Season 9 - A New Sunrise
A long time ago
Minescape was first released in 2012. We first approached Podcrash in 2011 & 2012 about a possible partnership (buying their map), but they declined as they were working on their own server called RuneCraft. In 2013 we partnered with Podcrash and purchased their map. A collaboration that slowly brought more attention to Minescape.
As a side note, before 2013, we first used a map shaped like the world, and then we tried to roll out our Runescape mechanics to the project Crafting Azeroth map.
Minescape has been evolving since 2013 on the current RS map. It has lived through many different game versions (from v1.2 to v2, v3, v4, Minescape Classic, Minescape Network, and this current final version: Minescape). Whilst we did several code rewrites, some of our configuration files, such as monster spawns, were imported from previous versions (nowadays, we estimate that a few hundred spawns are still from Minescape Classic).
In 2011, the sun in Minecraft was rising in another direction. The north was changed in 2011/2012 and thus made the entire map rotated 90 counter clockwise. Over the years, we never really considered it as being problematic and built upon it.
As of right now, Minescape contains a lot of data related to the map. Here is a small, non-exaustive list:
- Monster coordinates (thousands and thousands of spawns in JSON format)
- NPCs (hundreds of spawns)
- Skill locations (e.g. fishing spots)
- Holograms (floating texts)
- Point Of Interests
- Action/Trigger boxes
- Game code: we, sometimes, instead of using configuration files for punctual features, write them in code. For instance, we may code a closed gate that moves the player in the northern/southern direction
- Velocity: In some occasions, the players may be moved in an absolute direction
- Player saves: We store coordinate related information
- In-game minimap with waypoints
Rotating the map has been in the heads of many players, and we have always said that it was too complicated for us to do so. In order for you to understand the full scope of the problem, here is an example:
Canada estimated it would take years to properly handle non-binary genders. Right now, government systems use a binary approach (male/female). It may sound easy to simply add more genders to the system. In essence, it is very easy to do so. However, the implications of changing this simple nomenclature are insanely complex. There are so many services using their internal systems, that it takes years and years to fully map out and understand the repercussions.
Our game code is, very much simpler, but has the same scope of complications. What if we rotate the map 90° clockwise? What happens in the code? What do we need to do and test in order to make sure everything works fine?
These are the reasons why we never decided to rotate the map. We thought we would have to convert all our configuration files to match the new coordinates, go around the entire code base, and check where we use anything related to position. And after all of that, we would have to run a lot of tests, which would take an immense time. We estimated it as months and months of work, possibly even a year with the current size of our team. In that time frame, new features would either need to be using the new coordinates, but wouldn't be able to be pushed or old coordinates and be converted again later on.
However, in this equation, we forgot one simple but yet very powerful fact. Minescape does not rely on the Minecraft engine to work.
What does this mean?
This means that Minescape in essence, can be run on various server software as it directly runs on our in-house framework.
Eureka!
We always thought about the impacts on the game from the world rotating. We decided to take a new approach, and we successfully allowed the Minescape map to be rotated by 90° whilst having 0 impact on the game. This process took a few hours to set up. In fact, the game does not need to know that the map has been rotated.
It took us more time and effort to rotate the map itself: We made a few scripts to help us rotate the blocks and entities in their new positions.
North is now North
No more confusion! Minescape North is now where it should have been since the Minecraft Sun rotation!
Marketing
Let's move on to another important topic: Marketing. Due to some third parties, our ability to market our decade-old project has been impacted. Without delving too deeply into the topic (you can do your own research), our map and name have been stolen. Yes, stolen. Third parties are using our map as a base for theirs (claiming it as their own work). One of them has even registered a trademark on the name we've been using since 2012. They have been threatening content producers on various platforms with the trademark. We will never give up our name, Minescape. We have put too much work into it.
Nonetheless, we have to move forward. We have to be able to bring the project into a new era. We have decided on a solution that preserves our flagship name "Minescape" and opens up to new audiences. We will refer to it as A/B marketing.
New players or non-active old players will see the project as CraftScape (logos, texts, etc). We've added two commands:
- /rebrand which toggles the name of the project (Minescape <-> CraftScape)
- /craftscape explains why this change/rebrand command is needed
Call our flagship project whatever you like; at the end of the day, we believe we offer the best RS experience in Minecraft and one of the most complete MMORPGs in the Minecraft world. Our name means very little compared to the work we've been putting in over a decade.
Content updates
This update also focuses on bringing more resources to the world! We have decided to split up season 9 into at least 3 targets. This target, and this update by default, focuses on enhancing the resources available in the world and ensuring each type of resource can be farmed efficiently.
Resources
We've encountered some complications when transitioning to 1 main world and 1 Ironman world. One of these issues was that resource areas and spawn rates were simply too small to accommodate the single world of players. This means that by removing a world, we essentially halved the amount of resources available to the players. A significant push from the players has helped us rectify this. Many skills—whether it be woodcutting, mining, thieving, runecrafting, or herblore—have seen increases in either the amount of resources available at a given spot or the time between their spawning.
Now, you may be wondering where exactly all of these new and improved resource areas are, and we hear you. Some are at familiar locations such as the abandoned mine, Entrana, and Edgeville. Some are being kept a secret to allow players to discover their own 'best-in-slot' areas before others. This promotes exploration and community hunts.
New Points Of Interest
Myth's Guild (Rune Dragons)
When deciding where we should focus next in terms of development, it was one throwaway comment that spiralled into a massive overhaul of the south side of our map. The comment "we don't have a dragon lump drop for the dragon platebody" took us on a path to correct that... Introducing the Myth's Guild! Initially locked behind Dragon Slayer 1 only, the Myth's Guild offers a new bank, teleports to 3 other guilds (Champions, Heroes, and Legends Guild), a new cooking spot, a new magic tree spot, and herblore spot(s). Oh yeah, in the basement somewhere there are also rune dragons now, but that's not important...
Corsair cove dungeon
Below Corsair cove, a small movement of the earth has uncovered a vast dungeon from a forgotten time. On the east side of this dungeon, Ogres have made it their home. Over a large cavern sits a pretty worn out bridge, this bridge will take you to the west side of the dungeon, home to a number of different chromatic dragons as well as the illusive rune dragon! Something else was also uncovered when explorers mapped out this dungeon recently. An altar?
Wrath altar
Within Corsair cove dungeon, you will find the entrance to the wrath altar, this altar requires 95 runecrafting to awaken and produce wrath runes, a super powerful rune needed in casting the highest level spells. Here is a list for the multiplier of creating this rune:
lvl 95 - 1 wrath rune
lvl 102 - 2 wrath runes
lvl 109 - 3 wrath runes
lvl 116 - 4 wrath runes
Ardougne farm areas
Fleshing out the southwestern areas of the map, the build team has been working hard to bring ardougne and below to life.
Chaos druid tower
Clocktower
Witchaven
Eagles peak (new tp)
We're always striving to improve older areas to bring them 'up to code' per-say. Old eagle's peak was bad, new eagles peak is good. It does also come with the benefit of a new teleport there too.
Exploration
Exploration has received some changes related to jobs. Jobs are now weighted depending on their skill difference, meaning you will be getting a lot more tasks closer to your skill level required to execute the task. We've also made the probability of landing on a certain skill (in a job task), constant. This means you will get as many mining tasks as hunter ones.
Exploration points
We've added a new task UI for jobs as well as points. Completing a job will reward you with one exploration point.
- Cancellng a job: You can spend 3 points to cancel a job (or 1500 gp)
- Partial completion: You can also spend 1 point to partially complete the job. You will receive coins and exploration XP depending on the tasks you completed.
Exploration points will, in the future, receive a shop similarily to the Slayer shop.
Crafting
We've added the ingredients listing in the wiki UI.
Candies
We increased the maximum amount of candies you can spend per day on loot-crates and xp-lamps.
Resourcepacks
We have fixed various issues regarding resource-pack loading.
Accuracy
We have buffed overall accuracy.
Quests
When starting a quest, various instructions will appear on the screen. These can be toggled off by clicking on the current quest in /quest. We've also improved our cinematic mode, by changing the view ratio when watching cinematics.
Top bar
We have finally fixed the top bar not appearing for certain players.
Monsters dislocating
We have fixed our rendering issues related to animated monsters.