Those caves look pretty awesome!

Quick question: Could we get the times a lintel later than that in the future? More like 3pm or so? Its 8 AM for me

And having Comic hiding chests? That would be a pretty cool aspect

Hactar Wins Big In Revamped Caves
Abba Caving - 16 April 2016



An unforgiving round of Abba Caving took place this last weekend with a twist-- using Terrain Control, a custom terrain generation plugin, we were able to modify the amount of caves generated to create a thrilling, extra dangerous match in which the phrase "cave-lacking" would certainly not fit (in fact overkill might have been a fitting word). HactarCE was the winner of this match that is the first of its kind, with 935 points, hot in pursuit of the highest score of all time! This comes just behind Rivereye's 938 points the previous weekend, and still a tad bit short of the all-time record for a 20-minute game of 956 points (based on the current scoring system) which was set back in November 2015 by tifreak8x. Some closer scores followed a tiny bit further behind in 2nd and 3rd place held by Unicorn and Lennart.

Event Statistics:

1st Place - 935 Points - HactarCE
2nd Place - 872 Points - Unicorn
3rd Place - 867 Points - LennartVH01
4th Place - 716 Points - Racerdude24
5th Place - 603 Points - ElementalVis
6th Place - 596 Points - LittleMoonBeam
7th Place - 347 Points - ACagliano
8th Place - 236 Points - DrDnar
9th Place - 000 Points - KermM (1 death)

Average Score - 647 Points
Median Score - 660 Points
(0-point score omitted from the distribution)



Ores Collected
0000 Ores - Emerald
0083 Ores - Diamond
0077 Ores - Lapis Lazuli
0373 Ores - Gold
0871 Ores - Redstone
1092 Ores - Iron

Wild Cards
0 Items - Diamond Horse Armor
0 Items - Notch Apples



Shown above is the jackpot which was split 80-20 - 80% to the winner, 20% evenly distributed to the remaining participants.

Thanks everyone for participating in this first revamped Abba Caving event! We are currently working on tweaking the cave generation to better fit the preferences of everyone, and also seeking to balance it with a more ideal caving experience. We found the match to be quite "swiss-cheesed" with caves, so we generated a new map right after the abba match with a slightly toned down cave generation. In my own opinion, it still needs to be toned down a slight bit more as to avoid some areas which are practically a mess. Please do leave your feedback on what you think about how good the caves were, how was your experience with them, and how they could be changed for the better in the future.

Also, apologies for the delay to starting the match. In the future, we will enforce a hard-limit to how late the match can start after the planned starting time. The main problems that could have been prevented include players having various issues right before the match, and also delaying the game by a few more minutes in order to include one extra person or two.

While I was not able to participate in this match (was out fishing, what can I say), I did jump in the world a bit after to try and do come caveing for ores, and I found that what was there last night just to be a huge mess to try and work through. It is almost like there is one giant cavern more than there is numerous caves strung about. However, I think cave generation will take some more fine tuning before it gets right.

All-Time Record Shattered
Abba Caving - 22 April 2016



A small, heated match between tifreak8x, LennartVH01, and myself took place in a newly refreshed caving world (however the cave generation ended up being standard vanilla, as opposed to the monstrosity of a cave system from the Terrain Control plugin). It was universally agreed upon within the first few minutes that caves were a bit harder to find, so a bit more luck was involved in this match. However, the record-setting game would speak otherwise-- 1086 points is now the new 20-minute game all-time record, beating tifreak8x's 956-point equivalent score (under the current scoring system) that was set back in November 2015, and Rivereye's 938 point score record for the current map set, set back on April 10th, 2016.

Event Statistics:

1st Place - 1086 Points - ElementalVis
2nd Place - 861 Points - LennartVH01
3rd Place - 680 Points - tifreak8x

Average Score - 876 Points
Median Score - 861 Points

Ores Collected
0002 Ores - Emerald
0049 Ores - Diamond
0040 Ores - Lapis Lazuli
0145 Ores - Gold
0352 Ores - Redstone
0513 Ores - Iron

Wild Cards
0 Items - Diamond Horse Armor
0 Items - Notch Apples



Shown above is the jackpot which was split 85-10-5 - 85% to the winner, 10% to 2nd place, and 5% to 3rd place.
In the bottom left hand corner of the jackpot chest is the 2nd and 3rd place winnings respectively (an one emerald went to 2nd place).

I think you might want to edit your italicized percentages. Unless, of course, 105% of the winnings are being distributed, which would be awesome

Pizzabboy Breaching 1,000 Points
Abba Caving - 24 April 2016



Another one bites the dust this round, as we unfortunately had another death to lava ): Overall totals were very impressive and competitive! Pizzabboy was the winner of this match beaching the 1,000-point mark with 1,051 points, right on the heels of the recently set record score of 1,086 points just set 2 days ago by myself!

Top 5 All-Time High Scores:

1,086 Points - 22 Apr 2016 - ElementalVis
1,051 Points - 24 Apr 2016 - Pizzabboy
956 Points - 29 Nov 2015 - tifreak8x
938 Points - 10 Apr 2016 - Rivereye
935 Points - 16 Apr 2016 - HactarCE


Event Statistics:

1st Place - 1051 Points - Pizzabboy
2nd Place - 945 Points - LennartVH01
3rd Place - 915 Points - ElementalVis
4th Place - 899 Points - Racerdude24
5th Place - 813 Points - Unicorn
6th Place - 757 Points - tifreak8x
7th Place - 581 Points - KermM
8th Place - 313 Points - ACagliano
9th Place - 084 Points - Rivereye (1 death)

Average Score - 784 Points
Median Score - 856 Points
(Death-affected score omitted from the distribution)



Ores Collected
0002 Ores - Emerald
0119 Ores - Diamond
0086 Ores - Lapis Lazuli
0339 Ores - Gold
0888 Ores - Redstone
1328 Ores - Iron

Wild Cards
0 Items - Diamond Horse Armor
0 Items - Notch Apples



Shown above is the jackpot which was split 70-10-5-15 - 70% to the winner, 10% to 2nd place, 5% to 3rd place, and the remaining 15% evenly distributed to the remaining 6 participants.

Thank you everyone as usual for participating! I hope that the newer jackpot split is helping everyone feel better about participating and not necessarily winning (:

Also be sure to consider looking at the topic on an Abba Tournament that Rivereye put up here!

Good game, everyone! Real talk: this is the third game where I have found myself spending the entire game either in dark caves that have already been mined, or giving up and straight-line mining. How many of you guys use monitor settings, texture packs, shaders, or mods to turn up the brightness slash see ores more easily and avoid the need for torches? Since I have no idea how we could control or moderate that, what do you guys use that you recommend I use next time?

I keep my MC brightness all the way up and my monitor brightness at 100% as well. Caves in MC are still dark but navigateable, it's not like it's as bright as day down there. I still use torches and other light sources to light caves though.

On-topic though: We make torches mandatory. I can certainly see a player thinking a cave is unexplored and wasting time in it. Failure to torch could result in point deductions.

Just not sure how we'd monitor that. The abba worlds aren't log blocked and I don't have time to spectate every player, especially in large 9+ player matches like today.

You could make torches mandatory, and in a big-brotheresque way check "torches placed" on the detailed statistics page. If the number didn't go up at least 100 or so from before the match to after, you could give a point penalty. Just a thought.

Edit: comic mentioned that the abba world is log blocked. My mistake.

I may have mentioned this in passing but several shader packs have dynamic lighting effects, and there is a Forge-dependent mod that does the same thing... light-emitting objects held in hand produce light in the same range as the placed object. However this is client side only. Not something I'd personally use on a server at all, much less in abba bc it is a bit unfair to other players, but you asked :p.

I personally think that the community can be trusted to play fairly, but as a suggestion on how anti-fullbright could work:
We could make ores that are in total darkness (light level 0) unbreakable, that way people using torches can still normally mine, while those using fullbright will have to place torches anyway.

I started experimenting with shaders after that post my Acag a few days ago, and it turns out that when using the SEUS shaders and not placing a light source, just using a torch in hand, lapis doesn't appear. that could be because of some sort of texture change, but just thought I'd mention that. I do agree, though, we should make torches mandatory. The only benefit of using fullbright would be not having to place torches, speeding up the mining process. But with two hands, placing torches is almost instantaneous, we no longer have to scroll to them.

Tifreak, Back at it Again!
Abba Caving - 07 May 2016



A spontaneous, on-the-spot round was held this last Saturday, and was tighter-knit with 5 of us, the newest member of which to join our game is Chauronslilsis! Unfortunately, there was another death to lava this round. Water buckets are life savers, especially with iron armor!
tifreak8x took this match away with a final score of 904 points, seeking to beat his old record of 956 points. No new all-time high scores (top 5) were made this match, but it seems that it is continually proven that to be competitive in chances of winning, 900+ point scores are what everyone should aim for. Check back soon for some overall Abba Caving stats, and some tips on how to achieve higher scores!

Event Statistics:

1st Place - 904 Points - tifreak8x
2nd Place - 828 Points - ElementalVis
3rd Place - 610 Points - LittleMoonBeam
4th Place - 354 Points - Chauronslilsis
5th Place - 000 Points - Unicorn (1 death)

Average Score - 674 Points
Median Score - 719 Points
(Death-affected score omitted from the distribution)

No graph of scores plotted for this match due to a lack of scores.

Ores Collected
0000 Ores - Emerald
0041 Ores - Diamond
0031 Ores - Lapis Lazuli
0206 Ores - Gold
0297 Ores - Redstone
0620 Ores - Iron

Wild Cards
0 Items - Diamond Horse Armor
0 Items - Notch Apples



Shown above is the jackpot which was split 75-10-5-10 - 75% to the winner, 10% to 2nd place, 5% to 3rd place, and the remaining 10% evenly distributed to the remaining 2 participants.

As usual, good game everyone-- thanks for playing! And congrats to tifreak8x on his win!

I hope it was a run game, everyone!

Now I have to start the long task of farming for emeralds again...

Clearly I'm not at all taking sufficient advantage of the dual-wielding opportunities.

tifreak8x, congratulations, and good game to the rest of you. I look forward to joining another match soon.

*bump* Fun fact that I learned today: ABBA caving is indeed named after the band, specifically referring to the ABBA song "Winner Takes All". Source:
http://mindcrack.altervista.org/wiki/ABBA_Rules

*bumpity bump* Elemental and I played a friendly match today, 30 minutes in the Abba world, iron armor only, 80%-20% loot split. Final scores were:

• KermM: 1162
  
• ElementalLibra: 1070

We certainly hope to continue more of these soon!