I still can't believe how close that match was, and how there was 3 pieces of gold waiting for me right at the start.



I thoroughly enjoyed this as well, and definitely cannot wait for the next one! I think the fact that the game was that close made it really much more interesting, despite my loss haha. I'd love to see more games like this. Props to Monkey0x9 for burning tifreak8x!



I follow completely with this! I especially resonate with the idea of having a small world regenerate for usage of Abba Caving, and being able to do something like allow someone to go into spectator mode for that world to find the proper cave to begin at and everything. If we had such a thing, creative mode would help with building nice embarkation rooms to start the matches out in. It's really fun to build it with the materials I have though, but either way.

The idea is on the timing, that everyone should remain within the defined boundaries until a "GO" is given after a countdown, and the players should immediately drop their picks when the time is up. There are fair warnings we typically do, such as having someone read off the time remaining every few minutes, and especially as it closes within 1 minute remaining. I know we'd definitely be able to do some of this or all of it with command blocks, so it'd just be a matter of actually getting it worked out and implemented.

Altogether, I would like to say that Abba Caving has been just as fun as it was initially when we first started doing this, and I'd even argue it's more fun. We're starting to see 5-player matches, with potential for 6/7 players (which might start getting a little too big at that point haha... we'd have to potentially go with the multiple starting points idea...)
And everyone seems to enjoy it. We may want to continue to consider dividing the loot from "winner takes all", to having winner take most of it, and a small pecentage split amongst all other participants. Even though it defeats the 'abba - winner takes it all' ideal (in case you were wondering, Abba is a band, and Winner Takes It All is a song), it may be more beneficial for maintaining participants and not discouraging people from playing just because they don't think they will win.

Thanks everyone for the continual support of this mini-game, and thanks for playing!

This weekend has been quite a fun weekend with command block logic! Not actually knowing anything about command blocks prior to this weekend, after hours of research and dedication with ComicIDIOT, we were able to produce the first command block-coordinated Abba Caving game! We also generated a relatively small 1000x1000 map to use as fresh terrain for caving, and it seemed more successful than usual! I'll leave some notes on that at the bottom. Also, if you participated in today's (Nov.29) game, please leave your feedback on not only the game itself and the idea of using a small new map every new game, but also on the command block initiated events such as equipment distribution, teleportation, countdowns, the 20-minute game timer, and such.
Oh, and looks like we have a record number of participants-- 6!

29 November 2015 - Abba Caving
Time Limit: 20 Minutes
Standard Point Values

Point Totals:
462 - CharlesSprinkle
050 - ChimneyChris
439 - The_Rivereye
450 - KermM
564 - SelenaGiana
870 - tifreak8x


WINNER: tifreak8x
WINNINGS:
057 Diamond Ore
000 Emerald Ore
048 Lapis Lazuli Ore
168 Gold Ore
339 Redstone Ore
822 Iron Ore


Congrats to tifreak8x on the big victory!

Here's some screenshots from today's event.

The dynmap showing the participants mid-game spread out over hundreds of blocks, excavating out the fresh, large cave system (credit: ComicIDIOT)


The final tallying in the "Embarkation House" a.k.a. the Embarkation Room. (credit: ComicIDIOT)


Cheers to the winner! (credit: tifreak8x)


The ore loot collected by all 6 players, tifreak8x takes all!


Thank you all for playing-- don't forget to leave your feedback!

Some additional notes.
Basic game walkthrough and command block involvement--
Here's a basic run down on the process of the Abba Caving game in terms of what was done by command blocks. When everyone is "ready", having cleared their inventories, everyone is automatically given the essentials for gameplay, and everyone is on equal playing ground sinc everyone has the same gear. (Skill from caving speed and such will dominate normally for who wins, luck can play a role still from caves, even so) Such things include iron armor, sword, bow, arrows, silk touch [efficiency] pickaxe, shovel, axe, torches, blocks, water bucket, and food. Assuming everything goes well and everyone again says "ready" after organizing inventories, the game sequence is officially initiated, giving a couple of status effects to players (/effect; namely slowness 10) after teleporting and spreading them in the Embarkation Room (/tp and /spreadplayers). A countdown sequence is given using a title sequence (/title) which will officially start a 20-minute clock. While everyone plays, a 20-minute clock is started. It is designed so that it will pulse a dropper with items in it, into another at least every 5 minutes. Based on some redstone signal strength based off of how many items are in the output dropper, commands will be activated every 5 minutes to give a heads up of the time elapsed/remaining (i.e. 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes elapsed messages) in the form of a subtitle on screen. At 20 minutes, the end game sequence is initiated, and players throughout the map are all inflicted with mining fatigue 5 and slowness 10 to prevent movement of any sort, or further mining, a quick message appears for the time being up, and then everyone is teleported back to the original Embarkation Room.

Further possible improvements--
Seems that everything went well for the most part (feedback will help a lot!). Will continue to adjust the equipment as necessary to meet players' needs, such as if there was enough food, or too much of anything else. 5, 10 and 15 minutes elapsed subtitles are good, and I don't think any title in general was intrusive or too big-- let me know otherwise. There was no additional head up after 15 minutes, and efforts will definitely be made to include a 60 and 10 second remaining message on screen to make the transition of the end game less abrupt.
When teleported back, there was a command missing to put everyone inside the room, and instead put everyone on the roof-- this will be fixed next time.

Additional idea-- scoreboard timer.
It seems very possible to make a small "minutes remaining" timer off to the side via scoreboard mechanics, so there will be efforts to add this so that you can see the time remaining at any point in the game.

Overall, the only issues I had were:

I'd like to see half a stack of baked potatoes, or other food source, instead of just 16

As noted in your post, a notification of 60 seconds and 10 seconds remaining would be most helpful.


If all that is needed at this point is to iron out the last couple of things, I'm thinking we need a much larger, announced event. Plaster it everywhere, see who we can get in on it. I could potentially drag a few friends I've made on VV, since they won't have to worry too much about starting out with anything.

Also, I can't believe that point gap. That was nuts.

I spent some time connecting the caves together and ensuring they all had roots to the bottom. I used TNT as well as my hands to carve out new caves. Since we usually start under ground where there is already multiple ways to traverse from the start, I wanted to mimic that on the surface.

Did you feel like the caves were adequate?
Would you like more entrances? Less?

Going forward I'll probably look for a more diverse landscape but when I generated and entered this world I was already blown away by the cave systems so close to spawn. This was also a crash test with the new system so I wasn't really looking for anything in particular other than the caves. In the future I certainly plan to spend more time finding caves. I think this map was limited to 1000x1000, is anyone satisfied with this size? Smaller?

After the game I allowed folks to mine the map normally, is this something you'd like to see going forward? Keep in mind the map size won't increase post game and will be deleted after a few days or at least before the next Abba match. I think Abba caving could be a wonderful way to introduce a new resource world before others are allowed access. This could have several benefits including an increased participation amongst the citizens of Cemetopia (Yay, nay?) for Abba caving. The downside could be we get so many participants 20 minutes isn't enough time.

Let me reiterate some of the things that I said on Skype:

1. First of all, huge thanks to comicIDIOT and CharlesSprinkle for taking the time to put this event together. It was certainly a new approach to our popular Abba Caving events, and showed a lot of thought and effort. Congratulations to tifreak8x for that insane score.
   
2. I liked that there were multiple entrances. For a while, I was mining in a cave all by myself; only after about 5 minutes did I finish the cave system I was in and discover that CharlesSprinkle was in the adjoining cave. From then on, though, I couldn't find a cave that other people hadn't already mined out; I was constantly 30 seconds behind someone else. Eventually I panicked and just started straight-line mining for the remainder of the match, hence my pathetic score. I'm not sure there's anything you guys could have done about that; part of the objective of the game is to beat other people to caves and get the resources before them, so I just failed.
   
3. From a higher level, I'm uncomfortable about any creation of value from nothing. In the rest of our server and events, with a few exceptional additions of special items for scavenger hunts, every piece of value on the server has been generated through farms or mined from the world. While giving free items for the caving event has the positive effect of leveling the playing field for our n00bier members, it removes the egalitarian aspect of doing better if you work harder at being a good Minecrafter that the rest of our server promotes and supports.

Just my two or three cents.

[quote="KermMartian"]

• I liked that there were multiple entrances. For a while, I was mining in a cave all by myself; only after about 5 minutes did I finish the cave system I was in and discover that CharlesSprinkle was in the adjoining cave. From then on, though, I couldn't find a cave that other people hadn't already mined out; I was constantly 30 seconds behind someone else. Eventually I panicked and just started straight-line mining for the remainder of the match, hence my pathetic score. I'm not sure there's anything you guys could have done about that; part of the objective of the game is to beat other people to caves and get the resources before them, so I just failed.

[quote]

I'm glad that's a +1 for the multiple entrances. Initially there was just the one at the center of town but I discovered a whole other system outside of the town so I spent some time excavating with TNT to connect it to deeper caves and the original cave.



That's something Charles did on his own initiative that I did not decide to challenge. I figured we'll see how well this is perceived and I think we had a better participation out of it but on the other hand I agree. I can't control what everyone does. We can add a button to clear inventories but what if someone presses that before dropping off their ore? What if someone logs out without pressing the button to clear their inventory, before we collect the gear, before I wipe inventories? *cough*Like Kerm*cough*. So there's definitely some more discussion there.

While I want it to be a community thing, I also feel like it would give users something to work for, to have that competitive advantage.

I'd like to see us take another crack at it, maybe with a few refinements, see how people feel then? I'd say it wasn't bad for a first go.

And I'd love to see 1.9 map not get ravaged so hard by mining, at least not for the first little while. :p

I am not sure what was done underground, as I filled in the role above around. I didn't notice anything funky about the caves or anything, so can't say much about it other than that I upvote increasing cave connectivity to effectively expand the cave system into more caves, if an admin or otherwise neutral person in the game can do that.

The caves were pretty adequate in my opinion. I mean, I had to eventually start strip mining off to a new system as I found myself running out of cave after 10 minutes, but I think the cave got its run, given the fact that we had 6 people participating and quickly lighting up and excavating out the place. I think even with large and reasonable systems, at least one or two players will start running out of undiscovered cave halfway through the game, and that's just how it goes. You really just need to find yourself a good section of cave before someone else does.

Having more entrances are definitely another upvote from me. I mean, despite only using one entrance obviously, I think having the choice of where to start was good as it spreads the players out a little more initially. Eventually, I'm inclined to say that there is a point in time which players reach a focal point where players from different entrances eventually come together at in the heart of the system, but at least it'll delay it. In the future, we may want to explore doing things like spreading out the entrances even further, and perhaps even allowing people to pick their entrance to start at when the timer begins.



A 500-block square radius or in other words, a 1000x1000 map I think was very fair. Given that I had to start strip mining to another cave halfway through the game, I went out quite a ways, and was perfectly fine. I'm almost inclined to say that a 500x500 world (250 square radius) could even work, given the cave system we start out in is very appreciable in amount of cave to explore before running dry. The idea is that if there are enough caves to suffice one's ore hunting, then there's no reason to be branching off in a strip mine out 200 blocks. Caves are far more efficient at gathering ores. But in the event that someone runs out of cave in their area and decides to branch off in a strip mine, we should have that the map be large enough to satisfy that need. I think 500x500 is good enough, as you can always make a turn or multiple turns, and effectively circumnavigate the map as necessary... essentially in a 500x500 map, you have 2000 blocks circumference, and effectively almost that length of tunnel to run into caves. I notice that we didn't use most of the 1000x1000 map, so in the best interest of being more resource conservative, we can probably bring that map size down. But in light of the current map size (~4500x4500), a 1000x1000 map is only 1/20th the total area, so I feel this is rather insignificant, and not really a concern. If anything, a 1000x1000 map size would give more opportunities, and it's better to have a little more cave to work with than less. Having our current 4500x4500 map, in parallel with a 1000x1000 map, will only cost 5% additional terrain. Especially in light of some discussions of having the 1.9 map becoming larger to something like 6000x6000 in the longer term, a 1000x1000 map is only 1/36th the size of that, and therefore only a 2.7% contribution to total map space. If I had to argue for one or the other, I'd say to keep it at 1000x1000. No reason to go any bigger as it's more than generous for Abba events, and keeping it up for a week or two temporarily.



I think this is a really great idea, as it also satisfies previous discussions, especially pertaining to the economy, and having our economy revolve around some resource you'd find embedded in the terrain like gold ore. This would essentially allow any of those category of resources to become unlimited based on the refreshing of a small map we'd use for something like Abba Caving, but ultimately for general resources. On another side, not only will ores be renewable, but so will everything else. Each map will be a wildcard, and always holding new surprises and adventures. We could even hold other events such as some scavenger hunts, as the new terrain will always put everyone back onto even playing field, since the map is new to everyone. It's not like you can know exactly what route to take or recognize a certain feature. While it'd be good to have events like this on our primary map, hosting some of the events on the temporary map would also be cool, and confine the search a bit more. This is more discussion for the general server activities.

I feel like Abba Caving events are starting to reach a tipping point in which we are starting to see enough participants that we really do have to worry about having large cave systems with many, many caves that go all over the place and down to lava level... and also having multiple ways for everyone to go to disperse the crowd to prevent everyone from tripping over each other in a sense, fighting for the same ores and trying to get ahead of each other in the same tunnel. With a bigger map size like 1000x1000, we also have the leisure of creating multiple starting points that could be much further apart in two totally separate cave systems which are both equally expansive, and therefore still a level playing field. 20 minutes could be not enough time for more participants, but that is given that there isn't enough real estate to meet that demand. We need more caves, not necessarily more time. Generally longer games to like 30 minutes are preferred, but I have often found that especially past 20 minutes, I will always find myself strip mining because it's honestly hard to find a good cave.

With that, I'd like to suggest that we use a plugin that will modify the cave generation, simply increasing the frequency of both individual caves, and also cave systems (clusters of caves, if you will). Please refer to my suggestion in the 1.9 Server Plugins topic regarding ways to enhance cave generation to cater to our needs, while still retaining the vanilla look and feel of everything.





As Comic stated, it was my idea to create the more level playing field by having everyone come in with nothing, and substituting everyone's gear with a standardized set. I was definitely respectful of whatever Comic would allow or not, and I didn't think it was completely unreasonable things... the tools are probably the most valuable, which were more in the interest of allowing everyone to have the ability to avail themselves to the same higher efficiency.
I would like to say that while I'm more neutral on the idea of having this standardized condition, I also do agree with the ideas presented about having people work for being able to gain advantages in gameplay. One side of me wants things to be more fair and open for everyone to play if they wanted-- hence my idea of leveling the playing field, but on another side, this is a game which asks that you have a silk touch pickaxe in the minimum... not too terribly much to ask. I think it is healthy to ask this, and urge players to motive themselves to get the tool they need to participate, rather than have other people always cater to their needs. I am a firm believer of the idea that I'm willing to help someone who puts in at least an honest effort, and especially if they are capable of doing it themselves (people like us usual Abba Caving cavers who have all the equipment)... however, I tend to not like catering to people who are incapable of trying to help themselves. I can see why there's a tendency to not standardize the playing field for everyone, as we essentially will cater to the 'n00bs'. I hope I did not step over any lines by implementing that part of the system which handed out everyone a package of Abba Caving equipment, and hope that running it by Comic first was acceptable.
This was definitely meant to be a test run, and an experiment to see if we should keep some things, add some things, take away others, or adapt anything... so I think the heart of the system is cool. The idea of having a running in-game mechanism which will enforce the integrity of the game-- putting everyone in the same starting point(s), releasing everyone at the same time, and forcing everyone to stop at the same time... are all the main ideas. So just in case someone sees diamond ore, but time runs out, no one gets any funny ideas from being tempted. Simply, the command blocks will enforce the strict time limit so that no close calls are tipped in the favor of someone who went over the time limit, ultimately winning the game. I had a game with tifreak8x in which the scores were 613-615, which is really 1-3 ores away from tipping the game over to me. Had I found one vein of iron ore, or even a single diamond, I would have won. Let's say that I found that after time was up, I could in theory, mine it, and win the game simply by going over the respected 20 minute time limit. Every second counts.

So, in the end, I would be more than willing to remove the mechanism which distributes standardized packages to everyone as I completely understand the issue. We will switch back to our usual style of BYOE (Bring Your Own Equipment).



As I think about this more, the more I think we definitely should encourage people to have reasons to want to build up their place in the community in terms of friendly competition and creating things. We do aim to have a more advanced community, so it's reasonable to ask that if someone doesn't have at least some simple resources, that they invest a little time into getting them instead of giving them the idea that we'll give it all to them.

Loved last abba caving event I thought it was a really fresh idea to have a new map designed for it. The caves were great and setup was spot on

Things that maybe we can add next time: a timer that counts down or gives us a heads up how many minutes are left (IE 10mins, 5mins, 1 min, etc), a little more food than just 16 potatoes (that might deplete rather quickly), and spawning in the building at the end rather than on top haha

Overall, I really enjoyed this one Good job Comic and Charles! Bravo and thank you guy for setting it up. Until next time!

Thanks! We really lucked out with a village right on top of a healthy cave system.

We were going to have a timer but every action the command blocks do shows up in my chat window, multiplied by the number of players. So, when testing it counted up every second but I got so much spam in my chat box that I really didn't want to miss the chat going on. But Something that counts every minute is certainly plausible.

Our plan for the next one, I think, is to let folks bring their own gear. That way it brings back the competitive nature of the game PLUS it'll give something for folks to work towards. However, I wouldn't be opposed to doing more level playing field matches as the 1.8 EOL nears, right now it looks like we've got a few more months.

The spawn at the end was a hiccup. We totally meant to spawn you guys in the room but forgot to add the command for it.

I would like to bump this topic again with a point I briefly discussed earlier, which is in regard to the plugin, TerrainControl. With already the talk on the spawn and map biomes and terrain styling already pretty much set in stone, there is one particularly more useful feature of TerrainControl I'd be interested in, which is the cave generation. The other day, I decided to use the mod version of this in order to see how it worked in singleplayer by changing things like the frequency of cave systems and individual caves-- the results were spectacular. Below are a few of the best screenshots I got, but there is also the full album linked here









Let me know any continuing thoughts on the idea of putting this on only the abba caving world of the multiverse, if that seems reasonable/possible as to make our matches much more thrilling.

Since we'll likely be going with a new map for Abba caving this is doable. I'll learn MCEdit and get the grasp of this plugin and we can have some killer 1.9 Abba Caving!

So, today we went for another abba caving! Sadly, we were only able to get Elemental, KermMartian, and myself to play, so we decided to keep the super nice abba world cave available, and found ourselves another one in the main map.

After bouncing between 2 cave systems, with 10 minutes spent in each, we called it and dumped our score of bounty to be scored.



It seems I just had one of those games, I guess? Crazy score gap there.



Good game, guys!