p>Everyone has their own fond recollection of their first time playing Minecraft typically filled with the same warm reminiscence of a child waking up early on Christmas morning. Minecraft is a comforting blanket for the soul. The warm cup of hot chocolate that completes this picture are the community-created maps. These maps have been evolving with Minecraft for the past decade, from basic adventure maps to fully-fledged game modes.
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p>Many believe that the golden age of Minecraft maps to run from 2009 to 2012. Minecraft was simpler back then, with the simplest tools and mechanics (except for Minecraft mods) available for developers to explore. The limitations didn't stop developers from releasing a number of famous maps, like Skyblock and The Walls, which have been downloaded millions of times and seen by hundreds of millions via YouTube Let's Plays. While they're similar in design they offer distinct variations of Minecraft's core gameplay. Skyblock for instance, begins on a tiny, isolated island in the sky with only a tree, water, and lava to survive as well as a plethora of difficult challenges to complete. The Walls is a Hunger Games-inspired battle royale in which each team has time to prepare before the walls that divide them crumble and a free for all begins.
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p>If we talk about the most pivotal members of the Minecraft map community, you would be difficult to find a more influential person than Vechs who has made several highly influential maps - check out Super Hostile and Race for the Wool - that set the bar for what a good Minecraft minigame should have to offer. "I've created custom games' content since Duke Nukem 3D, and my Super Hostile series has over two million downloads," Vechs says. Super Hostile has received lots of attention from both community members and influencers alike - there are many Super Hostile Let's Plays, with over a million views on YouTube.
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p>"It's not every single day that you come up with a new genre. It's pretty satisfying," reflects Vechs. "My old map-making process was to create a globe open in MCedit, then delete everything. I prefer to start completely from scratch." While remaining loyal to his own method the improvement in quality from the past is amazing to observe for the seasoned map maker.
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p>"Minecraft maps are changing for the better It is a fact. There were many worlds that Minecraft had generated and then people found an area in the world to display signs. Low-effort maps were common at the time. Today, such a thing will be laughed at. The quality of the products offered has risen dramatically."
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p>Lucian Tash, also known as Chopper2112, is the founder of the Minecraft-partnered map-making group Yeggs. The team started out in 2015 and has created 23 maps. Tash and his friends started creating maps as a hobby. "Yeggs was initially created to be a server on a broken laptop, where a few of his real-life friends would play after school. From there , we began to create tiny maps until the year 2019 when we joined the Realms program," Tash explains.
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p>Mojang created the Realms content creator program in 2014. It is an online library that is curated for community-made maps.
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p>Quality control is something that Yeggs takes very seriously. Tash states that Yeggs' main goal is to make games more accessible. This, in conjunction with the limitations of Realms which is a service, frequently requires us to come up with creative solutions to problems related to lag. Sometimes you might have an idea that will require many resources. A lot of the technical aspects of a Minecraft map tend to be built around static entities in the game and it can get quite intense on hardware."
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p>A number of the maps created by Yeggs use command blocks which can be used to execute code lines. Road Runners is their latest map. It was inspired by the frogger-style humor of the popular mobile game Crossy Road. The map uses command blocks to create Minecraft an all-top-down race against the clock in which you have to be careful to avoid deadly mobs.
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p>"Some of the new commands have brought ideas to life that would not have been thought of in pre-1.13 versions of the game," Tash explains. The method by which custom maps are built is drastically changed with the introduction of datapacks. Not only does it provide simpler access to commands than command blocks had previously but it also allows a Minecraft map developer to invoke a large number of commands at the same time, or even use recursion in order to make a function call to itself."
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p>Minecraft is still a fluid project that doesn't sit on its laurels. Vechs explains that the foundation for Minecraft's unstoppable community has not been changing. "The most useful skill for map creation is empathy. It is crucial to build an image of the player's life as well as their emotions and their thoughts. Empathy allows you to create challenging curves and to know when it is time to give breaks or add scenic vistas to provide the player with a sense if wonder.
