Survive and Thrive

“To be honest, I don’t even know any style-name of the structures. [They’re] not Gothic, not medieval. I think it’s a mix,” says Flash2Boom, a member of Patheria. “If you look carefully, you’ll probably see the differences between the structures. You can discover different villages and a lot of secrets beyond the bridges.”

Each one leads to a building designed to entice players to pick their mini-game. SURVIVAL GAMES has a flashy sign (nice use of two swords to make an ‘A’) to draw you in, while others use detailed castles to promise adventure and excitement if you choose them. Argggh, I can’t decide!

But the project didn’t get off to a smooth start. As Flash2Boom explains, “at the beginning, it was hard to get ideas, [particularly] at this scale. Most of the buildings are higher than 200 blocks!” That’s getting reeeeeal close to the maximum height you can build to in Minecraft (256 blocks), which is a design challenge to a team who clearly enjoy constructing colossal structures!

After a great deal of brainstorming, however, the team came together to start building and tackled the difficulties that come with such an ambitious project early. “Sometimes we had a finished structure but it did not match in the entire world - so we started a new one.”

It’s scary, throwing away something you’ve invested so much time, energy and creativity into - but sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture and do what’s best for the project as a whole.

Fortunately, the more that was built, the more the team could see a final, cohesive vision where everyone’s individual skill was meeting and merging. Builders such as Kev worked on landscaping, Fabi did organics and Wubi worked intensely on the details. Lucius did the structures and Lucky “imitated different styles to find my own.”

Everyone on the team has a building specialty that they want to develop their skills in, but most learn a range of skills just by working with the rest of the team. As Lucius puts it, “everybody has his/her own ideas and skills. By combining them you get the maximum out of everybody and start inspiring one another.”

Wolfsspiele reflects this in its diverse designs and flamboyant features - it feels like a playground where its builders were encouraged to experiment with whatever styles or creations they wanted to try next. For example, there’s not just a wolf in here, there’s a detailed build of a man adorned with a monocle and parrot, too. Fashionably flamboyant!

“We were getting more and more ideas by building the hub,” Flash2Boom says. In particular, one of the most striking aspects of Wolfsspiele was inspired at this time - the bright signage that decorates the building façades. “We thought it was a good idea to add signs in different styles. The problem was that most of the rendered server chunks are 16, which makes the signs disappear when you walk too far away from them.”

So the solution? “We finally placed these signs at the distance that the player can read them by walking around the centre of the map.”

It might be less than they originally dreamt of, but when you’re standing in the middle of that bridge considering your options, seeing all of those signs flourishing with choice and the promise of adventure is… actually, it’s too much choice! Too much pressure! Argggh I WANT TO DO THEM ALL!!!