Well I have a great many problems with this, Spike.

First up, no one can say the original plan for the Theme Zones does not work as no one has even tried it.
Secondly, the management issue is not an issue. I never said that ONLY one person would be in charge of a theme. I have always made it clear that it can be a whole team of people who run it.

As to spawned items: Its a huge problem. Simply handing out the ability to spawn items will absolutely end up with those involved taking said items to build their own homes in Homestead and to sell on the markets. This will categorically happen.

On this map we (or rather, I) have been far more tolerant of players building "cities" (and I use the term in the loosest possible way) because the problem is simply not feasible to manage. People want to build close together and they want to do so without Residence. The more I think of it in fact, the more I think we should just abandon Residence for players entirely as I believe it serves no purpose. Homestead was designed to be a place where you HAD to Residence what you build and we would not prosecute griefers as it was your own damned fault for building something you could not afford to protect. That idea lasted about 10 seconds and we are back to the ridiculous nanny-state that Rose wanted to enforce

As or the rest: There are MILES of free areas to build in on this map and I will simply not even entertain notions of expanding the map or turning Theme Zones back into being part of homestead. We are not even 10% full on the current Homestead so such a proposition makes no sense.

Back to the main point: Unless a way can be found to monitor the distribution of spawned items (something I believe to be utterly impossible) then I cannot see me agreeing to it. We will just end up in a farcical server where no one in their right mind would do anything else other than build in a Them as, hey!, everything is free there. It just makes no sense to me.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Very fair points, Howard

I was not trying to say that the map should get widened anytime soon. I was trying to point out that it might be a good idea to spread people out a bit on the existing map, by opening up some of the areas reserved for themed zones. This would mean that there would be more traffic in the existing themezones (as people travel to and from spawn), and it would give people more freedom in choosing where they want to live.

We don't need 8 themezones at this current state, and before we do, we would most likely be on the point where we would consider widening the map anyway.

As for controlling the spawned materials, I completely agree. There is no way of making sure that the spawned items won't end up on the market.
A solution to this COULD be to allow themezone managers to buy spawned basic materials (logs, smoothstone and glowstone) at admin market buy prices. They could use the money they earn from selling resses to buy these materials. Seeing as the items are not free but bought, and that at the standard buy prices, would mean that there would be no idea to sell them again.

To prevent huge quarries, we could also regenerate areas used for harvesting stone/ores.

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<@Howard_s> usa just has a made up economy - they can't really go broke

JuncoPartner: I could barely hold it up for long.

Well, I've been pondering this a lot lately and the more I think about, the less I am swayed by any suggestions I've heard.

This is SMP, not FreeBuild. Being given a Theme Zone, a simply MASSIVE section of land that is pre-zoned and allows you turn off monsters, turn on healing and do whatever the hell you like in there is already an insanely good deal. I simply cannot see any justification for giving people WorldEdit, item spawning or any other tool bar simple laziness and a childish need for instant gratification.

As I have said from the start, a Theme Zone, like any build, should be its own reward. Working in the safety of a Residence with nothing to threaten or hinder you, it will be a simple task to gather vast, vast quantities of items in a relatively short time (assuming there are a reasonable amount of people involved and if there aren't, it should not be a Theme Zone). The only concession I will consider is giving you some sets of tools to start you off. Beyond that, you have everything you need.

So, as of now, anyone involved in a Them Zone will have nothing given to them other than the zone. I am not saying that is the end of this or that I don't want any discussion, but Theme Zones need to start and only a few people are bothering to involve themselves in this discussion.

Keep the ideas coming if you have them but so far I have heard nothing even remotely convincing.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I think I've probably been AWOL long enough, but I have been thinking about whats been said.

I totally agree about people having to build things properly, without just WEing a rectangle up and calling it a building, but there are a few rather large problems that occur, for city at least, if WE and item spawning are completely removed. Sadly, I can't think of any solutions at the moment, but I will give it some thought.

First up of the problems is that the land itself is still completely out of shape, with maybe a third of the land needing to be lowered: a task that I cannot see happening without WE. Alongside this, there are some builds already made, but in the wrong place that need moving- you can see the issue there with no WE.

As for the resource collection, while it is a nice idea to set up an enormous communal mine, which may well work for smaller themes, the amount of stone alone required to make city would take an obscene amount of time to mine.

Then come other materials, such as wool and glass. Since the plan is to have an area for 'touristy' buildings, many of these will be made of wool- and there simply aren't enough sheep to meet demands. As for glass, I plan to use monumental amounts of the stuff, meaning that entire deserts would have to be dug up. Not only would this remove everyone else's supply of glass, but it would leave a horrible scar on the landscape.

I expect I've probably just caused more problems than I've solved, but I though it necessary to let you know where I stand on this.

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"I'm... I'm trying to have a soul more"
-Gavin Free

As for the problem with sand and Stone. I'd say we should just strip mine an area, and when the area is mined, we regen it. That way you will still have to manually farm it, but will not end up with huge holes all over the map.

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<@Howard_s> usa just has a made up economy - they can't really go broke

JuncoPartner: I could barely hold it up for long.

Fair points. Let me clarify what I am willing to do.

If Theme Zones need "terra-forming" to be suitable for purpose, I am willing to do that for you. You need the land raising or lowering then fine.

For glass I am fine with giving you however many chests of sand you need to make glass. It ahs no great worth so would not be used to break the market

Wool is trickier as it is very pricey. I can see no harm in spawning sheep for you to harvest but spawning wool would be an issue.

As for it taking ages to mine enough stone to make a city - Gotta say I disagree. I have built some damned big things in SP in my time, all long before I even heard of World Edit and they did not take that long, even though I was working alone in a true survival environment. When you can just stand and mine for an hour with no concern for food or mobs, you will find you will have mined a stupid amount of materials. It is more than easily doable.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

That sounds good, the glass and the terra-forming were the main concerns for me, and those sound like good solutions for the problems. Fair point about collecting stone, especially if you are willing to take the sand collecting process out of the equation- plus, once we get the foundations down, we can get some more people involved to mine/build. Wool wise, it is not an immediate problem as it won't be used in the set up process, but it would be good if we could find a solution as some buildings do look better in wool.

If your willing to drop the ground level down (and maybe even move the builds where they are meant to be?) then I think that these solutions should solve the current problems.

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"I'm... I'm trying to have a soul more"
-Gavin Free

I much as I understand the idea behind gathering the resources, it just makes more sense to me to do a large project in homestead. Mobs are a non-problem, build during the day, mine during the night, and then the only issue is the residence really but that's also doable paticularly when there's more than one builder involved. The themezones are pretty out of the way, most people would probably prefer to do a large project in homestead, so they can live there, and have people see their work. Plus resource gathering is really boring if there's healing and no mobs, because it isn't survival anymore, it's just mining in godmode

The other issue aswell is places like D9 where there is no /res for the whole thing, and that kinder of defeats the point in themezones, or that place by PA, just a mess of shit eating up land that could of gone to builders actually using /res and some design. You must appreciate that building a project purely based on aesthetics over survival and practicality is a lot of fun for some people, and feel a great satisfaction when their vision is coming together without hinderance, freebuild's appeal depends on this, but smp can do this far better with variety of blocks and items, superior lighting. Building something practically thinking about how liberal you can afford to be using certain rare blocks wouldn't make sense for a build that wont serve any practical use (even if for the sake of pseudo-functionality it could).

I think there could be things done to prevent spawned items reaching the economy or chests in homestead, allow themezones to explore pure building, to impress people, and even have a server tour using portals. Then keep that seperate to homestead which is surivival, so when you take up a project you take a break from survival and possibly stay out of homestead until you finish. That way we can have the best of both worlds. Of course we all enjoy minecraft differently, but for me, I don't see any apealing reason to build legitimately in a themezone, when homestead offers the full survival experience. I can build my project in homestead and live there, while still playing normally with everyone else.

Themed zones are not supposed to be easy if we spawned items why not just do it in freebuild?

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[10:36] <+Mack_> Howie I cant die D:
[10:36] <@Howard_s> challenge accepted...
macktastic360 was slain by SpA_Howard

I think junco answered that for me already.

thats the exact thing i want to do howard D: are you telepathic or something?

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[10:36] <+Mack_> Howie I cant die D:
[10:36] <@Howard_s> challenge accepted...
macktastic360 was slain by SpA_Howard

you just described my exact plan for hith duin D:

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[10:36] <+Mack_> Howie I cant die D:
[10:36] <@Howard_s> challenge accepted...
macktastic360 was slain by SpA_Howard

Mack, why are you replying to old posts? And it's not even a useful reply...

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What are you looking at?

Personally I think it's better to make another world like bedlam and homestead.
On the spawn place of this world will be an Admin shop where you can get FREE items. This way you can give people 'spawned' items without giving them Gamemode 1. They won't be able to take the items with them to homestead or bedlam. (Could be fixed with a simple plugin maybe? [clear the player entries maybe] )
It could still stay SMP.. But we will have a world with epic theme zones.

Then for the existing theme zones in Homestead we take care they will still be maintained. The other areas will be open again for everyone.

This way I think it can be solved...
Hope it is of any use..

- hwinwuzhere

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School is sucking up my head.
Luckily I left it in my bed :3

Can't have another map. One of the first points I made very clear. Even if we could, this makes the server Freebuild and I am not having that.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I know this is an old post and what have you but i just thought why not create a seperate rank for theme zone owners they could have special perks like for instance more wool of of a sheep and can mine faster (of course they arnt allowed to sell the spare items on the market) but a new rank will be easier then just going i can give you this but not that and creeping around what you cant and can give people.

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

And this would function how? We do not have a plugin that enables faster mining or gives you more wool per sheep.

Also there is no creeping round. I am simply telling people what they can and cannot do. From the start it was made clear that WorldEdit, spawned items and GM1 are not negotiable.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Well here the idea of buffs comes to mind. If you look at this page, you'll see there are some potion effects that haven't been added through potions, but still have a function. The potion effect that would come with ells' suggestion is "Haste", which lets you dig faster

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What are you looking at?

Well im not sure about these plugins but im sure there are some out there and as held said there are potions giving them potions to do the work is just as effective they still will be doing the work but just with some buffs added on Just a suggestion that's all as we don't have any ideas that will generally work and that most people can't be asked or don't want to have the hassle of having or making a zone

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

If people can't be arsed to make a zone then guess what?

Easy-mode, make-it-in-2-days zones WILL NOT EXIST. Period. If people want they they need to go elsewhere.

Either that or the WHOLE server needs to be changed so that it is not economy based.

I swear the further we move from the original idea I had when I first took over here, the worse it gets.

You guys need to decide what you want, top to bottom, the whole scenario. Suggesting game-breaking amendments that fix one thing and break 20 others is not helping.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

What about no theme zones and we regenerate the area they were in so we can extend homestead (or whatever its called) and build more useless things in it! That way every problem goes away right?

A bit extreme, but it does seem fitting. I agree, even though I was a builder of Islerlohn. Just one request if this extreme idea goes through, can i get a schematic of the entire Islerlohn?