Yes, my creativity with names is pretty crap. Been working on a map for a little while, as we don't have as much choice on Vanilla servers as we do with other ones. The creative process works in two ways - I make the map, and because I can't get the Hammer tool to work properly, Grace will be kindly sorting out the technical side of it. So, the map is built and finished in Minecraft, bar any issues that come up. Next the map will be imported into Hammer and Grace will happily and without complaint do all the impossible things I asked her to add. I took a few screenshots, so you guys could see what we've got so far. Spoiler: Towers! Spoiler: Small Hills! Spoiler: Village! (just the one) Spoiler: Cells! Spoiler: ...and a Secret Room!
I love your work and think this is a great map! How long did this take you? And if you could improve one thing about the map what would it be? I'm just interested! A good map name could can come from your inspiration. If it was something like Lord of the Rings for example something like the Shire Hills or something etc.
Thanks! It took maybe a few weeks to sort - the majority of the map was built in one long evening, and the rest of the time has been getting opinions and fine-tuning. I've durdled with it for a while lately, before finally declaring it done. I have no idea how long it'll take @Grace to add everything and make it playable - I've never done anything like this before. I have a lot of faith in her, though. It was inspired by one of the towns I built back when I first started on Minecraft, some six(?) years ago on a server run by one of my World of Warcraft guild officers. The map is lost to the ages unfortunately, but there were some gorgeous creations there (most of them not by me) and I'd give a lot to get it back. I also wanted to make a minecraft map that felt like a minecraft village. We have one or two that are similar, but not enough for my tastes. Mechanically, I took some inspiration from some of my favourite MC maps we already have, such as Seriouscraft and Tiptsky. If I could improve on something, it would be T traps. The map has one. That's it. But I couldn't really think of a way to add more that wouldn't cause an imbalance. I prefer T traps that take out maybe one or two people, and are single use - otherwise you get people just camping them like the water trap in 67th or the T room under the house in minecraftvillage. We'll see how it goes. It's got open spaces and narrow corridors, it's not massive but it's pretty vertical, and it hsould be balanced. Time will tell =)
Wow this looks beautiful. As a member here who mains Vanilla, I along with the majority of players on Vanilla can agree that the current map list just isn't cutting it, and is in dire need of some new maps like this one here. For the sake of my sanity and others, I hope you're able to get all the technical things sorted and move forward on releasing the map for everyone to enjoy. -Thanks for putting in the work to make maps for Vanilla, members like me really appreciate it.
The fact that their is quite a good story behind the whole map makes in 10x better for me, the one thing I would knock about this map is that is does looks bit too simplistic. I know it's mine craft so it's gonna be ha adding tons of detail but just those little touches of detail would improve the aesthetics, playability wise though it looks very very good!
Having seen this map it does look very promising and we are really needing more potential for vanilla maps. Hope it doesn't take too long to finish.
The second picture made me think it was a rework of jondome. The map does look very good, you're doing a nice job.
Hey Harvest, great work on the map but looking at the screenshots I can see that you're going to be running into a couple of issues. First of all is brush count (actual blocks/houses), the max you can have is 8192, and looking at a complex map like this it seems that limit will be reached pretty easily because of the geometry, which leads to the second point. Although a complex Minecraft map looks good and doesn't seem to have any problems you may run into the issue of the map being too hard for the valve compiler to calculate proper optimization (this is why seriouscraft needs updating). You don't have to but I would say to make the walls around the village flat as it will save you a lot of trouble optimizing everything else. They don't have to be perfectly flat, just enough that it would have too many different layers (sort of think how Jondome did it, sharp cliff walls) . There is a way to reduce brush count while keeping the same map, but it would be hours of work more for Grace. There is a tool called Propper that lets you convert brushes into Props, this is how the mc_skyisland team had huge undersides to the islands (and it's also what caused the horrible FPS). Propper would work well for some of the geometry that the player would not be standing on (trees, top of wizard tower, etc.) It's also pretty hard to setup on the new Steampipe system. Anyways this post is long enough If @Grace ever needs some help with converting it or if you need some ideas for in-game I can always help on the forums or if I'm online on Steam. Good luck!
Many thanks! Will likely have to have a chat with you sometime. I admit, I know nothing of the actual technical side of things - the map may need to be edited and cut down if it doesn't work. A number of the outer walls are already flat, due to not wanting players to jump out of the map. It's an ambitious project, I'll admit, and Grace has a ton to do, but we'll see how it goes =)
I agree my kingdom ( vanilla XD) is in desperate need of a new map(s) to mix things up and add some, as you would say spice, to the gameplay. Looks like a good map!