changingtuna88

Little update:
We are now on Minecraft 1.7.8 running Spigot (A fine tuned version of CraftBukkkit) which has had some notable performance increases, it allows us for example to set item frames only visible as a certain distance, so there's less lag for you in areas with lots of frames!  
New public build warehouse is coming along very nicely, massive thanks to madrad for helping me on this, the new warehouse is located away from spawn area to reduce lag on players within spawn, once we have completed the new warehouse there will be a portal/warp to it which will be announced. The current warehouse at spawn is currently closed while all items are transferred over and the warehouse dismantled  
Today someone said to me "I still think you should include a warp command for veteran players so they don't have to run the whole way down spawn tower XDDD". I didn't get a chance to respond but my response would have been... "How do you know there's not one?" warps are everywhere, if you look back a page to my first post, you'll find I said this "A lot of people say to me you should place a warp at the bottom of spawn tower so we can get down quicker, my answer normally goes along the lines of there are warps everywhere you only need to find them. It’s true, the people that usually ask are just not looking hard enough, where’s the fun in having a warp that’s in plain sight, it’s much more fun and rewarding to find hidden warps, they are there, yes even right at spawn tower, you just need to look." so yes don't forget to look around for things!  
Someone recently asked if we can sethome in the mining world, this was once a very long time ago available in the mining world + nether, however it was disabled due to a few reasons, some of which were: 1. People were rush mining good areas and just using warps/spawn etc to get back and then /home again to carry on taking all the good stuff. 2. People were using home to get further and further away from the main spawn in one direction, causing more and more chunks to be loaded. 3. People were setting up mining bases and calling that their home and forgetting about the main world. I told this person that if he wanted to see sethome to post here with why etc, as of yet they have not done so.  
Someone recently asked if we can use ender chests. The main reason they are not allowed is to stop items being brought back from creative worlds etc, while I could block the use in those types of worlds, it's another thing to remember to do when I suddenly decide lets do so and so event! With that said I have thought about allowing ender chests before but there's never really been a big ask for it and no one certainly asked here, I told this person to suggest here and as of yet they haven't.  
In a post on the previous post, I mentioned village trading and that we don't allow it so the shopping centre doesn't become obsolete. I asked however if this is something we need to look into again. There has been no response about is so i can only assume people are happy with them staying blocked, except when there's an adventure map with them in etc.  
Talking about adventure maps, I have installed an adventure world plugin that allows us to enter a world and then after the last person leaves the world resets, this will be helpful when I run events so I don't have to restart the server and upload a new copy.  
I am currently designing a mini game, it's been in my head for some time and this world reset plugin will help it come true, unfortunately it seems other servers have had the same idea, but that's not going to stop me designing it, they use a custom built plugin, I'm trying to build it with redstone and command blocks. I do require some help though... I need builders to build me: 1. A decent sized floating island, I can get approximate dimensions. 2. An airship or something similar that is big and flys. More info and tools will be given to the person/s who decide to help.  
I've had some more thoughts about the games/events section room, and I'm thinking this can be located maybe under spawn tower were the current "old" warehouse is and that in addition to teleports to games it could also be used as a teleport section to ongoing build projects, makes sense as we have always used the bottom of spawn tower for portals to build challenges and events etc. Hopefully a central place like this will make people more aware of what's on.

Hello everyone,
 
Big thank you to everyone who has posted here, I've been thinking long and hard on what to do and have discussed the whole issue of whether to renew or not with both Minecraft and non Minecraft friends.
 
It's been very hard deciding because while I have previously said that the cost isn't an issue if people come on, this month:
I have more than expected to pay out in other bills, have had to cancel/downgraded some of my own personal subscriptions. 8 days into the month and the most players that have been on at any one time is 5 players, do I really want to pay so much money (I could go on holiday for this amount) when there's only ever been 5 players on at one time, most days its only a couple. I want to renew YAMS but I'm torn between the expense and the community not to mention the fact that I've been running YAMS for over 3 years now and certainly don't want to just see it die or with no big celebration of  success!
 
So what have I decided? I've decided to renew but on some conditions:
I have downgraded from 2GB of RAM to 1.5GB, this shouldn't impact us much in terms of performance as we no way hitting the 2GB mark but will save a huge amount in cost. I have downgraded the player slot limit from 24 to 16, this isn't a huge cost saving as it would have been by decreasing it to 12 but we had at least 13 players on at one point during the YAMS Anniversary so I certainly don't want to stop anyone from coming on due to a player slot limit. If we ever feel the need to increase I will do so if I can. You the players of YAMS don't forget about YAMS and continue to come on and enjoy YAMS! We celebrate our 4th year of YAMS in case there isn't a 5th. That is make YAMS the best there is: Play our existing mini games and suggest new ones! Enjoy taking part in world challenges and events and suggest new ones! Suggest interesting plugin ideas http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins even if it's just for an event that day. Overall be a part of the community and have fun. Don't think we have enough fun? Just suggest things in the forums and turn up when we do actually do the things you ask for! If you've been keeping up to date in the forums you will have already seen my efforts to keep things moving:
Back in January I installed the ColorShuffle plugin to bring some more fun into YAMS, it is popular amongst players. You can join by typing /color join I've been wanting a theme park in YAMS for ages, I decided that in case we were not around for much longer to go ahead and do this, it was very fun world to do and Id certainly like to bring it back again to complete the other areas. I recently finished the University of YAMS just in case this is our last year, I also added a maze though one ones completed it yet! I recently finished the fun room house just in case this is our last year. Did some work on the snowheim castle area so this isn't forgotten about, I installed Spigot to improve on performance as I knew that I may be downgrading the server specs. As ColorShuffle was popular I also installed the TNTRun plugin, you need 2 players a minimum to play and you can join by typing: /tr join 1 Today I finally finished the ender dragon statue after spending the past week finishing it off. I added /warp park amongst other warps! I am looking to redesign the spawn public build warehouse, madrad has some good ideas for this and I am hoping he can design this for me, the reason it will be moved elsewhere is to improve spawn/sandbox lag / fps. There will be a teleport portal to it and back with a possible warp too. I notice the acknowledgement room hasn't been updated in a while, I always liked the idea of this but if it's not being updated we may need to change this, please suggest. I am thinking about about adding a games sign/portal/warp room so you can quickly know what games/events we have and teleport to them, good or bad idea? Some areas could be: ColorShuffle, TNTRun, Battle Arena, Infected, Hide and Seek at the Mansion, The Maze, Oasistadium, Boat Race, The Park and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots etc... Looking into more events we can do. If you know any please suggest in the right section and I'll see what i can do. Making the Adventure of YAMS more known, ever seen the pumpkin monster under spawn? I wonder why hes there. This is just a start on my part, please do your part to make this a great year of YAMS just in case it is our last, please don't make me regret paying the renewal fee!
 
Thank you,
Darren

Hello everyone,
 
As I'm sure you are all aware yesterday was April Fools day and I played the joke of stepping down and promoting TheTimeMeddler, had any YAMS player been on in the morning I would have got them to become joke admin but no one was on so TheTimeMeddler was used which actually worked quite well with his previous antics!
 
I can safely say that while it was funny writing the list of changes, most of them will not be happening....
 
Mostly being, that one of them is... has!
 
Lucky its not a bad change, but rather last weekend I changed us over from CraftBukkit to Spigot to improve our server performance, this actually appears to have helped for lag around spawn, at least for me when I tested without Optifine.
 
Hope you enjoyed the bit of fun and if you would like to see the nether version of spawn you may go to /spawn and step on the random pressure plate in the middle of the quartz floor on top.
 
Long live the bright future of YAMS, I can not wait! 

Sorry for the late post - lazy slime is lazy 
 
I first logged into YAMS in September 2011, having not really spent a lot of time in multiplayer. The previous servers I had been on were big, and no one was very social. When I first logged on, I was taken aback by how friendly and sociable people were. Everyone was super friendly, and I soon got settled in (after a minor rule infraction...).
In the 2.5 years since, I've spent a great deal of time on the server. I applied to be a CSO not long after joining, and became part of the staff team, eventually becoming a moderator. Even though I'm no longer on as much as I used to be, I still care a great deal about the server, and I pop on when I can.
 
That said, it is not hard to notice the decline in player numbers we have had over the past few months. I remember when the server used to always have at least 3-4 players online, and when the nights were equally as busy as during the day. People will always come and go from the server, though there are always those of us who have stayed long term.
 
I've made some amazing friends during my time on YAMS, some just on the server, and some irl 
I think it would be a great shame if our little community were to end, and we'd eventually lose ties with each other. I should be going to university next year, so my time on the server will be reduced even further than it is now. It would be great knowing that the server is still there, for when I have free time on my hands.
 
For as long as cost isn't an issue, I think we should try to maintain our community and keep the server running. We seem to have a little stream of whitelist applications on the forums, and perhaps new people would be more inclined to come on if they saw more players online.
 
-Nick
 

Is there a future for YAMS? I really hope so
We've been in our current world for 2 years now; how long do we have left? ages. we left the old world because of map corruption and theres none of that in this world.
What would get people involved more in building public builds? encouragement and more people on in different time zones.
Are the current town themes ok? yes but Perivale is a bit short-changed at the moment. am hoping something will come up to fix that.
Is there a better way than plots? not that i can think of.
We have a test build world but would a free build world work too? Or would it just make players neglect the normal world even more, not helping on community projects, as free build can be very much do your own thing rather than help the community. i think its more fun when you have to collect resources.
What could make the YAMS experience better? more players. but that involves promotion of the server, and that can attract an unsavory element as well as nice players.
on the whole i believe YAMS is incredibly worthwhile and i love it.
 

This is my 1000 forum post! For me, thats impressive, since usually I give up on forums before 5 posts through. Kinda shows how interested in YAMs I really am. 
 
Thats... pretty much it. I mean, whoo, go me! xD

If am honest I know with work I have been busy and not as active as I would like, however when I do play on Minecraft it is 95% of the time on YAMS. the other few times is single player and usually if Internet is being silly so can't get on multi player. I understand your dilemma and like yourself I have made some great friends on the server and would be sad to see it go. But would fully understand if you felt it was time to lay YAMS to rest for a while.

I'd hate to see YAMS go, I've had my ups and downs but lots of new players are joining now and I'm meeting new friends  . I know the problem with the lack of activity on the server as well as the forums is an issue but I have a feeling that if we really put the server out there (planet minecraft, telling friends, ect.)  we can have so many new players by the end of this year, and yes the grieving is a problem, but what's the world without any badies  . I believe that YAMS' future can be a memorable one, hopefully with new players and events, after all there's no other server out there like YAMS.
 
Thanks,
Dev

Between senior project and trying to find a job before I graduate, my free time has been pretty much nonexistent this last month.  I try to get on when I can, but it tends to be at random hours of the day when I suddenly have 20-30 minutes to spare.
 
As I said before, I love this server and everyone on it.  Playing Minecraft alone isn't nearly the same as playing it with others, and all of my time in this game for the last half a year or so has been spent on YAMS.  If the server ends up being going, we all understand why it would happen, but it would be depressing to see one of the friendliest communities that Minecraft has ever had pack up and end.  It's been a great year, meeting new friends and doing all sorts of fun things with everyone: discovering goodies and structures that people put a ton of effort into, contributing to the server and helping make/test new activities, taking part in events, etc., and seeing that it all might end is heartbreaking to say the least.
 
I'd love to see YAMS go strong for another year at least, but if it is something that you think cannot continue, then I understand.  And even if it does end I won't stop keeping in contact with everyone, because you guys are what make YAMS great.
 
 
Hope to see you all in the main/mining worlds soon,
-Zhon

I'd really like YAMS to continue. i found minecraft at a horrible time in my life, i was depressed and felt cut off from the world, and then i found you lot, some of the nicest and friendliest people i've met and or spoken to. i've enjoyed my time as a moderator too, its nice to feel i'm helping even in a small way to make this little corner of the internet such a nice safe place to be. i often come on just to talk to anyone who happens to be on.
 
minecraft itself is constantly gaining players and some find their way here, i'm sure we must be one of the longest running servers there is, and while we do get troublemakers some stay and join our community and make new friends just like me.
 
If YAMS continues i will be very happy. this is very important to me- two and a half years ish of my life has been devoted to it and i'd be devastated if it were gone.

After being banned from my first ever server, I found this one after searching for British minecraft servers and have never looked back. I like many have found new people, people I can call friends. On the 15th June this year I will have been on the server for 3 years which is quite a big chunk of life for one game, let alone one small server out of thousands. I have seen plenty of players come and go, those who joined in the days I joined, long gone. While being on this server I have searched and explored many other servers. Maybe even playing on them for a week or so, but none have ever had the community that YAMS has.
 
None at all.
 
The community that YAMS has is so close that it is pretty much inseparable. You get the odd person that goes off and leaves, but there's always a new person to take the place. I have seen many people leave for valid reasons such as getting bored of minecraft or not liking the way we run the server, I can see why some people may not like it, but that is the way that has worked for the past 3 years. Maybe there are changes that can be made to loosen restrictions. But still people may not like it. In my mind, I like the server the way it is. It always depends on the type of people you get joining the server.

Now I have been inactive for over 3 weeks, almost 4 (a whole month!). That is quite bad for someone who is a Moderator. The fact of the matter is, I have hit a stage where after 3 years of non stop playing minecraft I am finding that I am getting bored of it. Now I know that it is just a stage I am going through and know I will be back. Other things include not feeling myself the past couple months, lot's of college work, working and lastly applying for uni.
 
I have donated 2 times before to keep the server running and do wish to donate again to keep it up as I wouldn't like to see it go, but there is going to be a point where there server will go. It will be sad for all of us, but I don't think that time is now. It is up to you though Darren. If you feel that you can not keep it up for another year then so be it. But remember that the 3 years that it has been up has made many peoples lives a joy and has let us meet new people.
 
Thanks for reading.
 
Ryan (Your resident Enderman)  

Just to add, i have been playing around inside the pyramid continuing my efforts from all that time ago, creating a confusing internal tunnel structure... Now I remember why this took so much sand.
 
Also I have made a transport system to get from the quarry to the pyramid, I hope you all like

I like the idea of bringing it back now and then to do different areas/regions of the park.

I'd still like to get my obstacle course done before it closes, but with the way classes and senior project have been lately my timetable's not exactly reliable.
 
 
 
As for tuna's idea, I like it.  The original goal was to have a massive theme park with different styles for each area around the lake.  With this, we could have future build challenges where people focus on a specific region and theme/style to build on, so that after a few more of these we'll be close to a completed park.

Hi Folks!
 
In support of this project I've gone one a small  mining trip and have donated the following to the Spawn Town community room:
 
Iron - 132 Redstone - 708 Diamond - 19 Gold - 32 Coal - 572 Lapis - 168 Smooth Stone - 1683 Quartz - 448 Wool (white) - 32   I hope this is sufficient to at least get you guys started and it probably isn't a patch on the kind of resources you guys can deliver but I hope it helps. If anyone thinks they'll need anything else please let me know and I'll go and grab it.   -gtadvance.

Youd be surprised whats possible in minecraft... well with editing tools and mods, though id like to stay away from them here's some exampls of what can be done:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0GksPRuFM
 

 
I think we could actually make a good carousel of horses even without using editing tools like others have done on YouTube if you look around. On a side note... I thing Minecaft should have mirrors... I want a glass mirror maze.

Runaway minecart in a mesa
Log flume in forrest (with rubber ducky)
Rapids
But most of all the Extreme Queueing Ride

Lol well thanks to you both ^^

I assume you mean animal farms, unless food and saplings are running away?
 
Talking about farms.... I believe steer wants to move/make farms in the big flat area we have now where there used to be plots, the plots were removed as they never got used. I suggested to steer that if she is doing that then to make the farms interesting... let me explain my idea:
 
So you all know we have the wood land / forestry area *cough* my idea *cough* well I was thinking something similar where that flat area is near the tracks where old plots were, but make it for farms and instead of just having lines of standard farms have them dotted around farm houses and such and even integrate the trees into it too, have lots of tree areas all around that you can chop down and replant but not necessarily in linear fashion (like sandbox etc) so while there would be signs saying these trees can be cut down it would like like a feature.
 
Farms/reeds etc could be a long a stream river that goes down to the big river/lake at bottom.
 
And mushrooms could be inside a cave.
 
Of course would require quite a bit of terraforming, but I think it could be nice touch instead of the same old farms in a row.
 
I did have a picture to share... but Flickr is down.
 
Hopefully you understand what I mean, let me know what you think. I'm trying to convince steer.
 
P.S. Steers away for a week tomorrow... so while she's gone we shall party! Muwhahaha! 

I left this game open till now so people could have extra time, unfortunately it seems the redstone broke as some point and it wouldn't recognise the difficulty, may have happened if someone teleported out or left when the game was in progress causing the redstone to become stuck. Unfortunately I cant see an easy fix for this and as the event is over now anyway I wont spend any more time on it. If we do this event again I'll just use a fresh copy of the map.
 
Hope those of you who played enjoyed it.

January 2014 is coming to an end, wow where has time gone? To wrap January up I have decided to set up the Death Sentence arena map from Hypixel.
 
Death Sentence is a competitive arena map that challenges your Minecraft combat skills and agility.
 
Both Multiplayer and Singleplayer modes are available and have different gameplay.
 
The goal is to survive the customized monsters that are constantly coming at you and reach level 20 as fast as you can. Kill the chest-headed monsters to gear up, avoid the invincible heavy armoured zombies and don't fall in the void!
 
The multiplayer mode is competitive, the first player to reach level 20 wins the game and get to choose one of the 3 death sentences for the losers. PvP has to be turned off but you can use your flint and steel or throw monsters at your opponent to disturb them!
 
If you want to play singleplayer mode, your goal is to get the best timer on the clock.
 
Sound interesting? If so you can find a portal to it at the bottom of spawn tower, enjoy!
 
You will have to use "/warp spawn" to go to /spawn (turned off) unless you know the hidden spawn tower warp I talked about in The Future of YAMS post.
 
P.S. Leave items + XP levels at home, you will loose them!

I've generated and uploaded a cartograph (aerial imagery) of the over 16,000 blocks exploration we did, thought some of you might like it.
 
I recommend using a proper browser on a PC/Laptop to see it and don't forget you can zoom in with mouse wheel or buttons.
 
http://www.darrenstraight.com/minecraft/cartograph/world_adventure/
 
And here are some approximate coordinates to help you find the base camps if you cant find them on your own!
 
Spawn: X = 123  Z = 243
1st night camp: = X = 41  Z = -2222
2nd night camp: X = 125  Z = -4915
3rd night camp: X = 110  Z = -6710
4th night camp: X = 0  Z = -9515
5th night camp: X = 10  Z = -11615
6th night camp: X = 40  Z = -13670
7th night camp: X = 80  Z = -16230

As many of you know as part of YAMS 3rd Anniversary celebrations we played a minigame called ColorShuffle, this involved you being spawned into a multicoloured arena floor where you were given a piece of coloured wool in your inventory hotbar and you had to run quick to that  corresponding colour mat before the rest of the colour floor collapsed beneath you... anyone not standing on the correct colour would fall and loose.
 
Everyone really enjoyed playing this and some of you asked to see it come back again, so I'm happy to announce that ColorShuffle is here to stay for as long as the plugin works and doesn't cause issues!
 
To join, in chat type: /color join 1
 
You do not have to worry about items/xp on you that will be saved and returned to you afterwards, the only time it wont is if a server crash/restart happens during a game in progress.
 
Enjoy!
 

Thanks for the replies so far, I'm going to try and reply to each of you individually but I may repeat some of my responses as similar things have been said. I suggest you read all of my replies either way.
 
 
Thank you for your post Nikki and you're welcome, it took me a while to write and still have more to say.
 
Glad you think there's a future for YAMS, sometimes it feels like there isn't or it's not worth continuing when people don't appreciate the time and money that goes into running it.
 
Yes I too believe the current world has lots of unused areas, it's one of the reasons why we separated the towns so far apart so we lots of area to build in, if we had the towns nearer to spawn and then decided latter we wanted more space we would have to go further out and generate more terrain which would probably not merge correctly if it was done much latter. Yes I try and keep buildings fresh.
 
I've seen people build wonderful things in the normal world and test build world, town moderators should get these people involved as much as possible, they have talent and it should be used so they can feel appreciated.
 
As a mod you know we have had a town theme discussion, the discussion is still there to have, you mods just have to discuss why you want a certain theme change to happen and what benefits it brings and agree between all of you that you are happy for it to go ahead so I can approve.
 
I'm quite surprised that a lot of people are ok with plots, I thought people were not. Also hopefully those who visited the old world would have seen that the plots we have now are much better than what we have before, we had fences all the way round the plot before instead of just the corners and they were much smaller for the most part.
 
Having a free build world is always something I've been worried about having, it's another area to protect/police and a lot of players may just stay there and not get involved around the other parts of the community. If the community really wanted it though, I would look into it. Maybe though it would be nice to do some build challenges again, problem is getting people involved though, also all the hard work never gets seen by others afterwards when the world closes, even if you release the map as download its just not the same as seeing it in YAMS with others.
 
Looking forward to seeing if you have anything else to say.
 
 
Thank you for your post Carter. I'm glad that you think YAMS has a positive future. The decision to continue YAMS or not and how will be based mainly on responses here.
 
I'm sure I can say from me and all our staff, you're welcome, it's very hard work but we try our best.
 
Again I'm quite surprised that a lot of people are ok with plots, I thought people were not. Also hopefully those who visited the old world would have seen that the plots we have now are much better than what we have before, we had fences all the way round the plot before instead of just the corners and they were much smaller for the most part, as you know from places like Winter Wonderland.
 
Like I told Nikki Having a free build world is always something I've been worried about having, it's another area to protect/police and a lot of players may just stay there and not get involved around the other parts of the community. If the community really wanted it though, I would look into it. Maybe though it would be nice to do some build challenges again, problem is getting people involved though, also all the hard work never gets seen by others afterwards when the world closes, even if you release the map as download its just not the same as seeing it in YAMS with others.
 
Yes I would have liked to see other towns to what Snowheim did, not sure if that can change now however and some towns such as Perivale are quite flat.
 
You're mistaken, our first map was between January 2011 - February 2012 (13 months) and our current map February 2012 -  Onwards (23+ months). There's absolutely no way a new world would be up for February 2014, discussions about our current world started in August 2011 a long time before we moved, there's lot to think about and prepare for to ensure a smooth transition, of course now we have done it once if we ever did it again it wouldn't take as long but still discussions would have to happen and a world prepared, took a while last time to generate a world where the towns could all go and there was plenty of nice flat areas for other builds.
 
The new biomes will actually make a new world harder, as there's even more to think about.
 
Sorry but again you're mistaken, it doesn't take 7 minutes to get to a town on a cart, from spawn station (most people would /spawn) it takes 2 minutes and 5 seconds at the minimum, even if you dont /spawn and go 2000 blocks it still doesn't take 7 minutes.
 
Would be nice if we can include some new materials but only if they look good together, as an example we have allowed coloured glass but some players have gone a bit wild on the colour patterns using a lot of colours so some houses look a bit out of place, especially when there's more glass then there is main wall material.
 
We decided not to allow acacia / dark oak wood to be fair on other towns. Another problem is if a town has too many materials you could have too many different types of themes within a town so some houses look out of place.
 
 
Thank you for your post Devon. You're very much welcome.
 
I like to do events, but when people don't turn up then it makes me very disappointed as I go into a lot of effort to ensure they are running on our YAMS setup, a lot of maps now use command blocks and such so I have to make sure these don't impact on the main world or remove the /spawn plugin so you can respawn correctly when you die on an adventure/game map etc. I also have to wake up early and make sure I'm on till the last event at night when running multiple time slots, I try and have multiple time slots so people from all over the world can join. Really wish more people would take part in the events when I run them.
 
Looking forward to seeing if you have anything else to say.
 
 
Thank you for your post Jake. You're very much welcome from all of us, including yourself!
 
Its keeping the players that's hard, we have lots to do you only have to look around as you know and I do listen to feedback on what we can do to improve things but a lot of players don't take the effort to take part or don't understand why we do things the way we do and just assume we are being awkward so leave. Had quite a lot of people use the wishing well in the shopping centre though wish is good, 39 books so far, some people have done multiple wishes.
 
Yes the mines and map corruption was part of the reason why we moved, there was literally air bubble pockets all over the map as if there was supposed to be ores there but they had vanished. This time we haven't had that problem and the mining world has really helped as well as all the space we have to play with, unlike before where it was messy in areas and we didn't have places for things.
 
Glad you like the test build world and plots too, I really was thinking people would say they don't want them, I'm quite surprised but relieved to know those that have commented so far are happy with them.
 
Again you're welcome.
 
 
Thank you for your post Joe. I'm glad you think we are friendly, we may not have some things that other servers have and we do have some restrictions, but we make up for it with our community atmosphere.
 
Yes, need to round people up, like sheep! Who wants to be a Sheppard? Haha.
 
Another two reasons I forgot to mention in the post about why the towns are so far apart are: It allows us to have lots of terrain pre-generated already so we can build lots of nice things on the rails without having to worry at a latter date about expanding the map and where things are going to go and if terrain would be ok, we had this problem in the old world. The other reason was it separates the lag areas, so everything isn't cluttered.
 
Lets look at some coordinates, currently heading north: 0 is spawn tower, -250 is the road at the edge of sandbox, -523 is the road that goes to the coliseum (coliseum width is 227) and then snowheim at -1000 with the castle grounds starting before that. Some towns such as maplehold have houses before (870) you arrive at the station, then there's other things such as adventures that take space!
 
Allowing dark oak is an issue as I said above, you can allow it for one town, if all mods agree but then what about other towns that have less materials, look at perivale as an example that doesn't have different variations for stone and mojang said at Minecon 2012 they will not be doing more stone variations, when I was there and heard that I thought immediately of steer and perivale. Also lets say we allowed dark oak in Snowheim, someone could build a house all made of cobblestone including the roof and then use dark oak and the rest of the town carry on as is, it creates a divide in the theme, that's the biggest problem. I'm not against new materials, I just want to make sure all towns are fair with each other and the towns are themed nicely.
 
You're welcome, lets see what happens.
 
 
Thank you for your post Luke and you're welcome.
 
Sorry what did you say? Ohh you're talking about yourself, we are not here to disguise you Luke, we are here to discuss YAMS. Hehe.
 
When you say biomes, do you mean changing the current biomes with world editing tools etc to those new biomes? I'm not a big fan of changing biomes and I only really do it if there's an issue, such as when Mojang decided it would be a good idea to remove snow fall from Taigas and create a Cold Taiga where it does snow so I had to download the map and convert biomes then reupload etc. Another time is when there was spots all over perivale that didn't have rain while other parts did, some houses had rain on one side and no rain on the other side, so we changed it all to plains to keep the whole town in tune.
 
Funny you say more towns, as some people say we need less. We choose 4 main ones for simplicity, there's a town at the end of each cardinal direction and all at the same length, there's no unfairness and it's easy to go straight to the end of a track and find a town. There was lots of plans to have loads of other towns (not living in) on the corner stations, such as the oasis, underwater town, cave town, valley ravine town etc... but there wasn't that great of a leap of people wanting to help out at the oasis that I haven't come forward about the other towns yet. If people would help finish the current projects off, id love to start on some of the corner stations.
 
Again you're welcome.
 

 
@Everyone - sorry if I missed parts, I've tried to answer as mush as possible and I also don't want to be the only one to comment on what's been said so far.
 
I would like to see more people take part in this discussion, as well as those that have done already, there's plenty more to discuss, don't just think about what I've said in my main post in this topic, there's plenty more to talk about. As an example villagers, I'm assuming you all know why we don't allow village trading? So the shopping centre doesn't become obsolete. But is it something we need to look into again. There's lots of things like this that I haven't mentioned but maybe you'd like to see improved or changed.
 
Looking forward to more replies. If you care about YAMS now is the time to show it by taking part in discussions here.
 
Thanks,
Darren

Attention residents of Snowheim and YAMS!!!

 

Snowheim is proud to announce the grand opening of the unique underground stables.

There is a horse friendly access point to the underground tunnels just outside of the current farm location. Signs lead the way to the old 'horseshoe' area which has now been transformed almost overnight (2 days and one very late night to be exact), into a fabulous Stable area.

 

ride your horse around the back of the stables and chose one for your horse to stay for a while. Signs will be available to let others know what your horse is called and who it belongs to

There will be chests provided soon with some hay and carrots as a welcome gift for your Horse.

 

hope you like and enjoy using the new town feature

 

Nikki