Opening statement
I am very sorry that you always have to read so much about the new RP, I hope I am not boring you too much with it
But now it's high time that you are getting excited about the new pack! We're almost there and the Dol Amroth team is already using the half-baked version of it to assemble some house concepts. As special feature of today's Times I want to introduce you a bit more closely to the behind the scenes of the new RP. Believe me, it really is revolutionary what Eriol developped here. Of course, mods with massively increased inventories are here since as there is Minecraft itself. But a solution with solely plugins, and no client-side mods that everyone has to install, is something that is still unheard of.
Project Progress
Dol Amroth house concepts using the new Resource Pack
Andrast (In Progress) - Lead: @jacenpeter
Jacen has now completely buried what once was known as Ship Breaker Island. Instead there now rise awe-inspiring cliffs, and behind them some of the most fantastic landscapes MCME ever had to offer.
Belfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @Thijs1801
With a pre-release version of the new RP being shared among staff, some first drafts were made for how the houses in Dol Amroth might look like. What do you think? Do you like this new kind of style or rather not? Either way it will still be discussed and probably changed here and there. Give your opinion in the poll above!
Lamedon (In Progress) - Lead: @_Luk
No changes this week.
Mordor Terrain (In Progress) - Lead: @Tyranystrasz
No news this week.
Moria (In Progress) - Lead: @Despot666
Texture DevelopmentJacen has now completely buried what once was known as Ship Breaker Island. Instead there now rise awe-inspiring cliffs, and behind them some of the most fantastic landscapes MCME ever had to offer.
A great deal of progress in Belfalas! The very time-consuming manual smoothing of the beautifully rolling hills is taking big steps forward these days, the plotbuild plugin is wielded by the new Foremen to make it possible for Adventurers+ to also lay hand on these hillsides. Furthermore a lot of terrain has been converted to sand and already been brought to a near final shape.
Dol Amroth (In Progress) - Lead: @Eaglz24With a pre-release version of the new RP being shared among staff, some first drafts were made for how the houses in Dol Amroth might look like. What do you think? Do you like this new kind of style or rather not? Either way it will still be discussed and probably changed here and there. Give your opinion in the poll above!
No changes this week.
No news this week.
From Moria Reporter @SmaugJuice
Over the past two weeks, there has been a good amount of progress in Moria. In Fire's hall, ooits has been running jobs and great progress there has been made as well as some 'sexy looking' floors! It is now almost done and ready to be ruined. In Ivan's hall there has been some ruining jobs and there are at least 18 rooms that are now ready to be ruined in jobs. Bender has made some small but good looking places in his training grounds, hopefully more will be built there soon.
Furthermore, I have been informed by Beathaven that the Chamber of Light is almost complete! Since the last edition of 'The MCME Times,' a new cargo area and some aqueducts have been made. By the next edition of The Times, CoL may be finished.
Tolfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @TyranystraszOver the past two weeks, there has been a good amount of progress in Moria. In Fire's hall, ooits has been running jobs and great progress there has been made as well as some 'sexy looking' floors! It is now almost done and ready to be ruined. In Ivan's hall there has been some ruining jobs and there are at least 18 rooms that are now ready to be ruined in jobs. Bender has made some small but good looking places in his training grounds, hopefully more will be built there soon.
Furthermore, I have been informed by Beathaven that the Chamber of Light is almost complete! Since the last edition of 'The MCME Times,' a new cargo area and some aqueducts have been made. By the next edition of The Times, CoL may be finished.
No changes this week.
Valley of Erui (In Progress) - Lead: @Mandos
Mandos at last got down to reconnect the stream coming down from the slopes near Minas Tirith. Additionally he made a new farm that besides boring wheat is growing Lavender plants, definitely a luxury product the noble women of closeby Pelargir are screaming for!
No new textures have been submitted recently. I have gathered all the ideas that I once had during the sorting-out phase of making the new RP, and maybe some of them will still be added to the pack in a future update.
Animation Plugin (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Ivan1pl
Rank UpdatesTesting due to be done. Hope I can get to this soon, because then the plugin should be pretty much ready for implementation.
Custom inventories / itemblocks (In progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur
For a long time, making a custom Resourcepack was pretty much identical with making textures. This is still a major part of it of course, but by far not the only one. Minecraft offers an incredible amount of options, many of which are untouched in most RP's. And we used pretty much every single technique you can possibly use in the new packs, and even extended it with custom plugins.
This also means, that there's way too much to this than that I could cover it all. Over the last half year I almost daily learned new things about all of this, and even in this late stage of creating the RP I am still discovering new things.
First off, here's a flowchart displaying what it takes for a block to show up ingame. The blue area marks the area which you'll actually see in the game, all the green stuff however is not visible, and serves to make the small blue part work...
(click to enlarge)
An insight into the various types of files, along with a little more explanations I did arrange here:
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
Now what still is left to do at this point are some of the rather large "Inventory configuration files" and the "Armor damage state files". These two are required to assemble the custom inventory and to make the itemblocks work. So far the regular blocks are already functioning, but many of them need Voxel or WorldEdit to access, that's why the custom inventory is absolutely vital.
Block analyse / replace / switch Plugin (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_EandurThis also means, that there's way too much to this than that I could cover it all. Over the last half year I almost daily learned new things about all of this, and even in this late stage of creating the RP I am still discovering new things.
First off, here's a flowchart displaying what it takes for a block to show up ingame. The blue area marks the area which you'll actually see in the game, all the green stuff however is not visible, and serves to make the small blue part work...
(click to enlarge)
An insight into the various types of files, along with a little more explanations I did arrange here:
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
Now what still is left to do at this point are some of the rather large "Inventory configuration files" and the "Armor damage state files". These two are required to assemble the custom inventory and to make the itemblocks work. So far the regular blocks are already functioning, but many of them need Voxel or WorldEdit to access, that's why the custom inventory is absolutely vital.
Eriol has released a major update to this plugin. It is a vital part in introducing the new RP's. The plugin is very versatile, but ofc in contrary a bit tricky to use, here's an excerpt of Eriol's explanations:
/block count <search_id1>[:<search_dv1> <search_id1>[:<search_dv1> ... [-m [mapName]] [-p <rp_letter>]
Seaches for one or several types of blocks. Results are displayed for each block type separately. If no <search_dv#> value is given zero is assumed for it. If a '?' is given as a <search_dv#> blocks of all data values are counted.
Without optional arguments [-m] and [-p] the current WorldsEdit selection (//sel cuboid or //sel poly) is used as seach area. Optional argument [-m] counts at the whole map area (as specified in the config.yml) of the current player world who issues the command or the whole map specified by name. Optional [-p] argument uses all defined rp regions for the specified rp as working area.
This week I give you a freshly baked and very eager and active new Guide: @SirEonwe! Congratulations!
Furthermore, our Ex-Artist greglas has made a very elaborate and impressive application to regain the Artist rank. After thorough discussion and a few staff meetings we at last have decided to grant him this wish and welcome him back!
Unfortunately I also have a resignation to announce, and that is mister @bobingvar. He excuses that he quickly needs to finish his studies, and he reassured me that he will be right back from this nasty task and do again what is important in life: Help building Middle-earth. Hope to see you again soon!
Furthermore it seems like the number of very active Artists is decreasing a little. How much this depends on the couple new Foremen we promoted and how much it is other factors is hard to tell, but anyway we are desperately looking for new Artists! So don't be shy and step forth! The Designers and I will gladly give you feedback on your builds and support you on gaining all the skills you'll need to be a great Minecraft builder!
All information on how to apply can be found here: Must Read - Artist Application Format
Media of the week
My absolute favorite this week is this shot made by our Guide @TI_020601:
Annúmnas
More here: TI's Screenies
Then once more we have a series of very nicely chosen screenshots in insane resolution made by @barteldvn:
Smailholm
More: barteldvn's screenies
WANTED: Moria Reporters!
At this point I'd like to thank Smaug (again!) a whole lot for speaking up as a helping hand when it comes to remaining on track with Moria progress! I still want to shout out to everyone of you reading these lines: I still would be incredibly glad if you would be interested in joining Smaug on this task! There's always something the other one won't notice...
WANTED: Short stories!
A couple days ago @mapthor reached out to me with the idea of making a book store in Bree, featuring a couple of his self-written short stories. I thought that this was a fantastic idea to bring an authentic sort of Easter Egg to the map. Before we can start re-furnishing one of the houses we need some stories though! So if you have something nice in mind, please write your story down and message it to me! The length is pretty irrelevant, all it has to be is authentic. That especially means:
- No items that would not exist in Middle-earth.
- No MCME player names.
- No conflicts with the known storylines.
I will also consider adding the short stories that were written a few years ago as part of a short story competition, although these are a lot longer than what we'd need to make it a useable story for the book store.
- No items that would not exist in Middle-earth.
- No MCME player names.
- No conflicts with the known storylines.
I will also consider adding the short stories that were written a few years ago as part of a short story competition, although these are a lot longer than what we'd need to make it a useable story for the book store.
Themed Build
The *new* Audiobook
The Audiobook, hosted by @TI_020601 is taking place regularily on saturday evenings, 8pm GMT, unless announced otherwise in this thread: The New Audio Book
Closing statement
As Head Designer I sometimes got into the situation of having to react on an Artist or above infringing the server rules. Something I pretty much always did is trying to view the matter from the other player's view. Today I found a nice quite about just that:
When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.
- Blaise Pascal
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