Opening statement

Project Progress

Texture Development
Plugin Development
Rank Updates

Media of the week
Staff Meeting #22 summary

Past Saturday evening we had our first meeting in 2017 (the last one was on December 30th) and as always we found an abundance of interesting topics to discuss about. Only few of the topics are of a nature which are concering single players and thus are not intended for the public, everything else (as far as I think it is important enough to spell out) I hereby open to you and gladly invite you to tune into the discussion!

We started with a quick look back, where we were at at the last meeting. At that point (2.5 months ago) we were in full swing discussing the new Foremen and Commoner ranks, in fact the last meeting was where the idea of the voting system was first brought up. In the meantime Eriol has developed the matching plugin and many Commoners and Foremen alike have been promoted. We also quickly reviewed the situation and can say that the Foremen are doing a fantastic job and as was the intention there now are a lot more jobs available than before.
In terms of the gianormous Resource Pack project we also could observe positive changes. While I underestimated the work it includes by many many times and have already given many release promises and could not hold them by much we could see that roughly 3 months back I was still planning the pack and have not actually created anything yet. By now, as you can see below, the pack is almost completely assembled and working like a charm.

The next topic was the one which is the most remarkable in my opinion. It is about ranks, especially the Artist rank. At this point in time 36 players technically hold the Artist rank. Over a third of them (13) has not logged on in over an entire month. Only 15 have logged on within the last week. Designers remarked it already quite a while ago and the numbers confirm it: The number of active Artists is dwindling. As a concrete measure we stated two ideas:

• Making the "how-to-apply" easier to find and maybe more attractive to read. Right now its a bit hidden where it is.
• Making the Applications publicly viewable. Right now it may well be that it is a bit uncomfortable if you have to make a post in a seemingly empty or abandoned forum, the contrary might be the case if you could check out other apps before you post your own. Furthermore as a spontanous idea we might even cross-reference feedback we give, so that applicants could check out the mistakes and progress others have made before.

Beside that I just want to strongly call out for both the new and old players, either to really consider heading for the Artist rank, or if you already have that, motivate others to do so!

The next topic was to some extent a bit personal. As a Head Designer it is one of my main tasks to closely supervise the projects and intervene whenever something takes a bit an odd direction. Due to me not having just as much time on my hands as I'd like to and me being very busy with the Resource Pack stuff I had to admit that I have been lacking a bit with this responsibility and I thought that a change was needed to get some more control over the project progression.
I voiced two ideas:

• Elect a second Head Designer, who would mainly focus on that project supervision, and beside that would rather work like Credoo, who was mainly working on projects himself (i.e. Minas Tirith and Pelargir). Once MCME had seven serving Valar, as opposed to the two we have now (me and Dyno). The big plus with only having one Head Designer is, that it is always one person seeing the entire picture and not a couple people who each only see a part of it. The downside obviously is that it is more work for that one Head Designer.
• Proper logging / reporting of the progress by the Designers. We have tried this numerous times in various ways, that all Designers working on any project summarise what they have been doing, so that it is easy for me to keep the overview and know at which part of the project I need to look to see the recent changes.

We elaborated on the second option. As medium we want to use Discord text channels, one for every bigger project, one for all the smaller ones and an additional one for plugin development. Discord seems to be very easy for quickly uploading pictures and most players have it on at all times anyway so the extra work for the Designers is as minimal as possible. Thinking about it now I think it is best to make it a sort of official change in the Designer task portfolio, that Designers being obliged to report their work is a fix part of the rank. Because without a proper way to have some overall control over what's happening in the different corners in the world the project might stray apart too far from each other (i.e. in terrain style) and cause some very hard to fix conflicts on the map.
Additionally it makes the project progress a bit easier to grasp for the non-staff members and probably make the community feel more active generally.

Something I do want to change on my own end though is to be quicker on replying on Forum PM's and important discussions.

We then went through the ongoing projects, on some we could not say a lot as the respective leaders were not online. The main discussion points were Dol Amroth and Moria.
In DA the big challenge is of course the new house style. As most of you confirmed with last Times' poll, the current style is still a bit "meh". We're still discussing the details, ideas include though to include vertical slabs to have nice steep roofs. We also discussed about the use of wood in a city within a country whose civilization mainly builds with stone. The DA team stated to make the rich houses almost completely with stone and use wood for poorer housings as the material is cheaper and easier to build with. However the general urge for realism, especially in terms of how the tone and mood of a texture should be there is a conflict which we cannot solve properly. Our textures are unrealistically bright, but it makes stuff look good. If everything would be made striving for the maximum of the realism it may not just look as nice as it would be with textures which are made to make nice color combinations.
Also mentioned was the fact that we're always redoing things and always have to go back. It was voiced that we should once and for all settle for a degree of realism and stick to that. This however is something that very soon will backstab us. Since MCME was founded we always improved on the degree of realism and quality we produce and it would be a fatal decision to just halt that, given the constant new additions from vanilla Minecraft and custom new technologies, as well as generally new ideas.

On Moria the most significant point is that Despot is working on a reorganisation of the project. On one hand he wants to bring again a little more order into things like creating warps for the current building sites so that he and visitors can easily access these spots in the already ever-so-big Moria. Furthermore different sub-projects than just halls and corridors are being planned so that the Designers and Artists dont get insane on those big square spaces by i.e. start making some big mines or more caves similar to the chamber of light, housing the people of regular wealth. Also of course Despot wants to get some of the fancy new blocks from the new Gondor pack in Moria

Upcoming
WANTED: Short stories!

Themed Build
MCME Audiobook
Minecraft News

Closing statement

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
- Mitch Albom

Click to expand...