Hey guys, HadSkills is organizing a building contest!

Theme: Freestyle

Who: Individuals or teams

When: September 20th – October 20th 2017

Where: Your Lot, Any Survival World with lots
(NOT in the Nether, The End, Flatlands, or Draftlands!)

Prizes:

1. 20k unc & 2 shulker boxes,
2. 10K unc & 32 Diamond Blocks,
3. 5k unc & a full suit Thorns III Diamond Armor

You will have 1 month to complete a build of your choice. If you sign up as a team, you will have to settle how to split the prices yourselves.

To sign up, comment below before the 20th of September. If a team signs up, There needs to be one post with the whole team listed, and all team members posting as replies that they agree to be part of that team.

I got some requests for more games on the server, and while we are building on a PVP arena, I thought we can start preparing the race/parkour at the same time. Since we want to have something that is not getting boring, my idea would be a multi-option race.

We would have a track where you can race in different directions, with different deviations that are selected by a lever-combination before you start. People would decide on a combination of levers (on/off/off/on/on) which would raise certain blocks and lower others or open and close passages that give access to different tracks. There would be 4-5 intersections that each make you chose between 2 different segments of the track. Together with a backward/forward direction change, this should give some different track combinations to keep races interesting. Each segment can have some different key features such as:

• Spider web slalom
• Slow sand climbing
• water obstacles (diving, swimming)
• log jumping (if you fall down, walk back to the start of the start of the segment and climb up)
• straight line race
• etc

One question is if the track needs to be circular or not. If the start is near the finish, of course we would be better able to switch direction.

What other obstacles can we have? Can someone take a sheet of paper with squares on it and try to draft a course with sufficient length that has those different intersections to branch out the track. For the redstone, I imagine the following process:

1. Switch intersections
2. There are 4 lanes, everyone picks one.
3. Lane one user steps on a pressure plate to open a gate for runners to open the track
4. The same plate disables the intersection switches
5. At the goal, people step on a pressure plate in their lane. The first one hit will be the winner and be signaled.
6. The final goal switches the intersections back on

I am not sure how we can integrate the backward/forward race here, maybe the goal and start need to be always the same, just another row of walls lead either to the one or other. I imagine that this does not have to be all on the same level but intersections can be crossing over each other etc. Any input?

So I finally got around doing the floating city contest. Here are the winners:

• Designer/Master:
  1. aerox247 (is already Master), 192 Diamonds, Bioshock
  2. sleepystrangekid, 128 Diamonds
  3. pagreifer, 64 Diamonds
• Architects:
  1. baronmanfred (just got upgraded), 192 Diamonds
  2. Rickard2010, 128 Diamonds
  3. Akium, 64 Diamonds
• Citizen:
  1. XadrianZ (becomes Architect!), 192 Diamonds
  2. miloisgooddrink, 128 Diamonds
  3. wubwubthatshit, 64 Diamonds

On top of that, all users can chose from the following list of items that have been pledged by myself and other users. The preference goes from top to bottom, so aerox can chose first, wubwubthatshit can chose last:

• Portal (1 copy, from 2007)
• Bioshock (1 copy, from 2007)
• X-Com Enemy Unknown (1 copy, from 2012)
• 25 USD from KidCodiwise
• 25 USD from enkl0001
• Minecraft (1 copy) from lilroc
• Terraria (1 copy) from JoBilly

Since the call for donations for contests was done during the last contest in March, I would understand if some users do not have the items anymore that they pledged. If so, please let me know ASAP and I take them from the list here. Winners, send me an email with what you would like to have (one item each) by email (minecraft at uncovery.me).

Leading the server into new year, I would like to start a new contest format. Why?

As you know, I have been notoriously late in closing contests and announcing new ones. This has caused a lot of contest entries to be erased since users expired before the contest was closed. Further, upgrades of great people have been delayed of this and have been existing only far-and-between. I think we fixed the upgrade issue with the new voting system, the question is now how we can continue to run the contests so we do not lose it as a great thing on the server.

So the issue why it took me so long is the following: I needed to go on the server and rate 20+ entries. Since I want to take this seriously and give everyone a fair chance (my rating power is higher than normal users), I wanted to take time for this, which I usually do not have. I cannot not do it from work, since my internet connection is not fast enough there. So I stated to procrastinate it, with the outcome well known. Further, moving the contest entries back to the city took quite some time always because I had to find a location for each single building and copy-paste the items over. Only that would take me 3-4 hours.

So the proposal is to change as follows:

• Shorter contests. The time to build something should be max 6-8 weeks. We often took 3 months from the get-go and then more due to delayed closure.
• No more votes from me. If I do not need to vote, no issue for me to delay.
• I will try to copy landscape to the contest area from the beginning so that people can prepare what they build to fit into the landscape from the beginning. We can build roads already during the contest. I am not sure if this works, but will try.
• Winnings will be Steam items contributed by users as promised before. On top of that, winners will get a proposal vote from me. I usually did not vote on proposals, but for contests wins, you will get a proposal from my side which is worth 16 points – provided that you did not get promoted in the last 2 months. On top of that of course diamonds etc as we had it.

So my question is what you guys think about that. Please comment.

I have now closed the contest and enabled voting. All contest materials that have not been submitted for voting on the website have been refunded to the owners deposit boxes!

I have copied the jungle contest to the city. I would like to ask the elders to help with the required terra-forming, tree-planting and path-building. Please also help contest submitters to re-place missing pictures and other items. You can reach the area with /warp jungle

The new contest is also live, please see the contest page for details! There will be REAL prizes this time!

I have now finally gone through the contest entries and the winners are out. There is only one designer level user and the others are all architects or settlers. So I grouped the designer with the architects. Sleeping_owl also had the overall best entry

Architects:

1. Vixengold (level up, 2 stack of Diamonds)
2. patpat211 (2 stack of Diamonds)
3. scarovese (1 stack of Diamonds)

Settlers

1. sleeping_owl (level up, 2 stack of Diamonds)
2. kzr_nvd (2 stack of Diamonds)
3. kaosrin (1 stack of Diamonds)

Congratz to all winners! I will be copying the entries over to the city, due to the amount of entries however only those with a score of 2 or higher! Contest winnings are already in your deposit boxes!

Once I managed to copy everything over, I will start the new contest.

Please head over to the Jungle Contest page and vote ASAP! We will be voting for one week only this time to make sure that we can start the next contest soon!

We have the jungle contest right now and it will end soon. For the next contest (and I do not know yet what it will be), I will be giving out real winnings. To be specific, I have 3 games in my steam inventory that I got as bonuses for buying other games:

• Portal (1 copy, from 2007)
• Bioshock (1 copy, from 2007)
• X-Com Enemy Unknown (1 copy, from 2012)
• DotA 2 (10 copies) from Sleepystrangekid
• 25 USD from KidCodiwise
• 25 USD from enkl0001
• Minecraft (1 copy) from lilroc
• Terraria (1 copy) from JoBilly

I decided to give those away. So what I will do is the following: There will be a build contest. I will make a proper ranking, regardless of user level. Then, the top user will have the choice to pick either 1 of the games, or pass (in case he/she does not want it or has it already). Then the next user in the ranks will be able to to the same for whatever is left over in the list. Of course, we will still do an additional tiered ranking as usual and hand out rank upgrades!

[Update]

I have received emails from users who want to contribute. So here is how:

• Either you have a game in your steam inventory that you do not use anymore and pledge to give this to one of the winners. I then add this to the list here. Once there is a winner, you will give the game to the winner who chose that reward.
• Or you want to contribute cash via paypal. You simply by another donators level and send me an email that this is for the contest instead of a donators level. I will add all the money together. You can give any amount you want, big or small. The money will be another optional prize for the winners to chose from. However, the winning user has to pick a game on steam from that money. If there is more money than the game is worth, the rest stays on the rewards list for the next one to chose. If the money left over is too little to buy something from, it will go into the next contest. We will most likely determine a max prize range for the game to be bought.

[/Update]

The next thing to do will be to wait until the server is updated and then to decide on what the next contest will be. Suggestions welcome!

Please all note that if you think your contest entry is done or almost done, please submit it on the website! Only submitted entries will be voted on!

If you have some technical issues submitting, please send me an email with the text that you are trying to enter and your lot number ASAP. I will not start working on reported issues 3 days after the contest closed….

Dear all,

as promised I have created a new contest. Please go over to the contest manager and take a look. Please make sure that all of your tree is in the build area so that it does not get cut off when we copy stuff over.

[Update] I wanted to make it clearer what I wrote above:

• It is no problem if some leaves stick out over your build area. Just be aware that those will not be copied over. If you place a tree in the corner of your lot, 2 sides will have the leaves cut off when we copy it.
• The 6 blocks clearance is only a helping guideline to tell you the radius that large trees use when making leaves. You do not need to keep 6 blocks completely empty on the inside of your lot.

• I have now cleared the contest area in the aether, so we are ready for the next contest. I am currently working on the new one. I need to do some testing, but it should be up soon
• I also refunded all the contests entries and you should all have your contest materials in your deposit box. Due to a bug, it is not possible anymore to do /withdraw all. I have disabled that function now for security. Please withdraw line-by-line. I am working on fixing this.
• There is a new /warp now called “xmas” where you can see all submitted contest builds. This warp works only in the city, as usual.
• I would like to ask the elders and masters to help making the area around the xmas entries nicer with some roads etc.

I have just closed the XMas Contest: We had 27 submissions, quite amazing! Since this time we had so many Citizens and Settlers I split them into two groups. So let’s start from the lower levels:

The best ranked entry from the 5 Settlers is coming from tbrewda36, and of course she is promoted to Architect, and wins a stack of Diamonds!

Next level up, we are coming to the Citizens, where we have 11 submissions! The highest ranked entry there is from PioneerTomb187, and he also wins an upgrade to Architect, and a stack of Diamonds!

Then we come already to the Architects, where we also had 5 entries, and the best one was patpat2211 who will be from now on Designer, also receiving a stack of Diamonds!

Among the 2 Designers, the best one was AEROX247, who will have the honor to be Master from today, with – you guessed it – also a stack of Diamonds in his pocket!

The 2 Masters who submitted were led by lilroc17, who will receive 2 stacks of Diamonds, just as the best Elder, KDDK!

The best overall score was achieved by AEROX247, who will get another stack of diamonds on top of it!

All upgrades are already applied and diamonds are in your deposit boxes! I will do my best to copy all 27 contest entries to the city ASAP and then announce the next contest!

Congratz and thanks to everyone for participating!

I found the reason for the holes in the contest lot. I made a mistake in the code that should exclude contest lots from being reset. Since the contest holes are not aligned with chunks, the reset function shot some random holes into the area. Very sorry about this.

Good thing is that the reason was actually trivial and could be fixed. If the teleporting there would have caused this (it caused some severe issues before, such as server crashes). we would have a much harder issue to fix.

So thanks to all who suggested solutions and tried to help here, and sorry again.

I have closed the contest now, so please go and vote!

Also, there were numerous cases where chunk-holes appeared in the area of the contests. I have no idea how these happen and can only suspect that there is an issue with the automated warps. We might have to find a different system here. Maybe it’s fixed with 1.4.6. If some of your contest got damaged through this and you did not have time to fix it until now, please send me a ticket immediately.

Also, if you did not manage to submit your contest until now, please post a message here and I will do that for you. Thanks!

Please be aware that the XMas contest will end in a couple of days! Get building to get a new level!

There is a new contest now open for submission: Christmas! As before, please use the /contest command in-game to participate!