Minecraft / Space Quest Server.. asking for your thoughts

[ChrisPope]

Minecraft Server that recreates scenes of the Space Quest series http://bit.ly/sqminecraft

[pcj]

Sounds like fun!

[mjomble]

Very much yes :P

 

The thought I had in another thread was to just have a regular server for the community to build stuff (possibly SQ themed, like giant plunger-shaped towers and statues of Roger, etc), but this looks interesting as well.

 

Would it still be open for all to modify as they please or would it be more of a pre-built world that we can explore and interact with in pre-defined ways?

Also, can you tell us more about those screenshots of a Minecraft Kerona map + texture pack posted on the Two Guys site?

[ChrisPope]

I made this a few months ago while playing mindcraft with my kids. I was working with Scott(before "The Two" made up) on his personal website we planned to launch. Already had planned to try something similar when his site went live. Makes even more sense now with the way things played out.

 

I have the minecraft world saved as well as the texture pack I made. I want there to have areas where people can build what they please, but I would like to have a place where people can work towards making the different scenes as accurately as possible. Both Scott and Mark are interested in interacting with fans there and I would want it to be brilliant, as I'm sure all of you would. The textures I made were colors copied from screenshots from the game. I'm not the most artistic person in the world so I'm sure things could be improved.

 

WHAT I REALLY NEED:

 

To know you guys are interested in this. As well as someone that is knowledgeable about managing a multiuser minecraft server. I would need people that could help keep the server and plugins up to date. The Guys From Andromeda company is willing to flip the bill for the server for awhile as long as there is enough interest. I will give admin rights to certain people to help control and police things. Please email me if you're interested ( chris AT guysfromandromeda DOT com )

 

Thanks guys!

 

-Chris

[pcj]

I have experience with managing and maintaining a Bukkit Minecraft server, so if that's what you intend to use, I'm up for it.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm totally stoked for it!

[mjomble]

Please email me if you're interested ( chris AT guysfromandromeda DOT com )

Done :P

 

I want there to have areas where people can build what they please, but I would like to have a place where people can work towards making the different scenes as accurately as possible.

Awesome.

 

Are you thinking of having the regular build area on a separate server from the stuff meant to be used with the SQ texture pack(s) or on the same one?

 

I guess if the texture pack replaces the look of common blocks like dirt, wood, stone, etc, it'd have to be separate.

 

Or, it could be all in one server, but there'd be special areas where specific texture packs are strongly recommended. For example, if you go in with the default textures, the Kerona area looks weird, but you can engage in regular gameplay in the wilderness. And if you load up the SQ1 texture pack, the Kerona area looks okay, but regular gameplay outside of that place would be surreal.

 

Another upside is that you'd be able to chat with all players, regardless of where they are and which texture pack they have.

Splitting the whole thing into multiple servers could fragment things too much, leaving fewer players in each.

 

Alternatively, we could just stick to the regular texture pack and use that to build SQ locations with less accurate colours. The different shades of wool should provide quite a flexible range.

[MusicallyInspired]

There's a way with bukkit (I think it's bukkit) to make portals to different worlds all on the same server. This can work because Minecraft can already do this with the Nether in SMP. The Minecraft Workbench server, for instance, has several worlds running at once. The regular world, the Nether, and a creative world. One need only step in the correct portal. I'm not sure of the hardware requirements of such a setup for the server, but it is possible.

[pcj]

Aye, you can do that, or if you're just looking to connect them by chat, there are plugins to have shared chat channels between servers.

[mjomble]

Sweet.

 

I also just remembered about Spout which should allow controlling the texture pack via server plugins, as long as the player has Spout installed on the client side as well.

However, I've never tried it and I'm not sure if that's already possible or planned for a future release.

[mjomble]

Any news on this?

[pcj]

@MusicallyInspired is working with @ChrisPope on it.

[MusicallyInspired]

Indeed. I'm going to post more about this and the plans we are making tonight, but I've gotta head out the door right now.

[MusicallyInspired]

I've got Chris's source files and I'm trying to put together a decent server setting which I can then send back to Chris to put onto his server to, uh......serve. Before that happens we'll need to have some stuff finished already. I don't think I'd be against the idea of some of the community helping build it, but I'd like to have at least some stuff finished in advance. The idea is to have multiple worlds using Multiverse for visiting the various areas of each SQ game. We'd start with SQ1 and work our way up to at least SQ4 (the last one the Two Guys worked on together) but if there's enough interest, creating the last two wouldn't be out of the question either. But one thing at a time. The server would be more like a hangout/museum type of thing where you generally won't be able to build, unless you're a trusted community member with special building privileges helping to build the various SQ areas. You'd also be limited to these specific areas in the worlds and won't be able to go beyond the borders.

 

I'm not opposed to creation abilities if we can find a good way to make it work. Maybe an alternate world for fan creation. But that can make file size large and the idea is to keep it small for Chris's server. The original intent was to be more of a chat room/hangout where we could explore the SQ areas. Maybe even hang out with the Two Guys every now and then. And given the possibility of linking the Minecraft server chat with an IRC channel, that's an even more exciting prospect.

 

In this light, what kinds of features would everyone like to see implemented in a SQ Minecraft server? Any other ideas?

[mjomble]

I'd really like an area/dimension/sub-server/whatever for regular Minecraft gameplay.

Walking around in a museum would get boring pretty quickly.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ok, so would it be safe to assume that's the general consensus across the board? (a separate creative world for players to build) If we do go ahead and do something like that, it would probably come later after the various SQ worlds are built, with help from some trusted members. Then we can focus on where to take it after that. Whether to make it Creative or Survival, for instance, what kind of limitations it would have to have, etc. But that will have to come later when see just how popular the whole idea would be. 4 or 6 games of near completely replicated game content in Minecraft will be a lot of work and will take some time as well.

 

Speaking of which, I'd like to make a formal call to anyone here interested in helping out with the server as a mod, admin, builder, or if you have something else in mind. I'd also like to know what specific features people would like to see. Special mods or something that might make things interesting maybe. Just to get some general feedback. I'm putting things together but am still in the beginning stages of planning what plugins would work best, how to go about planning a group building session, etc. Whether each game should take place in their own worlds, or if each area from each game should have their own world (as in which would be more efficient for file size costs). Should the replicated worlds be aesthetic only or involve interaction via redstone etc to trigger events from different games. Anything you can think of, let me know.

[pcj]

I'd definitely be in favor for a separate world that lets us create stuff. Not sure about the Creative/Survival breakdown - I usually stick to Survival in vanilla Minecraft implementations, but this is kind of special I guess.

 

I'd be up for helping as an admin as well.

[mjomble]

I guess there's so many small details that this would be better discussed in chat.

pcj and I can be regularly found in #sq and I also created #sqmc on the same server (Freenode) for this.

[mjomble]

Did some experimenting and ended up with a local test server with the following features:

 

* Multiple worlds on the same server.

* Portals that teleport you between worlds.

* When teleporting to certain worlds, your texture pack is changed.

 

Client side requirements:

Spoutcraft - Downloaded from http://get.spout.org/, works like the regular Minecraft launcher (at least on Windows). The textures, etc are fully managed by the server, so the player doesn't need to manage anything else.

 

Server side requirements:

Craftbukkit, Multiverse-Core, Multiverse-Portals, SpoutPlugin, TexturePackMenu and a simple custom plugin I wrote that connects the portal plugin to the texture pack plugin.

 

So here's my suggestion:

 

A server with up to eight worlds:

1-6. One world per SQ game, each with their own custom texture pack. Limited building rights.

7. Regular gameplay, survival mode

8. Regular gameplay, creative mode

 

There would be portals connecting the worlds; the SQ game specific textures would be applied automatically as you enter each world and unloaded as you leave.

 

The SQ worlds would probably remain fairly small (we can probably limit exploration), so the relatively large number of worlds shouldn't cause any filesize issues.

 

I can help set all of this up on a server if we get one running.

[pcj]

Hmm, Brandon was looking forward to the upcoming patch which would let servers manage client-side textures but Spout sounds nice. We got some plugins going last night on his server. Hopefully we can get something going by this weekend if Spout works out though. :y:

[MusicallyInspired]

I need to talk more with Chris about the Survival/Creative Minecraft worlds possibility. He was worried about bandwidth and the worlds being too large to stream to members. I don't think we could swing both Survival and Creative worlds. It would have to be one and it would have to be fairly restricted, somewhat like Minecraft Workbench. But that would all come after the regular SQ worlds are built. For now we'll focus on the game worlds. Maybe do one at a time for now.

 

The texture-altering plugin sounds like a good idea. I was thinking of using EternalTime or something similar to keep all the space-venue worlds night time permanently. In doing so, though, they would have to be separate worlds each. But they could be relatively small as we could use a map editor to remove everything from the world except the construction itself.

 

The custom plugin you made would be handy! In fact, everything you've put together is mostly exactly what I figured we'd need. Chris also has dynmap installed in the one he gave me. I also got IRCTransport, WorldEdit, and PermissionsBukkit.

[mjomble]

Could you drop by #sqmc? :)

 

I'm okay with just having a survival server for regular gameplay.

 

However, as far as bandwidth goes, it's mainly affected by the number of players and not much by the number of worlds.

Minecraft only streams to each player a relatively small area that surrounds them, rather than the full world (or worlds).

So, for example, streaming from eight worlds to eight players would take less bandwidth than streaming from one world to twenty players.

 

The main cost of multiple worlds would be disk space, but that's the cheapest resource. A few gigabytes can hold huge worlds, we might never need that much.

 

There'd also be more CPU drain, although that can also be more affected by the number of players, especially if the players are far apart from each other.

 

So if you're worried about server resources, I'd focus on limiting the number of concurrent players rather than worlds.

 

Also, how about starting the regular gameplay earlier and keeping it running while the remaining SQ worlds are being built? I can't think of good reasons for postponing that.

[MusicallyInspired]

 

Been working on this A LOT the past couple of days. It's almost set up and ready to go. There's a welcome hub with a couple portals to the current SQ1 worlds and another to a community survival world. Just a few things to iron out with Chris and it should be good to go soon.