I'd personally be behind a massive castle-like spawn area (then again, it's my preferred build style anyways). Would have places to tuck away shops, houses, dungeons, and areas to explore (and hide easter eggs). Best of all, it can be worked into just about any sort of biome. I'd personally suggest some sort of snow biome for the aesthetics of a snowy castle.

Regardless, i'd be more than willing to help build a spawn area no matter the theme, if the help is wanted.

I might as well weigh in as well, despite not exactly being one of the most active members on the server.

I love the idea of centering things around an enormous tree. Although, I'd lean heavily towards the mega-taiga variant, mainly because I'm a huge fan of the more nordic-oriented architectural styles.

I'd like to bump this topic again, especially since it's been sitting on the backburner since late October, and since we're going to need to concern about this first and foremost in addition to the map we will decide on.

In particular, I would like to draw attention to the fact that 1.9 is officially not going to be released until 2016... though we are coming within possibly a month. No guarantees of course, but again, remember that 1.9 is feature complete at this point, and they are bug fixing for the most part to prepare it for release-- it's in its final stages.

source: Twitter

This being said, we need to really begin discussing when we will open up a new server port with the spawn area of the 1.9 map up for building. I think that there is generally a lot more availability of everyone during the "winter break" time frame except directly around Christmas time, which mimics what we did for when we started the 1.7 map. It'd be great to get a handful of trusted, creative people involved in the making of the 1.9 server spawn, and what better a time to do a lot of this than the last 2 weeks of December? I think it seems relatively clear that the biomes we seek are in place, as discussed on the 1.9 map topic and here... jungle is a recurring theme for spawn (and ice spikes and mega taiga are other cool biomes to have in the map too). There's some interest in building a tree-involved spawn in one form or another. So, I think we should just solidify this to confirm this is what we want, and just start laying out the map for everyone to start building. I get done with school after the 11th of this month, and many others who are working on school will be done around a similar date. Perhaps now is a good time to begin polishing 1.8 map creations, and get ready to start making that 1.9 spawn mid-December?

While 1.9 has not been officially released obviously, there are at least some snapshots which are considered to be more than relatively stable. Since there will not be any further new terrain generation, or anything major that would affect upgrading from a 1.9 snapshot, to the release, we would be more than fine working on a stable snapshot, of course making the proper backups of our map to assure that we will be fine.

I could easily run a server locally and open it up to a few users. My computer is on 24/7, I could limit the border to 500x500 and we could build. Eventually transferring it over to a new port on Cemetech at some point.

But do we really have an idea of what we want in regards to a map and spawn? Should we do a generic terrain generation and then scout for a good spawn or generate a world until a good spawn is upon us when we enter the world?

I would be happy to join in on this after I am done with finals next week if you do! Perhaps we could start finalizing the planning stages of the map spawn, and map itself. Once we generate the map, and spawn building begins, terrain generation is set in stone, since it all bases off a particular map seed, terrain generation, and also cave generation if we decide to do anything with caves.



KermMartian might have a possible seed to use which satisfies what the discussion on here has been reflecting-- mostly talk about having a jungle and ice spikes somewhere on the map with jungle being the current dominate vote for spawn, and some about mega taiga. I'd consult him in case that seed might be a good choice. Otherwise, perhaps let's just nudge everyone to be especially posting in the map and map spawn topics over the course of the next week so we can reach a decision that we know is clear? Especially on the style of terrain generation, but really every aspect.

I think it would be preferred that we get everything around where you spawn in, for sake of time. All you need to do is roll through a list of random seeds until you see something that works. Actually, here's a tool which might help speed up that process. Just hit random seed, and it'll display initially something that is roughly a little bigger than 2000x2000 in size without zooming, which is a good indication of whether if everything we want is in that size. You can select options off to the side that are generated structures if you want to display those, or generate another random seed. You can hover over the map to see what coordinates something is at, and what biome it is. For instance, a few main criteria you might use to evaluate a new random seed is:
[1] Is the spawn point in or next to a jungle biome (if we go with jungle)?
[2] Is there a "cold" biome, preferably ice plains and spikes (if we want that)?
[3] Is there 25% (if that's what we want) ocean?
[4] Is there a desert somewhere?

and if all criteria are met, perhaps copy the seed down somewhere, screenshot the map preview, and post the screenshot here and/or on the map topic, or post to IRC to see if it looks good to a handful of people.

If we're going to have a snapshot server I also highly suggest to create backups every day (automated backups are best backups) and also a backup once the server version changes (average of 1 time a week, depending if there is a "b" or even "c" snapshot).
The snapshots are becoming more and more mature but that doesn't means we don't have to take backups, snapshots are still development builds so unsupported.

In a little 2 weeks my winter break will also start (in Belgium), so I think it's a good idea to have a spawn building server running so people can work on it during the winter break.

I also think to get a general idea of the spawn we should first decide which type of map we have so we can make something that blends into the map nicely.

Charles & I started discussing 1.9 Spawn in IRC today after/during our fiasco. It eventually culminated to me launching a 1.9 Server on my computer to we could toy around with ideas. It seems everyone is cool with a Jungle spawn and the giant tree so we started planning that.



Our idea was that we'd have roots so players could safely get up and around and to even have a second trunk come from across the river but it be came quickly apparent that it would start becoming a forced thing. "Why are these roots so long?" or "Why does this trunk split so far away?" So we started the idea of bridges and paths carved into the roots that would eventually carry on without them.



Then we decided maybe we want the tree to be this whole small island here and we can branch it over to the mainland on the left (of the image)



There's still a lot to do. My server is whitelisted and the IP will not be shared publicly. My server will be run 24/7 for the most part. There are no plugins at the moment so I'll spend some time adding in WorldEdit and a few others to we can make things faster. Right now we're just experimenting with spawn ideas before we get down to business so you aren't missing much. Once we get a spawn idea down, we can transfer the world to Cemetech and host it much more reliably. So don't get bummed if you aren't in on the early action.

What seed have you chosen here? I was hoping to work together to pick a seed very similar (but not identical) to the latest one that CharlesSprinkle and I had been discussing, that had a nice mix of biomes.

I'll try to get my idea for the future rail system posted with a picture form, maybe using the current map or something. Hopefully that can be integrated as well.

We do indeed have a similar seed. It's got all the biomes people are asking for within the first 2000 blocks or so. Also, we're probably going to regenerate the map with more caves using a CaveAmplifier plugin or something so resources are more accessible and on-world Abba caving more eventful. Any progress we deem important we'll likely world edited over to the new map other wise we'll use screen shots and memory to construct the spawn; we're just planning and building skeletons so we can get a general idea.

tifreak, unless I'm mistaken I thought a server funded/built rail system was not desired? I thought folks wanted to make their own methods of transport to towns. I agree that Spawn should also have this transport and act as a hub but I don't think we should force a certain transport system at the start.

My idea for the rails considers of 4 deployment/receiver locations in spawn, so no more complicated or broken rail system. These rails then tie into the closest towns, where the rails themselves have to be built by the players. Then each town can build rails to the other towns, etc. That way, everything is linked up together.

Some more prototyping, this time ground based paths.

This is as if our current map were always just pve, and we had more rails built between towns, kind of thing. In general, something like this is what I'd love to see for the new map, since we won't be getting /tpa, as per discussed in the transportation topic.

The idea is for there to be rail station(s) in spawn and the users build to them from their towns.

And yes, I know, this should also be in the transportation topic, however, I'd like to see a jungle building inspired rail station(s) that people hook up to with their own rails.

I'm not against the idea of this, I just want to pause for a moment. This visualization has made me aware of something which may be a more minor issue than I'm making it. For instance the top left quadrant. We have three towns, and the path branches out to two of them then around to the third. There's no direct path to the third town. This means we make folks who desire to travel there first travel through another town, which in relative terms public transit can be much the same way.

Even then, I'd rather not have a server funded method of transportation; I'd much rather have the system set up in 1.8 if transportation is provided by the server. if a user puts in the effort to make a rail from their town to spawn the admin team will put in the effort to make a station at spawn but as it is there will be paths going from spawn to the border of spawn.

The only thing being provided by the server would be the stations inside spawn, and the rails going to the outside of the spawn border. This would encourage interconnectivity between towns and cooperation to build solid transportation. Besides, I doubt we're going to have the userbase that 1.7 map had building those towns to begin with.

Anyways, that's getting away from the topic of spawn. I just want the 4 directions of rails starting at spawn, built to just outside the spawn border/protect, and let the rest happen via users I don't want to have to deal with the current system, which is still broken.

I don't mind the idea of having to build rails to connect to spawn rails. (let's just not make it so high up this time ) Sounds like a fun project that gets the community involved. I'm sure friends would help out too

What about the new rails will fix this? I know they're broken in 1.8 but must not be up to speed as to why.

There are several 'stops' going along the north rail that it just takes you into the stop, doesn't let you go through.

I ended up fixing the end of the east rails where the rails were going in different directions and looped back (hard to explain) and the fact that -I- fixed it means no world guard down towards the end of east branch

Selection at the main station is still broken, have to jump the glass to find the rail you want to go on.

New rail system I have in mind is the fact there would be 4 deployment areas, going in the 4 main directions. From there, the towns would have to build to them.

Just saying, player made rails can also be player repaired, so if it's broken everyone can repair it while now only 2 people with a busy life can repair it.

More progress on spawn with Charles, tifreak and Selena!







Hopefully soon we can transfer the world file to the Cemetech server where more of us can work on it at once. The three of them have a Skype call going and doing a lot of discussions there so they don't have to stop and type a discussion.