The 'Shroom:Issue LXXIX/Minecraft Event

Minecraft Event by

Oh god, I'm late with this section. Whatever, at least I got it in.

Some of you may know that this year we hosted an event in Minecraft for the awards, creatively titled the Minecraft Games. It was basically an event where people got on a Minecraft server and played games for fun and token profit. LTQ and I were the hosts of it, and I'd like to thank LTQ as he did a great job with all of the technical things involved with hosting the server and abusing the fuck out of Redstone Repeaters. I'd say there are +200 Redstone Repeaters in that world...I'll explain later.

The games got started when I was allowed back into the Awards Committee. I wanted more than TF2 and MK7 tournaments, so I was throwing around ideas and tried to present an event where people would casually play on a server and mine for valuable resources, but nobody got the point in that. After a while, I decided that it would be fun to play minigames on a server, and so the MC Games were born.

LTQ offered to host the server, and a superflat 256x256x14 world was created for the games. Around this time the events and day plannings were laid out, and most of the structures in the world were built by hand, including the large Monster Dodge arena. MCEdit was used to lay out snow, place sandstone and accomplish other minor things. We also created an announcer, Poochy, to explain events in the chat and count down. LTQ renamed and recolored the name of a Command Block via NBTedit. Poochy and many timed Redstone Repeaters were used to make the entire Poochy system.

The world was finished a day or two before the Games. Day 1 began with the Pig Races, with Skulldug13, Turboo, and Mariomario64 participating. The Pig Races were an obstacle course where you had to maneuver "tamed" pigs across fields of cobwebs, ice, soul sand, and water. At the finish line, there was a handy...pig disposal. It really made fresh porkchops. MM64 finished first, with Turb second and Skulldug last.

Capture the Block then began, with Uniju and GreenDisaster (Reversinator) on the Green Team and Turb and MM64 on the Red Team. You needed to get the other team's wool block in a chest and bring it to a large tree that triggered redstone. The event was a disaster, with an accident with a lava bridge, wool blocks, and me dropping Wooden Swords from the sky. The Red Team claimed the win.

The final event of Day 1 was the Redstone Contraption Contest, with Skulldug, MM64, Rocker, Uniju and Turb participating. You had to build structures out of redstone...pretty obvious. Uniju grabbed first with a RAM contraption that saves data. Second place was Turb, with a contraption that played the Zelda item get sound whenever it was night. Third was MM64, with a diamond-filled chest that was secretly a death trap. All five contraptions can be found in this thread.

Day 2 came with Beginner Spleef coming up first. This was a large arena that was filled with water at the bottom and had grass blocks covering it. You had to break the grass blocks and knock other opponents into the water. There were many retries because there were many accidents involving the water currents and players being able to directly hit each other. It was still fun, though. Rocker, MM64, Uniju, Toadbert, TFP, Turb, and GD participated. GD won with Turb and TFP being the runner-ups.

The incredibly long and boring Sprite Art Contest was next. Rocker I can congratulate from staying in the time limit, but Turb and Uniju built lavish, elaborate pixel art of Touhou Satan and Jesus, respectively. The contest lasted for at least two fucking hours. Turb won first, Uniju won second, and Rocker won third. You can find all the structures here.

Sky Warriors came next - it was a game where players were handed blocks and had to knock each other off the 3x3 platforms and also climb to bonus chest platforms. This event royally failed because of my politeness being exploited to get extra chances and many players getting stuck on platforms due to lack of stairs or anything. People also teamed. Team Turb and Uniju got first, Rocker got second, and GD got third.

Finally, there was Hardcore Spleef - an arena where the floor was made out of TNT, everyone had Flame I and Infinity I-enchanted bows, and if you got knocked down, you died. TFP, Turb, Uniju and Toadbert participated, and it certainly was quite fun even though it was late. Complaints came in - the same from Beginner Spleef, actually. I gave everyone Creative Mode so they couldn't get hurt and instead just died to The Void. Afterwards, everyone started playing with LTQ's pet horse and Edd the Invulnerable Skeleton but I had to leave so the server suddenly shut down while TFP was riding on a horse and the horse was on crack.

LTQ had to be gone for most of Day 3, so I ran it on my own. It started off with me trying to solve the hunger meter by giving everyone public "steak buttons", and this lead to some people flooding others' inventory with useless steaks, so they had to be removed. Monster Dodge started with GD, Uniju, Toadbert, TFP and Turb participating. The goal of this game was to kill as many monsters as possible, but it later shifted to whoever had the least deaths. Every hostile mob except the Ender Dragon was spawned. I hilariously underestimated Endermen and Magma Cubes, completely screwing over everything. When we spawned the Wither, it decided it would be a great idea to run into a corner and then shoot fireballs at everybody. Nobody could hit it, so me and LTQ had to fly up with Creative and killed it. We tried again with a second Wither, but it had the same problems. Deaths to the second Wither were not counted. It did create a memorable moment from Toadbert, though.

"I GOT THE STAAAAAAAAAR"

I subsequently created a museum for it as the second floor of the Op Shack.

Next was Player vs. Player, and bloody hell was that the most exploited event. TFP, Turb, Toadbert, and Uniju participated, and they separated into two teams. They instinctively mined the hell out of the underground even though it was just dirt, so then it resorted to them mining out a floating iron structure LTQ made and the golden structure that meant to resemble the Cornucopia from The Hunger Games, but then they discovered an op room and then that was over with. Then someone figured out how to severely exploit a secret diamond-giving room LTQ made. The two teams never fought each other, it was very boring, Uniju forfeited, Turb was second, and TFP and Toadbert joint won first. Easily my least favorite event. No offense to anybody.

The final event was the MarioWiki User Build - a sprite art contest where you had to build MarioWiki users. Toadbert, SKmarioman, Skulldug, and Turb successfully completed their sculptures of Toadbert, Porple and Stooben, a horrible abomination that was supposed to be Skulldug, and Superchao, respectively. Sculptures can be found here. Toadbert won first, Turb won second, and SK won third.

Deep breath...the summary of the Minecraft Games. It truly was an ambitious event. Once again, I'd like to thank LTQ for the help. I hope that next year there will be a better, more organized Games, with much less exploits and more thought-out events.

As a closing, I'd like to mention that you can possibly expect a new thing from LTQ and I coming soon...