Notes

How Minecraft's Custom Maps Are Evolving

Everyone has their own personal memory of their first time playing Minecraft which is usually filled with the same warm nostalgia of a child who woke up early on Christmas morning. Minecraft is a heated blanket for the soul, and the warming mug of hot chocolate that completes the image are the custom maps that are created by users. These maps have evolved alongside the main game over a decade, going from simple adventure maps to full-blown game modes.



Many consider the golden era of Minecraft maps to run between 2009 and 2012. In the early days, Minecraft was a much simpler game with fewer mechanics and tools (excluding Minecraft mods) for creators to experiment with. This didn't stop Minecraft creators from creating a variety of well-known maps such as Skyblock and The Walls. They have been downloaded millions upon millions of times and watched by hundreds of millions through YouTube Let's Plays. While they're simple in structure, both are distinct variations of Minecraft's core gameplay. https://healthhuman.net/ Skyblock for instance, places you on a small island in the sky that has only water, lava, and a tree for you to survive. There are also many difficult challenges to complete. The Walls is an action-packed battle royale based on the Hunger Games where each team has time to prepare before the walls that divide them crumble and a game of free for all begins.



When it comes to the pivotal players of the Minecraft map community, you'd be hard pressed to find someone more influential than Vechs who has developed numerous influential maps - like Super Hostile and Race for the Wool - that set the standard for what a good Minecraft minigame should have to offer. "I've been making custom games' content since Duke Nukem 3D, and my Super Hostile series has over two million downloads," Vechs says. Super Hostile has attracted a lot of attention from both influencers and community members alike - there are many Super Hostile Let's Plays, with over 1 million views on YouTube.



"It's not every day that you invent an entirely new genre. It's pretty satisfying," reflects Vechs. "My old method of making maps was to create a world open in MCedit, then delete everything. I like to start totally from scratch." While remaining loyal to his own method the huge improvement in quality from the past is amazing to observe for the seasoned map maker.



"Minecraft maps are evolving for the better, surely. What was on offer were a variety of worlds that people let Minecraft generate, then they discovered a great location in the world and created a kind of challenge there by posting signs. Low-effort maps were quite common at the time. Today, such a thing will get you laughed at. The quality of the products on offer has increased dramatically."



Lucian Tash, also known as Chopper2112, is the head of the Minecraft-partnered map-making group Yeggs. The group started in 2015 and has produced 23 maps. Tash and his friends started creating maps as a hobby. "Yeggs was initially developed as a server on the laptop that was broken down, where a few real-life friends would play games after school. Then we started making small maps until 2019 when we joined the Realms program," Tash explains.



The Realms content creator program was launched by Mojang in 2014 and serves as a curated library of maps that are created by community members, such as minigames and world template-style maps and adventure maps.



Quality control is something Yeggs takes seriously. Tash says that Yeggs' main goal is to make games available. This, in conjunction with the limitations of Realms which is a service, frequently requires us to find creative solutions to the lag issue. Sometimes, you may have an idea that will require a lot of resources. Many of the technical aspects of the Minecraft map are based around static entities in the game and it can be quite challenging on hardware."



Yeggs has employed command blocks to create a variety of maps. These blocks can be used for executing lines of code. Road Runners is their latest map. It was inspired by the frogger-style adolescent humor of the popular mobile game Crossy Road. The map makes use of command blocks to turn Minecraft into a top-down race against time in which you must avoid mobs of deadly hordes.



Tash says that the new commands have enabled ideas to come to life that couldn't have been done in the pre-1.13 version of the game. The way that custom maps are created is drastically changed with the introduction of datapacks. Datapacks allow for more easy access to commands than command blocks were able to provide in the past. A Minecraft map designer can call on many commands at once or use Recursion to make a function call.



Minecraft remains an amorphous project that doesn't rest on its laurels. Despite this, the foundation for Minecraft's unstoppable community will remain the same, as Vechs explains. Empathy is the most important ability to map. You need to create through a mental model of what the player will see and feels and what they think. Empathy allows you to design challenging curves and to know when you should give breaks or add scenic views to provide the player with an impression of wonder.


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