Community Question: Which type of areas do you find most fun to build and design and why? (Forests, islands, floating islands, castles, caves, swamps, you name it!?)
Generally, as far as general area composition goes, I like making caves and other natural formations more than I like making structures/castles/etc. While I do think that a good-looking structure can be as great or even greater than an equally good-looking cave, the detail work for them is much more tedious to me.
If I had to pick specific themes, I really like making holy and hell themed areas. Holy because quartz is my favorite building material and fits with the heaven theme very well, and hell because I really enjoy making fire-and-darkness-themed caves. Those two together can sometimes make for some fun contrast from area to area in my maps (for example, my Redemption minimap is completely built off of that contrast).
After I was originally told which wool I had been assigned for TR, my plan for my area was called "The Fall of Heaven" and consisted of those two things together: a holy-themed stronghold situated within a hellish landscape. However, I changed that plan to something else after I found out that I was actually on a different wool and had been misinformed.
Hi Everyone! How are you doing? Time for another Community Question? (You might have to venture to your past times to answer this)
When did you start Minecraft (Classic, Alpha, Beta) and who or what convinced you to start? What was your first reaction towards Minecraft?
For me, I started in Pre-Classic, back when Left-click was to place blocks and right click was to break blocks. One of my friends told me to play this because I used to love building stuff. My first reaction to this game (Im pretty sure this reaction was everyone's reaction) was "Why is this game so pixelated?)
I'm not sure if this was asked before but does Kamyu's Populate Chests tool still work? (currently using 1.7.10 map). I tried it but it keeps saying "ChunkDataError" no matter what map I use. If this tool still works, is there a way to fix this problem? Thanks. (trying to make a CTM map but I kinda need a way to make random loot chests and this is the tool Vechs uses/used so I want to use it as well).
Hi Everyone! How are you doing? Time for another Community Question? (You might have to venture to your past times to answer this)
When did you start Minecraft (Classic, Alpha, Beta) and who or what convinced you to start? What was your first reaction towards Minecraft?
For me, I started in Pre-Classic, back when Left-click was to place blocks and right click was to break blocks. One of my friends told me to play this because I used to love building stuff. My first reaction to this game (Im pretty sure this reaction was everyone's reaction) was "Why is this game so pixelated?)
Hey since you're new I'd just like to let you know that CQ's are generally 1 per page (unless thats changed), but I'll answer it anyway:
I started playing around when the adventure update first came out. A friend had introduced it to me then, and I got hooked on just regular old single player survival. First reaction was thinking that the game looked cool.
I'm not sure if this was asked before but does Kamyu's Populate Chests tool still work? (currently using 1.7.10 map). I tried it but it keeps saying "ChunkDataError" no matter what map I use. If this tool still works, is there a way to fix this problem? Thanks. (trying to make a CTM map but I kinda need a way to make random loot chests and this is the tool Vechs uses/used so I want to use it as well).
Kamyu's Populate Chests filter (and possibly other filters) do not work in newer versions of Minecraft. I suggest placing your loot by hand, and before you start complaining hear me out. Random loot is generally considered to be pretty unbalanced, and its likely to give you pretty high tier loot sooner than you want players to have it. Placing your loot by hand allows you to more successfully balance your map's loot, as well as allowing you to know exactly what the player is getting and where they are getting that loot.
Community Question: Which type of areas do you find most fun to build and design and why? (Forests, islands, floating islands, castles, caves, swamps, you name it!?)
I enjoy terraforming landscapes in general (mostly caves), mainly with Voxelsniper's melt and lift brush.
Sometimes, a weird thing I do is that pretending I'm Bob Ross and when I'm stroking my brushes I sometimes think of what Bob Ross usually said in his show with his soothing voice
"Let's take this sphere brush and what I like to do is add some obsidian clouds all over the sky. Just add some happy little clouds here. Happy little clouds, evil looking clouds, all over the place"
Comments
A whimsical romp through the CtM genre. Most times visually stunning, although there are some obvious brush strokes and spheres in between major areas. From a progression perspective, it's recommended to take the branches in linear fashion, and much food and gear available is to you in the monument room. Unfortunately, the spawn area has a very attractive wall that leads directly to the final area and overpowered gear. The monument materials are unique, and has some clever visual effects.
Well, on this thread, we used to exclaim "page get!" in the most unique ways possible whenever we are the first person to post a comment in a new page. It's just a little thing people of this thread like to do
Thanks for your review, I'll link it in the OP later. It's been a while since we had one of those in the thread. Yours seem to be a little too indulgent though.
CQ#1 I'm not mapmaker, but I'm planning one map (ETA 2097). I love to desing area themes which other mapmakers have not fully explored yet. Lush caves, crumbling structures above lava lakes, mushroom areas, swamps (and some others) are already present in many maps. I bet you could do a nice map composed by cliché areas, I probably will do it before the aforementioned map just to get experience (I don't want to ruin my good ideas because of inexperience). Calling it ROM-CTM (ETA 2096), where ROM stands for Regular Ordinary Map.
CQ#2 I've known Minecraft since alpha, but I did not play it till beta 1.7.3 because I had the feeling it was one of this games you cannot stop playing and ruin your life.
narutodra You don't want to use random loot chest. It can be tedious, but do it yourself. When you use random loot you are damaging several aspects of your map: progression, balance, exploration and aesthetics. You want the player to make his way from bad armour and weak weapons to good armour and strong weapons so he feels accomplished. You don't want the player to face the easy first areas with an overpowered set. If the player decides to fully explore the enviroment he should be compensated for taking the risks of facing the perils or those areas. Also, chests can contribute to make the gameplay more immersive by adding items that resemble the enviroment you are traversing. You can't do this with random loot. In general it's not a good idea to use a tool because somebody used it first, you should use the tool based only on the results you are getting.
TL;DR Random loot saves time at the cost of damaging the gameplay of your map.
No, I completely disagree.
Random loot can be good. You can take several approaches.
1) You could not scale resources and completely avoid power creep. See, instead of leveling up from wood->stone->iron-> diamond you could always give out just enough to be kinda inbetween. Upside is that open world feels more open world, downside is, well, that it kinda has to be open world. Loot will also feel more like supplies and stuff to repair, and especially armour and gear in general will have to be made more rare, but it's definitely possible.
2) You could randomize over areas. Areas 1-3 can only get leather, 4-6 only stone, etc. I'm currently working on a filter to kinda specify loot levels, but that will take a while. In the meantime, you can just use kamyus tools on each area independently.
Biggest upside with random loot is that it's random. That can be really good. If it's random, the challenge/reward ratio isn't always fair. Now that may sound weird an unbalanced, but it's not.
Let's consider challenges and loot to be numbers. If challenge X gives you loot X, and challenge Y loot Y, you always know what you're kinda going to get. 20 creeper spawners might give some gear, a chest in the ceiling probably some potions.
However, with random spawners, this is not true. Therefore, you do not know what is most likely in the chest over there. You'll have less information about your environment, and so you make decisions in a drastically different way.
Yes, players can do this too, technically. But humans can't do something completely random, and therefore those tools can definitely be good.
Random loot is like RNG, it makes games lots better, but needs to be kept within bounds. Imagine a game like Hearthstone without RNG. It would be really boring. Or what is the charm of roguelikes? Are roguelikes unbalanced all the time?
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Anywho, I've been dipping a bit into my sleep time and cutting some loose edges to get some time for mapmaking. WIP area, just finished making how it'll look without structures and whatnot. Thought's?
Random loot is like RNG, it makes games lots better, but needs to be kept within bounds. Imagine a game like Hearthstone without RNG. It would be really boring. Or what is the charm of roguelikes? Are roguelikes unbalanced all the time?
The real problem with random loot is that a.) it's way too easy to do poorly, and b.) it's way too hard to do well. It probably takes more effort to do good random loot than it takes to hand-place the same amount of loot. It's not even an issue of being able to save time; if using (for example) Kamyu's random loot tool saves you a significant amount of time and effort, you're using it on too many loot chests, so you've either got too many loot chests, or you're using Kamyu's tool on too large a section of the map.
Roguelikes take a lot of effort to do right. You basically need to do a lot of fine-tuned tweaking and careful balancing. This is analogous to going through every loot chest that you filled randomly, and changing everything by hand, at which point you may as well have placed the loot by hand to begin with. There's a reason for making a randomized game like a roguelike, and that reason is pretty much exclusively for replay value. CTM maps have next to no replay value; you can't randomize enough of the game to make it like a roguelike.
(Also: Hearthstone without RNG is basically Magic: the Gathering, which IMO is a far superior game for the exact reason that it has less randomness.)
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Mapmaker and LPer of Complete The Monument (CTM) maps.
Creator/owner of the CTM Community Mapping Server - ask about it on the CTM Community thread!
Current projects:
Thanatos - a subterranean semi-open-world urban CTM
Titan's Revolt - a collaborative project run by ProjectCTM; sequel to Pantheon
Pinnacle - a "sketch" mini-CTM intended for newer players (nearing completion!)
Roguelikes take a lot of effort to do right. You basically need to do a lot of fine-tuned tweaking and careful balancing. Oh really? Sorry that might sound kinda rude... Not meant that way, let's just say I got some personal experience
(Also: Hearthstone without RNG is basically Magic: the Gathering, which IMO is a far superior game for the exact reason that it has less randomness.)It's less popular though. It's better for competitive and hardcore, but way less fun for new players
Comments
A whimsical romp through the CtM genre. Most times visually stunning, although there are some obvious brush strokes and spheres in between major areas. From a progression perspective, it's recommended to take the branches in linear fashion, and much food and gear available is to you in the monument room. Unfortunately, the spawn area has a very attractive wall that leads directly to the final area and overpowered gear. The monument materials are unique, and has some clever visual effects.
I was around when that map was in developement! In fact, i think I actually helped give Karrot a few ideas. It was a really great me too. Also reviews tickle my nostalgia as well, since its been forever since we got a review
Anyone else having trouble with texelelf's NBT edit filter in the MCEdit for 1.8? keeps derping up the numbers or just straight-up not making the changes I'm trying to make, like changing amounts on villager trades, creeper fuses, spawner delays etc... Driving me nuts, don't wanna have to fine-tune stuff like that using summon or entitydata commands...
Let me guess, that says Apollo? I can't tell what is the last 4 banners
The last four banners are supposed to say 9898 really kewl like.
Anyway, using banners for large signs i think is really cool. Its great when you don't want to actually use blocks to spell the words out. Also with a little manipulation you can pretty much make any letter.
Generally, as far as general area composition goes, I like making caves and other natural formations more than I like making structures/castles/etc. While I do think that a good-looking structure can be as great or even greater than an equally good-looking cave, the detail work for them is much more tedious to me.
If I had to pick specific themes, I really like making holy and hell themed areas. Holy because quartz is my favorite building material and fits with the heaven theme very well, and hell because I really enjoy making fire-and-darkness-themed caves. Those two together can sometimes make for some fun contrast from area to area in my maps (for example, my Redemption minimap is completely built off of that contrast).
After I was originally told which wool I had been assigned for TR, my plan for my area was called "The Fall of Heaven" and consisted of those two things together: a holy-themed stronghold situated within a hellish landscape. However, I changed that plan to something else after I found out that I was actually on a different wool and had been misinformed.
When did you start Minecraft (Classic, Alpha, Beta) and who or what convinced you to start? What was your first reaction towards Minecraft?
For me, I started in Pre-Classic, back when Left-click was to place blocks and right click was to break blocks. One of my friends told me to play this because I used to love building stuff. My first reaction to this game (Im pretty sure this reaction was everyone's reaction) was "Why is this game so pixelated?)
.
Hey since you're new I'd just like to let you know that CQ's are generally 1 per page (unless thats changed), but I'll answer it anyway:
I started playing around when the adventure update first came out. A friend had introduced it to me then, and I got hooked on just regular old single player survival. First reaction was thinking that the game looked cool.
Kamyu's Populate Chests filter (and possibly other filters) do not work in newer versions of Minecraft. I suggest placing your loot by hand, and before you start complaining hear me out. Random loot is generally considered to be pretty unbalanced, and its likely to give you pretty high tier loot sooner than you want players to have it. Placing your loot by hand allows you to more successfully balance your map's loot, as well as allowing you to know exactly what the player is getting and where they are getting that loot.
I enjoy terraforming landscapes in general (mostly caves), mainly with Voxelsniper's melt and lift brush.
Sometimes, a weird thing I do is that pretending I'm Bob Ross and when I'm stroking my brushes I sometimes think of what Bob Ross usually said in his show with his soothing voice
"Let's take this sphere brush and what I like to do is add some obsidian clouds all over the sky. Just add some happy little clouds here. Happy little clouds, evil looking clouds, all over the place"
Edit: Bringing back the PAGE GET trend!
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Curse PremiumDifficulty: 5
Overall Enjoyment: 8
Comments
A whimsical romp through the CtM genre. Most times visually stunning, although there are some obvious brush strokes and spheres in between major areas. From a progression perspective, it's recommended to take the branches in linear fashion, and much food and gear available is to you in the monument room. Unfortunately, the spawn area has a very attractive wall that leads directly to the final area and overpowered gear. The monument materials are unique, and has some clever visual effects.
SCORE
Aesthetics: 9
Creativity: 8
Gameplay: 7
TOTAL: 24
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Well, on this thread, we used to exclaim "page get!" in the most unique ways possible whenever we are the first person to post a comment in a new page. It's just a little thing people of this thread like to do
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Curse PremiumNo, I completely disagree.
Random loot can be good. You can take several approaches.
1) You could not scale resources and completely avoid power creep. See, instead of leveling up from wood->stone->iron-> diamond you could always give out just enough to be kinda inbetween. Upside is that open world feels more open world, downside is, well, that it kinda has to be open world. Loot will also feel more like supplies and stuff to repair, and especially armour and gear in general will have to be made more rare, but it's definitely possible.
2) You could randomize over areas. Areas 1-3 can only get leather, 4-6 only stone, etc. I'm currently working on a filter to kinda specify loot levels, but that will take a while. In the meantime, you can just use kamyus tools on each area independently.
Biggest upside with random loot is that it's random. That can be really good. If it's random, the challenge/reward ratio isn't always fair. Now that may sound weird an unbalanced, but it's not.
Let's consider challenges and loot to be numbers. If challenge X gives you loot X, and challenge Y loot Y, you always know what you're kinda going to get. 20 creeper spawners might give some gear, a chest in the ceiling probably some potions.
However, with random spawners, this is not true. Therefore, you do not know what is most likely in the chest over there. You'll have less information about your environment, and so you make decisions in a drastically different way.
Yes, players can do this too, technically. But humans can't do something completely random, and therefore those tools can definitely be good.
Random loot is like RNG, it makes games lots better, but needs to be kept within bounds. Imagine a game like Hearthstone without RNG. It would be really boring. Or what is the charm of roguelikes? Are roguelikes unbalanced all the time?
Player view:
Bird's eye view:
One of the only times clouds work well with stuff
The real problem with random loot is that a.) it's way too easy to do poorly, and b.) it's way too hard to do well. It probably takes more effort to do good random loot than it takes to hand-place the same amount of loot. It's not even an issue of being able to save time; if using (for example) Kamyu's random loot tool saves you a significant amount of time and effort, you're using it on too many loot chests, so you've either got too many loot chests, or you're using Kamyu's tool on too large a section of the map.
Roguelikes take a lot of effort to do right. You basically need to do a lot of fine-tuned tweaking and careful balancing. This is analogous to going through every loot chest that you filled randomly, and changing everything by hand, at which point you may as well have placed the loot by hand to begin with. There's a reason for making a randomized game like a roguelike, and that reason is pretty much exclusively for replay value. CTM maps have next to no replay value; you can't randomize enough of the game to make it like a roguelike.
(Also: Hearthstone without RNG is basically Magic: the Gathering, which IMO is a far superior game for the exact reason that it has less randomness.)
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Curse PremiumOh my nostalgias
I was around when that map was in developement! In fact, i think I actually helped give Karrot a few ideas. It was a really great me too. Also reviews tickle my nostalgia as well, since its been forever since we got a review
Let me guess, that says Apollo? I can't tell what is the last 4 banners
.
The last four banners are supposed to say 9898 really kewl like.
Anyway, using banners for large signs i think is really cool. Its great when you don't want to actually use blocks to spell the words out. Also with a little manipulation you can pretty much make any letter.
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Retired StaffDid you just say Hearthstone is more popular than Magic??? O_O
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Curse PremiumLast time I checked MTG had ~6 million while hearthstone had ~20 million, although my sources are not 100% reliable maybe.