Notes

How Minecraft's Custom Maps Are Evolving

Every person has their own unique memory of their first time playing Minecraft typically filled with the same euphoric feeling of a child waking up early on Christmas morning. Minecraft is a heated blanket for the soul, and the warm hand-warming mug of hot chocolate that completes the picture are the custom maps that are created by users. These maps have developed with Minecraft for the past decade, from basic adventure maps to full-blown game modes.



Many consider the golden time of Minecraft maps to be 2009. In the early days, Minecraft was a much simpler game with fewer mechanics and tools (excluding Minecraft mods) for developers to experiment with. The limitations didn't stop developers from releasing a variety of popular maps, such as Skyblock and The Walls. They have been downloaded millions upon millions of times and played by millions of people through YouTube Let's Plays. While they're similar in structure, both maps offer different variations of Minecraft's core gameplay. Skyblock, for instance, puts you on a tiny island in the sky that has only lava, water and a tree to live. There are also many difficult challenges to complete. The Walls is a Hunger Games-inspired battle royale where each team has time to prepare before the walls that divide them crumble and a game of free for all begins.



When talking about pivotal members of the Minecraft map community, you'd be difficult to find someone more influential than Vechs who has developed several highly influential maps - like Super Hostile and Race for the Wool - that set the bar for what a top Minecraft minigame should be able to offer. Vechs says, "I've been creating custom content for games since Duke Nukem 3D," and his Super Hostile series has more than two million downloads. Minecraft servers Super Hostile has received a lot of attention from both the community and influencers - there are many Super Hostile lets-plays with over a million views to YouTube.



"It's not every day you create a new genre. Vechs says it feels quite good. My old method for making maps was to create a world, then open it in MCedit and erase everything. "I prefer to start from scratch." While he adheres to his original methods however, the improvement in quality is incredible to watch for veteran map makers.



"Minecraft maps are evolving for the better, assuredly. There were many worlds that Minecraft created and then people were able to find a spot in that world to display signs. Low-effort maps were popular at the time. Now such a thing would be laughed at. The quality of the products on offer has risen dramatically."



Lucian Tash, also known as Chopper2112, is the leader of the Minecraft-affiliated map-making team Yeggs. The group was formed in 2015 and has produced 23 maps. At the time, the creation of maps was just an enjoyable pastime for Tash and his friends. "Yeggs was originally created to function as an online server on a broken laptop, on which a few of his real-life friends would play after school. Tash states that we started making maps in the form of small maps until 2019, when we joined the Realms Program.



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



Quality control is something that Yeggs takes very seriously. Tash states that the main objective of Yeggs is to make games available. This, in conjunction with the limitations of Realms which is a service, frequently requires us to come up with creative solutions to problems related to lag. Sometimes you might have an idea that will require lots of resources. Many technical aspects of the Minecraft map are based on static objects within the game. This makes it quite difficult to obtain the right hardware.



A number of the maps created by Yeggs use command blocks that can be used to execute 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 employs command blocks to transform Minecraft into a top-down race against the clock where you have to carefully avoid mobs of deadly hordes.



"Some of the new commands have brought concepts to life that could not have been thought of in pre-1.13 versions of the game," Tash explains. The way that custom maps are created has been greatly changed by the introduction of datapacks. Not only does it provide simpler access to commands than command blocks had in the past but it also allows for a Minecraft map creator to call on large numbers of commands at the same time or even recursion to make a function call to itself."



Minecraft remains an undefined project that never rests on its laurels. Vechs explains that the foundation for Minecraft's unstoppable community has not been changing. "The most important skill for map making is empathy. It is essential to create a mental model of the player's world and their emotions, as well as their thoughts. Empathy is what allows you to create curves that are challenging and know when to give breaks and when to include scenic vistas that give the player a sense wonder.


Homepage: https://minecraftservers.buzz/