~The MCME Times~ #20/16 - Unlight the Beacons!?

Opening statement

So as you may have discovered some of the past issues of the MCME Times have turned out a bit meagre in content. This may have been to some extent because of lack of available material (aka nothing significant has happened that week) or lack of time on my side, respectively me deciding a release at least as close to sunday as possible is better than a bit more content. Now for this week I really wanted to make again an issue stuffed with more... stuff. And things. An issue with more stuff and things! Are you already excited what the stuff and the things are? Yeah, sure you are, so read on already!
​

Whats Up?

​

Breaking News: Unlight the Beacons!?

Today @Mandos approached me with that at the time our server is set the Beacons should be unlit, in fact they would not be lit for another 18 years! Thus I am asking you guys in the second question of the above double-poll: Should we unlight the beacons as would be correct in the lore, or should we leave them lit for aesthetic reasons?​

Project Progress

Andrast (In Progress) - Lead: @jacenpeter

Past few days was exciting now that wroxxite has joined the team and got to work immediately. So now wroxxite is working on the stretch of mountains leading up to ras morthil, while I am working on finishing up the northern sections. Hopefully now progress will increase so much within the next few weeks that all this update will say in the near future is "done".
- Jacenpeter
​

Anfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @kisos

The terrain has barely set and already new towns and fortifications are sprucing up in northern Anfalas. Check out the screens above for those majestic locations!
​

Belfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @Thijs1801

While @Eriol_Eandur continues on his beautiful terrain work, @toeyoman, @Darki190 and I have been working on the details in the Valley of Steelmoar. The town itself is coming to an end and looks amazing. Darki has started work on Silverbay, wich is located at the end of the streams. I myself have been working on the vegetation, with trees and grass and stuff (you know what it is).
- Thijs1801
​

Lamedon (In Progress) - Lead: @Eriol_Eandur

The southern beacons from Minas Tirith to Belfalas have been laid out and will now subsequently be constructed.
​

Misty Mountains (In Progress) - Lead: @Finrod_Amandil

Yay finally I really made some major progress again! I have finished preparing the Gladden Fields now and will hopefully soon and often run jobs there! Additionally I have been continueing fine terraforming the eastern banks, a really arduous task, but lately I've found some great Pen & Paper Let's plays on Youtube, which are fantastic to listen to when doing such work.
​

Tolfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @Tyranystrasz

No progress this week.
​

Valleys of Celos and Sirith (In Progress) - Lead: @Fireinferno13

Work this week concentrated on the terrain near the confluence of the two rivers Celos and Sirith. Mainly vegetation and river refining has been completed.
​

[Public Project] Fennas Drúnin (In Progress) - Lead: @thomasd16

One farm is done and another has just started which is being done by Toey. Wroxxite is now doing the farm terrain as Thijs is busy with Belfalas. I have spent all weekend detailing all the streets in Fennas and updating them with a new style myself and they are all done. All that's left now is the town square and market. Next up will be the wall.
- thomasd17
​

Plugin Development

Animation Plugin (In Progress) - Dev: @Ivan1pl

No progress this week.
​

Plotbuild Plugin (Testing in progress) - Devs: @Eriol_Eandur & @Ivan1pl

q220 has installed the updated version of the Plugin on the by now on Minecraft 1.9.4 dev server. We had a pretty intense testing session and did find quite a lot of things. But to not only let you down with this vague descriptions, here's the full chronological list of things, according to my chat log, so that it's a bit easier for all of you to see for once, what kind of things can appear with a WIP plugin, how much thought and time we put into making it nothing less than perfect, and ultimately so that you can see why developping a plugin takes so long:

• When setting the corners of a 3D plot, the message for "second point set" appears twice.
• Wish to add a way to set corners via command if the corners are not accessible. Similar to WorldEdit //pos1 x,y,z.
• 3D plots sometimes place the plot sign ontop of the plot, which may cause that the sign may be inside another plot --> Change so that sign is always inside the plot it belongs to.
• Tested features of private plotbuilds. Works as it is supposed to.
• /plot history always displays first page, even when a number for other pages is given.
• When two 3D plots are right next to each other they share some of their borders, however if the first of the two plots is accepted and it's borders deleted the second plot is missing some borders where there would be space to place some. --> Redraw plot borders in such a case.
• Connected to the above: The /plot sign command should not redraw the borders as they were when the plot was created, but instead do again the collision check and generate fresh borders.
• Intensely tested locking and unlocking plotbuilds.
• Tested offline messages (telling you what happened with your plots while you were offline) which had to be changed to be 1.9 compatible. Worked as supposed to.
• A LOT of spelling mistakes, spelling conventions (e.g. naming the PlotBuild plugin everywhere PlotBuild, and plotbuild if it's about a specific plot) and similar.
• Tested plot restoring with entities.
• Discussed changing saving the plot state when plot is claimed instead of when plot is created. Allows staff to add changes in the plot before it is claimed (e.g. change house outlines) so that it will also be restored if someone claims a plot and then unclaims it again.
• Connected to the above: To avoid people spamming /plot claim and /plot unclaim and thus lagging the server as it always has to restore the plot, a limit of maximum 3 claims per minute per player will be set.

New New Player World (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur, Assistance: @_Luk

Also on this plugin changes are still being made; the brief summary of the latest changes Eriol gave me was "less questions and more explanations".
​

Minigames Plugin (Small fixes in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

No changes this week.
​

MCME-Architect (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

Eriol has finished the improved (clickable, tooltips...) messages and has tested them on his private server. By now it also has been installed on the MCME dev server and is about to get a final testing session.
As the plugin is now available again I was able to make a very short video of another very neat feature: Switching the server resource packs by command.


​

Resource Packs

Mordor Pack (In Progress) - Lead: @bender400

No progress this week.
​

Alternative Elvish Tools - Creator: @Wodleth

Wodleth has delighted us with an alternative set of textures for the golden tools. As it does not matter a lot from a building aspect I decided to put it up to a community vote which set we shall use from now on! Here are ingame images of both sets, please vote at the very top which set you'd prefer!

Current textures:

Wodleth's textures:

​

Flower Power - Creator: @Fireinferno13

Some of the flowers have been added to Github, but for the others still some checkups and similar are required.
​

New Texture Madness - Creator: @Despot666

Despot's new textures currently are up for discussion on the Staff forums; most of the new textures are intended for future regions like Forodwaith or Angmar, and we have to decide now whether we want to already add them or rather wait until we move closer towards these areas.
​

Rank Updates

@Wroxxite is the name I can present you since last weekend in green color! Long is the list of projects Wrox has laid his hands upon since he got Artist in November last year. Congratulations to you! Your name predestinates you to do a fantastic job at voxelling wroxxeling mountains!​

Media of the week

For me Minecraft 1.9 still feels like it was just released yesterday, still alread the first snapshot for Minecraft 1.10 was released, and it comes with all kinds of new features! Here's a pretty thorough rundown of pretty much everything, so if you want to remain up-to-date with the Minecraft development, check out these two vids:

​

Other news

Audiobook review

POH-TAY-TOES.
'nuff said.
​

Fanfiction #1: "Imperfection" by Linda Hoyland

Hereby I am invoking a new series for a special feature of the MCME Times: A short fanfiction story from the depths of the almighty internet. I will try picking stories about topics that are somewhat connected to the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit and elaborate on a not so-well known lore fact.

This week I present you a short scene from Aragorn's youth. Going by the name of Estel (Elvish for "Hope") he seeked refuge in Rivendell with his mother Gilraen where he then grew up.

Link to the story:
Stories of Arda - Lord of the Rings Fan-Fiction Archive


Do you like this kind of feature? If yes, what kind of fanfiction would you be keen on reading? Long or short? With which characters? Close to the lore or far away from the known areas and events?

​

Upcoming

Themed Build

Project Build 3 weeks - 2 weeks left.
Theme: Goblin-town
Resource Pack: Moria / Dwarven
Thread: #15/16 - [Project Build] Goblin-town
​

Scheduled Events

Audiobook session 15

We entered Ithilien last week, and we will remain in it for another week. We will be meeting carrying characters like Anborn and envy those beings who don't give a damn about whether that pool is now subjected to a no-swimming order or not.

As always: Saturday evening, 19:00 GMT.
​

Jobs & Plotbuilds

Jobs for next Saturday will be announced in this thread over the course of the week. Be sure to ask Designers for jobs at any time, maybe they can offer something!
​

Community Outreach

New Warp list on the MCME Wiki

I have a small update on this; we (Darki, Eriol and me) came up with the idea of improving our warp plugin so that you can maybe get a clickable warp list which will redirect you to a page with some information and maybe a fancy screenshot about the warp. So far only a mere idea, but a pretty fancy one.​

​

Closing statement

​

​

. .

Like our Planetminecraft page daily to help promoting MCME!​

 

[Mandos]

 

[Portalrules333]

Should we unlit the beacons?

First of all, I'm really sorry for my word OCD but it should be unlight not unlit.

I'm usually for staying accurate to the timeline, but in this case I don't think it's necessary.....it's not like having the beacons lit would create a massive time paradox or anything. Personally, the beacons just wouldn't be the same to me if they weren't lit, and they make for some great night shots. Plus, they help me out when I get lost in the mountains....

 

[mandolore100]

Like portal said the beacons make for some epic night shots

 

[samgamgee10]

For re-doing the elven textures, not all of the old textures on there is elven. What is going to happen to Herugrim? I know Orchist is cool and all, but to see the sword of the king of Rohan go is a bit depressing for me. Maybe move the king's armor to the chainmail armor slots, move Herugrim to the stone sword slot, get rid of the pitchfork and soldier of the Rohirrim armor, since you have the king's armor already for Rohan. Then put the elven textures in the golden tools and sword section, and maybe have wod make elven armor textures to go in the place of where the gondorian armor would have been, to make it more fitting.

I know, I know, its sounds really complicated, and the whole soldier of the Rohirrim armor and pitchfork are gone just over saving a sword texture, but to me, the golden armor of king Theoden will forever be incomplete without his sword.

 

[Ardelenia]

I'll stay out of the lit/unlit beacon discussion since I don't have any good reasons, but if we're talking about beacons again then I would like to request removal of the beacons between Edoras and Halifirien. The northern beacons currently break lore in three ways: they are lit, there are more than 7 between Amon Din and Halifirien (including the one at Minas Tirith), and that they go to Edoras. For the second issue, I think it is forgivable because we are limited by minecraft - if we only had the seven, there would be no hope of seeing one from the next, and that visual aspect would be ruined, lit or unlit. The beacons that go through Rohan are, as I see it, only there because of the movies. This is a more egregious reason to break lore, and even if we take structural inspiration from the movies I am under the impression that we like to follow the lore. I do not see any aesthetic benefit to having these beacons, nor is it related to our medium. Kindly reply if you agree.

Also, please don't get rid of the pitchfork

 

[samgamgee10]

Well then what level would you put the pitchfork with?

Because it doesn't really match with much, and I have no idea

 

[Ardelenia]

Well then what level would you put the pitchfork with?

Because it doesn't really match with much, and I have no idea

If you're referring to the categories I mentioned in game, it goes as follows.

Armor: Leather = Uruk-hai, Chain = Rohan, Iron = Gondor, Diamond = Dwarven, Gold = Elven
Swords and Tools: Wood = Uruk-Hai, Stone = Hobbit, Iron = Human, Diamond = Dwarven, Gold = Elven
I suppose the wood/stone/iron tools are debatable in their association, but the swords not so much. For me at least, not you.

 

[RubenPieterMark]

I mentioned that the leather armour in the Gondor rp also had the White Hand of Saruman on its cap. I don't know if Uruk-Hai from Saruman entered the Gondor rp region, but still the red eye would be a little more accurate. And of course there are tons and tons of coloured leather armour. I saw on YouTube that u can merge them very much so that u can make 12000 different colours of leather armour! I guess they would automatically change from the undyed leather armour with a colour correction to the coloured armour, but I'm not 100% sure. But if we could somehow use the coloured armour it would solve so much issues.

 

[Finrod_Amandil]

I mentioned that the leather armour in the Gondor rp also had the White Hand of Saruman on its cap. I don't know if Uruk-Hai from Saruman entered the Gondor rp region, but still the red eye would be a little more accurate. And of course there are tons and tons of coloured leather armour. I saw on YouTube that u can merge them very much so that u can make 12000 different colours of leather armour! I guess they would automatically change from the undyed leather armour with a colour correction to the coloured armour, but I'm not 100% sure. But if we could somehow use the coloured armour it would solve so much issues.

By crafting it may be limited to 12'000 colors, but with a command that will be accessible for everyone when the Architect plugin is out you can get armor using a HEX code, which makes it possible to get 16777216 different colors.

For all those of you that would miss Herugrim: This here may be a solution:

 

[RubenPieterMark]

By crafting it may be limited to 12'000 colors, but with a command that will be accessible for everyone when the Architect plugin is out you can get armor using a HEX code, which makes it possible to get 16777216 different colors.

For all those of you that would miss Herugrim: This here may be a solution:

Yeah! Nice with all the weapons but I don't think we can add them to the inventory right? But is it also possible to have more armour textures?

 

[Finrod_Amandil]

Yeah! Nice with all the weapons but I don't think we can add them to the inventory right? But is it also possible to have more armour textures?

Yes thats possible. You can get these weapons in vanilla mc with a command block, in MCME we surely can arrange a convenient solution if we decide to make use of this.

 

[RubenPieterMark]

Opening statement

So as you may have discovered some of the past issues of the MCME Times have turned out a bit meagre in content. This may have been to some extent because of lack of available material (aka nothing significant has happened that week) or lack of time on my side, respectively me deciding a release at least as close to sunday as possible is better than a bit more content. Now for this week I really wanted to make again an issue stuffed with more... stuff. And things. An issue with more stuff and things! Are you already excited what the stuff and the things are? Yeah, sure you are, so read on already!
​

Whats Up?

​

Breaking News: Unlight the Beacons!?

Today @Mandos approached me with that at the time our server is set the Beacons should be unlit, in fact they would not be lit for another 18 years! Thus I am asking you guys in the second question of the above double-poll: Should we unlight the beacons as would be correct in the lore, or should we leave them lit for aesthetic reasons?​

Project Progress

Andrast (In Progress) - Lead: @jacenpeter

Past few days was exciting now that wroxxite has joined the team and got to work immediately. So now wroxxite is working on the stretch of mountains leading up to ras morthil, while I am working on finishing up the northern sections. Hopefully now progress will increase so much within the next few weeks that all this update will say in the near future is "done".
- Jacenpeter
​

Anfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @kisos

The terrain has barely set and already new towns and fortifications are sprucing up in northern Anfalas. Check out the screens above for those majestic locations!
​

Belfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @Thijs1801

While @Eriol_Eandur continues on his beautiful terrain work, @toeyoman, @Darki190 and I have been working on the details in the Valley of Steelmoar. The town itself is coming to an end and looks amazing. Darki has started work on Silverbay, wich is located at the end of the streams. I myself have been working on the vegetation, with trees and grass and stuff (you know what it is).
- Thijs1801
​

Lamedon (In Progress) - Lead: @Eriol_Eandur

The southern beacons from Minas Tirith to Belfalas have been laid out and will now subsequently be constructed.
​

Misty Mountains (In Progress) - Lead: @Finrod_Amandil

Yay finally I really made some major progress again! I have finished preparing the Gladden Fields now and will hopefully soon and often run jobs there! Additionally I have been continueing fine terraforming the eastern banks, a really arduous task, but lately I've found some great Pen & Paper Let's plays on Youtube, which are fantastic to listen to when doing such work.
​

Tolfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @Tyranystrasz

No progress this week.
​

Valleys of Celos and Sirith (In Progress) - Lead: @Fireinferno13

Work this week concentrated on the terrain near the confluence of the two rivers Celos and Sirith. Mainly vegetation and river refining has been completed.
​

[Public Project] Fennas Drúnin (In Progress) - Lead: @thomasd16

One farm is done and another has just started which is being done by Toey. Wroxxite is now doing the farm terrain as Thijs is busy with Belfalas. I have spent all weekend detailing all the streets in Fennas and updating them with a new style myself and they are all done. All that's left now is the town square and market. Next up will be the wall.
- thomasd17
​

Plugin Development

Animation Plugin (In Progress) - Dev: @Ivan1pl

No progress this week.
​

Plotbuild Plugin (Testing in progress) - Devs: @Eriol_Eandur & @Ivan1pl

q220 has installed the updated version of the Plugin on the by now on Minecraft 1.9.4 dev server. We had a pretty intense testing session and did find quite a lot of things. But to not only let you down with this vague descriptions, here's the full chronological list of things, according to my chat log, so that it's a bit easier for all of you to see for once, what kind of things can appear with a WIP plugin, how much thought and time we put into making it nothing less than perfect, and ultimately so that you can see why developping a plugin takes so long:

• When setting the corners of a 3D plot, the message for "second point set" appears twice.
• Wish to add a way to set corners via command if the corners are not accessible. Similar to WorldEdit //pos1 x,y,z.
• 3D plots sometimes place the plot sign ontop of the plot, which may cause that the sign may be inside another plot --> Change so that sign is always inside the plot it belongs to.
• Tested features of private plotbuilds. Works as it is supposed to.
• /plot history always displays first page, even when a number for other pages is given.
• When two 3D plots are right next to each other they share some of their borders, however if the first of the two plots is accepted and it's borders deleted the second plot is missing some borders where there would be space to place some. --> Redraw plot borders in such a case.
• Connected to the above: The /plot sign command should not redraw the borders as they were when the plot was created, but instead do again the collision check and generate fresh borders.
• Intensely tested locking and unlocking plotbuilds.
• Tested offline messages (telling you what happened with your plots while you were offline) which had to be changed to be 1.9 compatible. Worked as supposed to.
• A LOT of spelling mistakes, spelling conventions (e.g. naming the PlotBuild plugin everywhere PlotBuild, and plotbuild if it's about a specific plot) and similar.
• Tested plot restoring with entities.
• Discussed changing saving the plot state when plot is claimed instead of when plot is created. Allows staff to add changes in the plot before it is claimed (e.g. change house outlines) so that it will also be restored if someone claims a plot and then unclaims it again.
• Connected to the above: To avoid people spamming /plot claim and /plot unclaim and thus lagging the server as it always has to restore the plot, a limit of maximum 3 claims per minute per player will be set.

New New Player World (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur, Assistance: @_Luk

Also on this plugin changes are still being made; the brief summary of the latest changes Eriol gave me was "less questions and more explanations".
​

Minigames Plugin (Small fixes in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

No changes this week.
​

MCME-Architect (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

Eriol has finished the improved (clickable, tooltips...) messages and has tested them on his private server. By now it also has been installed on the MCME dev server and is about to get a final testing session.
As the plugin is now available again I was able to make a very short video of another very neat feature: Switching the server resource packs by command.


​

Resource Packs

Mordor Pack (In Progress) - Lead: @bender400

No progress this week.
​

Alternative Elvish Tools - Creator: @Wodleth

Wodleth has delighted us with an alternative set of textures for the golden tools. As it does not matter a lot from a building aspect I decided to put it up to a community vote which set we shall use from now on! Here are ingame images of both sets, please vote at the very top which set you'd prefer!

Current textures:

Wodleth's textures:

​

Flower Power - Creator: @Fireinferno13

Some of the flowers have been added to Github, but for the others still some checkups and similar are required.
​

New Texture Madness - Creator: @Despot666

Despot's new textures currently are up for discussion on the Staff forums; most of the new textures are intended for future regions like Forodwaith or Angmar, and we have to decide now whether we want to already add them or rather wait until we move closer towards these areas.
​

Rank Updates

@Wroxxite is the name I can present you since last weekend in green color! Long is the list of projects Wrox has laid his hands upon since he got Artist in November last year. Congratulations to you! Your name predestinates you to do a fantastic job at voxelling wroxxeling mountains!​

Media of the week

For me Minecraft 1.9 still feels like it was just released yesterday, still alread the first snapshot for Minecraft 1.10 was released, and it comes with all kinds of new features! Here's a pretty thorough rundown of pretty much everything, so if you want to remain up-to-date with the Minecraft development, check out these two vids:

​

Other news

Audiobook review

POH-TAY-TOES.
'nuff said.
​

Fanfiction #1: "Imperfection" by Linda Hoyland

Hereby I am invoking a new series for a special feature of the MCME Times: A short fanfiction story from the depths of the almighty internet. I will try picking stories about topics that are somewhat connected to the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit and elaborate on a not so-well known lore fact.

This week I present you a short scene from Aragorn's youth. Going by the name of Estel (Elvish for "Hope") he seeked refuge in Rivendell with his mother Gilraen where he then grew up.

Link to the story:
Stories of Arda - Lord of the Rings Fan-Fiction Archive


Do you like this kind of feature? If yes, what kind of fanfiction would you be keen on reading? Long or short? With which characters? Close to the lore or far away from the known areas and events?

​

Upcoming

Themed Build

Project Build 3 weeks - 2 weeks left.
Theme: Goblin-town
Resource Pack: Moria / Dwarven
Thread: #15/16 - [Project Build] Goblin-town
​

Scheduled Events

Audiobook session 15

We entered Ithilien last week, and we will remain in it for another week. We will be meeting carrying characters like Anborn and envy those beings who don't give a damn about whether that pool is now subjected to a no-swimming order or not.

As always: Saturday evening, 19:00 GMT.
​

Jobs & Plotbuilds

Jobs for next Saturday will be announced in this thread over the course of the week. Be sure to ask Designers for jobs at any time, maybe they can offer something!
​

Community Outreach

New Warp list on the MCME Wiki

I have a small update on this; we (Darki, Eriol and me) came up with the idea of improving our warp plugin so that you can maybe get a clickable warp list which will redirect you to a page with some information and maybe a fancy screenshot about the warp. So far only a mere idea, but a pretty fancy one.​

​

Closing statement

​

​

. .

Like our Planetminecraft page daily to help promoting MCME!​

How do u change the rp back again to the regional rp

 

[RubenPieterMark]

Yes thats possible. You can get these weapons in vanilla mc with a command block, in MCME we surely can arrange a convenient solution if we decide to make use of this.

Awesome

 

[Eriol_Eandur]

How do u change the rp back again to the regional rp

The command is not really intended for use at main build world but for plotworld and themed builds.

The command works with server textures enabled only. Regional rp switching will still occur when you pass a rp region border. So for example, if you switch to Eriador pack with '/rp e' at Isengard you will have Eriador pack as long as you stay in Rohan resource region. When you walk/fly/teleport to another region your rp will be switched automatically.

 

[samgamgee10]

This is perfect!! If you really can do this with armor, when the server updates to 1.9, we could have thousands of different armor for all the different regions, like Laketown armor, All the differet orc armor (Uruk-ai, Moria orc, and Mordor Orc) and maybe add some istari staffs to go with everything!!!!

 

[Finrod_Amandil]

Any opinions on the new fanfiction section? More of this or do you find that idea rather meh?

 

[Ardelenia]

Any opinions on the new fanfiction section? More of this or do you find that idea rather meh?

I like it.

Also, shamelessly bumping the main part of my previous post which seems to have gotten overshadowed by texture discussions. Beacons to Rohan? Yea or nay?

 

[RubenPieterMark]

Any opinions on the new fanfiction section? More of this or do you find that idea rather meh?

If u Mean the story, i liked it!

 

[RubenPieterMark]

I like it.

Also, shamelessly bumping the main part of my previous post which seems to have gotten overshadowed by texture discussions. Beacons to Rohan? Yea or nay?

Imo there shouldn't be beacons in Edoras.