The MineTrek 2 server was created to bring the USS Enterprise D project into the latest Minecraft releases and open up all of the wonderful creative possibilities that offers. See the wiki for more information! http://wiki.minetrek.net
Thanksgiving is about family and I thought I would share how thankful I am to be part of this community of people, every one of us a fan of Star Trek, you're like another family to me.
So what has happened on the server since the last blog post?
I'll go ahead and let DM7 do the work for me. :D
As I've not been in charge of the server I've been absent a lot more lately than I should be, so things have been moving on steadily of course. I've been taking more interest in the server again and so I'm going to try to get this going steady again through the new year! :D
Some other things of note:
Klingon Bird of Prey is finished
New ships such as Nebula, Enterprise C, and several other creations
Running on 1.3.2 presently until bukkit and plugins get updated
Make sure you check the shipyards forums and log into the server to see what's happening!
- NX-74001 Sovereign by Atrocities has been imported.
- Sovereign Spacedock has been placed around the above ship.
- Voyager decks have been imported and as usual the new ship has been getting a lot of attention!
- Build day was, in my opinion, a success! We shall have another sometime!
- Video is coming along, but I am a lazy admin.
- Plugin updates, so maybe not THAT lazy. The server is running better and is more secure than ever.
- 4,017,740.
- Slice and Dice.
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Baby-Sov, By Atrocities
Some effort more recently has been put into getting the Enterprise E onto the server. Most of that work was initially focused around the hull due to the problem of acquiring any kind of internal schematics for the ship... but apparently, they exist, someone made them, and despite their rarity we were able to get a hold of an HD version of the plans.
Those in hand, we set out to get this thing made. Wow... that is a lot more work than I realized. What we need is some seriously dedicated cleanup artists - it just so happens we recently had one drop by!
Thanks to his efforts there is now a decking-included version of the ship in the server, albeit a bit off-scaled in various ways. You can barely tell, it looks amazing and as per usual MineTrek style, has all the internals (minus walls, decor, turbolifts, ... you get the picture).
Sovereign Spacedock, By 14jroyer
I had thought of doing one of these initially for the Enterprise D when I first envisioned the server coming to 1.2. Maybe that was a bit too ambitious, the ship is so large...
But someone has made one for Sovereign class ships, and it turns out it fits MineTrek size just dandy! With their offer (or should I say request?) to use it on the server, I went ahead and gave our new Sovereign a shipyard.
Check it out!
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Voyager is coming home!
I know it has been done before, by several different builders / teams, but we at MineTrek have our way of doing things and we just had to have our own Voyager.
So take a look at some of the screenshots.
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Thank the Maker!
In person (well digital person) no less! Halkun has been dropping by a few times recently and seems to have taken interest in his old project again, which makes everyone around here pretty happy. I'm just glad hes getting to see how far along things have gotten and the direction the project is going.
In my eyes, the next step is get Ed Whitefire to visit the server... and then maybe Patrick Stewart or something. *cackle*
Ok enough talk about famous people. :D
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Tonight we dine on sliced decking!
It was a simple process that went completely wrong on me the first go, but I managed to render up each deck of the ship using mcmap. The images are very interesting - its like looking at a dynmap rendered view of each deck.
Here are a few samples. The rest of the files can be downloaded by visiting our forums!
Yep, that's right, we're going to have an "event" on the server!
What: - On a specific day, for 24 hours, set aside your other projects and builds for a while and build rooms on the Enterprise D! The more gets built the better!
When: - This time we'll have this event for the first time on Saturday the 19th of this month (May).
How: - Log in any time on the 19th you want and build on the Enterprise D. You can fill in quarters like mad, find a few science labs to build, or if you're feeling brave start going deck to deck and filling in rooms as you go! If you need to be given permission for each room, I will try to be around a lot that day to make sure you get it!
Why: - It's a great chance to show your dedication to the project and maybe earn Ensign rank. - I'll be including some of the new rooms in my upcoming video of the server. Show us what you can build! - We'll be one step closer to finishing the Enterprise D. Maybe if we have these build days once in a while we'll be able to do that!
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Do please attend at some point that day! The more the merrier, the more we get done on the D!
I thought this time I would let images speak for themselves. :D
NX-01 Enterprise
Nova Class & Refit
B'rel Class Bird of Prey
2009 NCC-1701 Enterprise
Future Vulcan Ship
Daedalus Class
Custom Ships
Next episode is likely to showcase a whole lot of interiors for the Enterprise D, as I am hoping to have some kind of mass room building event. The best work from that event will be shown in one of my future videos for the server, and we're bound to get a lot done on the D from it, so I am really looking forward to seeing how many people participate.
Not a lot is going on right now, at least, I'm too lazy to make full posts about it. :D
- Recently imported the Equinox deck plans by PatchyPatch
- Some work has been done on NX-01's hull by LoakeyRonso and girhawk.
- Several freebuild projects have had interesting additions to them recently.
- Server plugins have been updated and everyone now has access to multiple homes using /sethome
- Voyager may be an upcoming project when the deck plans get worked on.
- Interior work on the Enterprise D has been happening here and there, mostly quarters but also a few various other rooms.
- Recently I was able to link dropbox to our schematics folder so now it is possible to export just about anything from the server as a schematic without my assistance retrieving and hosting the file.
One thing I would like to do is organize some kind of "build off" day where everyone logs in and builds as many rooms as they can on the D. I'm thinking of a weekend, probably a Saturday in a week or two.
There would be no obligation to log on all day, only whenever is convenient to you, but the goal is to build as many rooms in the Enterprise D as possible. I'd like to assign a few individuals the task of gathering up the best of those builds so we can have a poll voting for the best of them, and that location will be included in my video (still a work in progress but I have done some recording for it!!)
I have another CTO coming up soon, so be sure to stay tuned!
Anyone who frequents the server knows I like to jump around the dozen or so separate projects I have running at any given moment. I also like to start new ones. Recently I was browsing starship blueprints and came upon one I liked a lot. I found it elsewhere but later realized the images were available on Cygnus-x1 as well.
That is the USS Hornet. Well... I don't like the name much (I hate bees and all varieties of hornets and wasps) but I do love the design. Among other things it carries a squadron of small but powerful fighter craft.
So I set to work, stepping briefly away from the standard formula of deck plans in favor of testing my handcrafting ability. It was a long and painful struggle! I think I will take the time to use deck plans in the future.
Here's the progress so far, hull nearly finished and some of the turbolifts set up (mainly the central shafts).
My version is smaller than the measurements listed in the blueprints, but the decking would be ridiculous if I kept the scale exact. I attempted to comfortably adjust it to "realistic" levels and also fit it into minecraft, and as a result this version will end up with an extra deck and a lot of double floored decks (which allows for better ceilings so no harm done really).
I also made the saucer edge a bit taller to accommodate Minecraft's unfriendliness toward shuttle sized vessels. That should allow us to make a bit nicer details for the saucer bay.
No fighters yet, just fine tuning the hull shape before details and interior start to get love.
We're always on the lookout for interesting stuff on the MineTrek server, so please let me know in the comments or elsewhere if you think I should share something in a CTO episode!
All hands brace for impact!
PS - the Ironhour is the name I am using for this ship. It is a name I created back when I played WoW and just seems to me to represent some sort of burst of strength to me. The ship is well suited as a strike craft or patrol vessel, it kinda fits. :D
So today (right now actually) I am formatting and freshly installing the operating system on our server hardware because of a nasty little virus. Typically with a virus I can identify it online by its activities, but this one seemed to be too unusual a case to be identified so.
What it did was close off a section of my hard drive, a folder in my main OS directory actually, and hide it from view. When I say hide, I mean it was hidden in all ways - I could not see it with hidden folders being shown, I could not see it with hard drive scanning software (made for recovering lost files and such). As far as I was concerned this folder was literally nonexistant.... except that it was slowly but surely filling up my hard drive to the brim.
That is, actually, how I found it in the first place. The hard drive capped out and I thought "how strange". So I cleared up some extra space (over 20 gigs actually). After that, a few days later, it capped out again. Whaaaat?
It was pretty obvious something was up, so I started looking for the culprit, some program or folder was growing at a pretty quick pace to pull that off, and that meant it had to be quite large by now (at a minimum 20 gigs, right, but probably more).
I was able to identify this nonexistant folder because I could see the size of its contents, and the number of files, but when viewed directly there was simply nothing there. I tried every trick I could think of to open it, but even if I managed to enter a folder that was hidden (by typing its exact name) I was unable to see a single file within that folder anyway and so was stopped again.
I'm not typically forced to do a fresh OS install, but in this case I simply gave up on other solutions because I think at best it would take me longer to clean the system anyway. A fresh OS is quicker! I designed the system to allow easy fresh OS installs anyway. :D
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On another note: we've been working on the Enterprise E on our server! At present it is only a shell, and one in the process of being cleaned up, but it may one day get decks just like the Enterprise D.
We're planning on extracting slices of the shell as decks to create by hand in an image editor. The only downside to this side project is, well, there are no blueprints available for the E. That means we'll be working from scratch!
Well not entirely from scratch, really, but the only materials we have are descriptions of the decks contents on various websites and a few side cutaway images of the ship. That gives us a pretty solid place to start, but ultimately there's so much that will need to be done to create these, trial and error with each of its 24 decks until we're satisfied with the quality.
All else aside, we'll probably base a lot of the interior space off the Enterprise D. It seems to me that the design of the ship is close enough that it aught to be a similar style in most respects.
It was always part of the plan for MineTrek 2 to go well beyond the capabilities of classic servers. There are plans to do those things (as you may have read in this blog), but what about other ships?
Well with some thought I decided we'd go ahead and make it officially part of MineTrek 2, we'll be doing other ships and were not afraid of neglecting Enterprise D (lets face it shes still the biggest attraction to the server by far, and is getting love here and there still).
We have the Defiant, a Bird of Prey being worked on in Freebuild right now (perhaps to be brought over to the new Shipyards map), a Nova refit, and then there is my current deck work on the NX-01 Enterprise. There will be more ships in the future. :D
I thought I would share so people could see the complexity on some of these decks. They're not as bad as I say lol... but its no walk in the park.
I mean I really dig a lot of the deco on this ship, but nothing blew me away quite like this. I've seen the grotto - it has looked like it did in my video a while back for pretty much the entire time I've been a part of or even visiting the project - a big sorta empty room with some waterfalls and grass and stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I do think that is ok... but why should it look like Minecraft generated it randomly? Why not a real mall, park, or whatever it is supposed to be? It's a public place on a star ship, not a nature preserve. I don't know what I am saying, it never really was that either... but it bored me after a while. I'm glad to see things are changing!
Here you can see the recent work by Patchypatch, despite my server dying on him and wiping out a fair amount of work.
Super awesome. There are pathways up the hill, little stands for vendors, a more scenic sitting area... the whole park having this level of love poured into it is just awesome. Its one public area on the ship, one relatively small room in comparison to the whole, yet is so packed with awesome detail. This is why MineTrek is where I want to be!
Thanks for the good work so far, guys, keep it up!
I'm planning to do a mini-series of videos in as high def as I can manage showcasing the server, its features and goals, the build, how to become a builder (Ensign), and other such things that are common. This video should serve as a much more helpful introduction to the server than forum posts etc, and hopefully will pick up more interested parties via Youtube (and perhaps elsewhere that the video could get linked to).
The first episode of this video will deal with everything in short form except connecting to the server, becoming a builder, etc..
The second should be dedicated to showcasing the current state of the Enterprise D, many of its unique rooms and areas, and advanced ways to navigate it.
The third should be about current and future features of the server such as the freebuild area, arenas, holodecks, holodeck adventures or quests, PVP, and whatnot.
Texture Pack
I recently posted the updated 1.1.1 version of the textures which I apparently had been keeping to myself for a while. Since I was posting it I decided to update it with a few more details anyway.
- Added Gorn Creepers, Jem'hadar Zombies
- Adjusted the colors of several blocks
- Remade the Slab texture (and doubleslab of course)
- Tweaked a few other textures to be smoother
You can get the latest texture pack from the forum thread for the server. The page is shown at the top in the blog summary!
USS Defiant
This mini side project has been progressing EXTREMELY rapidly. Mostly this is because with something new to work on there is a sort of excitement. People get to do things that are simply not possible to do for Enterprise because, well, its already done. Not everyone was made to build out rooms!
Some of us were just made to do this kind of thing. (Note: not finished yet, its coming along very nicely though).
This is really why I wanted to make the Freebuild map, because it allows people to do things like this that are a part of the server, yet do not intrude on the Enterprise D projects space. It does consume some peoples TIME which might otherwise be spent on the Enterprise, but as I said not everyone wants to build out rooms and light hallways all the time. I'd put money on people being more motivated to get things done on Enterprise in between other side projects than were they dedicated to Enterprise the whole time (aka stuck on the D).
I plan on starting and probably finishing multiple similar projects to this in the future. Stay tuned for that.
The Defiant herself is just screaming by. We've got most of the decks set up, the top hull is completely done and just needs some detail work, and the bottom is going to be pretty quick. A good number of internal components are finished and many rooms have been done as well.
This ship will be released as a Schematic (WorldEdit and MCEdit compatible file) when it is completely done. :D
Now I know you love this project because you're paying attention to this blog even slightly. Or maybe this is your first time here, either way I'm glad.
Waaaaaay back when the Enterprise project first started there was a lot going on. Decks? What decks! There were schematics of decks, and funky layers that needed cleaning up, but not much else. The builders of MineTrek had to start out by cleaning the decks one by one, coloring the rooms, etc.
Well I decided that since I was adding a Freebuild Area (yes there is now an area anyone can build whatever they wish on the server) I might as well freely build something myself.
That's when I decided I wanted to go through the same process as the Enterprise for the Defiant. Deck by deck, immaculate detail, and roughly matching size to the Enterprise build.
I bring you Defiant, MineTrek style!
This version is 156 meters long, ~118 wide, and around 23 tall. The plans are based on the Strategic Designs plans of which there are only two sheets in high resolution on Cygnus-x1.net. Fortunately the thumbnail size images are just about perfect for our uses, so I was able to neaten a few of those up for our decks as you can see here.
Importing was a breeze, just slap the layers together in Omen, save the file as an MCLevel, import into MCEdit onto an Anvil map, export as a Schematic file, place the Schematic in the server's schematics directory, and then load and paste the image in game using WorldEdit (which tends to lag the server out for a few seconds at this size). *whew*
Enjoy!
More on this side project in the future. Check out the forums if you're interested in helping.
The ship is 789 blocks long, 581 blocks wide, and 181 tall. The volume of that area is about 83 million blocks. The actual ship is comprised of 3,969,529 non-air blocks (wool, obsidian, water, sand, stone, etc) and counting up as we fill in more rooms.
The server houses two copies of the ship, one that is preserved in its final form upon being imported from classic (the latest version from there) and the other is the same but is being built further using all of the new blocks available between classic and the 1.2.3 update.
You'll probably note that large areas of the ship are not lit. That is one of our current goals, to light everything. Another thing you'll notice is there are a LOT of empty rooms. Literally, we welcome even visitors to choose one of these rooms as their own and /sethome there, and I will be happy to give them build permission in that room to decorate it as they see fit.
If you want to become a full builder rank you'll need to hang around a bit and get to know the ship inside and out, understand our goals with it and show us that you aren't just waiting for a chance to grief. There has been a lot of love poured into this ship, and the level of detail is absolutely maxed out for what Minecraft can provide (at least classic).
This is a project, not just a build server where people can goof off. Come and see it, bask in its wonder as we do, and thank Halkun for coming up with such an ambitious and wonderful idea in the first place. We're not letting the Enterprise Project fade away into the past... it's going to live on, and one day we'll see its completion.
There were a few more things I could probably have done to ruin this... but I was lazy. At least I have the ship's beauty to carry my horrible video making skills.
Also just let a few people know over at Minecraftforum.net that we're here, I wonder if we'll get visitors... >.>
Random posts will occasionally be an "episode" where I show off something new and cool on the server. I've decided to call this "Check This Out" or CTO episodes.
Today the topic is the Calypso.
As you may or may not know, the Calypso is the Enterprise D Captain's Yacht. With a few selections in WorldEdit we were able to pull the yacht right out of the bottom of the ship (well copy rather, we left the ship intact). We placed it just outside the hub's shuttle bay and cleaned up all the excess. Amazing! When have you ever seen this ship? Never, actually. They never used it in any episode.
Memory Alpha has some interesting tidbits on the ship on their Captain's Yacht page.
And here are the screenshots, enjoy!
I for one think this ship deserves a bit more attention than it received during The Next Generation (none). I see no reason why it shouldn't be a part of some holodeck programs, or maybe an adventure of some sort (we'll explain the plans for "adventures" at a later time...)
Well... technically we haven't yet, but we will soon.
How does that work, you ask? Why, we simply replace the skin of the Pig Zombies with that of a Borg Drone, replace the gold sword with a neat little... claw arm thing *shudder*
Viola! Borg.
What doors does this open up for us? Well to name a few:
- Crew vs Borg battles!
- Adventures in the Enterprise, fighting our way through the Borg to get to our goal.
- Arena style events where we throw players in with a number of enemies and some meager weapon to defend themselves...
- Target practice with our phasers... ?
You... did know about the phasers right? Sure the Zombie Pigman grunt the Borg make is funny, but you have a phaser that TWANGS! (it is based on the bow naturally).
Just one example of the fun mini games and pass times we'll have available to visitors of our humble little server.
Transportomania!
Another game already implemented (though not nearly as heavily as I would like, its a WIP) is the secret message transporter game.
This is a sort of "collect them all" game where the objective is to find all of the secret message commands I have built into the server. Each command takes you to a location that already has transporter commands for reaching...
Wait... you did know we have transporters now right? Yep... just type /<location> for just about anywhere (another WIP, not everywhere is covered yet) and you'll be taken to that place, albeit at a slight delay for the computer to lock on.
But where was I? Oh yes, these special message commands activate the normal transporter location, but also display a special gold lettered message back at you. Some will be funny (I try), some will just go along with the secret message command, and some will be outright strange (again... I try).
What do you win for finding all the messages? Well... you get to brag that you know all the messages! Of course, you'll never know for SURE that you have them all, and more will be added all the time, but that should not deter you!
HUBBA HUBBA!
For anyone who has already logged into the server lately this will not be news, but for everyone else - there is a puny little space station like object taking shape off the port side of the ship, connected with a docking arm. Well my friends, that there is the HUB!
The purpose of the hub will be to host the server in all its glory in all ways that the ship cannot. For example,, we wouldn't want to go around splattering borg guts all over our pretty Enterprise, would we? No no no! We aught to have a little arena to battle them in!
Or, better yet, for battling each other!
But the Hub isn't just for PVP, it's also a location we'll have a mockup of the ship to guide new builders through the basics, and maybe a build area to allow them to get their feet wet a little. We aught to have a message board area with information about the server (in case people arrive here oblivious to the existence of the forums, this blog, etc..)
And of course ultimately its for everything we haven't thought of yet.
You can always reach the hub with just a flick of your fingers: /HUB
Holo-wha?
And the final little bit of information about the server is that soon we'll be setting up the first of the holodeck areas. No, we're not going to decorate up a holodeck... we're going to decorate up a random patch of nowhere and link a holodeck to it!
I'm hoping the effect will be something akin to actually being IN a holodeck. You walk through the arch, its an ordinary hallway you're leaving, and on the other side is a vast new world, an exciting mystery adventure, or a paradise.
You take a look behind you and instead of a ship, you see this lonely arch in the middle of... wherever the heck you are.
The server is up and running, and things seem to be in good shape for the moment. Many updates to come, but for now, lets keep it simple.
Server Information:IP: 24.18.50.46:17011 Recommended Texture Pack(s):16x Texture Pack Note: The ship will look strange without it, I highly recommend using these textures!
For those with build capability, for the moment I would prefer we just stick to LIGHTING as that is both the main concern for exploration of the ship and is not the end of the world if it gets erased (where major changes to various areas of the ship would be).
If you do, however, make changes to something, be sure to make a note of it in the SERVER THREAD so that I can be sure not to accidentally erase it and we can save it in the future. There are several methods for doing this, so no worries!
Since we do not have a firm example set to work from so everyone is using the same methods for lighting and otherwise, I would absolutely love if you'd begin making a small mock-up of the interior somewhere. Perhaps ground level?
We can use anything like that once I get the HUB set up.
The HUB will be an area that contains information for people new to the server, and also information for those who have been around a bit and wish to become builders.
We'll get into how promotions and such will work at a later time.
And of course, if you have opinions on ANYTHING I've already mentioned, the server itself, the blog, the texture pack, ANYTHING! Just let me know in the main SERVER THREAD and I'll be happy to consider.
Recent work on the 1.1 server has been oriented towards newcomers. We've been test-building a builders guide to how the ship is set up and how things should be built within the ship, exploring how best to inform players what their initial role would be once promoted. That... and texture pack stuff!
But that was all in the last couple of days, and what I really want to talk about is what progressed last night!
256
Last night I spent a number of hours throwing together the numerous components necessary to pull off this feat of conversion. Most of them were in unstable form, literally their developers were, like myself, up late trying to put together a stable build before they lost the ability to keep their eyes open.
There were moments of frustration, brief success, and more frustration. Finally I found a way to tackle the obstacles I was facing which resulted in a map file for Anvil with the latest version of the ship fully imported...
At that point it was a matter of scrounging for bukkit plugins, because bukkit itself had development builds (of course) that were if not complete then certainly in very solid working form.
One plugin was absolutely necessary. All I needed was a method of protecting the server from harm, both from itself and from unknown players. WorldGuard was capable of that, and luckily for us there was someone on top of updating it for bukkit literally while the bukkit server files were being updated in development builds!
Armed with this invaluable tool I was able to run the server (without errors!) log in, create protective region files over the ship, log out and shut down the server, replace the messed up Enterprise (lava and fire and flowing water OH MY) with a clean copy of the map... and that is how you get the image you see here.
So in effect the server is usable RIGHT NOW. The problem is its not very secure, is missing important features, and is running on development builds of critical features besides.
If you thought waiting for this to happen was frustrating, try being on my end! Now you too know just how close we are, how much we're waiting on and relying on the work of a few plugin developers.
I do know one thing though - while we're not the first 1.2 server to run by any means, we're going to be one of the first classic-exclusive builds to be imported to 1.2, and that's not insignificant at all! If you have the time, we're going to need all the help we can get preparing this ship for release once the server setup is finished!
Stick around and keep an eye on the forum, a new thread should appear very very soon!
Sometimes you see these wonderful structures in videos, taken from a creative server. They'll be all shapes and sizes. What I have noticed is it is pretty common to see things that are not all that creative architecturally and instead have amazing texture packs applied so they look amazing despite the lackluster craftsmanship.
Often a creative server will judge players based on the size of their creations, the time spent working on it, rather than the skill applied in creating it. But what always seems to remain true, no matter the quality, is that a good texture pack always makes things look several factors better.
That isn't the current goal of the server's texture pack.
Yep!
But What About Us?
Right now, the goal of the textures is to make use of every block and item available to us, to decide their final form regardless of quality. I certainly don't mind re-working a few textures to make them prettier, but at the same time I don't intend to re-work a texture 20 times to get the ultimate iteration.
Each texture should be refined only in structure - adjusting the shape, perhaps widening or thinning the edges a bit. Working on what each LCARS display will hold in general (such as simply buttons or a specific interface like one found in engineering) or refining the actual purpose of the pieces.
I suppose it is no surprise then that my favorite texture is the hand held phaser, which has had only 3-4 stages of refinement put into it, and yet is probably the best looking texture of the bunch! It's also just plain entertaining to fire a phaser in Minecraft... even if it's still technically just a painted bow.
I'd really love feedback or design ideas for those textures though anything will do. Don't like a certain texture? Let me know! Think there is a better way to get the same effect? Try adjusting it yourself, post your results, or just share the idea.
I'm especially happy if you simply explore the ship and find need of something we do not yet have. Those are most important, because those ideas are what I need to use up the rest of the blocks available to us.
Some examples of unused items:
Netherrack
Caulderon
Minecarts
Boats
Lapis Lazuli Ore
Powered/Unpowered Rails (note: unpowered rails are different from standard rails)
Detector Rail
Iron Bars
Mycelium
Redstone Repeater
And Then What?
Once blocks are established its great to fine tune the texture pack. My goal is to have 100% unique textures, hand made not based on images taken from google or texture websites. This will be especially true with the HD texture packs we'll inevitably make in the future, where you will be able to tell without much trouble that the image has been "borrowed". Acquiring permission to use detailed textures would also be acceptable, of course.
If you'd like to help right now, as you're reading this, brainstorm some weapons or tools that crew members aboard the Enterprise might use - we've got TONS of hand held items which can be made into just about anything, similar to how the swords and bow have already been made into more Star Trek like weapons. As an example: I plan on making a tricorder using the stick texture.
Thanks for reading, can't wait for 1.2 release! Make it so!
The current terrain.png (note that there are more textures than just this, but it covers the majority):
The primary goal of this branch of the MineTrek project is to bring the Enterprise into the latest Minecraft.
All else bows to that goal. By that I mean, once the server is up and running with all its necessary protections, the necessary rank structure, the imported ship... all of it ready to be pushed forward as the project had been in the past, only then can other goals be attacked head on.
However there ARE other goals for the ship. Some great examples and ideas that have already been hatched (even tested on the test server):
Lighting the whole ship - after all, beta and beyond Minecraft has lighting in it, and without it you cannot see within the ship.
Redecorate the ship with the massive amount of new block options.
Build a really great texture pack for the server.
Add gameplay options such as PVP battles (Crew vs Borg!)
Add a tourism hub to help guide people through the ships many awesome locations.
Improve the holodecks to allow for massive amounts of cool content.
Multi-world to allow for away missions to battle enemies.
A spacedock (possibly to be used as the tourism hub and PVP staging areas).
Other starships to expand the project (1:1 scale of course).
As you can see, with a little imagination there is so much that can happen here! I see no reason why everything we can think of can't happen at some point.
When the 2.0 ship is ready to be released, the server is setup up with plugins and the ship is imported, I'll zip it up and post it for people to hold onto. That way it can't die without someone being able to pick it up and start going again. That's the most important thing.
After that, we're going all out.
I want to do some work on the major areas of the ship, light all of the important rooms and any rooms with windows to the exterior (ensuring the exterior is fully lit). The ship will have basic tourism systems in place (such as transporter locations) and will have many WorldGuard regions set up for protecting what we want built or not and by whom. Some adjustments will be welcome to the overall design here, but with the goal of accuracy always maintained. Within a few days, perhaps weeks at most, I want to have the ship ready to be further released to the Minecraft world.
I want to post a thread on Minecraftforum.net about her and invite people to join the server and take a firsthand look, maybe record some video, and share the ship with the world once more!
At that point, assuming I'm right about how the community will react - my little server will probably get crushed. But it will be worth it.
Here I will try to periodically show the current status and goals of the project MineTrek 2.0 (MineTrek in Minecraft Release 1.2 and above)! To get started, I'd like to talk about the history of the project a little and give some insight into how I've become involved with it.
Going Viral
Back in 2010 a guy named Halkun was working on a project in Sketchup. He wanted to map out the entire Enterprise D, but somewhere along the way he decided to try something similar in Minecraft. Tumblr
A video was born.
Of course, I'm guessing a vast majority of you (if not everyone) has seen that video - it's most likely the starting point of your adventures into the world of MineTrek. In fact I'd be surprised if anyone who's decided to build a Star Trek ship in Minecraft has NOT seen it!
From this, Halkun was driven to start up a server for his project and allow others to get involved. Many did, and the ship began to take shape (relatively quickly actually).
But Halkun has his own life to live and while he certainly has provided the beginnings of the project he's also not even close to the only person to put a lot of love into this ship.
Swax's Server
I'm sure the specifics are out there and probably even easy to find on the Shipyards Forums, but I have not bothered to look it all up. Suffice it to say, Halkun had other things to deal with and someone needed to take over the server management of the project.
It is my understanding that Swax took that part of the project over and helped propel it forward. A lot of very dedicated people were involved and the ship really took shape rapidly, though it was certainly no small amount of work.
A few searches for MineTrek or just the Enterprise in Minecraft on youtube will show you a number of videos by various people detailing the life and growth of the project during this time. Watching those and reading the forums will give you a much clearer picture of the process.
Mothball
The ship was definitely in a pretty late stage of completion around the time I discovered it and decided to become involved. The hull was shaped, not to mention being updated and decorated, finely tuned. The walls were, of course, all in. Many major parts of the ship had been filled in, built lovingly by hand by the builders. Rooms were being filled in, newbs like myself were decorating crew and civilian quarters left and right.
I really loved the way I would get lost in the ship. Even staring at BLUEPRINTS of the ship, it was easy to get lost. It is just that massive, even with a good amount of variation between rooms and hallways there are just so many that end up looking alike.
I found myself mostly interested in making the ship more accessible to those who just wanted to see the thing, not necessarily build on it. With this in mind and having been promoted to a builder rank (which to me meant they had accepted me as a part of the project officially) I started to do my part.
DNAV was born, and with Roosters help it made some good progress, adding to the tools available for navigating the ship. I also tried to put together a "tour guide" thread which is still found in the state I left it on the forums.
And then I found other ways to spend my time for a while. I'll admit I just wasn't as into it as I needed to be to stick around. Among other things, I ran a survival server for some friends with the latest build and using bukkit plugins.
Minecraft release 1.2 - Anvil
Around the same time as I found the post notifying everyone that the ship was homeless I learned that Minecraft was going to have its skies raised in the next update. Actually, I don't remember exactly, but it might have been this information that caused me to jump on over to the forums again and see what was up. The MineTrek project had always desired to be moved into "beta" Minecraft and above rather than remain it its classic server format.
Knowing that the latest Minecraft would have the ability to hold the ship, I knew that it HAD to be done. You see, the classic Minecraft clients are free, or even usable in a browser (though viewing the ship that way was not recommended). Yet despite this, there were many millions more players using the latest releases of the game.
The use of the World of Minecraft client and required texture packs to fully enjoy the ship which required editing your game files just made it a bit obscure for any but the more dedicated Trek / Minecraft fans. The question in my mind was which would really get more attention? Would a current release MineTrek server be a better home for the ship?
And so I took it upon myself to start the process: I was going to get the ball rolling on a 1.1 server made to "test" everything beforehand that we would need for the upcoming 1.2 release where we would bring the ship to a new home.
Testing 1, 2, 3...
The test server is up and running and myself and a few others have already identified a number of ways to improve the ship. We've found some requirements needed for the running of the server, ways to facilitate navigating the ship, and even improvements on the way we can handle promoting new builders. We've explored multiple ways to light the ship, worked on texture packs, even made adjustments to the build experimentally (which was previously not ideal as there was only one ship to work on at a given moment and changing things also meant possibly screwing them up). So far, the goals of my test server are absolutely being met!
And other good news has come up: MCEdit is definitely being updated for Minecraft 1.2, so we'll be able to import the ship right in with no major hassle!
There are many, many challenges to face in the next few weeks and months. There may end up being a need for new hardware (the test server is running on a PC in my home with only a semi-decent internet connection). There may be a great deal of frustration caused by griefers unless I can find a plugin solution to defeat them (we've already been attacked and my security precautions overrun somewhat). But, that is why I have the test server, to find and stop these things before they actually do any harm. Some will have to be tackled when they happen though.
In the meantime feel free to drop in and play around on the ship in 1.1! There are dozens of new blocks and a lot of things different in 1.1 that mean big changes for our NCC-1701-D.
A Note About the Classic Server
Right now other dedicated fans of the ship are running the classic server again (multiple iterations actually from what I gather). You can still check the ship out, in its full glory, by locating the USS Enterprise in the classic server lists. You can keep track of what is happening for at least one of those servers on the forums as well.
