The MafiaScum Minecraft Thread - AllTheMods 9!!! - NEW Vanilla?

[Rhinox]

Spoiler: Rhinox <3 sheep too!

[Maruchan]

i hate you rhinox.

and i might steel a baby sheepie after breeding one of every color.

[EspeciallyTheLies]

The rail from spawn to M/Maru/Klaz's place is finished, and is over 1000 blocks long in a straight line

This station is behind Dav's house by spawntown (the pyramid) and a spawn station is in progress.

[Rhinox]

Who wants a maze? (vanilla server)

Maybe this will be the server I actually complete it and ppl get to try it out lol. I wrote a program (in excel/vba) like almost three years ago holy shit really its been that long?! and never really got to show it off properly. Well I've dusted off my program and began planning again. Is it something people want? Should I go for super difficult straight away or start with easier/smaller mazes and work up to a very hard one? Any preference on where to build? Klaz if you're going to build a gauntlet maybe I could build near there and we can have like a whole minigame district? (Also klaz if you are building a gauntlet and are planning on including the cobweb walk in it I do happen to have a bunch of cobwebs I can donate to the cause.)

[Maestro]

And... Success! I can now generate a random 27x27x27 cube 3D maze scematic (13x13x9 nodes in game) in a minute or 2

Spoiler: Example Full Schematic

Levels 1, 2, 3 (top down view):

Levels 4, 5, 6:

Levels 7, 8, 9:

Red squares represent ladders up to the next level. Blue represents ladders down to the previous level. Purple represents ladders both up and down to adjacent levels.

Naturally I won't be building that particular maze now that I've gone and posted the schematic , but I'll be building 1 very much like that. Now I can play around with different starting node seeds until I get something I like.

Not sure how difficult a maze it is really... Looks hard on paper, and its hard to follow paths in schematic format just because its easy to lose track of where you are when jumping between grids. In game may be easier due to being able to visualize the 3 dimensions, or it may be even more difficult due to not being able to see very far in front of you and where you are in relation to the rest of the maze.

Rhi, is there a way to tone down the ladders? I do think the maze would be more effective, more immersive, and less repetitive if you didn't constantly have to go up and down in-game. It also seems like it would allow for more freedom and more interesting maze-ness than the "ladders that end nowhere" thing that started happening later on in this particular maze you generated.

[Rhinox]

Maybe. Probably. But... well theres just no other good way to go up or down without ladders. Is it just that they're slow/annoying? Or is it the up and down in general that you don't like? Because functionally a ladder that ends no where isn't any different than a deadend hallway. The way the algorithm works you could turn the whole maze on its side and the ladders would be hallways and the hallways would be ladders. I do try to steer the algorithm away from lots of deadend ladders if thats what it spits out but my goal was a 3-axis maze and not a flat 2-axis maze. I'm open to suggestions if you can think of a better way. I can always rewrite the algorithm. Fwiw i never found the 2-axis mazes very immersive or mazey because they can pretty much always be solved by the "hug a wall" approach ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[theplague42]

Hey everybody.... How's it going? I am back after three and a half years MIA.

[EspeciallyTheLies]

Hey everybody.... How's it going? I am back after three and a half years MIA.

hallo!

[Rhinox]

So i played around with my maze code and hamfisted in a way to control ladder frequency basically by telling it to skip generating a new path extension if the extension is a ladder X% of the time. It results in not only fewer ladders, but also shorter ladders and fewer ladder dead ends.

I'm also playing around with a new maze design idea that would use stairs instead of ladders and bigger than 1x2 hallways so it'd be less claustrophobic and could do more aesthetically. But of course that means bigger and more resources needed. But better, probably.

[theplague42]

So i played around with my maze code and hamfisted in a way to control ladder frequency basically by telling it to skip generating a new path extension if the extension is a ladder X% of the time. It results in not only fewer ladders, but also shorter ladders and fewer ladder dead ends.

I'm also playing around with a new maze design idea that would use stairs instead of ladders and bigger than 1x2 hallways so it'd be less claustrophobic and could do more aesthetically. But of course that means bigger and more resources needed. But better, probably.

I wrote a 3D maze-generation program for data structures class a couple years ago but nothing that would be useful for Minecraft. What parameters does yours have?

[Rhinox]

Its an excel spreadsheet with a vba back end that spits out a schematic i can use to build the maze in minecraft. It essentially is just prim's algorithm (sort of) for finding a minimum spanning tree but instead of a 2d grid I'm using a 3d grid. So instead of 4 potential connections at every node (N S E W) I have 6 (N S E W ladderUP ladderDown). I can just pick a starting point and it will connect to every other node randomly, or I can manually make the whole solution path first and then it just fills in all the remaining space with branches. With prims algorithm there is always 1 possible path from any node to any other node so once the maze generates you can really pick the start and end anywhere.

I built in some minecraft specific parameters such as if choosing ladder Up there needs to be a wall to place the ladder on. And recently i just added the control to be able to make the maze less ladder-y and early tests are looking good.

Its nothing too special really on the back end in fact I'm sure better programmers could write some less clunky and inefficient but the use of excel cell formatting to draw the schematic is the clever part imo.

[Raskolnikov]

Could you replace some ladders with stairs?

[theplague42]

The problem with stairs is they work on a diagonal, meaning they can't work with a 6-axis algorithm (N, S, E, W, Up, Down).

[Maruchan]

Hey everybody.... How's it going? I am back after three and a half years MIA.

MY OLD NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR!!!!!

wazzup bro

[theplague42]

Hey everybody.... How's it going? I am back after three and a half years MIA.

MY OLD NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR!!!!!

wazzup bro

Lol I had tried to come back a couple times, but didn't realize that I was filtering all MafiaScum emails to a folder on my alternate email, so I never got the password resets. Idk if I'll have enough time to play Mafia (idk we'll see) but I definitely want to start being active in a forum again.

It's been so long, it's interesting to see who is still around and who isn't. How's all the Navy stuff going? I'm in my last year of a software engineering degree in Texas.

[Maruchan]

Its meh. Navy Sucks, bosses suck, being an adult sucks.

but getting paid is nice

(Y)

had a deployment, 8 countries in 8 months was fucking fantastic, the in betweens were horrible.

got a second job as a dominos delivery driver, pays better than the Navy.

Got MS addicted to modded minecraft, and spearheaded canning vanilla servers alltogether, and am now part of the vanilla revolution inspiring all to play vanilla with us, and spearheaded getting a vanilla server back. I'm just wishywahy like that.

ragequit multiple mafia games in the past year over the stupidity of the current site-meta, and all around uselessness of some of the players.

[Klazam]

all around uselessness of some of the players.

why i dont play anymore also

[Rhinox]

Could you replace some ladders with stairs?

The problem with stairs is they work on a diagonal, meaning they can't work with a 6-axis algorithm (N, S, E, W, Up, Down).

Yes. But I'm working on a solution to that. Different style of maze. No ladders, only stairs. It will still be randomly generated using Prim's but the rules for the allowable connections between nodes will be different. Still working on setting up all the rules in VBA. Also tunnels will be 3x3 instead of 1x2.

[Klazam]

3x3 mazes
holy shit thats massive

[Rhinox]

3x3 mazes
holy shit thats massive

Good thing or bad thing?

Because my program is still a WIP and I was also thinking about how I could program it for 2x2 or even 1x2 hallways and still use stairs. Just got to set up the rules the right way and it can be done. I prefer 1x2 because it allows for more complex mazes in a smaller volume requiring fewer resources. 3x3 would be less complex and take up more volume but there'd be more aesthetic possibilities and maybe it would feel more immersive?

ETA: ok so I can do 2x2 tunnels with 1 block thick walls or 1x2 tunnels with 2 block thick walls and make stairs work. Both have the same complexity/volume but the 1x2 would require more blocks/volume than 2x2 so I think 2x2 might be the sweet spot for a maze with stairs.

[Maestro]

I endorse anything not one block wide and not ladders. Claustrophobia was my main concern but also there's so much more you can do if the maze is bigger. Do you want to build one in the Gauntlet/Arena Castle thing we're planning?

[Rhinox]

Do you want to build one in the Gauntlet/Arena Castle thing we're planning?

Yes if that's ok with you guys. Just got to let me know where and how much space I'll have to work with. Are we going to do prizes for finishing or just for fun?

I'll mock up a few different ideas I had this evening and post some pictures here later.

[Rhinox]

Through this together in creative for one idea for a 2x2 pathway maze with stairs and no ladders. It actually looks a little bigger than 2x2 thanks to the upside down half slabs on the floor/ceiling and iron bar walls. Now just imagine it at least 5x bigger in each direction

Spoiler: give me your iron, glowstone, and nether quartz plox

[EspeciallyTheLies]

BEAUTIFUL!!

[Klazam]

man, thats gorgeous.

Thematically doesnt fit with the planned castle, but i think that you could build that on the mountain in the mainland, near where the megafarm is. Honeyopolis Bay is all interconnected with a tunnel system anyway so it all will be fine i think. get more input from M though, maybe he has ideas