As I'm hope most of you are aware from The Yams 4th Anniversary post and The Future of YAMS for 2014 post some decisions had to be made as to how to carry on with YAMS if at all due to time, budget and other constraints.
I didn't want to see YAMS end so abruptly without a proper end so after the anniversary post I started thinking of what could be done to have one last go of YAMS. I have came up with some ideas and have proposed these to staff to see who was interested in carrying on as staff in the hope of making these ideas a reality.
I have now had most of the staff reply, I'm still waiting on a few to reply but while I wait (I'd really like to have them on board) work has started already as we are on the clock and also id like to start getting members thoughts!
So here's the current plan, please bear in mind things may change as this isn't final:
We will be switching minecraft hosts, I can no longer justify paying what we do with our current hosts.
This will mean the ip address will change, but you should be using play.yams.me as the ip address anyway so you will be able to connect no problem once we switch as I will update it.
I will try and get us over to Minecraft 1.8 with all the new blocks.
New survival world, items will not transfer over as it would be nice if we all start of as new players, we have had our current 2nd world for some time now so a refresh will do everyone good giving players a chance for a fresh start.
Mining world will stay, but will be refreshed, all mining to be done in mining world to prevent players digging into peoples basements or getting in the way of each other. Mining world will of course be refreshed.
Test build world will hopefuly be replaced with a creative world.
Old YAMS Normal worlds to be available as read only worlds for visits if possible, this will depend on RAM.
Nether portal will most likely be more accessible this time, its currently hidden and you have to find it.
Access to the end has yet to be decided.
PvP will remain off except for certain pvp arena areas, we are a family friendly server we don't need people killing each other all the time.
New world will not be as large radius wise, but may expand if needed as at a latter date.
The big one.... no sandbox and no towns.....
There will be no set theme unlike our current towns but there will be certain building rules.
Players will build their houses along the side of the 4 main rails coming out of spawn tower, we will ask you to place your name at the side of the rails and that you build a path to your house and you don't go really far back (players should be able to see your house from the rails). So that's no plots...
We are still a community and players should stick together don't try and separate yourselves out massively, be friendly with each other and explain to your neighbours what you plan on doing so you can wok out space between you.
Only 1 house per player, but community projects will be allowed. We could maybe have 1 of the rails for community projects, we shall have to think.
Small outbuildings such as wells and outside toilet etc around house will most likely be allowed as well as small farms and such.
Building rules will include things such as not building offensive structures, not building houses that go very high up, floating houses (includes trying to attach it to the ground with say a 1x1 pillar to try and get round it)
There will be good farms in spawn town as everyone should be provided with a good chance to start just as they were in sandbox.
No mass claiming of land (i.e fencing massive areas off for future use), take the land you need there and then to build and expand as and when needed. Talk to your neighbours if you think you need space.
Evictions could happen to those who don't come back in a long time, so keep active.
There will be opportunities for new staff and internal staff promotions.
Well these are some of the ideas that I'm thinking of going along with, as I said at the start things could change, nothings final but I need to start somewhere. I'm hoping you agree on what we have planned?
Have you ever heard of The YAMS Adventure? Somewhere out there is an epic adventure on a grand scale just waiting to be found... Have you ever seen the pumpkin monster around spawn tower? He is very mysterious but I hear if you're nice to him he will help you on your journey by showing you the way!
Now where was I.... ahh yes I was going to say that I have a competition for you all, I am need of small but elegantly detailed village houses! If you can design one that I like it will be used somewhere in YAMS... Your name will be on the village house for all to see when it's found...
Are you interested in taking part? If so please take a wander down to the bottom of spawn tower where you will find the events portal section with a portal to the village houses world. You'll want to make sure you leave your items at home, you will also loose experience to use it up before visiting!
There is currently no deadline on this challenge but once I've got enough houses that I like the world will be closed! You may make as many houses as you like but please make sure you finish them off properly before starting on another house and also don't forget to put your name! If you want to build a house as a small team you can just remember to put all your names on it!
Let me show you an example of what it is I'm looking for:
Real shame to see no one suggesting anything. Please remember you don't have to live in a specific town to suggest or help out in it, you can live in another town and still help.
As discussed in the Future of YAMS topic, I was thinking about adding a room with signs displaying warps/commands to all the different games we have in YAMS as not everyone is aware we have all these games, there used to be signs in the old spawn tower (though not warps) but they got took out.
Well I'm pleased to announce at the bottom of spawn tower you can find a place that lists most of the games we have along with required warps/commands to get to them, there is also a community build teleport location - if a moderator ever wants a teleport button to a big town build, they only need ask me.
Please go and take a look. Good or bad idea? Feedback please.
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.
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.
YAMS is 3 years old today the 9th of January 2014. I truly cannot believe YAMS has been going for 3 years, with nearly 2 of those years being in our current world. It’s been an enjoyable experience so far but you can make it even better by helping shape the future of YAMS.
I'm here to discuss why things are how they are in YAMS and what the future holds for YAMS.
I also would like to find out from the community what they think has and hasn't worked well and how we should proceed with the future of YAMS, if at all there is a future for it?
Let me start my going into detail on the various aspects of YAMS both past and present:
A family friendly community YAMS is a family friendly community orientated server and I wouldn't want it any other way. I truly believe in having a community where everyone can happily coexist. YAMS just wouldn't be the same without the community atmosphere.
Spawn tower and the rules A spawn tower has always been present on YAMS; it gives a great vantage point of the centre of YAMS.
Spawn tower hasn't always had barriers to prevent you from getting down quick, in fact there used to even be signs in the very old spawn towers encouraging you to jump into the water. Unfortunately however it became apparent that some people were not bothering to read the rules and instead jumping from the tower and running away, since then we have always forced users to walk past the rules room by having fences and such on the top preventing players from making excuses of not having seen the rules.
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.
The first original spawn tower didn’t have many rules in it; I had decided that I would start off with little rules and if the community decided to break my trust then I would add rules as required. When first starting off I had no idea that there were people out there that actually had fun in destroying others people creations a lot of the rules you see today are there because at some time or another someone did something to abuse our trust that made us add a rule.
Every so often I consult with staff and ask them whether there needs to be any changes to the rules, be it adding or removing rules, changes are made as required. It was only very recently that we updated our current rules, I removed quite a few and made a few of them clearer.
I also try and improve the spawn tower in general, such as working out the recent issue of huge FPS lag when 1.6.4 came out, I spent a lot of time working out what the issue was and once I found out that it was signs I spend time finding out solutions, the quick solution was to remove as many signs as possible and allow people to use the Optifine Mod while work was carried out on creating a new tower. It was unfortunate that we lost a lot of the rooms, but I’m very happy with the new tower and does make tours quicker, plus the old signs (stories, events etc) are still in YAMS, they have just been moved to other areas.
Sandbox and approval process When YAMS was first opened to the public, there was no sandbox, people could join and build anywhere without prior approval. This at first seemed quite nice however it soon became apparent that this wasn't working especially as we were becoming even more popular, the community started to become more disjointed with people all over the place.
After a few months we started to look into ways to fix this and we came up with the idea of having a Sandbox, players would be able to build a temporary home here so they could explore YAMS properly and meet everyone and choose a town to move too, making them feel a part of the community, after all being a part of the community is our number 1 rule.
The whole sandbox system has changed many times through YAMS history, sometimes it was simple other times it was more complex and tedious.
At one point you could become semi approved; this meant that I had seen your house when you were offline, but I wanted to see it with you in person, this wasn't to be awkward but rather because I wanted to actually talk with you and show an appreciation for your house and help you, a lot of server admins don’t take time to get to know their players, I wanted to. This semi approved process gave me that once chance to have 1 to 1 time with you seeing your house without anything else getting in the way. Unfortunately however meeting players was a problem some players could only come on for a few hours and I wasn't on at those times. It was decided that for the new world, the one we are in today that this semi-approval process would go.
Today the sandbox process is much more streamlined but I am still the only one to do sandbox approvals, this isn't a power thing but rather it still gives me a chance to actually be involved in a players first steps in the YAMS community, of course they don’t have to see me online anymore to get approved but I do try and find out when that player is on and talk to them and leave tip signs in their house, I even like to help players build their sandbox houses when they are struggling.
I believe we have fined tuned the sandbox experience as best as possible. I fully understand that there are still things some players see as an issue: too many signs, plots too small, still complicated etc. It’s not easy making everyone happy, getting the balance between things just right. Too few signs and players won’t understand. Too many signs and people lose interest. Bigger plots less plot numbers and players concentrate too long on their sandbox home and forget about all the towns they need to explore and that sandbox is much more than just building a nice house.
The towns When YAMS was first opened to the public, just like sandbox there were no set towns, people could join and build anywhere without prior approval. This at first seemed quite nice however it soon became apparent that this wasn't working especially as we were becoming even more popular, the community started to become more disjointed with people all over the place.
It was decided that we would try to regroup people by creating specific towns in high populated areas; some players had already started building towns themselves so we had a starting point for most of them but this gave us a chance to define those towns properly and put someone in charge of that town who could approve builds within that town, approvals had to go through me before.
In our first world, we had all sorts of different types of towns/places you could live at different times in the first world included: Plankville, Creeper Swamp, Woodbridge, Highland Cliffs, Splinterz, Beachside, Enderville , Tumbleweed, Winter wonderland, SinkCity, Saidai, Hakakai Island, Birchville (removed during town restructuring) and The Lyonesse Inn (A massive underwater hotel never completed before our move to the new world).
As you can see it was a big list, this is where a lot of confusion occurred even more so when not all towns were towns you could move into from Sandbox, but rather they were towns where you could rent/buy with iron/diamonds etc a predefined building/room that you could only change the interior of so the exterior of the house was kept in line with the town theme, for example Japanese.
It also didn't help that not all towns had the same plot sizes; this caused players to be drawn to the towns with bigger plots.
Now we had regrouped most players (there was still lots of disjointed players in the wild), we could start working more closely with players and have a better sense of a community, of course not everyone was happy with this change as they were used to building wherever they wanted but I do believe it was the right decision to make, having everyone all over the map was pretty crazy, it was hard knowing who was who.
One of the biggest problems with so many towns was that we didn't have enough staff to cover all towns or staff were appointed for that town then disappeared, leaving the players confused as to what they could or couldn't do and who to speak to, myself and my team were picking up the pieces time and time again.
When it came to a new world, we had a chance to structure things properly and that’s exactly what we did. We now have 4 plot based towns one for each main cardinal direction, with the main town station being 1000 blocks away from the centre of spawn tower.
The towns are this far away are for multiple reasons:
It makes it easier for people to understand coordinates.
It puts a nice distance between towns, so we can build lots of nice and interesting buildings/projects/areas at the side of the tracks for people to see between towns.
It gives towns enough area to expand without having to worry of getting in the way of others.
It makes players aware of just how large an area we have to play with, which would hopefully inspire some big builds.
Town themes When YAMS was first opened to the public, there were no town themes. Some buildings were wonderfully themed themselves while others were not so nice on the eyes. Some players created town style areas for themselves such as wooden planks in woodbridge and cobblestone in Highlands Cliff before they became official towns for the community.
As time went by towns were officially formed and town themes given to those towns.
Having town theme styles was a choice that some were happy with while others were not. Some of the reasons behind it were:
It gave towns a personalised style; they were not just a collection of random houses of all types of different materials.
Players could build towards integrating within the town, feeling like they were a part of the town style and not just another random person building another random house.
Some people would build wonderful things that looked wonderful and would probably feel very welcome in any town regardless of what materials were used (even wool), but others struggled building a house with so many materials to choose from not knowing what looks good together. Picture a cube house made out of dirt/cobble/white wool/pumpkins/sand and gravel, not a pretty sight. Limiting the materials helped people, of course 2 years ago there was less materials then there are now so we had less options of what would go well together.
Our current world town theme styles were chosen based on discussions about what the community would like, we had to take many things into account such as:
How easy it was to get those materials.
Would people enjoy using them.
Would the materials look nice together.
The main materials of our current town styles are as follows:
Snowheim:
Cobblestone for the main walls.
Mossy Cobblestone for small amounts of detail on walls.
Dark spruce logs for detail such as corners/rims.
Oak plank stairs/slabs for roof.
Cobblestone stairs/slabs for roof.
Dark spruce logs as extra detail for roof.
Farefall:
Stone brick for the main walls.
Mossy and cracked stone brick for small amounts of detail on walls.
Oak pine logs for detail such as corners/rims.
Oak plank stairs/slabs for roof.
Stone brick stairs/slabs for roof.
Stone brick as extra detail for roof.
Maplehold:
Oak, spruce, birch and jungle planks for the main walls.
Oak, spruce, birch and jungle logs for detail such as corners/rims.
Oak, spruce, birch and jungle stairs/slabs for roof.
Acacia and dark oak are not currently allowed.
Perivale
Smooth stone for the main walls.
White stone slabs for detail such as corners/rims.
Stone brick stairs/slabs for roof.
White stone slabs for roof.
Stone as extra detail for roof.
As you can see some towns have a better selection of materials than others, let’s take Maplehold as example.
When maplehold was originally chosen as the wooden town there was only one type of plank (oak) and 3 types of log (oak, spruce and birch) this was fine at the time but as Minecraft progressed so did the types of wooden logs and planks available to Maplehold, though I am currently stopping acacia and dark oak from being used.
I and the town moderators regularly discuss town themes/styles and what amendments we can make to the town rules, there’s a lot to take into consideration such as would a new block look ok in that town and would all the towns community be happy to change their houses to fit in with the new style, also would it cause any problems for others towns.
We try our best to allow things; we are not trying to be difficult rather make the general community is happy and make sure that as best as possible no one town is disadvantaged.
Town plots As you know all towns have plots, there’s a multitude of reasons why, let me explain a few things about plots:
Some people like being in a plot as it gives them a place they can call theirs, others don’t like them and feel too restricted.
We decided to go town the plot route so people felt like they were a part of a town and had people next to them, giving more sense of a community instead of people living out in the wild never to be seen.
The current 14x14 plot sizes were chosen for all towns as that way no one town had an advantage over others, the plot size seemed reasonable. The size was even as people preferred having double doors in the middle rather than a single door.
In the previous world an average plot size was 12x12 but a lot were even smaller! Only the town of beachside had a section were there was very big plots of 19x19, players who were seen to be active within that town, would be invited to take a bigger plot, this caused some unfairness.
There is currently no set block height for houses, the town rules state “You must only have 2 levels above ground to your house.†along with a pointy roof and attic inside on top. The reason that there isn’t a block height limit is that we trust players not to build ridiculously high houses and also because it’s another rule/restriction to add, despite what some people may thing, I don’t want to keep adding restrictions, quite the contrary. Most rooms are not more than 3-5 blocks high anyway so most houses are all roughly the same height so no one person can over tower others. On a few occasions people have built very high houses and we have had to speak with them and explain why we would like their houses shortened. I believe that while sometimes no height limit can be confusing, it allows you to be flexible in your house design and not have to worry about going those few blocks over a height limit.
You can currently dig 11 blocks down from plot level so you could in theory have your basement split into 2 floors of 3 high with double flooring, before September 2013 it was 8 blocks down.
Beautifully themed non plot based towns Just to add to what I explained above about town themes/plots.
You will probably have seen lots of beautiful non plot based towns created in Minecraft, but while wonderful looking (mostly done in creative) normally these towns consist of lot of vacant houses (the town is for show) or when people do live in them they can’t really alter much of the structure outside as it will ruin the impression of the beautiful town theme.
These towns are normally created by a specific group of people that know what the town should look like, leaving no room for others to join in and those that do want to take part are not sure how to start or feel like they cannot do anything better than what the others are doing anyway.
Saidai the Japanese themed town from the old town reminds me a little of this, there were 2 people working on it but after their absence no one knew what to do about the town.
What the town of snowheim does in our current world with their plots is something I've always thought was quite nice, the way the plots are on different levels and different paths is quite nice as it makes the town seem less plot based compared to other towns that have a cluster of plots all huddled together.
Public building requests I have always made it clear to town moderators that they should actively engage with the players of yams from all towns. I am fully aware how restrictive plots can be at times, so I’ve always wanted to make sure that there are building projects going on within the towns that any player from any town can come and take part in without anyone needing to be on to guide them. Unfortunately even though we have warehouses full of resources for players to use so they don’t have to use their own materials on public builds sometimes there’s a lack of participation from players all round.
Any player wanting to build something in YAMS only need post in the relevant section of the forums (town topics for town buildings and community building project forum for other non-town buildings) and ask if they can build it, it’s not so much for approval but more so others can show their interest in wanting to help before approval is given, so many times have we approved things only to have them unfinished while the person who started it goes offline for months and months.
Have a look at the past few last pages of each town topic and you’ll see there’s plenty going on within towns and actually quite a lot still going on out of towns, anyone forgot about the Ender Dragon statue? There’s even a warp for that. It's /warp dragon
The mining world When YAMS was very first setup, mining was allowed in the main world, this didn't seem like a problem at first but as we became bigger and bigger it was soon apparent that this was a bad idea, not only did it mean there was a limited amount of resources and we would never have the new resources but also that people were digging tunnels into other people’s houses and projects.
Our solution was to have dedicated mining areas which could be regenerated back once cleared (some where encased in bedrock), but this was problematic. Luckily once we had upgraded YAMS processing speed and ram we had another solution, the mining world!
Our current mining world is refreshed every update or so, when I think it’s ready for a change. People who say there’s not enough ores are just not looking hard enough, I routinely check ore percentages to ensure the world is still useable for both new and existing players.
The mining world rules have changed a lot through the times, I'm hoping the rules we have now in the mining world are much more friendly and open then what we had before. Some of the core principles of the mining world have stayed through the times though, such as the mining world being a place where you mine not build your house.
The nether world We do not currently allow people to build individual nether portals, not because I don’t want people to visit the nether but rather because it allows players to have fun exploring YAMS while looking for the community nether portal. It also helps organise the nether refreshes and having one central point for the nether rules.
The end world
There is currently no public way to get to The End as it brings up a few issues, one being that there’s not really much you can do there once you have killed the dragon or the person that does may end up with load of experience levels while others get none, though some people may want the end stone. Instead we use The End for event dragon killing, that way we kill the dragon as a community just for fun. I did plan to do an event to The End, if the dragon statue was finished… but it’s still not.
The test build world Some of you may remember that in the old world we had a place called the test build area, a 200x200 build area where you could pay 1 - 2 diamonds (fee was later removed) to build anything really, as long as it wasn’t offensive. Every month the area would be cleared and you would have to pay again if you wanted to build anything.
Unfortunately however even after we removed the diamond fee this didn't really take off; I think a lot of players didn't use it because you still had to use your own resources, such a shame more people didn't use it as people were always saying I was being too restrictive, yet here was a place people could build with freedom and they didn't use it.
Over a year ago and a year after the original test build area, we opened in our current world the test build world, this was a slightly different approach to what I had before, this time it was more about having a place to allow people to show their ideas and designs to others of things that could be included in YAMS rather than build anything you like.
You do of course have to find the test build world portal, but isn’t that part of the fun on YAMS? Finding all these hidden treasures out there and there’s plenty of clues, like did you know the hot air balloons can see the portal to the test build world portal?
Other worlds Every so often we open up other worlds on YAMS; a quick count gives me over 30 unique worlds. From past old world backups to adventure worlds and free build worlds. We really have been to a lot of different worlds. Just a shame that as many things on YAMS you open up these things and sometimes players don’t visit, yet they say there’s nothing to on YAMS!
The transportation system YAMS has always been known for its extensive rail systems, the rails in minecraft were something that got me playing more in Minecarft before YAMS, so let me explain a bit about the rail system in YAMS:
Our current rail system is in grid format for quickest understanding and access to towns.
Every town station is 1000 blocks away from spawn; corner stations (like the oasis) are also 1000 blocks away from town stations.
Some people think that the rails are too long, but there’s good reasons for them:
They allow you to see things on the way to where you’re going.
They help you get a better understanding of the layout of YAMS in a grid fashion, as each town is 1000 blocks away from spawn you can work out your coordinates easier.
You don’t need to sprint to a town which requires food/potions as well as having to hold down buttons, you can just pick up a provided minecart and press a few buttons and you’re off, you can even quickly go AFK and do something while you wait for the cart to take you.
They are still one of the fastest ways to travel excluding the newly added horses
Banning You may be aware, our current policy here at YAMS is once you have been banned we had good reason to do so and we will not unban you, unless there's been a mistake, which is very rare. Our policy is this way because usually if you've done something we can forgive you for we will jail instead that way giving you a chance to explain yourself, though if you don't turn up for months to discuss it, then you may be banned. I've done some unbans in the past and they never turned out well, since then I stick to no unbanning.
Of course no unbanning does present its own issues, some players move on while others just cant take no for an answer and instead go on a pathetic revenge, I've received my share of unwanted abuse. These players do not get unbanned, but they do show me that we did the right thing in the first place by banning them, anyone who abuses me, my staff and the community or wants to harm our community in general doesn't deserve to be a part of our community.
Wrapping up There’s so much more I’d like to tell you about YAMS and why we do things the way we do, but I've already spent way too long writing this post and I really don’t want to bore you (8 full pages long in word at this point excluding images). I hope that you find everything above fascinating and I have given you a better understanding of YAMS so you can help contribute to its future. Maybe you'll even go exploring a bit more... just like this person in the image below having fun on an adventure and yes all the images in this post are from YAMS at one point or another.
The future of YAMS is the title of this post… and I’m here to tell you the future of YAMS is:
That's it… there’s nothing to say, the future of YAMS is open for debate, it's a blank slate, there is currently no planned future. I want you all to take some time and think about what you've learnt above and post constructively below on what you think should happen with YAMS. To get you started I’ll give you a selection of things to think about, but please don’t just answer these think of your own too, these are just to help you think of what to say:
Is there a future for YAMS?
We've been in our current world for 2 years now; how long do we have left?
What would get people involved more in building public builds?
Are the current town themes ok?
Is there a better way than plots?
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.
What could make the YAMS experience better?
Ok good luck with your posts everyone, I’m looking forward to your replies and please comment on each other’s posts too, this is a discussion forum, so let’s discuss!
This was a hard decision, but I've finally decided upon the winners:
1st Place - ryanfenton - While not very vibrant in colours, which is something I had hoped to see, it did feature the word YAMS and also the 4 main town materials that every town could identify themselves with. I thought the town materials was a nice touch brining the towns close together. I also liked the fact that it had rounded edges, though these could have been blended a bit better as it looks a little rough if you maximse the GUI in the launcher options.
2nd Place - Captain_Marbles - Not as colourful as Nicks others screenshot images but it contained a recognisable image of spawn tower, the others could be anywhere if at all in YAMS. The biggest problem I found was that he broke the rules, he created a gravel tower to get up high to take this image... haha ok you're not in trouble. Anyway would have been nice to see some rounded edges.
3rd Place - changingtuna88 - The better of tunas two images, I choose this one other the other because while the spawn tower is screwed it's still more recognisable over the other one that contained some lava which could be anywhere in YAMS, if at all. You tried your best and that's what counts.
In the new year I may do another server icon contest, a few things you can learn:
Test your images on the dirt background of the Minecraft server list if possible, or ask someone to test for you, check contrast is right.
Transparency is good, but don't forget to test your transparency and check it blends ok.
If you are screenshoting images make them recognisable so it has a YAMS feel to it and looks like you went to some work to get that image.
If you use the words YAMS, try seeing if you can move things around a bit, have the word YAMS diagonal or one letter in each corner, or a little sway like you can get in Word Art etc.
Bright colours help us stand out, but don't just jumble loads of colours up, match your colours right!
Don't be afraid to use pens, pencils, paints, paper etc... and then scan it in and ask someone to sort of the size for you. Even if it doesn't look very good you at least tried and still get a prize!
To the winners of this one come and see me to go through your prizes! It will be fun!
A few things:
No new mining world yet as I may change the mining hub, in the mining hub competition I did say in my last post: Congratulations to Nikki and everyone else that helped out on the mining hub mushroom, we shall be using this design + some modifications as the first chosen mining hub. Using some of the others will depend on things, but I will try.
Infected mini game is currently broken.
I haven't decided on server icon yet, so for now I've used mine.
There may be other bugs.
Thanks.
Minecraft servers can now have server icons that display in the multiplayer server list, I think YAMS needs one.
In good old blue peter fashion (UK TV Show), here's one I made earlier:
But I challenge you all to see if you can make a better one!
The icon:
The image icon must be a .png
The image icon must be 64 Height x 64 Width in pixels.
Background transparency is allowed, its recommended over white background space.
Should ideally reflect YAMS in general, even more so Minecraft.
Doesn't have to say YAMS, but would be nice.
Nothing offensive, keep icons clean, we are a family friendly minecraft server.
Entering:
Anyone can enter including staff so long as they are not banned from YAMS.
You may use this topic to upload/post and discuss feedback on your designs.
You may enter more than one icon into the competition.
Icons may be uploaded here, hosted elsewhere or emailed to icon@yetanotherminecraftserver.com
When uploading/sending your icons please ensure that your icon is of high standard and that it uses the format of PNG and is 64x64, if possible please also provide us with you original save files of the graphics program you used before you exported it to png (e.g. PSD etc…). This is in case we wish to make changes at special occasions such as Halloween/Christmas etc.
Do not steal other peoples icons/images etc out there and try and pass them off as yours.
In submitting an icon design, you agree you are signing over the copyright of your icon design to YAMS, that is, any icon design submitted to the competition becomes the property of YAMS. YAMS will have the exclusive right to use/modify and reproduce any design submitted to the competition as it sees fit.
Selection process
Winners will be decided exclusively by Darren Straight in 2 weeks time.
Prizes
1st place you will be given the grand prize of having your server icon used for YAMS. You will also get to know the location of a hidden adventure of YAMS, should you know this location already but not completed it, you be given some help. You will also get to see the inner working od the adventure once you have completed it. As an extra bonus providing you complete the adventure you will also get an exclusive behind the scene preview of another adventure of YAMS!
2nd place you get to know the location of a hidden adventure of YAMS, should you know this location already but not completed it, you be given some help. You will also get to see the inner working of the adventure once you have completed it.
3rd place you get to know the location of a hidden adventure of YAMS, should you know this location already but not completed it, you be given some help.
Everyone that enters properly with effort will also receive 1 in game present!
Extra Info
A small sample of free tools to help you get started if you don't already have something:
Gimp (Free graphics editor)
Paint .NET (Another free graphics editor)
Minecrafter font
Minecraft text style generator
Good luck everyone!
It had me down as opening hidden boxes... Not sure when exactly that happened, but everytime I clicked edit profile, it was opening up /behind\ the launcher >_> but yeah. Cheers guys, I wouldn't have know what I was looking for otherwise haha
Haha yes steer said she told you, swinton hotel near kings cross. This is going to be fun! Im sure I can say this for the other 3, you are invited to come out for food and drinks with us! Get ready for a good time!
In the UK at the moment it's so nice! I can't remember the last time I could wander around in shorts, sleeves rolled up, flip flops on...!!!
It's 25C where I am right now (2pm) and I'm going to London on Friday, where its generally 5C warmer than up north, so that's looking promising! Looking at weather on my iPhone, this weather is staying for a while too, so YEAY!!!
Greetings fellow miners, I would like to invite you all to a sort of collaborative competition.
It involves building a new mining hub for the new mining world we will have for 1.6.
If you are interested please come to the bottom of spawn tower where you will find the portal to take you there, don't worry you wont loose your items or experience levels!
All is explained through the portal!
Have fun and good luck, please work together and get as many people involved as possible!
Here's a little something for you all, sorry it's not great quality (click image to enlarge) a lot of the isometric mappers now either don't recognise the new blocks or map it in a google maps style map which is nice but it's not just one single image I can embed here.
Free build weekend is now over, I have closed access to the world and removed your items, if you have a ridiculous amount of xp on you (obtained from freebuild world) please could you get rid of it by dying in lava or something, saves me having to clear it myself, I'm sure I can trust you all right?
ryanfenton reacted in 02/02/2015 - The Future of YAMS for 2015