Now that we hit a comfort zone on hosting the server I wanna start something new that we've discussed before, but haven't exactly ironed out the details on. I think personally it should wait until we have more members, because I believe this could actually be used as a chance to bring the community together.

For those who were not present, James, Burt, and I had a discussion about maybe making an arena with custom mobs to fight for fun, but with the emergence of mods and countries and currencies and whatnot, I think this is a good chance for the countries to work together. The Survivalist approach is what I tend to do more, and will focus on that aspect, but I believe with everyone's input this arena could take off.

So here's the thing...I suck at building, but I'm okay with command blocks. I also think survival is a lot of fun when done legit. So I'd imagine the creative people, Tom, Mike, James, could handle building and design while survivalists like myself give input. Due to the emerging roleplay on the server though, and Mike's currency system, I believe we could arrange some sort of betting system between the three elements of us.

Arena would obviously have to be a publicly announced event in order for people to make the most of betting which is one of the main reasons I want to wait until we have more people on the server. I believe this gives all of us something to look forward to in the arena. I'm willing to make custom mobs via command block, but I feel like this shouldn't just be a gladiator vs. gladiator thing. We should have a number of events.

We can have groups fight a boss, or single or team based pvp, we could have the creative people design a run with traps while survivors try and make it through while roleplayers bet on the outcome. As more people join more people can give ideas of events to host in the arena, not all of which have to be fighting. We could have contests to see who can make the coolest sprite art or whatever too so creatives can participate without feeling out of their elements. Roleplayers could put on funny shows for people, I've actually toyed with the idea of trying to perform a stage play in minecraft, and think out there somewhere we can find a guy who is intrigued at the idea of trying to make a lighting system for the stage.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head, and I think it'll be a fun community project to bring the people of the server all together when we get more.

I like this idea! If it works for you guys, I'd like to propose that we can turn the idea into a full fledged Olympic Park? Could have the main arena for the main event, a training center for practice, a full size pool, an Olympic Village with weapons and armor shops, and a media center for 'broadcasting' events. I'd be willing to donate currently unzoned laned to the west of AYU to dedicate to this purpose, if it's agreeable.

So I'm thrilled about the technical aspect of this...

I could make a manager's booth with some redstone commands to immediately convert the arena grounds from a solid floor, to a spleef arena, to a maze, etc...

It'd also be nice to have a "Hunger Games" Style Arena of some sort... I'm thinking a big enclosed city with a glass ceiling. Command Blocks would be setup to force constant invisibility to the spectators walking atop the glass looking down into the arena, and those in the arena would have a decent size area in which to hide, shelter, and fight. The entire arena would have a pristine-condition clone underground so that damages done to the arena can be repaired with the flip of a switch between games. Davy also has command block code to create and place chests that could contain potions, weapons, armor, and such. So there's a fair bit of possibility here...

There is one aspect of the game though that we'd need to learn before proceeding though: The ScoreBoard System. The ScoreBoard System is very detailed and would allow us to manage the betting and monitor the various arena events more precisely. It also allows us to shuffle team members and track each player's contribution to the team, etc, etc, etc... There are some decently team spleef examples for scoreboard codes online, so we could start with that.

D-D-Double Post!

Arena Floor Ideas:

• Lava Pedestal Platforming ("The ground is lava!")
• Spleef Floor (Self-Explanatory over water or lava)
• Maze(s) (Self-Explanatory)
• Urban Combat (Self-Explanatory)
• Forest Combat (Self-Explanatory)
• Ant Hill (Tunneling to capture the enemy flag)
• Freefall Arena (Wood ceiling above which is sand, occasionally creepers, etc. Floor is a spleef arena)

So basically, I'd have each of these floors set up encased in bedrock under the arena itself, along with a redstone circuit for each game mode, as well as redstone circuit designed to clear the arena back to just a basic gladiator style pit. The arena itself would be either circular or square, with the capability for up to four teams per gamemode.

I'd suggest a system be put in place using the scoreboard system to divide players up randomly into a variable number of teams (The conductor/manager/overseer of that specific game would set how many teams are participating in the game) and all players within a specific room of the arena would automatically be divided up into as close to even teams as possible, and teleported to their respective spawn-in locations.

The arena area itself may end up being a bit too large to use the clone command as a single-line process, so I may, depending on the size of the arena itself, end up having the command blocks clone or clear the arena in sections. This should still happen seamlessly, but I figured I'd mention it so we can all come to peace now with how much of an undertaking this will likely end up being and we can do our damndest not to get our feelings hurt if things don't work flawlessly the first few attempts.

All that said, if we're going to do this, we need to pick an area on the map and begin construction of The Underworks before we begin building the aboveground portion...

I've attached an image of the map with 4 proposed locations for this build an approximation of scale for a large arena capable of hosting the proposed uses thus far, and some information on accessibility. On the note of accessibility, Proposal #4 "The Bridge" would be the best option as far as accessibility to kingdoms is concerned, as well as centrality to the map. The problem with this one is the MASSIVE Land and Seascaping efforts that would have to occur in order to place the arena with Mike's suggested surrounding facilities.

These concerns also apply to Proposal 1, and Mildly to Proposal 2, as it'd be water on two sides. So 3 looks to be the best option without getting crazy-far from spawn.

We might also want to decide on a basic shape of the arena so we can plan and design accordingly. Oval like a football stadium? Round like a colosseum? Square, like everything else in Minecraft? Dodecahedral just because we can? I won't require much more than a location to at least begin work on the Redstone layer of The Underworks.

So yeah... There's a LOT to think about.

An enclosed city would probably eliminate my proposed site, lol.

I was proposing the forest at the west end of this image.

In all honesty most of the survivalists will enjoy banding together to make a trip if it's far away, so personally I say we just build wherever looks the easiest. Except I'm against proposal 2, the noise and lights will keep me awake at night, and I feel it would be frustrating to call the arena constantly, and asking everyone to type in lower case so I can sleep.

I did not plan for survivalists to have to journey four days to get to the proposed site. You should know by now, I always have an integrated transport plan for this sort of thing

As part of our bid for the Olympics, I propose moving the northern end of the Spawn Line to Spawnside station, and building a new Spawn Station further from the Homestead Inn. That creates a direct connection to As Yet Unnamed from as far away as Chesshire without any meandering through the forest of any sort. Then on the other side, the Great Western Line will have a direct line to the Olympic Park. So visitors and participants would have service from all settled areas on the server to the proposed site with this plan. The trip should take no longer than 7ish minutes from anywhere currently served by wootrail.

Additionally, I am prepared to fully finance the construction and operation of all the necessary venues from the national treasury, should AYU be approved as the site.



[Edit: I'm willing to provide whatever concessions necessary to improve accessibility of the site. Hosting the Olympics would be a huge development magnet for AYU and would contribute huge amounts to the national economy. Thus, it is a national priority.]

I had assumed rail would be run to whatever arena gets built - there was never a doubt on that.

But the reason I really liked the idea for Proposal #4 is it allows for a road between the Eastern Kingdoms (Avalon, Burtlandia, Chesshire, and loyalty-free survivalists) and the Western Kingdom(s) (As Yet Unnamed), with the center point becoming a vibrant mixing ground of cultures, building styles, currency exchanges, and more; like any great border province. As an additional thought, by keeping things somewhat central between the kingdoms we can avoid timeline crossover (given that AYU has guns, modern military uniforms, etc) whereas the rest of minecraft is swords and castles.

So I'm not really sure. I wish I could say "Well I want it built here" and then people could split the tie - but I don't have a single clue where it should be built, just half-formed ideas coming from the perspective of someone who does both Survival and Creative.

Yeah, that's the main reason I wanted more people before starting, let's see where natural development starts out, and once we have enough people settled into the server we could try and choose a central location like you suggested, or whichever of the proposals is left after taking into account where everyone builds their homes and bases. I also feel like we should wait until I get decent internet back, so I can actually help.

In the meantime, anyone know any prospective recruits? Spencer said he'll join as long as we have a lock mod, he also wants to get into hosting his own server, so if he goes through with that, I'm sure we could borrow some of his players.

Burt and Randall would probably join if they saw everything coming together, I know Burt likes playing straight survival, I don't know about Randall since he's only played a couple times. On a side note, is there a forum post with all the information needed to join the server? If not there should be sort of like Harpo.