Importing and Megastructures

I made the following post on the thread after Dunc posted the new cartograph, but the conversation quickly switched to the server lag and it was overlooked:

I'm starting to not like so much the massive structures that are imported into the server. My little red house is now surrounded by some weird lava building, a massive stadium, and an airport. If those things were built by hand, we would have less of them popping up, but they'd be a bigger symbol of our server's ability and "power", if you like.

If we start a new 1.8 server, which I'm starting to think we'll have to (I read that 1.8 features won't show up unless you start a new map), we should decide on big structures that are important to the server (no one is going to use an airport) and set up a plan so we can build them together with the resources available in the map. I mean, when I built that red house, I was trying to get as far away from the big city as possible, to have a nice natural area to live with fields and plains and a nice forest. Now I'm starting to think that wherever I go, some giant monument will appear nearby without warning.

Not trying to say I don't like the way the server is being run or anything, just voicing my perspective so you guys know. I know those objects weren't placed there to bother me, you guys were just looking for a clear spot. But one of those fields was one of my locations for finding sheep, that I just hadn't built anything on yet. There's plenty of places to do that still, so I don't really care, but I would like to see a change in how those structures are placed. Anyone agree/disagree?

Basically, I just want to be able to claim a piece of interesting land to build on (or just preserve, as I like to do) without worrying about what giant things are going to be built around it. The structures around my red house are not really all that close, but I'm still worried. Like I said, I think it would benefit the server to only build things like that by hand, as community projects. Of course, things like the bombercraft plugin are exempt because it requires the plugin to function, and it's just for fun anyway. Having to rebuild the dirt everytime would be a pain. But things like the airport, which serve no purpose but to look good, take up a lot of space with little function. And in some ways I think a small, well designed building surrounded by natural landscape is much more pleasing to look at, and funtional as well.

What I tried to do with the signs in "old new-spawn" was list community projects so we could all work on them and make meaningful, useful buildings with some form of regulation. If we posted certain "building codes" for different areas, like 2 block wide smoothstone paths in one city, and wider dirt paths for another, etc, I think everything would look a whole lot better, and it wouldn't be all that hard to do either. I'm a very visual person as you might tell, so making things look as good as possible is one of my goals for the server, I suppose. I might start a city with these kind of regulations in the current world, but if we do start a new world, it would be nice if we could plan these things in advance so that when we do start building again, everything fits into place and nothing looks awkward or unnatural (Rapture is kind of a mess right now).

So, thoughts? Agree/disagree?

dylansan wrote:I made the following post on the thread after Dunc posted the new cartograph, but the conversation quickly switched to the server lag and it was overlooked:

I'm starting to not like so much the massive structures that are imported into the server. My little red house is now surrounded by some weird lava building, a massive stadium, and an airport. If those things were built by hand, we would have less of them popping up, but they'd be a bigger symbol of our server's ability and "power", if you like.

If we start a new 1.8 server, which I'm starting to think we'll have to (I read that 1.8 features won't show up unless you start a new map), we should decide on big structures that are important to the server (no one is going to use an airport) and set up a plan so we can build them together with the resources available in the map. I mean, when I built that red house, I was trying to get as far away from the big city as possible, to have a nice natural area to live with fields and plains and a nice forest. Now I'm starting to think that wherever I go, some giant monument will appear nearby without warning.

Not trying to say I don't like the way the server is being run or anything, just voicing my perspective so you guys know. I know those objects weren't placed there to bother me, you guys were just looking for a clear spot. But one of those fields was one of my locations for finding sheep, that I just hadn't built anything on yet. There's plenty of places to do that still, so I don't really care, but I would like to see a change in how those structures are placed. Anyone agree/disagree?

Basically, I just want to be able to claim a piece of interesting land to build on (or just preserve, as I like to do) without worrying about what giant things are going to be built around it. The structures around my red house are not really all that close, but I'm still worried. Like I said, I think it would benefit the server to only build things like that by hand, as community projects. Of course, things like the bombercraft plugin are exempt because it requires the plugin to function, and it's just for fun anyway. Having to rebuild the dirt everytime would be a pain. But things like the airport, which serve no purpose but to look good, take up a lot of space with little function. And in some ways I think a small, well designed building surrounded by natural landscape is much more pleasing to look at, and funtional as well.

What I tried to do with the signs in "old new-spawn" was list community projects so we could all work on them and make meaningful, useful buildings with some form of regulation. If we posted certain "building codes" for different areas, like 2 block wide smoothstone paths in one city, and wider dirt paths for another, etc, I think everything would look a whole lot better, and it wouldn't be all that hard to do either. I'm a very visual person as you might tell, so making things look as good as possible is one of my goals for the server, I suppose. I might start a city with these kind of regulations in the current world, but if we do start a new world, it would be nice if we could plan these things in advance so that when we do start building again, everything fits into place and nothing looks awkward or unnatural (Rapture is kind of a mess right now).

So, thoughts? Agree/disagree?

Oh yeah?
I imported that big roller coaster thing, and I built it all by hand.

Maybe on the 1.8 world we should have a 'no import' rule, with a couple of exceptions in the cities, if for example someone reserves an area for a skyscraper, and specifically crafts the surrounding terrain.

I'm interested in hearing what Dunc has to say on this matter, as it really all comes down to his decision.

MrCoolfiat wrote:
Oh yeah?
I imported that big roller coaster thing, and I built it all by hand.

Why didn't you just build it in the server itself?

dylansan wrote:I'm interested in hearing what Dunc has to say on this matter, as it really all comes down to his decision.

MrCoolfiat wrote:
Oh yeah?
I imported that big roller coaster thing, and I built it all by hand.

Why didn't you just build it in the server itself?

T'was before the server came to my knowledge.