Added in the roots going into the ground, working on adding in the roots-to-bridge transition. Still a lot of work needed, next up is branches and leaves!

Wow, this is looking amazing. Dare I consider calling dibs on the rail terminal? Would someone mind showing me where a preferred location for the rail terminal might be (including underground or within the roots, if that would be the best)?

Well, nothing has been set on that, other than we should have it on the ground. :p Or at least have the rails go down to ground level. I know Monkey said something about having created a possible terminal interface. I'll let the others bounce in and post about it.

TRAINS.
Yes, I can't think of a better person to let do the rails, considering some train obsession being involved here.

And depends if we go through with a single terminal branching out in 4 directions, or if we make 4 separate terminals at different sides of spawn. The upside to more terminals, one in each direction kind of thing, would mean more structures (above ground?), more cool things to look at, and more paths leading to different places in spawn (of course not that we'd put tons of paths everywhere, but rather than having just a couple paths in spawn, which would be rather boring). Perhaps tomorrow we can take a look around spawn and do some planning as to how some other things will be laid out, buildings and such... and we can see where a potential location or locations would be that would be nice.

I concur with the idea of having rails stations (and the player-made rails stemming from them) above around. If we're aiming for this server iteration to have more aesthetic things, we should ideally have more above ground things to be eye candy. I can help with some of the aesthetics of the station(s) if that's open for help. Regardless though, perhaps we can see if we can get the stations to have a more rustic, integrated feel? We could even go with a worn-down kind of feel to them, having them look like some very cool, grand structures, but of course with nature taking over in ways-- trees growing around and through parts of it, vines coming down in various spots, jungle-wooden floors starting to ware down a bit, etc.

I appreciate the vote of confidence.

Whether we have one or four terminals, I'm definitely going to want to interconnect them. Having four completely separate systems, where you need to get off at spawn, walk to another terminal, and get back on, seems silly to me. On the other hand, if there are four stations corresponding to the four cardinal directions of which one is the main terminal (or a fifth, main terminal), I think that would be great.
I can certainly hide the intestinal mess of the interchange between the four lines underground, but I agree (continued below)...

...that grade-level rails and stations would be best in this iteration. We might want to put them a block above the ground and add some unobtrusive fences to keep the animals and mobs off the tracks, but I'd like realism in the supports necessary for the rails, any bridges, some nice tunnels, etc. Sounds attractive; I look forward to developing that look with you.

As counter points:

• I think the rails should follow a predetermined path. Such as already existing paths out of spawn.
• I don't want to have rails that no one uses, thus a terminal should be a bad idea. If someone selects the East rail but there's no towns connected to it, what happens?

I know how much the rails were underutilized and, consequently, not very well received, so I'm hesitant that we'll have a similar reaction to the new rails. I don't think the rails should connect with the central tree, I think they should go to other buildings in the jungle. The central tree is pretty small and fitting 4 rail lines, and a proposed terminal, it can get pretty busy. We don't have the 100+ blocks of height and the ~300 blocks if width to work with like we did on 1.8. The tree alone is going to be over 100 blocks tall; starts at 72 and ends (currently) at like 152? After the branches and leaves are added it'll likely be top out in the 200's and is only about 30 blocks round, at the base.

So if we have path ways to other buildings in spawn - shops, blacksmith, library, etc - we can easily add in other buildings for rail stations. But a central rail system like we had in 1.8 is going to be very hard to fit in.


I think this is a good way to create rails inside spawn while not having anything connected to them. The train stations can have a similar feel with the tracks blocked off until someone builds a connecting rail. Then myself or KermM can come in and remove the block slash add in missing pieces to make the rail functional.

On a completely other note.
And probably a critical one, can we get this moved to the Cemetech server sometime soon? I'll be gone for about 12 days at the end of this month. December 31st to January 10th*. My computer will be off the entire time. That, and more and more people are expressing interest in helping and I don't feel comfortable giving my IP out to more than those already involved (about 5). Plus, I do see adverse affects while I'm doing tasks that require CPU time while members are working on spawn. Such as tifreaks lava waterfall and likely other things that require CPU processing other than block removal and placement.

And, when it's on Cemetech we can likely add in plugins for WorldEdit so everyone can work much faster.

*My computer will likely be off from the 30th to the 11th. Because we may leave early morning on the 31st and come back somewhat late on the 10th.

Should I ask you to zip the map and dump it on Amethyst where I can find it? Or should I ask you to send the zip to me via Skype?

I can dump it on Amethyst. I'll zip it up after Charles and Selena are done working - when I get back from Star Wars most likely - and upload it.

I'll place it in the home Minecraft folder. I'll bump you with the name tonight!

Lots of progress has been made on both the tree and paths leading away from the tree! The tree trunk itself is mostly done, some minor details here and there to be done. The tree base transitions well to the ground for the most part; currently working on getting some roots going from the tree, and it looks like there'll be at least 4 major roots-- one for each rough cardinal direction which go into the tree as 4 different entrances, all which go onto a major path away from the tree. Branches are yet to be started (tree work gets a little tedious, so we took a break on it yesterday), but the plan is still to go through with making the said branches mostly at the top of the tree, and construct a canopy full of leaves. The style in which we'll do it has been yet to be decided on, but I assume we just have to start tossing some leaves onto branches to get a feel for it. I've setup 4 different beacons on each side of spawn, representing 4 rough locations of possibly where rail stations can go-- let me know if they're good locations if we go through with the idea.



I like the idea of having the rail system all connected together, having the north-south stations connect in some way (so you can bypass spawn in one way or another), and likewise for east-west. I feel that so as long as we connect it right, we don't need a central terminal with a universal direction selector, but of course that's just my take on that, since it would highly encourage people to walk about 70 blocks trough spawn in the direction they want to go in, and take the appropriate station. And since it could in theory still be linked, if someone were to let's say come from the north and want to travel south through spawn, the system would be able to let them pass through without having to hop off, walk through spawn, and then re-board on the other side. So, I'm fully in agreement with some connectivity to not make people walk across spawn to continue their railroad journey, but I am more in favor of not having a central, fifth station.




I like the idea of having them blocked off until there are the means on the map to open one up, and I agree with not having a terminal in/connected to the tree. As I mentioned, the thing I like, while we can still connect the stations together in a way and have N-S and E-W link together respectively, is having us spawn at the tree, and then picking a direction to venture out in, and walking briefly along a nice, scenic (but to the point) path which leads both to out of spawn, and also to a rail station for when we do use them. It'll actually give reasons to walk through a part of spawn... ideally eventually, when all 4 stations are operational, a person who journeys out will eventually end up using all 4 directions, and will have effectively seen all/most of spawn in walking to each rail station/spawn exit.

To actually build on my idea of station designs, I was thinking not necessarily something exactly like the following picture, but rather inspiration as far as a more wooden station. Perhaps have one side open to the environment so it feels more outdoorsy, but still under some roof or something. (This is a pic from a roller coaster station)


Perhaps a hybrid of the picture above with the outdoorsy and open feel, as well as the design of the picture below

Oops, destroyed a beacon.

Also, I'm still against the North-South, East-West connections. What's stopping us from adding a connection to go East to South? I was going to say that I was also against having two rails in each direction but then it dawned on me that we'll need to get players back to spawn as well.

Meanwhile, my computer froze while I was out and about but it seems everything is relatively in tact. I'm not sure if progress was lost but nothing is corrupt. I've taken the server offline for good and sending it to Cemetechs server now. So, it should be online sorta soon depending on holiday availability of a the lone KermMartian.

Some progress by pyrot3chnic, littlemoonbeam, and ElementalVis! (tifreak came later, he's such a lamer)



Elemental got to work on the pathway and shoreside cleanup for where the harbor is going to be erected.



Elemental and Pyro set about replacing items under the water with more water via the fill command, since you can't have a harbor in such shallow waters. Pyro spent the better part of the rest of the time after rounding out the ground under the water to make it look nicer.



There used to be a mountain there, right behind the tree. Sadly, none of the previous shots show off said cut off mountain, but it was quite ugly since Elemental had removed half the mountain side with the fill command as well. Looks much nicer, now



tifreak, after getting bored utilizing redstone blocks and tnt, decided to construct something nice. Sadly, his companions continuously picked on him, thought he was building a tnt cannon, among other things. No one seems to have faith in him anymore :< I kind of like the spawn pillars in our current world, thought it might look nifty like this in the new spawn.

Some more progress to share of Spawn building:



Thoughts thus far?

I'll leave it to my colleagues to post some photos of the excellent progress we're making on rails and terraforming for the new spawn, but I'm very happy with how it's coming along. Also, it's worth mentioning that to fix the minecart problems in snapshot 15w49b, we're now using the latest snapshot (16w03a).

Lots of progress being made on the 1.9 server spawn!
Here's the hawk's eye view of everything that's going on:



We currently have a few main projects going on:

• The Mother Tree (or "The Tree")
  
• The Circumnavigating Spawn Rails
  
• The Harbor
  
• Paths
  

At the center of it all, and essentially the heart of spawn and the map is the Mother Tree. Work on the trunk is basically done, connection to the ground is mostly done-- a couple of roots need to be added to serve as a couple more paths out of the tree. Branches and the canopy are the primary focus as of now, getting a couple more main branches done, making some sub-branches, and then finally decorating the tree with some leaves to finish the exterior design. Interior design is still a void other than a floor at sea level.

Thoughts?
For the interior of the tree, it would be good to know what we're aiming to put in it other than the spawn point itself, as to decide how many floors we would want, and the spacing between floors (not that all have to be equally spaced). I've also been considering how to make the stairs inside the tree, and it would either be putting a central spine of stairs in, or having the stairs spiral along the bark of the tree, as to perhaps make everything feel more spacious without some bulky staircase in the middle.

Overview of the tree:


First floor size:


View looking up the tree from the bottom:


The paths ultimately take root from the tree, and move out in each of the 4 cardinal directions, at least the main paths. The current intention is to have the 4 main paths, and keep any other paths which branch off these ones to a minimal as to avoid creating a whole mess of spaghetti and ways of getting lost. If there should be any other paths, they'll either lead directly out of spawn, or to a rail station.

Work on the north path is mostly done, and is just missing a bridge and a short length of path to the current worldborder boundary. The west and east paths are making good progress and are more than halfway done. The south path is just done with the planning phase, and work will be done on it soon.

Any further thoughts on path details and planning?

Paths literally take root from the tree (bad pun fully intended; no regrets)


Sample path going through the rainforest:


Rails are making progress at the fastest rate, with KermMartian keeping us all on track. A full circle of rails was constructed at ~R=160[m] from the tree center point, in favor of connecting each of the cardinal direction stations to each other, rather than having explicitly a north-south or east-west connection. The theme is more inspired by the earlier 20th century with some jungle overgrowth and visible aging to the support columns to the jungle-wooden tracks.

Stations for reference, are roughly* 27[m] x 15[m] x 8.5[m].
* - without the stairs that connect to it, that is.

One of the stations (west), interchange, and an arc of the circumnavigating spawn rail line:


West Station:



East station:


Station interior design:



Sample section of track:


On the bridge:


The harbor is getting toward complete, with most of the actual harbor done, and just the harbor buildings that need to be built for additional backdrop. No purpose for them currently, and probably no purpose, but will be more for aesthetics. A few one-story buildings, and a central 2-story building with a balcony is planned.

Overview of the harbor:


View with the rail bridge:


Larger boat decor was added for aesthetics, and to support the idea of those larger boats, the rail bridge was actually designed to be higher so that these ships could in theory sail out to sea. Yes, thought was put into that (:

Very happy with the current progress and rate at which things are getting done!

Meanwhile, Mojang continues to squish bugs in preparation for the 1.9 release, and while everything is still feature complete, they're taking their time thoroughly debugging.

Thanks for posting this thorough and in-depth review of everything we've been working on over the last week or so in the land of Cemetech's Minecraft server! It's been an unfortunate time sink away from my programming projects, but I've also been having fun designing the much more natural and fluid rails for this iteration of our server. The wiring to make those delta interchanges has also been a great deal of fun, and I hope that our players will enjoy using it as much as I've enjoyed working on it with you and tifreak8x. I'm particularly excited about the fact that limited teleportation commands will force people to use this system we've been building more regularly. The tree also looks great, and once it has more and denser branches with foliage, I think it's going to look really spectacular.

*bump* I made a video.

*bump* Since Pizzaboy asked about it, I do have a TODO list for spawn, and here's what it looks like:

• Add arrow in item frame in South spawn station, complete and test all south interchange wiring.
  
• Temporarily expand borders, find spot for and build North station.
  
• Complete north interchange wiring.
  
• Complete cross-bracing between harbor bridge supports.
  
• Properly age harbor bridge supports.
  
• Add supports underneath the rest of the rail circle, spaced 16 blocks apart arc-wise on the outer edge, and mimicking the supports on the harbor bridge (but 2x2 instead of 3x3, and with only minimal extension above the tracks).
  
• Add museum building somewhere within spawn showing the design of the tracks and how to replicate it for player-built rails.

Just watched your video, Kerm. Great job! Look forward to future ones

I've been working on adding columns all along the spawn rail circle. If someone could go behind me and age all the columns, I'd be very grateful. I'll update this post or reply again when all of the supports are complete.

There's more progress being made in spawn which I would like to further discuss and start laying out some time frames on, since we are indeed approaching the official Minecraft 1.9 release on Monday, February 29th, 2016.

The current highlight is the tree, in which another main branch is finished, with the last branch expecting to be done by the end of today, along with some sub-branches to begin to layout the basis for finally putting leaves on it so it isn't just some dull, brown trunk with arms attached to it. The current vision I have for the leaves of the canopy is to not make the canopy quite so flat-looking like the jungle trees all around (the tall variety), and not quite as bushy as a large oak tree, but somewhere in the middle. It is going to be a goal to finish most of the canopy foliage detail (if not all of it), along with putting in the last couple of tree roots, and establishing floors in the tree by the end of this weekend. This said, I would like to discuss precisely what we would like to have in the tree as to know how many floors we should have and how things should be laid out inside the tree. In the event that we do have things like signshop, the harbor will be a good place to facilitate such things.
As far as I know, we need to have a spawn point in the tree somewhere, preferably centered on one of the floors, and will also be with the rules/welcome board... count that as one floor aside of the main floor? The main floor should probably stay clear of anything other than decoration and signs directing what path goes which way and to what places/attractions. I have been considering making a tree "basement", in which a staircase spirals down below the main floor, and goes into what I envision to be more dirt and root-filled and moody on lighting. In the basement with this environment, I feel it would be quite appropriate to put the official spawn nether portal in-- thoughts? Use a bit of dirt, soul sand, have some random roots digging through the floor, give it the underground feel...
A last thought for the tree is that the uppermost areas or the canopy could have some sort observation deck and elytra launch point for those who manage to acquire one.

I originally had a vision for the harbor to have actual enclosed buildings, but someone had built quite a nice, organic and open structure where one of my planned buildings was, and I've grown quite fond of it. I'm currently envisioning a more farmers market-like feel with more organic and open structures where the buildings would have gone. The harbor altogether only has this as the main detail left to finish, so this will also be probably done this weekend.

Northern rail station situation still needs to be resolved, and once the plan is figured out, it shouldn't take much time to add in a station, more inspired by the south station design. There's a section of track which is jetting off of the main circle, which I feel could be a tad too far, but it's only in respect of the amount of jungle that would be remaining. I'm unsure how much jungle lies to the northeast of what we'll rope off as the official "spawn" bounding region, and I feel it would be good to figure out how much jungle there really is, and make a decision based on that, whether we should expand the borders just a light bit more to add in the north rail station, or fit it in the current boundaries. More precisely, what I mean is, we should have a reasonable amount of jungle outside spawn which players can use for themselves if they wish, rather than having spawn take up almost all to all of the jungle region, and no one being able to use it.

Paths are done for the most part-- the paths that we minimally want to establish have already been laid out, and at most, there may be a couple very short sections of path which I'll direct out of spawn as a foot path near the rail stations. Paths to all 4 rail stations have already been established otherwise. Some very fine details such as adding in more foliage around the paths will be done.

I don't imagine us releasing the server next week (through March 4th) conservatively, so the week can be used to finish any remaining major projects. One of these projects I feel should be on that list is definitely some sort of building or area which is dedicated to the people who all played some role in the making of spawn, which can also be inclusive to a special "spawn museum". There's a couple of good areas which could fit in such a building, either somewhere along the north path or east path where there's a lot of thicker forest with nothing around.

Altogether, yes, there is a handful of things left to do, but we have much more done than we are away from being done, and I think it's extremely reasonable that the above listed things can altogether be done by the end of this coming week. Any input on any of this and generally spawn-related things are appreciated, and encouraged soon due to 1.9 releasing, along with server-related things like Spigot this coming week.