Recruiting for Project Ronaru: A new kind of server experience.

Hi Bukkit Forums, my name is Matt 'Wahrheit' Enloe and I'm here to present something that I hope you'll find exciting. The developer team at the moment is:

Hidendra
krinsdeath
Pandarr
dumptruckman
Sleaker
Max Maton
rakiru
Crashdoom

Non-Bukkit: CursedChild, ShadowRiven

With the rest of my staff involved in the idea and building processes. I've been masterminding the majority of the content and am working on getting this big puzzle fit together with exactly the right pieces. What I'm hoping is that some of you will be interested in joining us.

It's been in the works for a while now, but we're finally ready to announce exactly what will be going on with the new map and our set of feature-packed plugins to create a new server experience.

It's called Project Ronaru, and it's the Summa Crossroads stab at redefining the Minecraft server experience.

Motivation

Initial idea: I first thought of this a while back near the start of the school year in September, as I had been playing a various few MMOs pretty consistently as well as Minecraft. One of the biggest problems we had with keeping people coming back to the server was that it was exactly like every other server, except for a few key landmarks and things. I didn't want to just be every server, I wanted to get something going that would engage users and make them curious and hopeful about what would happen the next day they signed on. Thus was borne a lot of notes before and during various classes which eventually became a spreadsheet with a name.

What makes us different: Well, really, nobody's done this yet. There's stuff like the Voxel Box (who are actually helping us learn a few tools and might give some feedback on the physical builds) but they're focused specifically on building for the most part. Things can look pretty, yes, and wowzers do they make some pretty things, but as a player in a game with others it should be more than that. Minecraft is so much fun when you are DOING THINGS with people, so we want to give the players things to do on top of the normal server experience. Take the great potential there, harness it, focus it, and spread it all over the place.

What we're doing to get there: A lot of the plugins we'll be running will be built on custom code. Most of the core features and defining characteristics will all be custom, and probably not released unless we can find some way to do it that will distribute the ideas and not just the skeleton. We want to improve the server experience without just distributing some out-of-the-box thing. People often try to replicate things using one big chunk and that never works. Instead, we have a lot of ideas that are built in a sort of webbed form - plugins with different modules and APIs that will allow us to integrate and expand upon them for a really connected, engaging experience.

Why this is worth doing: Minecraft is a great game, and it's going to keep being a great game. By pursuing this project we'll be able to cast it in a new light for veterans and people who have never even heard of the game, maybe convincing some to pick it up. This is our opportunity to make an impression on the gaming world and show what we have to offer as well as create something really spectacular. We want to surprise ourselves.

Goal

Goal of the project: To create a unique, engaging Minecraft server experience that will compel users to seek out and enjoy the game in new ways and on new planes of gaming.

Core Features: Please understand that this is an incomplete list, we have a developer document at the moment that we're using to organize internally but we want to shed some light for people interested in contributing.

• Multiple distinct factions, one of which the user picks upon joining the server. Each faction has specific bonuses, traits and abilities that it grants the player.
• A pre-constructed world with vast landscapes and intriguing landmarks to explore and appreciate. Opportunities for players to root themselves within a thriving environment, giving some stability and context for the best possible end result.
• Eventually, a custom client that expands the user-end capability for ingame interaction with a chat cache, in-game hyperlinks, and integrating an informational wiki.
• Reworking of the combat system and significance of armor - special events and increased importance of death. One does not simply 'respawn'!
• Time-based gameplay elements to accommodate both the casual player and the power user.
• Online integration for stat tracking as well as competitions, sharing, and spreading the word!
• Questing system to both reward exploration, integrate world-based lore, and introduce different gameplay elements. Rewards for doing what you love!
• Specialized introduction to the server for new players featuring both previews of the world as well as introduction to gameplay elements and community features. Information on long-term decisions and short-term actions.
• Changes in the overworld to integrate the structures players are currently building in our temporary world, as well as integration of exploration-incentive locations. Server-wide efforts towards the expansion of the world.
• Professions and Leveling systems atop the Factions system for a truly representative role-playing experience, engrossing the player in the world around them and rewarding hard work.
• Rewards for community participation that users can choose to spend how they like on improving their traits.
• Instanced areas for both cooperative efforts and head-to-head combat, as well as introductions of new mob mechanics.
• Automated and admin-actioned world events to get players competing and cooperating with each other. Social players are happy players!
• Detailed capitol cities with interactive features to keep players bustling about and living their lives within their factions.
• Specific events related to every player-based action on an individual and world level using enhanced data calculations from an all-encompassing API.
• Don't piss off the chickens.

Further documentation: Right now due to the current state of the project we don't have any further publicdocumentation, but we're definitely looking for developers to help with the backend of it and of course we want you players to help build things that should be present in the world! Over time we'll be releasing more information to help you know what exactly we're looking for, but you can always surprise us!

Contact Information: If you're interested in contributing to (specifically, developing for) Project Ronaru, you can reach me here via PM or hop on our Mumble server for a voice chat (mumble.summaxr.com port 4262) - I try to be around as often as possible. We're looking for as many comments and as much insight as we can get our hands on, so please speak your minds!

I've also posted this on my personal forums, you can leave comments or just check us out here: http://summaxr.com/Forum/topic/9621-proudly-introducing-project-ronaru/

Thanks for reading!

 

Hey everyone. Just letting everyone know, we are actively working on this project. It is slow going (a lot of work for only two people), but we're working our little hearts out to deliver some really unique and interesting ideas.

It'd be great to get some fresh meat into the grinder, and some help with the development aspects of this project. A lot of work goes into designing these things! Wahrheit, Hidendra and myself are all available most times on the Mumble server for questions or information. Just pop on and give us a shout.

 

Nice that looks great but IF i donate what do I get cause I own a server and I dont really want to help outhers do i a copy OF the plugin is it going to be openscorce or what will it be

 

We're looking for developers, not necessarily donations at this point. If you donate to the server however you get a whole slough of features - there's information about that on the site for what was on the old map and given all the new features we'll have even more abilities to make a great experience for our VIPs.

 

Hey Warheit, Remember Me?

I am likely not good enough to join the team (which is clear after our discussion)
But if you need a Medieval/Massive Builder, Let me Know

 

I'm pretty sure we have plenty of builders, but if you'd like to see the final project you can join our forums and you'll get an email when it's released.

I'd like to welcome dumptruckman and Pandarr to the development team!

 

I am pleased to announce we have added even more new developers, here's our total!

Hidendra
krinsdeath
Pandarr
dumptruckman
Sleaker
Max Maton
rakiru

As well as non-Bukkit users who go by the names of CursedChild and ShadowRiven. This is a great team, and we look forward to releasing more information soon!

 

Project Ronaru gladly welcomes Crashdoom to its development team!

 

We also gladly welcome mbaxter to our team! Many of the core plugin bases have been established, especially the statistics logging. We're hoping to impress a lot of people with this.

 

You got some good people involved, I'm curious to see how this turns out!

 

We're very excited about it as well! Progress is chugging along.

 

Lots of servers out there, so you have to make it very unique, but also take into consideration optimization and performance.

 

Performance actually won't be an issue. I can promise that. We'll be lag-free start to finish, not only because of how I've had the coding organized but also because we're hosted on Multiplay hardware. Second to none!

 

VPS :/ ?

 

Nope, multi-server environment with appropriately allocated resources and SSDs.

 

As a little update, one of the plugins we're developing has been labeled MatchMaker - it's a system for automatically handling structured PVP in an enclosed environment. There is a predefined "arena" space into which the plugin loads different builds of maps for teams of users to compete in. Currently it only supports "last man standing" gameplay but there are plans for gametypes such as Capture the Flag. I have some screenshots on my main machine that I'll add soon, but I'm on a silly little mac laptop I rented out from University right now due to a motherboard failure.

Also, as the name implies, MatchMaker will be utilizing our statistics API to appropriately assign players to opposing sides. There's a lot of great PVP data to be utilized there.