Hi gang! I'll be perfectly honest with you guys: when it comes to setting up online events then I'm most definitely not the best. Its not that I don't do anything, its just that I'm taking my sweet time and sometimes even take (too) much time working around problems and before you know it we're one year further. Now, instead of bumping several (old) threads with marginal information I figured that I should do the same thing as my "Journal thread", and here it is. Here I'll be keeping you guys up to date on the current status of some events, possible things to come, I'll whine and rant about stuff bothering me and so on So first things first... A summary of everything I'm currently working on and what the (rough) status is. Redstone tutorial project This is what triggered my blog thread. When going over my watched threads and private conversations (I always clean those out every 2 months or so) I noticed that I've been talking about this almost one. whole. year. And the result so far? Well, nothing you can see. I've discussed some things with the staff and decided that this project is going to be fully dedicated to the blog. Another change is that I'm not going to dedicate my Utopia residence to the tutorial (though some redstone stuff will probably find its way there) but instead I'll be setting up something else. What that something is? A secret for now, by the way things are going now I'm hoping to have something more substantial to show for around next month. Important: Someone donated some glass, redstone and a few repeaters. Those will be used for my upcoming treasure hunt (see below). Current status: I'm working on this, I hope to finish my first blog post next month. Auction house project Put on hold until further notice. I still think its a good idea, but right now I got other stuff to worry about. Also: Last year I also investigated options to build / maintain some kind of public service thingie in town (public smelter for example) but I totally dropped those ideas. For the simple reason that I'm having enough trouble as it is with maintaining my shop, so yah Shell's guide to the Empire Remember this? A book with a hefty pricetag attached to it, only one copy per player, and it'll disclose some of the secrets of the Empire. You'll even get a free subscription: as soon as I release a new version then you can trade in your old copy for the new one. Current status: Wrote some pages already, added things like the old tutorial, entering an outpost, entering the "staff cafe" (as I like to call that place) and the mysterious well on SMP2. I hope to release the first copy in 2 - 3 months time. GRIP Running head strong. I think that I made plenty of mistakes during the startup (mostly getting the feeling that I was trying to over-regulate things) but so far we're doing quite ok. Already helped out with several griefing incidents. Current status: Alive & kicking One year anniversary treasure hunt Funny thing to do almost 3 months after the facts Recall my "over regulating" comment above? This is no different. Talked to some of my friends about it and the fact that I think that some of the things and puzzles I made so far look "crappy". I kid you not: I remade some things 3 times in creative already and I'm still not happy with the results. Well, until someone told me that when they were doing my follow appreciation event they didn't quite care about the fact that the labyrinth was build out of dirt; but more about all the cool prizes they could win. Touche. So I'm going to change a few things here... One thing: this hunt is going to be held on my 2nd SMP2 residence (trick comment), my Utopia residence AND on AyanamiKun's 3rd or 4th residence (she has two covered with sandstone and I have no idea which one is which). Anyway: one of those two. So SMP2, SMP4 and Utopia will be involved Important: CadenMann donated 5k to the prize pool, and that is still a thing. Current status: Finished the starting puzzles on SMP2, I'm not going to re-do the build I made on Aya's res but finish it instead (another puzzle) and there might be an even harder redstone powered maze coming up on Utopia No promises on when this is going to be held, but it is coming. #emcdevappreciation Had a small set back because of my Internet disconnect as well as some IRL work related stuff, but planning to finish up next week. Current status: Got the first pages of the book almost ready (I'm following a tip from a friend: I'm writing the book in Metapad and then I'm going to paste it into Minecraft) and going to contact the first winners of the poll this week and the week after. Fantasy stories The EMC Fantasy story which I'm doing with AyanamiKun and of course the "The day it became all too real". Rebooting real soon. And what happens now? Now I'm going to continue doing what I've been doing so far and whenever I have some update to report I'll do it here. I think that's a much better idea than to start an event way too early, letting it slip past its event date and after that trying to pick up the pieces again. But not this evening: now its time to relax and maybe do some mining
About time I put this thread to some good use... On a personal note I'm really happy that I got to share the secret behind the 300k player. But as some of you already noticed: this doesn't mean that I simply give up on my alter-ego. No way She'll remain an active player on the Empire for as long as I'm active here So onto my ongoing projects. Due to personal issues (mostly work related) I had some delay with my EMC blog projects (mainly the event I started as well as my soon to be written blog posts). Today I had some good inspirational moments to do some writing and I hope to finish a few posts tomorrow and in the beginning of next week. Once I finished my strategy guide for the mini bosses I'll be starting the next round of the blog event itself. Topics which I'm trying to address in upcoming EMC blog posts: Mini boss strategy guide (because of the event), voters gear vs. god gear and... A mystery subject I've also made some progress on my redstone tutorial series. Another delayed event, now delayed for the second time even, is the developers appreciation contest. Right now I'm not sure anymore what I should do with that. First I'm going to concentrate on finally finishing the book, after that is done I'll decide on trying yet another reboot or... We'll see. Fantasy stories... Obviously these are going to get new chapters very soon! But I have some more good news (I hope). Many players asked for a guest role in my Empire Minecraft fantasy story. In case you're not familiar with my writings, I'm referring to this one here: http://empireminecraft.com/threads/a-minecraft-adventure-thingie.54858/ I've been thinking things over a bit and I think I came up with a good way to do this. Of course I should have thought about it sooner, but hey! Here's the thing: we don't have to be in the SMP9 frontier in order to snap some pictures for the story All it takes is finding a suitable location on another server (probably somewhere in the wastelands) and then we can use that. The main thing is the story afterall. So in the upcoming chapters I'm going to concentrate on adding a small plot twist which will make this possible. smp2 +directory This got seriously delayed as well. I've made a pretty cool Excel (macro) sheet last week and imported all the output from /res list +shop. I also wrote a small VBA program (macro) which will help me to sort the whole thing out (basically it helps me to sort all the residence numbers into the right categories). Empire guide I postponed this until further notice. I started to write some things and add some tricks (like getting into an outpost) but right now the EMC blog has priority for me. But this book is coming! So yeah, that's the current status of my projects so far.
And another update... First (more public) event finished, one more to go! It finally happened! I actually managed to finish an event which went a bit further than merely doing some kind of lottery. One down, one to go: the developers appreciation. The build contest kinda failed, I didn't manage to attract enough attention for it and well; my 2 periods of forced absence (Internet disconnections) didn't exactly help either. So I decided to drop the idea of a building contest and instead I'm now concentrating on finishing the book by getting people to sign it and then we can somehow present it (or sent it) to the developers. In case you don't remember it, I'm talking about this event here: https://empireminecraft.com/threads...-update-of-2015-show-your-appreciation.60806/ Don't bother to respond to that thread; the event already ended: we're at step 2 now (signing the book). GRIP In case this doesn't sound familiar: http://tinyurl.com/projectgrip (don't worry: it points to an EMC forum thread). We're still going strong. And it makes me so proud & happy to see all the positive feedback we've been getting. Every once in a while our donation chest(s) are filled with various items and honestly guys: that is the way I prefer it. Because those blocks will be used to help others one way or another. There are still plenty of players who haven't heard of us and I'm very pleased to see that a lot of others already started mentioning us every time people ask questions about sorting out a griefing problem. Awesome! Fantasy stories Next chapters planned for upcoming week (30 May to 3rd of June). That is my planning but keep in mind that I put a higher priority on EMC (contrib) related tasks. In other words: if the update to 1.9 also requires updates to the wiki then that will have a higher priority for me than writing up the next chapters. Origins This is StoneSky's project and I'm participating with working things out. Discussing plots, checking out story ideas, sharing snippets, etc. I'm not going to say much about this because I don't want to risk sharing any spoilers, but trust me when I say that you might end up surprised at where this story is going This one: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/origins.65014/ SMP2 /v +directory It's semi-locked right now, we're re-doing the entire build. Instead of some signs we're making a building which has several floors: one floor per category. So if you're looking for shops which buy items from players you can go up to floor X and there you'll find dozens of teleport signs which will teleport you to those several shops. We've also come up with another idea: a threshold. We will only add shops when the player has been on the Empire for a certain amount of time. We're thinking 62 - 73 days (2 - 3 months), might lower it to 1. In order to prevent adding shops which will be gone soon afterwards. And that's roughly what I'll be focussing myself on, next to some EMC obligations obviously. But that's not what this blog is about
History is going to repeat itself! I am super excited about this one! So today I reached 200 forum followers. Officially it's 198 because Aya & GripCEO are also following me, but since the number says 200 I should live up to that. This is going to take me a little longer than before because, as you can see, I now plan on making something a bit nicer than merely a labyrinth made out of dirt. This time I'm seizing the opportunity to start building a decent structure on my Utopia residence as well as prepare for my upcoming redstone tutorial. And what this is leading up to you may wonder? My 2nd follower appreciation event of course! All 200 players who are currently following me (so right now, at the time of writing!) will soon find themselves an invitation somewhere to try and pick up their presents. What presents you wonder? These prizes will be guaranteed. Every follower will have a chance to pick up a collection of these 12 blocks. Actually 13 because I'm also throwing in 200 signed books to share with you what led up to all this and why you get this specific selection of blocks (it'll be our secret ). This is also why I now have 3.5+ DC full of books & quills in my storage (that's going to be some undertaking to work out 200 books! ). I'm also throwing in some promo items and other goodies. Those won't be guaranteed wins, and I'll share more about that at a later time. Rumour also has it that you'll even get a chance to win a set of AyanamiKun's favourite GOD armor (with mending!) during this event. More info will be shared soonish
[quote="ShelLuser, post: 1217490This is also why I now have 3.5+ DC full of books & quills in my storage (that's going to be some undertaking to work out 200 books! ).[/quote] ... *drool* So many books!
