[Suggestion] Add mountains/rivers/scenery at the edges of town

I sense conflicting information.

I'll have a look where the thread is, I found it again a few weeks ago

Trust me, I have been a Corner/double-edge resident for over 8.5 years (one of 40 in EMC)
here is one thread, and there is one more somewhere:
https://empireminecraft.com/threads/residence-move-form-due-to-town-expansion.53648/

As somebody who lives at a very rare 12 from the right, 12 from the bottom residence (only 10 exist in EMC), I feel like it would be super fun to have a natural boundary.

It was also done twice in 2011 by JustinGuy
--> https://empireminecraft.com/threads/town-expanded-for-future-growth.21/
-> https://empireminecraft.com/threads/town-expanded.430/

Hmm, I always remembered there to have been just one. Guess I was mistaken haha

I completely forgot! Thanks.

You too!

If it ever happens again it should be an easy fix I guess!

Spoof up EMC's borders and create a new feature for EMCians to look out over

I still wanna know who's gonna build all these and what size should it be? How many chunks do you build back? How tall do you build it? Are all SMPS the same or not?

Personally on the last question I say make all SMPS the same background That way you build 1 for 1 SMP then you can just copy / paste it for others. Much less work, making it more feasible.

Even a cheap wall-scape would be better than the emptiness that it is.

+1
It would also be kinda nice to have the outskirts be explorable too, some cool secret buttons could give rewards (like the old tutorial. like the really old one) along with various easter eggs. could spice up town quite a bit.

The only thing i am worried about is how far back its going to be, mainly because when you go too far it kicks you back so SS or devs have to expand the "kick back to town" border by n amount

Other than that. pretty good idea!

As someone who would likely be on said project to build such a thing, let me say my opinions (in other words, don't take mine as an official answer). Each side of a town's square is roughly 4,000 blocks long. While you could design something that would tile and just stack continuously, creating such a structure on that scale would cause a significant amount of lag and maybe even be impossible to produce. (I practically crashed STAGE several times with just changing a few hundred thousand blocks at once.) Then of course this is all just for a single side of a 4 sided-town, on 1 server. This would be an enormous project and we're already scrapping by on the team we got with the current workload. [Shameless plug to apply ]. So while it may be rather empty on the edge, it would take a while to design, implement, and then push to servers which would also be a long-winded process with the current methods we have available. But I do agree it is rather barren out there.

There are many ideas of what should be out there and it would be a large task for staff to do so why not ask players to work on it?

Make an event out of it. Provide the dirt/grass and saplings and I will gladly build small hills up around smp3. I mean, it would take me longer but I could even use my own dirt/grass sapling collection.

A change of scenery no matter how strange, within reason of course, would be a welcome site. It would only have to go out to the tp point.

The issue with this is the permissions and flags. Even I, who is on Build Team, would need the building and command permissions of essentially a Senior Staff to be able to build on the SMPs/Utopia servers themselves. We always *could* theoretically close all servers and then temporarily allow us BT members + Staff to build on the border then push them to live then turn the servers back on. This may have a ton of technical issues and I don't believe that is worth it. With that in mind, only Admins and Senior Staff would have permission to build and that would be a lot of work for them, even to copy/paste something we already made. Again, it all comes down to the workload and being in the most used world.

I'd say build it 1 or 2 chunks out. Think of it as an extra park in a way. People can wander through it. Maybe turn it into a trip along the history of EMC? And there need to be hidden rooms

I'd also suggest to make every SMP different. As the SMPs are already different (I.e. some SMPs have custom messages when logging onto them).

We can have them made by the BT or maybe host a contest?

Haha we had the same idea with the hidden rooms! That'd be epic.

I think the 'kick back' is an easy fix

Would it be possible to roll it out in different stages?

Or perhaps have it setup with 1 large map update and server restart.

The event idea is a good one. Perhaps just to fill a few stretches of outskirts but I think even that would help!

What if we were to turn the outskirts into one big residence? And then build on it?

Or maybe we can fill it in as with the JG/ICC tribute. Have everyone build something on their own res or in SP in x by x blocks and then submit it.

Best X designs win and get placed?

Like I said, I am unsure of how exactly the procedure that would be needed for such a large change to the town world. We can't push something from STAGE to town since the town world is ever-changing with the constant player activity. We would have to shut down the server as a whole, move it to its own thing on STAGE, build on it, then push that to live on that specific server, hope nothing broke, then turn back on the server. Now there may be a more direct way, but as of now I am unsure of such a thing.

That would be up to SS/Admins to set up as a residence but that would be possible. However, the practicality and control in order to ensure it looks good and there isn't any foul play with any builds or whatever (not saying this will be the case but just thinking of what could go wrong) just doesn't seem worth it nor wise to just open it to public builds.

While the tributes/shrines or whatever we place could be included, each side of a town is nearly 4,000 blocks long. What else would possibly fill that much space? And then returns the issue from before.

I like the concept of including some extra scenery, but there seems to just be so many issues for just a cosmetic change that personally I see more cons, possible complications, and headaches than pros. If there is a simpler way or I'm incorrect in how we could handle pushing this build realistically let me know.

Hmmm perhaps you're right.

Can SS/Admins share their thoughts? (If anyone has found the thread yet).

I'm curious to hear what they think!

Great discussion.

I like this idea a lot. but, to reduce the workload, we could always let minecraft do the majority of it and just generate random terrain for a couple chunks out and have it copy pasted in or something. Sure it'd be more boring that having the BT build stuff for it, but it'd be more interesting than the grassy void

Thats also a good option!

I wonder how much time that would take.

1: Let worldpainter generate terrain to the size you want.
2: smooth out the edges to flatland with some brushing.

Depending on how smooth and seamless you want your edges to be, it can either be a lot less work or a lot more work than doing it all custom from the start. Making the edges doesn't have to be less work than just making the terrain yourself. The advantage of doing it all custom is that it is a lot easier to get the terrain in a shape that goes smoothly to flatland, you don't even really need to think about it. The advantage of vanilla terrain is that it will be populated a bit more diversely, and that it will have stuff like rivers and diverse biomes, which are a pain to do in Gaea / Worldmachine. (I personally prefer Worldmachine, but the steep price you need to pay to use it commercially probably isn't worth it.)

All with all, I don't think of it as one taking a lot more time than the other. I will say that doing with vanilla terrain requires a lot less skill.