Welcome and a bit of History

Greetings and welcome to the MineTrek 2.0 blog!

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.

Until, one day, checking back on the forums, I read that Swax had to take the server down...

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.

Engage!