signs he mentions are signs that typically lift you to a location vertical from where the sign is at, but we can make use of warp signs to do this ourselves without needing to acquire the extra plugin this is a part of.

 

Clan Hall

- kiwi99 - Imgur album; screenshots include both his design for a spawn and clan hall submission.

 

- maxweberh - Imgur album; says as well that he might work on a road design, so i'll add that in if he ends up commenting with it.

 

- draykhar - Imgur album; description in subreddit comment.

 

Roads

Sidenote: I will not be commenting on this section on the basis that i've submitted designs myself.

- Tharine - Imgur album; Submission for the road layout as well as design of the roads themselves.

 

- TornadoHorse says that he would like to return to a basic cardinal design for the roads.

 

- TexasTormenture expresses an interest in returning to the Revision 15-style road setup with warps based in a spawn outside of the main road system.

 

- AC13O shows an interest in both the strict cardinal road design as well as the suggestions to check out the setup from Revision 15.

 

- IDANUB would like to see us return to Revision 15's road system with warps included.

 

- PeteLucas provides a unique take on the road layout.

 

And for some general comments:

 

beastbruiser suggests the idea of introducing creeper spawners in the new revision.

 

Cheesety provides a response to several components of the new revision, quite detailed and worth the read as in-depth insights like this are rather uncommon.

 

GetaFever advises against using warps as part of our setup this upcoming revision.

[smiler100]

I have plenty of time over the next week or so I can spare if you need some help with preparations for the new revision. I believe that the whitelist has been reset since the CTF preparation as I am unable to login to the event server.

Some feedback (mostly just responses to submissions for builds / opinions people have raised):

Spawn

From the designs submitted I think that kiwi's spawn is my favourite, however it is rather large and due to the many requests for a less complicated spawn I am not sure whether it would be the best one.

zifnab's spawn might work as a good jail >:D

Unce's spawn is relatively compact, which is quite nice. A possible issue with this is that there is a lack of space for rule boards and things — however the amount of space is not a huge amount smaller than the current ones. Perhaps it could be made such that upon a player's first join to the server they spawn at a more complete rules board, more like the one at the current spawn on P. There could be a warp sign at the end taking you to spawn proper, and you would spawn at the normal place the next time you die.

Arenas

This revision there was both a public arena and an arena that was used for events and such. I did not see the public arena get used very much in rev 21 and I'm not sure how important adding one is. If there were to be a public arena I would recommend that it be in/near spawn or somewhere very easily accessible. Maybe we should scrap a dedicated event-based arena next revision and use the public arena for any events, just disabling and enabling the /spawnme and /leavearena commands as necessary.

I think that out of the submissions provided that Unce's would be my favourite aesthetically. I think that with regards to Hydralisk's arena, although it is large, I prefer the look of Unce's. This could just be because of the biome the screenshots were taken in — I think it would look significantly nicer in a forest or jungle biome, just because of the change in grass colour.

I don't really have any comment on Ozo's arena except that it is quite nice too. I will wait until/if he completes the stands etc to comment more.

Clan Hall

If it were possible I would include the clan hall within spawn itself. I've noticed that both kiwi and Unce have provided clan halls in their spawns — although I think that the one in Unce's, at least, is far too small. I haven't seen kiwi's in person to be able to comment on the size although through the pictures it seems to be okay.

If we were to go with an external clan hall outside of the main spawn building it would increase the size of the spawn a lot. This is not necessarily a problem — simply roads leading out directly would make the spawn easy enough to exit — and it could mean that we could fit an arena on spawn grounds as well if we wanted.

Roads

I'm not very fussy about roads — although I would not really be a fan of warp signs being reintroduced. Out of the designs offered I think that your design is my favourite - it's simple and does not have the immense amount of road that the design this revision had. The rails would be an interesting addition although I can't see them being used that much.

Other

I would be in support of beastbruiser's idea of having a few creeper spawners around the map. I'd suggest that they could be found in abandoned mineshafts much like cave spider spawners (except a lot rarer, maybe 2-3 in the entire map).

I think that the 'stables' spawn suggested by Cheesety is an interesting idea however we have some very nice designs submitted which aren't themed as such.

I think that's everything I have to say.

[uni0]

I really liked the rev15 road/warp/portal layout, it was great. At the end of the rev we saw a good distribution of builds and getting around all portals/quadrants was fast. There was a 'slight' issue of portal camping but it wasn't significant enough to discredit the layout imo.

 

The classic cardinal layout could work too, but I strongly advise about having portals at 300 not 500. It makes a big difference for faster travel around quadrants. So there would be one at 300 and another at 800. For reference, we've had portals at 500 in rev14, and portals at 300 in rev19 and 21.

 

About GetaFever's comment on warps, the scenario he mentions didn't happen in the rev's that had warps. It's wasn't easy to get to warp and grab another armor set and return to a fight. Having warps is like having a de-centralized spawn basically, it can save the player some travel time but it's not drastically different from a regular non-warp map in terms of base accessibility.

[Guest Former Staff]

 if you would like to help out and you're not already on the whitelist (not sure if it would've been changed from the CTF planning) and would like to help out, please let us know here (rather than somewhere like IRC or in-game).

 

Requesting to be whitelisted. I'll help out as much as I can.

 

May I suggest that once that something has been decided upon that we have a list available in this topic of what needs to be achieved upon the server. This way we can progress if you're [Tharine] offline.

[Ozomahtlii]

I too would like to be whitelisted and help wherever I can if theres a list of things to be done :)

[kitcatbar]

I'll start out with saying that I'd like to be whitelisted, to help with all the roads and what not. Now for opinions.

 

Spawn/Clan Hall: Kiwi's design is my favorite, but I do like that Unce has his clan hall in spawn. Maybe we could keep kiwi's spawn, but somehow add in a drop to a subterranean clan hall underneath it? I can't picture a way to add an above ground clan hall without it looking like it was just plopped on the side. Not that there isn't a way, I just can't picture one. That being said, draykhar and kiwi's clan halls are my favorites. Kiwi's could work underground, but draykhar's would be better above. So again, if someone more creative than I can think of how to get a clan hall above ground, pls say so.

         Edit: Read what Tharine said about the clan hall being at the end of a road, I vote for draykhar's then.

 

Arena: Hydralisk's arena looks the best to me, only gripe I have with it is that sometimes default glass kind of gets in the way of the view. My opinion is just from a looks standpoint, I don't really know which would be better to fight in.

 

Roads: I like the top part of kiwi's road, and the bottom part of yours. Like smiler I also don't know if an under road rail would be used much, but I think it's worth adding. But maybe I'm just biased to the idea of an underwater rail. After playing this rev I have to say I prefer the cardinal roads opposed the the system this past rev. Not quite sure how rev 15 worked so I can't comment on their layout, but people do seem to like it.

 

Creeper Spawners: Initially when someone suggested this I was all for it in blind firework loving glee. Since then I've taken a step back to think about it. It could definitely speed up the process of getting potions made, which is either taking away another boring chore or making getting potion materials too easy, depending on who you're asking. But my main worry is that individual players or clans will keep the spawners to themselves, only benefiting them when the point was to quicken the brewing process on anyone. I don't really know how private grinders would be handled on S, maybe that wouldn't even be an issue.

[Mrloud15]

I would like to be whitelisted so I can help.

[Ozomahtlii]

Spawn:

I think kiwi99's design is the nicest one, it looks good and seems simple enough for new players to easily get out of spawn, though it's easy to pearl into spawn, I'm not sure if we are using something to block pearls from entering spawn but I know it is possible to do, so that may be useful if this design gets chosen.

 

Clan hall:

Draykhar seems the most fit one as it's also pretty open which is always nice. Would the clan hall be in a pvp zone or a no pvp zone though, this will probably depend on the location too I guess :p

 

Arena:

I'd obviously choose my own arena ;) but from the two other submitted designs I prefer Unce's one though it seems a bit empty and open which would give more advantage to people using the bow which is quite annoying during arena fights imo...

 

Roads:

No real opinion on how the road layout would be, but I love your design Tharine, having the rails under it is also a pretty awesome idea.

 

Creeper spawners:

Seems like a cool idea but how many would there be, if there'd be only 1-4 it'd probably be protected quite much and traps everywhere (which is good, but a bit to advantageous for the people who own it, towards people who don't know of the location or are unable to get there, if there'd be a public one protected and easily accessible for everyone (in a pvp arena so that people could still kill eachother which is still kind of the point of it imo).

 

 

Horses:

How would this be handled? As I'm guessing most horses will either be locked up by people who want to keep them and hide them, or they will be killed by people who don't want other people to have horses. Possibly there could be a horse spawner so that everyone can have horses, this would certainly change pvp quite a bit though as it's easier to run, but it'd also be easier to chase people or to go from one side of the map to another. 

[Tharine]

Ah that's a great idea, Barlimore! As a sort of a general list, here's what we need to do in order to make sure this revision's fully prepared:

 

Selecting a design for:

• Spawn ✓
• Arena(s) ✓
• Clan Hall - As a sidenote, the intention was to place this at the end of one of the roads, similar to how the public arena typically is. ✓
• Road layout - What physical structure we would like the road system to have. ✓
• Road design - The actual appearance of the road, including what 'colour' roads we would like to have this time. ✓

WorldEdit-ing/Pasting in:

• Spawn ✓
• Arena(s)
• Clan Hall
• Roads (including portals)
• Centre region of nether and roads (including main portals)

Building/Creating:

• Admin room - Including a chest room for land disputes, as well as a jail, and any additional fun admin room secrets.
• A room with more extensive guidelines for new players (?) - This one was suggested elsewhere that I thought might be a good idea in lieu of the absent in-game rules book (and in addition to, when it gets added in) as a warp-to-and-back area in the spawn region with some more detailed understanding of what's different on our servers compared to some others (e.g. things like SafeBuckets, the armoured head drops, etc.)
• Spawn secrets - basically any of the cool hidden spawn features that anyone's interested in creating. I would advise making note of where you build these, just so we don't overlap with each other when making them.
• Hidden portals - These were admin-only last map, personally mostly from a standpoint of not wanting to ruin the surprise of finding them as mods, but I feel if we make sure to use spoiler tags in here when stating the coordinates (but not the +/- quadrant) then we can keep to working on our own portals and not spoiling the location of the other ones. The hidden portals are usually anywhere between +/- 1500 and the edge of the map, so I would recommend teleporting out that far first and locating somewhere that looks nice for a hidden portal. Honestly, you can totally go all out in designing these, and this is one of the big reasons I don't want to limit these to being admin-only. Here's one of the hidden nether portal sections we built for Revision 16 (taken post-chaos, as I had none saved prior to the map going live it seems). It was an incredible amount of fun to build, and it added a bit of story to the map for those that were interested in that sort of thing. If you're especially keen on designing one of these, please make a comment in this thread to say which quadrant you're picking to work in. No limitations at all on how many people can work on each or anything. I'd only recommend not making whatever you build too large, as it is intended to be hidden (but not too obvious or impossible to find).

Protected regions:

• Spawn - General spawn region as well as an inner, child region for blocking PvP.
• Arena(s) - Separate regions for stands, arena floor, control box, etc.
• Clan Hall - Sky limit; perhaps all the way down to bedrock, given size.
• Roads - 25 blocks above; 5-10 blocks below.
• Portals - Sky limit; may want to consider ideas suggested by beastbruiser here.
• Nether roads - 25-50 blocks above; maybe all the way down to bedrock.
• Hidden nether portals - dependant upon the final design of the area.
• One end portal

Plugins:

Ones that we're certainly going ahead with at least at this stage.

• PvPTimer - Provides protection from PvP for new players, as well as a few other options, including protection upon respawn. 
• Enchantism - Complete rework of the enchanting system.
• Rebalance Villagers - Takes control over what trades villagers have, how much items are sold/bought for, etc.
• Placeholder for the combat logging plugin we go ahead with, which will most likely be either Combat Tag or CombatLog. 

 

I've been typing this up in the background of doing some other tasks today, so there might be some things i've neglected to think about completely that we need to do, so please comment if there's something alarmingly obvious that i've missed :P I'll add my own comments on the design submissions stuff when i've got a bit more time.

 

Edit: Should have mentioned as well that i've whitelisted on event.nerd.nu everyone who explicitly asked to be added, so if you're not on there currently please state if you would like to be in order to help out.

[Tharine]

Spawn

 

I think I love kiwi99's design the most out of the submissions, but I do understand the concern of a complicated spawn. I know the issues regarding complicated spawns had a lot to do with the separate tiers Revision 21's spawn had, as even regular long-time players would get confused when I tried to explain what tier I was referring to when both the punt and KotH were introduced. I do know from speaking with kiwi99 (back in May when he first told me about the design he was doing) that he had no issues with us editing the spawn as necessary if he went ahead with submitting it. I think if we intend to change anything about the designs given to us, that it would be great to ask the others ahead of time too. With that in mind, I can see us changing the floors in kiwi99's spawn so that they're not so complicated. I've walked through the building and it does face the same issues that Revision 21's spawn had, and I think if we broke those down and took a look at what might work best, we could get around the issue.

 

I do really like Unce's design for the ease of exit it provides, but I worry about how much extra policing that would require to ensure things like spawn camping don't happen in the absence of moderators being available. And that sort of thing doesn't end at adding region flags, people will taunt each other incessantly about that sort of thing and toe the line wherever they can, and i'd rather not deal with it outright than try to consider the number of scenarios we'd face for that with a spawn that's so open like this. It would be a lovely design if we had the most ideal playerbase ever, but we simply don't.

 

Arena(s)

 

I do really like the idea of using one arena for both scheduled events and public use, and if we use 'public' as it's default state, that means we only need to change things around when staff need it, rather than the other way around. I'm a bit conflicted on which of the arenas I prefer, but I feel like Unce's hits the most points as possible. The arena floor is quite flat and easily changeable; the stands (although actually missing a barricade it seems, but we can add one easily) are pretty straightforward and easy to walk the entirety of; and the arena itself isn't that large, which would eliminate a lot of the annoyances people have with people pearling and running away (which, whilst still possible, would be quite limited).

 

Clan Hall

 

I think of all of the designs, Draykhar's would be my pick. I really like the theme (heads on pikes, medieval-type walls) and how that reflects on what Survival tends to be like at times. I think all of the clan hall submissions are great, but i'd have to go with Draykhar's design of the three.

 

Roads

 

Said I wouldn't comment on this one as i've submitted a design, but i'll only iterate that the railway thing was more for novelty than anything. I can't imagine them ever going properly used, I just dig railways haha.

 

Other suggestions

 

As for the creeper spawner idea, I wouldn't see any huge issues with going out and randomly changing spawners to produce creepers instead, but I feel like that would be a huge task to locate them and appropriately select what is a decent distribution of creeper spawners versus other, regular ones. I'll look into this a bit more when I have the chance and see if there hasn't been anyone else who's wanted to do something similar. I believe Draykhar had the idea of allowing people to request that a particular type of spawner (pre-determined and unchanging, e.g. zombie spawners) they found be turned into a creeper spawner. I do like the idea as it has a lot of benefits (simplicity, no implied favourtism as people actually have to go and find those spawners themselves and request the change), but I have contemplated how well met the idea of moderating 'vanilla' aspects of the game like this might be. I know we obviously have an effect on how things run as it is as moderators, but on Survival we don't really change parts of the game at request like that unless it's to fix damage caused by other players.

 

In response to Cheesety's suggestion about horses, spawn is actually going to be in a plains biome this time around so there will be horses running around as it is from time to time (when they actually respawn after having been killed off/run away with). There exists separate region flags for denying mob spawning and denying the spawning of particular mobs, so I wouldn't be against setting things up so that horses are the only mobs that spawn there. That would remedy some of the issues of them being a bit hard to come by (especially if killed off), as well as add a bit of a nicer atmosphere if you've got horses mucking around in the spawn region (Goddamn are horses a great addition the the game, seeing them traipse around spawn would be hilarious).

 

As for your comment, Ozomahtlii, I think we'll have to play it by ear and just treat them as we did when cows were a coveted item and not impose any kind of rules on them. They are a rarer spawn than other non-hostile mobs, but not to the point that I would consider adding in a horse spawner, to be honest.

 

When the warps idea came up last time, people were generally pretty clear about not wanting them. I had offered the suggestion in the past of having only two wilderness warps (e.g. North West and South East), but I feel that depends on the road design. Were it a cardinal road system, I might offer this suggestion again, but not if we go with something more grid-like.

 

---

As a bit of a rounding up point, i'd like to finalise our decisions for what designs we'd like to go ahead with by this Monday (US/Canada Monday, not Australian) as i'd like for us to get working on pasting as much as we can into the map in the next week. If you would like to give some input on these designs, please do so before then. I think by Friday of next week I would really like for us to have a solid grasp on what needs to be done so that we can provide some kind of timeline for the players to expect the new revision to be ready by. 

[Tharine]

Went to double check the submissions thread for any last minute entries (and to check up on BSchilli2's design, but i've received no response from them on that), and there have been no new ones but I noticed that I did neglect to include Graymansnel's entry when I looked the first time. I've added it to my earlier comment but for ease of viewing, here are some screenshots I took of the design he made for spawn. 

 

To comment on it, I do really dig this design. My major concern is the limited room for rules and explaining some of the important changes that were listed in Revision 21's spawn room, but I can see us working around that by including the aforementioned warp-to-and-back room for more in-depth guidelines for new players. I think I would still prefer to go with kiwi99's design over this one, but this is a very nice and compact spawn.

[Tharine]

Said I would corral things on Monday (it being at the time of my comment, 8:09pm in South Australia, 11:39am in the UK, and 3:39am in California), and i'll check in when it reaches somewhere into the afternoon in California, but this is how things look thus far - counting comments of support, rather than explicit 'votes' as some of us commented in support of multiple designs for a particular structure:

 

Spawn:

 

kiwi99 - 4 comments of support

Unce - 1 comment of support

graymansnel - 1 comment of support

zifnab06 - 0 comments of support

 

Arena(s):

 

Unce - 3 comments of support

Ozomahtlii - 1 comment of support

Hydralisk - 1 comment of support

 

Clan Hall*:

 

Draykhar - 3 comments of support

maxweberh - 0 comments of support

kiwi99 - 0 comments of support

 

* I couldn't include smiler100's comments for Clan Hall as they weren't definitive - if you have a particular preference for this, please let me know!

 

Roads:

 

Tharine - 2 comments of support

kiwi99 - 1 comment of support

Several mixed comments about ideas for road structure.

 

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Because there are so few of us involved in this decision making process, i'd like to kind of get a reign on things and properly decide what we should go ahead with. With that said, and keeping in mind the comments of support as above**, I would like to propose that we go ahead with the following:

 

Spawn: kiwi99 - and to take a look at how we could address making spawn more simple and straightforward.

Arena(s): Unce - and to set up a barrier for the stands so that players can't walk onto the arena floor, and also to adjust it to be operated as both a hosted and a public arena. To be placed at the end of one of the roads.

Clan Hall: Draykhar - to be placed at the end of one of the roads.

Roads: kiwi99's road design, using the supports from mine. To go ahead with a strict, four cardinal road design with the portals at 300, and 800 marks.

 

**I'll factor in any more comments that come in between my posting now and when I check in again later.

 

How does this sound to everyone? I've tried to counter some of the issues that particular suggestions brought up, and tried to factor in as many of the different positives that each design provided. I would like a genuine 'yes/no/let's do this instead' sort of comment from everyone that wants to be involved, as time is of the essence and I would really like to start getting stuff pasted into the map this week. I know that totemo is going to be alternating between the new S map and the CTF for hosting on event.nerd.nu, and he has said he'll give fair warning to switching between the two, but with that in mind i'd like to use as many opportunities as possible to get stuff worked on. I have a lot of spare time this week to work on things, so I don't mind at all if I need to shoulder the bulk of it, but the decision making is something I feel unfair doing by myself (as it can imply personal selectiveness/bias, and I wouldn't want anyone to feel that's the case at all).

 

So with that all said, please do let me know what you think of this, I really appreciate everyone's input so far :)

[kitcatbar]

Plan sounds good to me. =D

[Mrloud15]

The plan looks good.

[Draykhar]

Bit late posting in on this one, sorry. I agree with all the builds decided on, I'd like to extrapolate on Creeper Spawners and the potential concern of horses and their respective armour being scarce.

 

I'm sticking behind my opinion on Creeper spawners. Allow either spider spawners or Zombie Spawners to be modreqed into creeper spawners. It prohibits there only being a select few on the map, and doesn't take away from anyone being able to use them. It'll speed up potion-making, which I feel is one of the larger hindrances of fair pvp.

 

In regards to the concerns with horses, allowing them to spawn in the plains biome near spawn will help out quite a bit.

 

Beyond that, I've envisioned another villager class that could be set up with Rebalance Villagers. It'd essentially be a stable-master. Selling Horse eggs, Saddles, and Horse armor (as neither of those are craftable, and are extremely limited items) in exchange for emeralds. If wanted, it could be expanded to include other animals such as sheep and cows, but I don't particularly see a necessity for that. Opinions? 

[Tharine]

Rewriting the checklist here just because the formatting went wonky after I added the tick marks into the list. I'll highlight green for done, orange for in progress, and red for not started yet:

Selecting designs for structures is already completed fully.

WorldEdit/Pasting in:
Spawn (kiwi99's)
Arena (Unce's)
Clan Hall (Draykhar's) - Draykhar is just repairing the signs that were lost in the schematic save.
Roads and nether portal areas - all road portals now lit and working too

Building/Creating:
Nether roads and developing centre of nether to look nice
Admin room
Guideline room for new players - utilised second layer of spawn for more in-depth beginner signs.
Spawn secrets - Have at least a few spawn secrets in now, if you need to finish any please do so :)
Hidden portals - JohnAdams1735 has the -/- quadrant; TheRandomatrix has +/+, Ozomahtlii has -/+, Mrloud15 covered the remaining +/- quadrant.

Protections:
Spawn, including no-PvP zone
Arena - Just want to double check these when I have the opportunity.
Clan Hall
Roads
Portals
Nether roads and portals
Hidden nether portals - All are protected both top- and nether-side!
End portal - will protect it once it's found and opened by players, as we've had some minor issues with this before. I already have the location of the end portal noted, so i'll be sure to check back on it once the dragon's been killed.

Plugins:

Testing PvPTimer on chaos, looks to be working well. Developed a config for Enchantism that we should get put in for the next round of chaos with more realistic level requirements for enchants and took out the redundant ones (e.g. Silk Touch 2, 3, and 4). Rebalance Villagers config prepared ahead of time, see Draykhar's comments below.

[Draykhar]

Looking back: likely to make Saddles and armor craftable. Stablemaster class'll sell animal eggs and nametags.

 

Haven't written the stablemaster class yet, but here's the current config files.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eifx7f22uhwb3tw/t54vXdSJrA

[Tharine]

beastbruiser came to me with the concern recently that we perhaps disable the feature we have in KitchenSink for despawning carts after five minutes, as abandoned mineshafts (since 1.5) come with chest carts on rails, instead of (or perhaps in addition to?) the chests you would usually find in them. I've considered this and I can see no major issues with removing this feature, cartspam is not an issue on Survival like it is on Creative, particularly because of the cost of making a bunch of minecarts.

[Draykhar]

Clanhall pasted in and modified to better reflect surrounding biome. Still need to properly setup sign wordage. Protections and flags set. Surrounding terrain will be molded shortly.

[tompreuss]

beastbruiser came to me with the concern recently that we perhaps disable the feature we have in KitchenSink for despawning carts after five minutes, as abandoned mineshafts (since 1.5) come with chest carts on rails, instead of (or perhaps in addition to?) the chests you would usually find in them. I've considered this and I can see no major issues with removing this feature, cartspam is not an issue on Survival like it is on Creative, particularly because of the cost of making a bunch of minecarts.

 

Chest minecarts are not affected by the KitchenSink cart-removal feature (neither are powered carts) since last August (bug report here, by yours truly  (the only reason I remember)).  And it's still that way now, I've found chest minecarts in abandoned mineshafts on P months into this current revision, and people use them in sort machines as well.

[Tharine]

Chest minecarts are not affected by the KitchenSink cart-removal feature (neither are powered carts) since last August (bug report here, by yours truly  (the only reason I remember)).  And it's still that way now, I've found chest minecarts in abandoned mineshafts on P months into this current revision, and people use them in sort machines as well.

 

Ah, I actually went out to check a bunch of abandoned mineshafts today and found that any chest minecarts I went near ended up despawning. I'm not sure if that's some kind of issue with regards to 1.6, but from what I understand it's only chest minecarts (and not regular ones) that spawn in abandoned mineshafts, and they had definitely despawned once I loaded the chunk and gave it a few seconds. totemo's since turned this off for us (it's caused us some unnecessary issues in the past anyway), but it might be good to test it again at some point once we've moved the Survival map off of event.

[Tharine]

To separate my comments for clarity, everything map-wise should be good to go aside from allowing Draykhar to fix the missing signs on his clan hall, and I would like to double check with Mrloud15 if he is completely done with his portal (it looks it, but just want to be certain). We'll give the go ahead to backup/save (whatever it is that's necessary) and pull the Survival map off of event so that it can be used for CTF planning when both of those are done. I've handed the updated Enchantism config over to totemo to hopefully host on the next round of chaos, PvPTimer is again good to go, Rebalance Villagers apparently is having some issues but we'll see how that goes.

 

We're probably looking to launch the new revision next weekend, at around this time (it should convert from my time in Adelaide to yours) - depending on if we have the tech availability. We won't confirm that without making sure we do have tech admins available at that time, so that we don't have to reschedule. Both Draykhar and myself will be available on that time/day.

[totemo]

The points that apply to me:

1. The map building server's configuration is based off normal survival's config and as such (I'm told) was deliberately configured to zap special carts when we had the troubles with hopper carts.
2. I should be around for the launch.
3. RebalanceVillagers is not building because their repository for downloading dependencies has been down for many days at this stage.  I'll try to work around it when I have a  moment.