Jeb announced adventure mode, a game mode ideal for challenge maps in which players cannot break or place blocks.
But we need more video game like elements to take full advantage of Adventure Mode. I suggest adding "Respawn Blocks" to serve as checkpoints.
When a player dies, before sending them to their bed or to spawn, the game would check to see if there are any respawn blocks in the nearest 25 chunks around the player's death site. The player would be respawn standing on the nearest unblocked respawn block to where they died, if there's one within that area. That way if you're killed, you can be sent back to the beginning of your current area instead of warping far away.
Game makers would have a lot of control over where players respawn, because respawn blocks would only work if there's nothing on top of them. So activating a checkpoint in a map could be as simple as pressing a button to make a piston push a block off a respawner so it's now useable.
More advanced redstone systems could be used to unblock or reblock respawners when certain conditions are met, so you block off old respawn points as new ones are reached.
And of course it goes without saying that respawners would not be available in survival mode.
How should they look? Probably like a magical bejeweled altar, or some nonsense like that. People can always retexture them.
Beds could just work in the daytime, but I prefer this.
Beds are more limited though, even if they worked during the day. You can only have one at a time. This allows people to use redstone machinery to automatically unlock and lock respawn points, without requiring the player to click on anything or even visit the respawn block first.
But we need more video game like elements to take full advantage of Adventure Mode. I suggest adding "Respawn Blocks" to serve as checkpoints.
When a player dies, before sending them to their bed or to spawn, the game would check to see if there are any respawn blocks in the nearest 25 chunks around the player's death site. The player would be respawn standing on the nearest unblocked respawn block to where they died, if there's one within that area. That way if you're killed, you can be sent back to the beginning of your current area instead of warping far away.
Game makers would have a lot of control over where players respawn, because respawn blocks would only work if there's nothing on top of them. So activating a checkpoint in a map could be as simple as pressing a button to make a piston push a block off a respawner so it's now useable.
More advanced redstone systems could be used to unblock or reblock respawners when certain conditions are met, so you block off old respawn points as new ones are reached.
And of course it goes without saying that respawners would not be available in survival mode.
How should they look? Probably like a magical bejeweled altar, or some nonsense like that. People can always retexture them.
And altogether I like this idea.
Beds are more limited though, even if they worked during the day. You can only have one at a time. This allows people to use redstone machinery to automatically unlock and lock respawn points, without requiring the player to click on anything or even visit the respawn block first.