Minecraft: Project Orhedge

[Dog Pants]

Grimmie came up with an idea last night which has inspired me enough to make me want to do it on my own if need be, but I think it would be an awesome 5punky project which would have some use at the end too. People may or may not know that the world in which Grimmie runs his D&D game is quite detailed, and of his own design. There are maps and backgrounds and politics. The first bit is the bit that interests me with regards to Minecraft though. Last night we vaguely chatted about making Orhedge in-game. I propose we extend that to making the whole known world. Not only will we have a big 5punky project to play with, but once done anyone interested in visiting the places we visit in the D&D campaign can have a look. I did this with his second adventure (Dungeon Siege), and it was surreal but rather entertaining to walk around a place you've previously constructed in your mind from maps.

We have a couple of starting issues, and it warrants planning if it's going to be a large scale project. Firstly is the terrain - Minecraft generates it randomly, so we could end up with a sea where the Dwarven city should be. This could be overcome by either careful siting (which could take a long time, unless we could use one of those map viewer things), creating a new world with some editing, or just adapting Grimworld to fit what's there (but it wouldn't be as accurate and as such wouldn't be as uncanny). We also have stuff built already, which won't fit with the world, and also I don't think it's fair stopping people using the MC server for playing Minecraft while some of us build this. I don't know if you can have multiple instances of the server running, if not we might just have to go out into the wilderness so there's seperation between 5punkybuilds and this project. Lastly, we need to know what we're building. We can all see the Orhedge map, and I know there's a world map somewhere. Grimmie also has a map of another city. The rest, I would suggest, is up to Grimmie to direct us.

Like I say, I fancy having a go at this even if nobody else joins in, but I'm sure there will be others that fancy a big project.

EDIT: Map linky - http://www.5punk.co.uk/b3ta/Pants/Orhedge%20Overlay.jpg

[Joose]

I love big projects, so this sounds awesome.

I think starting with Orhedge and working our way out from there would probably be best, as its less likely for us to encounter weird scaling issues, where someone has miscounted blocks or whatever.

The starting location thing is an issue. making a new world via editing seems like cheating to me: if you are going to edit the terrain to match, you might as well edit the world to make the buildings too. Adapting grimworld seems wrong too, as then we would just be making something thats a bit like Orhedge, rather than making orhedge. I vote for careful siting. Of course, its going to be impossible for us to make that work for the whole damn world; even with the best starting spot possible we are going to hit a point somewhere where terraforming will be needed. But thats part of the fun, if you ask me.

Biomes could be an interesting problem, mind.

As far as the other people constructions go, I think as long as we site the starting point (orhedge) far enough away, it will take us a good long time to get to anything existing. When we do, we can either:

1)see if the person is still bothered. People have a natural tendancy to get bored of their own creations after a while, and it would probably take a while to get to them, so they may not mind thier houses being demolished for the Greater Good
2) if they are thematically appropriate enough, and in a bit of the Grimworld that isnt already a major landmark, Grimmie could just include them in his world. Have it going both ways. Obviously, this would only work for certain kinds of buildings, and would be entirely up to Grim. A medieval style castle on a hill would probably be fine, a slightly weirdly constructed tower could be passed off as the works of a mad wizard, but a giant statue of Mario is probably not going to work in a D&D setting.

Of course, there is also a decent chance that this build will run out of steam before we make the *entire* world, so as long as we start pretty far away I don't imagine it will ever be an issue.

Are we aiming at a 1:1 scale? Please can we?

[Dog Pants]

Are we aiming at a 1:1 scale? Please can we?

That was certainly my plan. No point having an epic project if it isn't going to be epic.

I'm rendering the current world now so that will probably make scouting a lot easier.

EDIT: Got it. Huge snow biome to the east might be restrictive. We need to explore more.

[Joose]

snow biome could just be Grimworld in a Grimwinter...

[Dog Pants]

True. This afternoon I'm going to explore anyway. I'll also go try to find a rough scale, which shouldn't be too hard as 1 block I roughly equal to 1m.

[Grimmie]

The rest, I would suggest, is up to Grimmie to direct us.

Oh fuck.

I think the biggest challenges are going to be the "Cities". Highmeadow (elven) and some dwarven one on a huge hill somewhere.
The little pass over the river where you all bought your horses from should be quite sweet, and making the huge forests from Green Shell Suit will be interesting.

Is this something we torture ourselves making in survival mode, or switch to creative for?

Would it be worth generating a flat map and starting from there, putting weather, hills etc in, or are we gonna do HARDCORE mode and work with what we have?

[spoodie]

I don't really understand what you're talking about but:

1) I'm not precious about my little house, could be removed. I just want the resources I've gathered so far, if we keep the same world.
2) A flat world comes with slimes guaranteed. Just something to bear in mind.
3) MCedit is rather a good application these days, easy to use and effective. If you want to tweak a world on a large scale.

[Dog Pants]

Creative mode is for suckers, hardcore miners play in normal. Well, hardcore, but not in MP.

Problem with generating a flat map is, as said before, it requires a new map. You also have the issue of actually filling it with believable landcape. Way I see it we can realistically go two ways:

1. Exact replica of Grimworld
Creative mode, separate server with a generated but edited map to resemble the world, made to scale. That would be quite an undertaking but it would be the most epic, and would be a fantastic tool to have in the Grimpaign not to mention a lovely MC server. The issue are it needs more initial effort - another server, someone to work out how to use the map editing mods, then actually create the landscape. Once that's done it would probably go pretty well, but there's a chance people will get bored before that.

2. Approximation of Grimworld
Normal mode built in our own server. The terrain doesn't match so compromises would have to be made, but the rough scales could be kept and the cities would be pretty close. It only requires some scouting about to set up, so people could pretty much pile straight in. The build would be harder because of the limited resources in normal mode.

Actually, Spoodie's post (while writing this) makes me think, could we edit an ungenerated part of the current server and have a combination of both options?

[Grimmie]

I guess half the "fun" is acquiring the resources, like the huge digs we did for isengard. Leveling mountains and plateaus that are in the way of a town is a good way to get an enormous stone stockpile for walls, later, so it might even be worth finding somewhere hilly to flatten instead of a flat area to build up from?

You can switch creative on and off if you're a mod, right? I can only see that being useful for super-rare stuff like lapis or cocoa beans for use in dying wool. Spawning in diamond tools willy nilly just feels sort of cheap, when you don't have to work for it. More fun would be a huge mining effort (perhaps at a dwarven town?) where we rally back iron ingots and diamonds for use by the construction team.

Thoughts?

[Dog Pants]

Well funnily enough, last night's construction reminded me of building a dwarven city,with the underground farms and mines. Starting with the dwarven city would give us a good base and lots of resources for the other places.

[fabyak]

Count me in!

[Joose]

Well funnily enough, last night's construction reminded me of building a dwarven city,with the underground farms and mines. Starting with the dwarven city would give us a good base and lots of resources for the other places.

Actually, that's a damn good plan, as it would give us plenty of stone for the other places.

I guess half the "fun" is acquiring the resources, like the huge digs we did for isengard.

Personally, this. Starting with a flatworld, editing maps or using creative mode might be easier, but surely the fact its harder not to makes it more satisfying when things get completed?

Plus, if we use a normally auto-generated world, we don't have to put in *all* the hills and forests by hand. A flatword would be easier for the cities, but the vast majority of a world would be countryside, and that's not an easy thing to fake by hand.

[Dog Pants]

I'm currently flying around mapping the area around where we are. A little bit cheaty maybe, but it's a means to an end so we can actually get started. Once I think I've got enough generated I'll post here so we can start looking for sites.

[Dog Pants]

Okay, I've been scouting and mapped out an area around the spawn:



The spawn is where the little house in the middle is. To the south is the communal mountain fortress. That's 25,000 chunks right there, probably about 3-4km. I think making a several hundred mile wide country might be a bit too ambitious, but we can start off with Orhedge or High Kyrke. The Grimworld map is jere, by the way.

The big mountains on the far left edge might be a good starting place for High Kyrke (which can then expand westwards away from the spawn), or maybe the hilly area directly right of the spawn after the snow for the Orllyn area in the far west of Grimland.

[FatherJack]

Starting in the west makes us closer to Orhedge, which we have a map for. I wonder how hard it would be to do the roads and put signs where the villages are going to be, yet keep the scale correct for when we put the buildings and streets in. Orhedge is just a small square on the big map, but it's pretty large in blocks if we make all those buildings big enough to walk around in.

[Dog Pants]

I was wondering a similar things. We can at least mark the roads out, maybe cobble for main and gravel for minor. About the dimensions, rather than measuring it in the huge scales of miles, we know that Market Throp is a day's walk from Orhedge. We could use in-game days for that and use it as a unit of measurement, which keeps scales manageable.

[Grimmie]

We could also do a compressed version of the world, sort of las Vegas style where all the structures are the correct size, but the distances between them are drastically reduced. That would mean that the forests suddenly become much more manageable.

[Anery]

I'm currently flying around mapping the area

Flying flying or running around?

Also, I am down with this shit

[Dog Pants]

I was flying flying, but now I'm back to my normal mortal self.

[Dog Pants]

After some consideration I have drawn two conclusions:

1. We will never get a normal MC world to look like anything other than Minecraft.

2. Fuck it, we'll build it wherever.

With that in mind I have selected the site circled on the (please refresh) map. It's fairly clear, it's temperate (so we can grow the crops for the farms outside), and it's about three days walk from the spawn.