Getting the Most out of being a Guest on the Voxel Box

So, you've connected to The Voxel Box and you've chosen to read this page, so thanks for that! Contained here are my (plusnine) personal thoughts on how to approach your time on the server, and a little bit about my approach to where I think the server's going and how you might fit in.

Getting Started

If you haven't read the FAQ, read the FAQ!.

• First, go read the entire Frequently Asked Questions links. It will give you a good feeling of what The Voxel Box project is about and how we approach the server. Facet and Holocene are wide and varied worlds -- as varied as the individuals that comprise it, and the best part about it is that it's ours. The community of people who develop and build on the server are the driving force behind where our world goes and what sorts of mechanisms we develop to make that happen.

• Back from the FAQ? Good. As you've probably read, we're what some folks might call a "freebuild" or "creative" server. This means you will not be doing much monster-fighting or cave-mining on The Voxel Box. We focus primarily on the building and creativity side of the Minecraft game: We like to build cool stuff and tell fun stories (which the VoxelWiki is full of!).

• It's important to take a few minutes to really understand some of the amazing tools like the Dooplicator, which allows players to get items into their inventory without mining or typing, and other tools like the Magical Paintbrush and VoxelSniper, which are huge time-saves when doing big building jobs. These tools are developed right here on The Voxel Box. Most of these tools are available to guests right off the bat when they join, but certain tools may be restricted at first.

• The wiki you are reading further enriches the experience with stories, maps and lore all about the world of Pangea. Members are strongly encouraged to get a wiki account and start logging their Voxel Thoughts into it. It's the best way for other members and guests to find out what is going on around the server lately.

Getting Inspiration and Making a Plan

Usually Minecraft imitates architecture. Sometimes, architecture imitates Minecraft!

Aside from the Becoming a Member article I've written, here are a few other additional, more specific thoughts about how I approach building. I hope they will be helpful to you while building in Guest Zones, The Wild West and beyond.

• The Power of the Idea. The comment I hear most when a new build is blowing someone's mind in-game is "wow, what a great idea!". Great ideas are hard to come by, and no one has one every day. Sometimes it's good just to sit and be in the server, see other people's work and maybe that will spark an idea for what would be exciting to do or see next on the server. Creative drought is hard: using the server's plethora of idea-having other members is a great way to get your building involved in the continually unfolding stories that are constantly taking place between our members. When you're starving for ideas, there's always some grunt work that could use doing, and sometimes mindless building with a task can get you primed and ready to start executing your own ideas. I keep a notebook with all my notes, sketches and ideas for The Voxel Box. Except for this wiki, it's my best friend, when it comes to the server!

• Image searching is your friend. I cannot stress enough how helpful it is to look at a few pictures and doing some sketching before blocking out your structures. For example, If you are building an airplane hangar, a quick image search for "airplane hangar" yields a couple of consistencies: Almost all these structures have a gridded, depth-pattern for the walls. Also, it looks like the logical materials from the Texture Pack are going to be iron, industrial copper, half-block, tech blocks, obsidian and glowstone -- maybe some colored cloth for pop). So you should definitely pick some of those up from the Factory Showroom. Closer examination reveals a couple drastically different design choices, as well. Do you want to leave room for some hanging scaffolding? Will the cieling be glass or solid? Which of the structure's wall elements do you want to keep straight, which do you want to angle and which do you want to curve? Knowing what your options are is a great way to avoid the problem of simply not being able to get your idea translated into Minecraft. Making some of those choices now, doing a few sketches on paper is a great way to make sure your ideas are feasible. "I can't draw" is not an excuse: You can do this on graph paper and end up with great rough guide for how many blocks high or wide you might want a structure's elements to be!

• Accessibility: Because not everyone has flymod for Flying seamlessly around the world, it's important that people who are using the feather from their Ninewerks Tools can both reach your build easy and get around inside to see the features. I always recommend that every hallway, and ESPECIALLY staircase be at least two blocks wide. Ladder-hatches are permissible to be one-block shafts, but remember that any time you have a passage that is only one block wide, players will not be able to comfortably pass one another when going opposite directions. It's a better idea to stop those kinds of annoying traffic jams before they start once people start visiting your build. Make sure the entrance is clearly visible and as easy to get to as possible.

• Some will tell you that the best way to plan your space is to use mathematical ratios and magic-number generating patterns. These tools are extremely useful on the larger building scale, but they do not always address some of tight spaces in Minecraft from the player's perspective when you are down to your last block space or two. Consider the follwing suggestion: All ceiling heights should be a minimum of three blocks in height -- preferably four. While, from a certain perspective, this places the player at very nearly hobbit height next to the needed headroom, having four block-heights of wall gives you far more design opportunities than two or three does. Understanding this difficult disconnect between actual player height, perceived height and design-space height and making a build that succesfully provides this illusion is key to doing great work that looks as good and detailed up close as it does from far away. (See a helpful curve/parabola generator: found here)

• Basic color / contrast theory -- All I can say about this is: let each color be itself. Dark starts to become meaningless without light, just as bright becomes meaningless without dull. Try setting up a pallete set just to see the blocks you've chosen next to one another.

• Simple ways to get great curves. Almost all computers come with a free paint software option. MS-paint is the most obvious, windows-compatible version. You can zoom in with MS-paint until you can see and work with each pixel just like a block in-game. Use the circle tool to plan out some easy curves on your build! (see: Planning Buildings)

Building

The Dao of the Voxel: Understanding the Voxel Box Texture Pack

Let's take a moment to consider some of the blocks in the Texture Pack. Each block has locked within its design a directional energy flow. Making the most of each block's natural energy and flow will help you build structures that draw the eye to your key points and are much easier to read. Good use of the texture pack will also help make a structure look less "blocky", because they hide the connection points at the block level in strategic ways.

An examination of vertical energy.

Blocktypes with vertical energy are great for calling attention to your structure's height. Because these blocks obscure the vertical connections from block to block, they draw the eye up and down a structure in a seamless way. Some blocktypes that fall into this category are logs, marble columns, and iron beams. Note what happens when we use these blocktypes going the direction opposite to their energy. The iron, rather than looking like a seamless beam becomes a segmented mess, calling attention to each block. The log's busy top structure is best hidden, capped or used only above the view and never as flooring. These kinds of blocks interrupt the eye as it travels across your space each block they are repeated.

An examination of horizontal energy.

Blocktypes with horizontal energy are the opposite -- They are ideal for creating horizontal lines that lead someone down a long hallway and invite horizontal player movement. Some blocktypes that clearly fall into this category are copper tubing, most half-block subtypes and sandstone. Like the vertical blocks, fighting the natural leanings of these blocks is often not a good idea. The wonderful tube effect of the copper plate is completely lost, creating a jumbled mess as this block travels vertically.

An examination of neutral energy.

Other blocktypes still have a neutral energy. These are the blocks you will want to make large fields out of, as they are designed to hide all their block-connections in every direction. Blocks that fall into this category include most natural materails like stone, sand and clay. Other blocktypes that have "busy" or tessellating patterns like wood planks, cobbles and bricks have slight leanings toward both vertical and horizonal energy, and can also be used as neutral in the correct context.

Combining vertical and horizontal energy into a structure.

Horizontal, Vertical, Neutral and Punch blocks in use together.

Here we see two examples of combining vertical, horizontal and neutral energy blocks in pleasing ways. In the final example, we see that a fourth blocktype use exists, as well: This is what I call the punch block. A Punch block is the use of a single block to perform a structural function. In the last image, notice how the rivoted iron block performs as a 'hinge' for the wood, hiding the fact that the horizontal and vertical woods are different materials, and giving them a strong connection point. Keeping this block singular prevents its own energy from doing anything other than being a bridge point for two other blocktypes with strong directional energies. Examples of punch blocks include lapiz lazuli, gold, and glowstone.

Understanding each block's natural energy flow will help you incorporate more and more material types into your builds and continue to direct the player's eyes toward your structure's detailing while keeping a clean, readable space. Note that many blocks can fall into one category or another depending on the context! Remember to step back and take a long view of your structure to make sure you are maximizing the energy flow and only calling attention to your build's structure where you want the viewer's eyes to travel.

Quiet-Bright-Mind-Space: Separating your Walls and Flooring with Color and Contrast.

Fig. 0 - A box. The worst of the worst.

Fig. I - A taller box, but a box nonetheless.

Here's a quick object-lesson to help you avoid making boring box interiors. Figure 0 is a room that seems to occur all-too-frequently in builds I see from guests. The room is more or less golden section ratio'd, which is fine and all, but why is the ceiling only 2 blocks up? It feels pretty claustrophobic in here, so let's open the building's height from three to five blocks tall. Taller rooms will help you get more out of your light sources by giving them room to glow, and opening up world of design opportunities. Good lighting will highlight the important parts of your building and downplay the areas you want your players to dismiss visually.

Now that we've opened up some room above, Figure I shows us that we have some room to begin actually considering decor for our space. Notice how the four blocks of room-height allow us to balance our torches toward the ceiling or the floor, creating a different light-level for each. This helps begin to separate the walls from the floor.

Fig. II - Two tones of wood.

Fig. III - Adding a foundation trim further helps define the most important point to define: the floors to the walls

Here in Figure II, we have repainted the floor and ceiling blocks with the unstained version of the planks from the Texture Pack. Using the light-wood helps us even further differentiate the walls from the floor, creating a much easier space to read with the eyes. We do not have to guess where the floor ends and walls begin because of the differing materials. The foundation trim we added in Figure III defines our space even further and makes a wonderful way to give the floor some nice sturdy weight.

Fig. IV - Adding windows for extra light.

Fig. V - A preliminary furnishing job.

Here we see two final revisions to this space: in Figure IV, again we see the benefit of our added height as we place windows in. A taller room gives us more room to let light in from the outside, drastically increasing the interior light of the room during the day, and making the lighting cozy at night, while fully bordering our windows before they reach floor or ceiling height. In Figure V, we see some preliminary furnishing and interior detailing. Notice the pine columns that create two rooms-within-a-room, allowing you to define space by functionality. The ceiling height we've chosen allows us to put a horizontal crossbeam across our space without reverting our space back to a 2-high space ever, giving our space another structural element that makes it look believable. These kinds of architectural supports become more important as spaces grow larger and larger, but never discount them in any room, even ones as small as this one! Also, note the iron bolts for punch (refer back to the Dao of the Voxel) section for more on this. Finally, Our space gives us enough room for an inset rug with some furniture, and a nice tall light-giving lamp that is itself three blocks tall.

• Fighting the Dragon: Working with Landscape.
• Making Sure Your Build is Beautiful Inside and Out.
• The WOW effect: Feature-Driven Design.

Being a Good Neighbor

• Share what you know, share what you have. You never know who you're going to run into in the Guest Zones. That guy over there could have some serious string-pulling power and it's always going to be in your best interest to suffer a little now than to rush into getting banned early.
• Toltecs had it right: Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.

Dealing with Criticism

OOF! Better luck next time!

• Learn to be your own worst critic, but be the resillient person who finishes a project anyway, at least sometimes. After a while, finishing something feels better than repeated abandonment. Polish that turd until it shines as much as it's gonna, and then resolve to do better next time.
• It's okay to fail spectacularly. you will learn loads from this.
• Feel free to ask for criticism in chat to improve your build -- Don't just ask the admins, ask anyone who will come by, including other guests. If there's a comment you are getting a lot, you might consider re-thinking some things. Don't lose yourself in your work by making concessions and creating something over-worked: ultimately what you produce has to be your vision.
• Take your time to revise. I can't tell you how many people think they have finished their build in an hour and then solved all its problems in another fifteen. Trust me, there's no build that could stand some good solid revision and re-thinking after only that much time.

Dealing with Voxel Members and Voxel Admins

• The admins are often extremely busy developing new plugins, making large-scale map-changes or just keeping the server running smoothly. This makes it difficult for us to attend to all guest matters in an especially timely fashion. The virtue of patience in a guest cannot be underrated. If we are feeling harassed by you, our feelings will grow increasingly tepid toward your build, even before we've seen it.
• It's important to know exactly when you don't need an admin (this is most all of the time) -- try asking your question of the other Ranks! Many of them have been around the server a long time and know the answer to almost any question you may have.
• Remember that in addition to looking at your build and creative skills, we are also vetting your personality. A big reason we ask guests to build more than one item during their time in the Guest Zones is we just do not feel like we know you well enough. Seeing how people react to a little bit of criticism on their work, or a brush-up with a VoxelSmurf gives us a good indicator of your temperament. Don't be one of those people who builds great stuff, but other people aren't happy to have around on a regular basis.