Cubed Community is a freebuild server with over 5000 members from all around the globe. Its aim: to build together as one, making light work of massive, meticulously-realised cities, each informed by real urban planning methods. Well, comparatively light work anyway - their ongoing modern city project, Westpoint, has been in the works since 2014. Rather gloriously rendered above by Droolie, Westpoint’s world file is currently a 5GB download - and growing.
I had a chat with Cubed Community owner Adam “Aequotis” Berry about marshalling such massive multiplayer talent and his love for urban design. Adam describes himself as “a bit of a city freak” - an obsession that many on the server share.
“There are quite a few of us on the team who have an education in geography and cartography, so we normally pull upon from that,” says Adam. The server tends to gravitate towards European cities, because of their more organic structure, and layered architectural history. To some extent, this goes against Minecraft’s strengths - the higgledy-piggledy growth of European cities doesn’t fit neatly into a grid. But it’s exactly that which appeals.
“It’s an extremely attractive prospect to make things fluid,” says Adam, “to work through a time period. So even with modern cities what we’d do is give it a little bit of a lore, some background and say, ‘This city was started in the 17th Century, so it’s not going to be organised on a grid system, it’s going to be much more fluid.’”
Del denne historie