FCC: the Frontier Clean-up Crew!

This awesome logo is courtesy of our very own EnderMagic1!

Who are the FCC? (Frontier cleanup, what?)

Crew, can't you read the sign?

The FCC are a bunch of players who care greatly for the Frontier. For those new players amongst us: the Frontier is the non-resetting survival world on the Empire. The main goal of this world is to build and (optionally) share your creations with the rest of the community. You can even establish outposts there which eventually might be used to serve as Empires. But that is beyond the scope of this post...

In case you played on different servers before: non-resetting means just that. This world never resets. Making it the ideal building grounds for your own fantasies and (optional) public buildings. but...

So what if those players go derelict?

Welcome to the very essence of the Frontier concern. Quite recently (time of writing) the Empire developers introduced the Anti-Griefing update! This means that most uncommon blocks are protected (as a rough rule of thumb: mostly all blocks except cobble, cobble slabs, dirt and commonly available stone blocks are uncommon)... But not those common blocks. And there is also the issue of the Frontier being in a very degrading state shortly before the protection came into power.

Summing up: The Frontier is "a bit messy" right now, especially around the spawn areas.

The FCC is here to help!

Have no fear, the FCC are here!

Seriously, for real... Did you see ManCub flying in our logo up there? He does that for real you know.. No, on Utopia of course! yeez..



We are a group of players who want to make a difference.

Now, to better understand our group you really need to know our origin... The whole idea sparked when a player called Seatwig started wondering about abandoned structures in the Frontier. This led to some ideas, one of which Khixan shared and that let up to me pursuing the whole thing.

Spam: Khixan is well known for the SMP8 Public wild utilities while I'm probably known for GRIP. I like to think that we have come together and joined forces, even though (official mumbo jumbo): the FCC isn't officially related with either of these two projects.

But that doesn't make us less awesome!

Clean up duties

Our goal is to help with making the Frontier a better place to be in. To put this blunt: do you know the yellow line between the outpost and the wilderness in the Frontier? That area is essentially up for resets when the staff feels like it.

We are actually trying to work with staff to prevent that from happening. Our goal is to make the Frontier spawn area a fun, luscious and inviting place to be in. A place which will hopefully trigger your imagination: this is a world which you might want to be a part off!

FCC is here.. more to follow soon!

Frontier Clean-up Crew - Memberlist

(in alphabetic order)

• AbstractToast9
  • Toast will also handle any block donations which you might have (more info will follow soon).
• AyanamiKun
  • Bookkeeper - handles the financial administration (keeps track of donations & expenses). Aya is mostly a supportive member
• bitemenow15
• EldritchAssasin
• EnderMagic1
  • Our designer: made the awesome FCC logo you see up there!
• Evesthery
  • Our terra-forming expert.
• Khixan
  • Also mostly a supportive member, also because Khixan's obligations to the SMP8 PWU come first.
• Kytula
• Lomax70
• MancubPlayzMC
  • Our treasurer.
• RunderK
• ShelLuser
• _cTJ_

More information will be added at a later time...

Where do I sign up?!

It's great to know that other people actually care about how...

Because it is.

(also I would sign up, but running 1 1/2 businesses [dont even ask] is hard enough for me )

I'm here to help and comment about how schwanky our banner looks
(I'm standing next to Shell like "NOTICE ME SENPAI")

I'd love to sign up as well

smp8wild c needs this

Just let me know when/where, I'm glad to help.

¤cough, not ender, cough¤

Yeah... hehehe

uh oh... I blame the orange juice and me seeing double

Orange juice & WHAT Is the question. I'm sensing Zombie Virus may have been involved .

I'll gladly donate time and resources to this cause, the frontier needs to be more appealing to new players

Hm, very nice!

Without any of Aikar's crazy expensive T-virus Vaccine at hand

ok mine and Enders skins do not look the same and dont blame the orange juice, it was just a mistake you seeing double (not a good thing) and I just want to let you know thats me who is flying up there and I love it

(bump) First project coming up soon.

A quick update....

You may not have seen it, but we have a new version of our logo. Yes, the first major project has been tackled! Ok, a bit more serious here: Ender worked hard to polish up the logo to make it a bit smoother and better looking, and I think he did an amazing job!

Right now we're discussing the first real project and as soon as we sorted that out you can expect another update.

Donation

We also had someone donate 25k to us. Which was very generous, and also totally unexpected Right now the money got parked with our treasurer (Mancub) and we'll work out something a bit more official soon enough. But please keep in mind: right now we're ok on money and materials.

New members?

We'll get to that soon enough! I don't want to rush things, and the main (first) goal is to start our first clean up project. This will take quite some preparation and a bit of planning, so right now that's what I'll be concentrating on. We'll get back to new members and all after we got that sorted out and started.

Thing is: this is all very new & weird for all of us, so I really want to start out with the original group first so that we can get some experience with this. Once that happened it'll be a lot easier to get new members on board because we'd all be able to help you to get started. But before we can do that we'll need to get ourselves started up first

Thanks!

Thanks for all the feedback and shown support so far, it means a great deal to us!

FCC's first project report!

These team members worked on this project!

While everyone was enjoying FireFloor this week the FCC gathered together in the SMP1 Frontier and started their first project. Earlier both Aya and me found a wrecked up place which seemed ideal to start with: it was pretty messy and torn up, very close to the protected area (easy to grab things from the vault) and hardly any player structures (less chance of (accidental) griefing).

So last Thursday (time of writing) we headed out!

Apologies if this turns into a mini-rant, I'll try to behave, but even one day later I'm still very excited and satisfied with what we achieved here. I'm very proud to be a part of this!

Before

I think it's safe to say that this place was a mess:

Water, holes which would kill you if you fell in, and large dark & dangerous (mobs!) areas...

Water, dirt and what was once a nice house (?) is now nothing more but a stone carcase.

We also discovered a torn up wooden cottage (had no roof and broken windows), see background.

The last two pictures were actually taken while we were already busy cleaning up, but I still think they clearly show the mess which this place was. A totally ruined & mined out and worn out area. You really would think twice before thinking about building your house here, right?

During the project...

I'd also like to share some in-between pictures, but I'll spoiler these so that you won't get too many pictures loading in at once. If you're considering to join us then I request that you go over this, there are some things which I think are important for you to know.

First we set up some signs to mark the area so that if players were to pass through they'd notice that "something" was going on here. This will also help us when we're taking on projects which last longer than a day.

We also set up a small storage. As you can see we're not here to mine / take things out of the Frontier, we're bringing stuff into the Frontier.

Important information....

If you're considering to join us then I request that you carefully read this.. You might be puzzled why I had 'NoProtectMode' on up there. After all: isn't this about restoring and making sure that the area will no longer be griefed?

Well, yes and no.

Our goal is to restore the area. Not to re-make it in the way we think it should be. And there's something really important to keep in mind: what is the purpose of the Frontier? It is a place for players to head out into, explore and give them the option to build stuff, right?

So how are they going to build things when they're greeted with protected blocks? That doesn't quite add up, does it?

Also important to know: restoring an area is NOT about simply covering the whole mess up with one or two layers of dirt, bonemeal the rest and then calling it a day. But it's also not about blindly filling up every hole we find, then covering that up and calling it a day.

Restoring means so much as carefully going over the area and repairing it, making it look original again while still preserving every player made structure.

There was a gap in the fence which looked intended, so we restored that section as well...

Here's a noodle for you: in this area we found some huge underground caves which were dug out by players. In my opinion that is also a player structure which needs to be preserved. For all we know some player(s) could actually be using that. I don't know, maybe to hunt mobs there (and why not?). It sits close to spawn, has many options to hide from mobs and plenty of dark areas which spawn them.

I don't think that any player who might visit this place would be happy if we were to come over and simply seal the whole thing up. In my opinion that would also count towards griefing: purposely annoying or hindering other players from their gameplay.

As such we made sure to mark every player made mine entrance (crude block stairs) and keep them opened up. We did fill up a lot of holes and areas with dirt, stone, sand and gravel (that is also why using noprotectmode can be important) while also making sure that those underground structures were still reachable.

THAT is what restoring is all about in my opinion.

Note that this doesn't mean that we don't use protection at all. Those player buildings we restored? Those now enjoy block protection. For the simple reason that those buildings shouldn't have been torn down in the first place.

And well... I think that the inhabitants were very happy that we were there:

Our welcoming committee?

And after we were done...

In case you're wondering about the crafting table: that was there before, so we're leaving that in place. Not only because this one happened to be protected (I assume we could have asked staff if we wanted to) but because we're restoring the landscape. And that crafting table was here before us, so we're leaving it in place.

Grass, flowers, trees and no more holes! Also notice the restored pathway

We're making sure to leave existing areas alone (even underground mines) & keep them accessible!

Lomax stayed behind for a while to make sure the grass grew back.

What was once a stone carcase is now a beautiful cottage.

A cobble tower restored to its former glory.

Concluding

I think we did pretty good for our first project. This may not have been a huge Frontier-changing endeavor, but that doesn't matter. What was once a ruined mess is now a beautiful & natural looking area. One which hopefully can attract players and persuade them to use it to make it even better than it is now.

Who knows, maybe someone is going to use those cottages or maybe someone likes the area so much that they're going to build their own mansion here (and with the grief protection in place, who cares that it sits close to spawn?).

And that concludes our first project, there will be many more to come

Even the mobs were happy to see us leave

PS....

Our own Kytula helped us out with a new storage facility which the FCC is allowed to use:

But I will tell you more about that in a later report