New Minigame Idea

[Onett]

With the recent performance of Disasters, I've started to think of ways to get more players onto the server even quicker. The gamemode was definitely a step up above SnD in terms of its contribution to server growth, but personally I think we could do better. I believe one way to do this is to double down on one of the key characteristics of Disasters, at least compared to SnD, which is its marketability.

In this thread, I'll first explain the gamemode, then explain why I think it'd be a good fit for the server. The gamemode I am proposing is...

Minecraft Manhunt

​

Yes, like the one Dream makes videos on all the time. There's 1 speedrunner, and 2/3/4/5/70 hunters that try and stop the speedrunner from killing the ender dragon. A pretty simple game concept. However, the version I am proposing differs in that

1. It will be altered to be played like a minigame.
2. Game time will be significantly reduced.
3. New and unique challenges will be included to help differentiate our gamemode and make it more fun.

Game Rules:

Overview:

Games will include up to 5 players total, with 1 speedrunner and up to 4 hunters (minimum of 2 hunters). In order for the speedrunner to win, they must survive for 2 minutes. In order for the hunters to win, they must kill the speedrunner within those 2 minutes. Hunters have unlimited respawns, however, the speedrunner only has 1 life.

There will be a variety of maps to play on, each based on a different part of a vanilla Minecraft world, however those can be further separated into 3 categories:

1. Overworld
2. Nether
3. End

(I'll elaborate more on these later)

http://imgur.com/a/TX4lTLR

Each map will be around 75x75 blocks in size, with a height limit of approximately 45 blocks, in order to prevent the speedrunner from easily running away the whole game. Each map will require strategic adaptation to its environment for success, but will also require quick thinking from the speedrunner, to use various items and powerups to react to the hunters' attack. Ideally, it will be VERY difficult for the speedrunner to survive the full 2 minutes.

Besides the borders of the map, everything can be broken and interacted with, just as if you were in a survival world. You can break blocks, place them, craft, etc. Everything is just like Vanilla 1.16.5, which includes combat (One exception to this is the inclusion of auto-smelt, which causes broken ores to instantly smelt into their raw material form)

Gameplay:

At the start of the game, Speedrunners and hunters share the same spawnpoint, however the speedrunner will get a 10 second headstart to begin escaping. This does not contribute to the 2 minute survival timer. The hunters will be stuck at the spawnpoint, partially invisible.

As well as this, both teams will receive some gear at the start. The Speedrunner gets theirs before their headstart, the hunters get it after the headstart:
(I will go more in-depth on kits later on, this is standard gear given to everyone regardless of kit)

Spoiler: Standard Speedrunner Gear

Gear:
Iron Helmet
Iron Chestplate
Chain Leggings
Chain Boots

Items:

1. 64 Oak Wood Planks
2. 32 Cobblestone
3. 9 iron ingots
4. 3 String
5. Stone Sword, Axe, Pickaxe and Shovel
6. 64 Bread

Spoiler: Standard Hunter Gear

Gear:
Full Leather Armor

Items:

1. Speedrunner Tracker (Works like an SnD compass, points to the speedrunner and shows their distance)
2. 64 Oak Wood Planks
3. 16 Cobblestone
4. Wood Sword, Axe, Pickaxe and Shovel
5. 64 Bread

Upon death, you will lose all of your current gear and kit items, and spawn with the standard gear listed above.

Also, it may be important to note that all of these mechanics will work like Vanilla Minecraft, so tools do lose durability in this gamemode. You will also lose hunger, and regenerate health, just like Vanilla Minecraft.

If a hunter dies, they will be dead for 5 seconds, in which they can fly around invisible as if they were a spectator. They will respawn at the original spawnpoint. Read the following spoiler if you are more interested in the reasoning behind including these items.

Spoiler: Default Gear Further Explained

In terms of crafting, different materials will be available depending on the map, however I believe with these default items, the game will remain fun and interesting even on more barren maps, such as the ones based in the End.

Wood is the most abundant, since it's meant to be used for building and crafting, and is the most versatile. You can create sticks to make better tools, ladders for saving yourself from large falls and lots of different block types (slabs, doors, stairs, chests) which can all be used creatively when necessary.

Cobblestone is mainly reserved for crafting, especially for hunters, since it allows them to easily upgrade all of their tools.

Iron is a very important resource for Speedrunners, since they can use it for a wide variety of items that really help them survive. From shields, to upgraded tools, to armor, to crossbows to buckets, its essential that they use iron wisely based on the map type to ensure their survival.

String is another important resource, since it can be used by the speedrunner to craft 1 of 3 key items:

1. Bow
2. Crossbow
3. Fishing Rod

These share a similar role to Iron, as effective use of string can allow them to have a much easier game.

The bread is for eating.

 

[Onett]

Map Types:

As stated previously, there will be 3 different map types available to play, which each represent a different dimension in Minecraft. The purpose of this categorization is to present players with a variety of gameplay scenarios that closely resemble those seen in manhunts often, to make up for the short gameplay sessions which definitely do not represent the whole manhunt experience. I will go into more detail about them in the spoilers below.

Spoiler: Overworld

The Overworld may include maps based on:

• Oak Forests
• Deserts
• Jungle
• Mountains
• Swamp

(Insert more MC biomes I may have missed, it could also include landmarks such as the Desert Temple or Stronghold for example)

http://imgur.com/a/TX4lTLR

This is the "standard" map type. Underground, there will be a ratio of 1 iron per 7 stone (no other ores), so if the speedrunner wishes, they may spend some time quickly collecting extra iron before beginning their escape. All ores will auto-smelt upon breaking them. On these maps, there will be no void, lava or especially dangerous stage hazards... for the most part. Some biomes within the overworld may present the speedrunner with some issues...

In addition to manmade maps, I believe using naturally generated worlds would really help keep the game fresh. Perhaps there could be a system that auto-generates "map-sized" chunks out of vanilla worlds, and automatically checks if it passes certain criteria that make a map good for manhunt. There's no way the community can sustain new maps constantly, so a feature such as this would be incredibly helpful.

Spoiler: Map Requirements

1. The lowest surface in the 75x75 map area should be at most 5 blocks above the floor border to prevent hiding underground from becoming too strong.
2. All stone/underground material should be converted to either stone or iron ore, with the ratio proposed above.
3. Maps will always be set to day time unless altered directly by a challenge (to be explained further into the post)

For now, these are the only requirements, I'd prefer to keep the guidelines less strict so there's more variety.

But to ensure those Vanilla chunks do not get boring, we could also implement custom structures, which could be submitted by the community. These buildings could offer strategic advantages and also include things such as loot chests, hostile mobs and other fun features. (credit to @Mythless for this idea). Building a whole map is pretty tough so allowing community-made custom structures could also allow for more people to get involved with helping the server through building. These custom structures will be categorized based on which dimension, and also which biome they will spawn in.

Spoiler: Nether

Nether maps may be based on...

• Nether Fortress
• Soul Sand Valleys
• Crimson Forests
• Nether Cliffs over lava
• Other misc. Nether landforms/structures

http://imgur.com/a/kQNZgKe

Nether maps offer more of a challenge, with the presence of dangerous hostile mobs when appropriate (piglins will spawn on the crimson forest maps, blazes and wither skeletons will spawn on nether fortress maps. This is the default expectation but it is ultimately up to the mapmaker's discretion), as well as lava on the bottom layer of all these maps. However, Gold ore will be available to mine, and will appear in the following ratio: 1 gold ore per 7 netherrack.

Similarly to the Overworld, I believe random map generation and custom structures should be allowed.

Spoiler: Map Requirements

1. Out of all blocks within the 75x75x45 area (including air), netherrack/nether gold ore/other nether blocks should make up 20% of all blocks. This is to ensure there's enough playable area
2. Lava should appear around 5 blocks above the floor border
3. If possible, select 75x75 chunks which pass all the above criteria and also stay within 1 biome, in order to prevent only parts of structures clipping into the playable area.

Some of the conditions I have stated may not be 100% effective for ensuring the elements of a good map that should be seen in maps, so any other algorithms which can get the same results would be great.

Spoiler: End

End maps may be based on...

• End island (near a cliffside)
• End City
• End Ship
• Other structures based on the End

http://imgur.com/a/J8tzSoW

End maps will also offer a considerable challenge for the speedrunner, since there will be void at the bottom of all End maps. While there isn't the constant threat of damage that is present on Nether maps, there is the omnipresent risk of instant death which lies at the bottom of the map... There's also a very noticable lack of resources to be collected.

Hostile mobs such as Endermen and Shulkers will also be present when appropriate (i.e. Endermen will appear on "regular" end maps and shulkers will appear on End City maps. The inclusion of these hostile mobs will ultimately be up to the mapmaker's discretion though).

Since these maps will likely be very difficult to generate, End maps should be created by hand. Alternatively, a "chunk finding" algorithm could be made to find suitable playable areas, which can be double checked by staff members.

Power-Ups:

Every 10 seconds, all players will receive a power-up in their inventory!

This cooldown will be signified by the experience bar (the bar itself, not exp levels).

I will list some ideas for powerups in the following spoiler, so you can understand generally how strong they are. While some are borrowed from SnD and Disasters, I've also made up some original ideas as well.

Spoiler: Power-Ups

• Ender Pearl
• Golden Apple
• Balloons

Item: Lead
Works just like Balloons from Disasters

• Leap

Item: Rabbit's Foot
Works just like the leap from Disasters

• Pokeball

Item: Firework Star/Snowball
The user can right click a mob with the firework star to "capture it". If it is a hostile mob, it will now fight for them. They can throw the snowball to deploy the mob. You can catch other people's monsters with your own pokeball, however once you deploy your monster you can't recall it.

• RPG

Item: Egg
Works like an RPG from SnD, however it will break blocks and its damage will be heavily reduced. Its main function will be to destroy terrain. Due to its reduced damage, it can also be used to "rocket jump"

• Rewind Clock

Item: Clock
Works like Rewind in SnD, however, it will only go back 5 seconds.

• Chest of Fate

Item: Chest
A chest which can give an item of... varying power. The chest doesn't give you what you want. It gives you what you truly need most. Upon taking the item out of the chest, the chest will automatically disappear. More powerful items will be rarer.

Possible Items to include (ordered from most common to most rare):

• Spoiler: Item List

  [*]Lonely Tree (Dead Bush)
  [*]Leafy Lonely Tree (Oak Sapling)
  [*]Unidentifiable Remains (5-7 Bones)
  [*]Old Stick (regular stick)
  [*]Arrow Bundle (8 arrows)
  [*]Farm Care Package (8 Hay Bales)
  [*]Cold Glass of Water (Water Bucket)
  [*]Hot Glass of Water (Lava Bucket)
  [*]New Stick (Stick with Fire Aspect 1)
  [*]Bundle of Iron (1 Iron Block)
  [*]Any of the other powerups mentioned in this list (excluding chest of fate)
  [*]Tome of Protection (Protection 1 Enchanted Book, will apply Protection 1 to all armor in your inventory upon use)
  [*]Tome of Attack (Sharpness 1 Enchanted Book, Applies Sharpness 1 to all weapons in your inventory and Power 1 to all ranged weapons)
  [*]Hermes Boots (Cyan Leather Boots, Give permanent speed 2 buff)
  [*]Air Jordans (Red Leather Boots, Give Jump Boost 2 and all fall damage is halved)
  [*]Home Run Bat (Wood Sword with Knockback 3, it has very low durability so it only has 3 uses)
  [*]Uber Sword (Iron Sword with full durability, heals the user 2 hearts every 4th hit)
  [*]Shotbow (Crossbow with Multishot, Quick Charge 1)
  [*]Berserker's Axe (Iron Axe with Sharpness 1, gains +1 damage per kill)
  [*]If any of you have suggestions for more items to add, please mention them in a reply!

• Cozy Campfire

Item: Campfire
A campfire which gives Regeneration 2 in a 5 block radius around it, to both enemies and allies. This campfire is unable to harm you if you step on it.

• Soothing Candle

Item: White Candle
A candle which gives Resistance 1 in a 5 block radius around it, to both enemies and allies.

• Arrow Bundle

Item: 8 Arrows
These are just arrows. If you have a bow or a crossbow in your inventory, your chances of receiving this powerup are 50% until you have arrows in your inventory, at which point, the probability will become equal to other powerups.

• Kung Fu Lesson

Item: Knowledge Book
"A lesson written by the Dragon Warrior many years ago... the pages are covered in grease and parts of dumpling skins..."

A book which will cause your fists to deal +2 damage. This effect stacks with multiple books (i.e. with 1 book, your fists deal 3 damage, with 2 books, they deal 5 damage).
(If you are a hunter and you die, you will lose all Kung Fu damage stacks)

When you use a book, it will state the current damage of your fists.

• Rage Potion

Item: Potion of Strength 1 (Duration: 10 seconds)

These are just the ideas I thought of, but we can always add more if needed. Leave your suggestions in a reply if you have any!

(Note: If power-ups are not based on vanilla mechanics (ex: ender pearls and golden apples), they will appear enchanted so they aren't confused with regular items)

 

[Onett]

Kits:

There are many kits available for both Hunters and Speedrunners.

As you may have noticed, the power-ups I mentioned above allow for different playstyles and builds, which I want to encourage further by putting the power of customization into the hands of the player instead of forcing them to rely on RNG to see if they can play a build they enjoy.

Kits will be the same for both Speedrunners and Hunters, however their default gear differs, which I mentioned above already.

Spoiler: Kit List

• Kung Fu

Default Gear + 2 Kung Fu Books

• Gambler

Default Gear + 2 Chests of Fate

• Camper

Default Gear + 1 Soothing Candle + 1 Cozy Campfire

• Brawler

Default Gear + 2 Rage Potions

• Athlete

Default Gear + 1 Water Bucket + 8 Haybales + 1 Leap

• Archer

Default Gear + 2 Arrow Bundle (16 arrows)

• Alchemist

Default Gear + Brewing Stand + 4 Water Bottles + 4 Nether Wart + 3 gold ingots
(Note that mob drops are turned on. Some powerups can also be used for brewing)

• Demolitionist

Default Gear + 1 RPG

• Pokemon Master

Default Gear + 2 Pokeballs

• Trickster

Default Gear + 1 Rewind Clock + 1 Balloon

• Chef

Default Gear + 3 Golden Apples

Again, there is lots of room to add more kits, if you guys have suggestions for them, leave a reply!

Challenges:

Think of challenges as "mini disasters" that have a chance to occur every game (although only 1 happens every game, instead of the usual 3 disasters)

Open the following spoiler for a quick list of them.

Spoiler: Challenges

Some of these challenges will be specific to certain world types, and I will denote which ones work this way.

Double Powerups:

Pretty self-explanatory, the rate at which powerups are given is doubled (10 seconds in between powerups ---> 5 seconds).

Night time (Overworld only):

Hostile mobs do not spawn in the overworld for the most part since daytime is on by default, but the night time challenge causes them to spawn naturally. These include mobs you would usually see in Minecraft, such as zombies, skeletons, spiders and creepers. If this Disaster occurs, all players will be given a stack of torches at the start of the game.

His Gaze:

Similar to Disasters, but modified to be less hard. Commands based on being near other players (his gaze focuses on... the social, lonely, pacifists) are removed. Commands based on crafting/survival are added instead (His Gaze focuses on those without a Wood Pressure Plate or other easily craftable items).

Red Light Green Light:

Similar to His Gaze, however, it only involves one command. You may move freely during green light, however if you move when red light is declared, you will be frozen in place for 3 seconds when Green Light is called again.

These commands will occur every 20-30 seconds, to prevent it from becoming too annoying.

Swift Hands:

All players receive Speed 1 and Haste 2 permanently.

Glass:

All players receive half health for the round.

Juggernaut:

All players receive double health for the round.

Nether Invasion (Nether only):

A nether portal spawns in a random location in the map. Similarly to Disasters, it will spawn hostile mobs, but at a much slower rate. It will also not alter the terrain around it.

Low Gravity (End only)

All players will have permanent Jump Boost 2 and Levitation effect (similar to the effect you receive when descending after the Balloon powerup from Disasters ends)

Again, there is lots of room to add more challenges, if you guys have suggestions for them, leave a reply!

Reasoning:

Manhunt is incredibly trendy right now and there's probably lots of people who'd love to try it, definitely WAY more than the amount of people looking to play disasters.

And surprisingly, I found there were very few servers that host the gamemode, and none of them put a creative spin on it in anyway (seriously, google "minecraft manhunt server" and you'd be surprised to see how little there are). Needless to say, the gameplay experience there was very poor, since people often left the game if they didn't get the speedrunner role and when the other players in the game weren't very good, which was the case most of the time, the game wasn't fun to play. It'd take forever for them to actually beat the game as a speedrunner, and it was impossible to cooperate with them when they were a hunter.

Hopefully with the minigame version I suggested, we can avoid these issues and provide an experience that is fun and unique but still remains faithful to the core gameplay seen in Dream's, and many other popular Minecraft Youtuber's videos on Manhunt.

As well as this, many mechanics from Disasters and SnD could be recycled for use in this minigame, which should help ease the burden of developing it.

Spoiler: Extra Notes

• Since lobby size is small, players will be able to spectate full lobbies, but only if they manually choose the server with the game selector.
• While the map size is relatively small, keep in mind that 1.16 regeneration is turned on, which heals you very quickly. As long as you refill your hunger after battles, you should be able to regenerate pretty quickly in between battles

Special thanks to Mythless and Elite for help

I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts about this minigame!
Feel free to leave some suggestions and feedback down in the replies!​

 

[toomuchzelda]

I like the use of custom stuff like power-ups and kits to make the game not as plain as vanilla, but I think the Challenges or mini-disasters is going a bit too far. I think it would take away too much from the core focus of the manhunt which is hunting / being hunted. In my opinion, it would be a greater distraction than a challenge and also alienating to players who know this game by Dream's youtube videos. I think it would be cool however if it were optional or some kind of side/spin-off to the main game (Like how big servers have several different modes for the same base game (e.g a certain one about floating islands and beds)).

That aside, I think this game could use some kind of goal for the 'speedrunner' other that simply surviving. In general speedrunning, and in Dream's videos, there's a goal the speedrunner has to reach that's not just surviving for some time. Obviously, if the goals were too big (killing the ender-dragon from start to end) they would be too much and take too long. I think a good addition would be many different sort of 'mini-goals' that the speedrunner is randomly given. These may simply be the speedrunners and hunters starting at different stages during a typical speedrun (with the difficulty sort of toned down if needed). For example, one goal may be "Kill the Ender Dragon!", but the players spawn in the End, with the Ender Dragon already on some half/reduced health, and only half or less of the Ender Crystals still alive. Another example may be in the overworld, "Build a nether portal and enter it!", with the map having some guaranteed amount of lava and water. Of course, the hunters are informed of the goal too so they can effectively try to stop the runner. The gear for each situation may have to be adjusted depending on what it is, like for the Ender Dragon example above, players will probably need slightly better armour and already spawn with weapons. You could also instead reduce the damage of the dragon/endermen, either way it comes down to the context of the goal.
The goals don't necessarily have to be one stage of a typical speedrun. While I think those would be the most familiar to players aware of the 'Minecraft Manhunt' genre, I admit that they will probably become boring / repetitive if there aren't enough different ones. So, they could be a little more arbitrary. For example: "Kill 5 villagers" (with a map guaranteed to have a village with at least 5 villagers), "Shoot a ghast with a bow", "Mine 50 glowstone", and of course "Survive for 2 minutes", etc. (I know these sound really mundane but I hope other people are more creative).
The lose condition could also change depending on the goal contexts, but for most of them I think the current one (death) should be more or less alright.

This is a good idea for a minigame and im sure if you keep baiting kids on tiktok and pretend dream plays this on Athios it will become very popular