Proposal for the Spawn Cleaning Project

#1

First things first, we should come up with a cooler name for this (ex: Operation TBD)

Since the Spawn clearance has been OK’d, I was hoping to step in to give an input about how it can be carried out since it has to be a well-organized endeavor and properly supervised. Criticisms or suggestions welcome. I’m not the one organizing it nor am I asking to do it, just trying to get the conversation started so we can get things moving.

Timing:

Sundays (Evening europe, afternoon US) is the time most people are available. We should try and aim for a Sunday, and probably make it an on-going/all-day event. Staff should be around to properly supervise the operations

Operation:

However, this Sunday is far too soon because we need to go about this properly. Agent agreed we should keep some of the good builds, but what defines a good build? I propose we make a preparatory thread where people nominate buildings they like and then either the community or the staff votes on it. Same thing with buildings that are completed but are abandoned and/or badly done (this includes some of the community builds).

As for the incomplete buildings, staff should mark them out to make sure they are actually abandoned, while giving the community a one week notice where they have to claim they are actively working on it or will soon. If a player claims to finish a building, he should be given a time period where he has to fulfill the commitment or the building gets removed (lets say 2 weeks).

After the votes are cast, and buildings kept/moved are decided on by Agent the staff, it’s the job of the staff and any officers they recruit to mark out the buildings with dirt towers with 5 torches on top (1 on top, 4 on each side of the top-most block). To avoid having dirt towers at spawn for too long I recommend they carry this out the saturday before. Alternatively, if we rather mark out the ones we plan on keeping, then we can do that since it might actually be easier. Personally I recommend marking the ones to be removed because we avoid the risk of accidentally miss marking a build we intend to keep and instead gets removed.

Tackling the Lag Issue

We also need to have a very serious discussion about tackling the lag issue at spawn. It’s not a server problem because we dont experience it at our homes. It’s a spawn problem and it must be solved because new players associate the lag with ping problems so they leave thinking we are based in Kuala Lampur.

Excess signs and farms need to be removed. The quote room should be moved further out, while the number of barely used farms is too much. If we wish t build a compound further outside of spawn where all the community farms are placed, then so be it but the number of entities at spawn needs to drastically reduce.

While this may be controversial because a lot of people have worked on it, the Troll market should also be removed. I have personally almost never seen people use it unless they are working on it or seeing it the first time, and it’s a massive amount of entities right below spawn. I also dont see why it has to be hidden underground, we can easily mark out a market area somewhere on the surface which is a few chunks away from the spawn point.

Furthermore, carved out caves + torches contribute to the lag issue, so we should fill them out once emptied. I know this is a sensitive subject but this entire discourse began with Agent identifying our lag problem. We have chosen collectively to keep our current spawn but we still need to tackle the issue.

Aftermath

Building Material removed is collected in a community chest area which we will designate at a later time, which will serve in the construction of future community builds. Furthermore, any valuables and tools recovered should be placed in a separate area to be dealt with at the discretion of Agent and Juggs. Personally, I would collect it all and then distribute it to those who participated as a token of gratitude.

Cleared Areas

Once preparatory work is finished (or after spawn is cleared although I rather we not have an empty spawn area for too long), we need to mark out some areas for specific use or for any community builds we might want to add collectively.

Personally, I like the idea of having an Embassy district for us town owners as a way to attract players to live with us. It also adds a community feel to the server when new players come and see how many towns are advertising for residents.

As said above, I believe the troll market should be moved above ground so designating an area for that will also be crucial. I rather we discuss this before giving people the chance to build houses randomly around spawn

Conclusion

Again, these are recommendations and conversations starters, Agent and Jugg are free to do as they like and anyone is welcome to give their thoughts.

I however recommend we do one of these clearings every 3-5 months to keep spawn lively and interesting.

Thanks for reading!

#2

Just a note on this.We should probably refrain from completely filling in all caves. Removing torches? Yeah, why not?
The thing is, by leaving Dark Holes, or in the words of Vechs “Honeypots”, you cause Mobs to spawn inside them, and less will spawn on the surface, once the area reaches the vanilla Hostile Mobs-cap of course.

Perhaps these places could be accessible via iron door to periodically clear them out, or if they’re small, hooked up to the streetlamp line to dispense lava at dawn or something to clear them.

#3

Just a note on this.We should probably refrain from completely filling in all caves. Removing torches? Yeah, why not?
The thing is, by leaving Dark Holes, or in the words of Vechs “Honeypots”, you cause Mobs to spawn inside them, and less will spawn on the surface, once the area reaches the vanilla Hostile Mobs-cap of course.
[/quote]

Problem is one way Minecraft avoids overloading your CPU when loading areas is by not loading blocks that are completely surrounded when you enter a chunk. Has it ever happened to you when you are travelling that sometimes the world loads ahead of you and you can kind of x-ray the caves ahead before the ground above loads? Thats because all the blocks that are fully surrounded arent fully loaded so they become invisible. The more caves we have, the more walls need to be loaded. More walls, more lag. It’s just another way to decrease lag at spawn, although it should be a last recourse in case removing farms and signs isnt enough.

#4

I vehemently disagree with your proposal to move Not the Troll Market. The amount of signs down there is very miniscule and I seriously doubt it is really contributing to lag. Also there’s a lot of work put into that area. And Idea I have would be to instead move the Sheep Farm since it is not a build which we invested a lot of time in. It’s also the farm with the highest amount of entities out of all the farms. (6 Sheep per color). Also I personally have come to the conclusion that the sheep farm at spawn is too small and that once we move it to another place we can have much more sheep to shear for everyone which is a win/win situation.

On another note, Central access is an essential thing with not the troll market. The whole idea of it is that you can acess it quickly. By moving it further away you’re removing the characteristic that was most important. The Sheep farm doesn’t depend on this. Infact, it suffers from it’s spawn location since it can’t have as many sheep.

TL;DR: Don’t move not the troll market, instead move the sheep farm.

On the topic of marking abondaned buildings: Why use dirt towers?. A simple sign will do.

#5

[quote=“Karasaar”] TL;DR: Don’t move not the troll market, instead move the sheep farm.

On the topic of marking abondaned buildings: Why use dirt towers?. A simple sign will do.[/quote]

  1. I propose dirt towers over signs because it’s easier to scan the area to see what needs to be removed/kept if we can just look for towers, rather than walk around looking for signs. Just makes the process easier/faster, and less chance of missing anything

  2. I proposed removing the troll market cause I really havent seen anyone use it ever. We dont have a shop system so trading face to face is just easier and the common practice. I may be mistaken

A good middle ground will be to develop a checklist in order of priority for fixing the lag. So first thing would be removing the farms. If lag persists, move quote wall and other sign-heavy builds. If lag persists then fill in unused caves, and so on and so on. It will be up to Agent and Juggs to determine the priority order, but we can have the troll market be the last recourse.

However, should the lag persist after trying everything else then the troll market has to go too regardless of people’s efforts put into it for the simple fact that this whole spawn debate began with the lag issue, which AgentRed identified as a priority. Anything else is secondary.

#6

Ultimate middleground: Small towers with signs ontop.

#7

The Staff team should organize the cleaning FAST though.

Let’s not wait 3 months, hm?

#8

A collection of unfinished and abondaned builds that I suggest should be considered for removal or reposession. (Unless otherwise specified)
https://imgur.com/a/ClIgG
Here’s where they are on the dynmap:
https://i.imgur.com/bHTNL8e.png
Yellow - Unfinished
Orange - Block builds.
Red - Resource Farm:
I: Iron Farm V: Villager Farm M: Mobfarm
C: Chicken Farm - The one in the south is aigoo_jebal’s (active), the other one is abondaned.
S: Sugar Cane (There’s already one at the cow farm and we have an auto-farm)
Cyan: A hole in the ground (Chunk dug empty)
Purple: Abondaned Shop
Blue: Non-Aesthethic
Dark Red: Claimed but not used.

#9

[quote=“rhalyon”]2) I proposed removing the troll market cause I really havent seen anyone use it ever. We dont have a shop system so trading face to face is just easier and the common practice. I may be mistaken

A good middle ground will be to develop a checklist in order of priority for fixing the lag. So first thing would be removing the farms.[/quote]

I agree with the filthy tree-hugger for once. The troll market is quirky and all but no one’s using it. Same thing with the spawn farms, mostly. That’d be a good opportunity to clean everything up and start over on a clear basis.

As for preserving good builds, DClem’s got something going on already.

Oh and let’s try to keep away from coming up with a bunch of convoluted obligations for the staff before we’ve even begun.

#10

In my opinion:

We should clear a 200-250 block radius around the Spawn build, and do ONLY community builds in that place.

Including:

A bigger and clearer Spawn Building, with a better access to the Central Nether Hub.

Organized manual farms, to avoid lag but have everything. This includes all crops, trees, mushrooms and renewables, but doesn’t include any mobs. All mobs should be put in a separate far away space.

A big Embassy Zone in a defined space around Spawn.

A Open-Air Market Place, to replace the Troll Market, with the same concept: 8x8 shops with limited heigh.

A PvP area, or a big PvP Spawn Arena?

As such, we will be able to fill up and/or regenerate all of what’s beneath spawn, to avoid lag from lit up spaces.

As for Karasaar’s map:

I sincerely DO NOT CARE about ANY buildings around spawn right now. Even what we could consider to be “iconic” builds of Arcane Spawn are basically useless. They take a lot of space for nothing, they don’t serve any use, and most of the time the player is gone.

Maybe we could reuse some of the “iconic” builds, like Sryguise’s Windmill, southeast of the spawn building, but other, like Smith’s “tower” imo, just have to go.

#11

I agree with rhalyon completely on this. Whenever I walk around spawn I feel like it has a mix of great builds and weird looking towers. The market is also never used but what I was thinking is that we could make another town just for shops and have a path to it from spawn. I do think there still should be builds under spawn, just not the shop like I said. Another big problem is making it a thing people agree with. In the future, someone who built one of the buildings that was torn down may come on and see there building replaced with another build and then go on a griefing rage. But I am definitely supporting this and I hope other active players do.

#12

Idk about this, while I agree spawn should prioritize community builds, there really aren’t enought to fill it up. Besides, I think it’s the diverse types of player homes found at spawn town that gives it the organic feel we all love.

PS: Seriously, we need to name this fucking place. Spawn town just doesn’t have the same ring. AgentRed should start a thread where people give nominations for the town and then either we all vote on it or he picks his favourite

#13

I strongly disagree with the idea of making the spawn area only for community builds or shops. Spawn area should be kept diverse not only with shops, but also with personal builds and decoration. Seriously, the windmill doesn’t need a purpose; we can just keep it for decoration. Think about it: if our urban cities were only full of shops, it would not get much tourism. Saying decoration should be taken down is just like saying the Statue of Liberty is just a statue and should be taken down.
Just remember: Spawn area is our huge museum. Builds with potential should be kept.

#14

Spawn Cleanup:

Great idea. As others have pointed out, some buildings are great, some…aren’t. In Karasaar’s imgur album, many of them should be demolished and empty chunks filled in.

Farms:

We should move all the farms away from spawn.

Not the Troll Market:

It should be moved. Open market area away from spawn is perfect IMO.

Signs/Dirt towers:

We can grab a snapshot of spawn and make a map for new players. Road names, buildings/functions, etc. Tie this in with the nether highway map.

Embassy Zone

Great idea, support this.

Caves

They should be filled in a certain radius zone from spawn.

#15

[quote=“greasy_bandit”]Spawn Cleanup:

Farms:

We should move all the farms away from spawn.
[/quote]

I strongly disagree. Numerous farms add no considerable lag to the spawn area. Example: Treefarm, Shroomfarm, Icefarm. It would be too much work to move those, also it would be unnecessairy and make it harder for people to get essential resources (wood, water). I propose we move them aboveground to make them even more easily accesible and noticable.