0.0 looks amazing

Apologies for the late response. However, I will still continue work with Spelunking. Despite maybe spending less time on it, development will still be going on. Spelunking means a lot to me; all of the work me and my friends have put into it, the story, the music, the textures and models... everything. I don't want it to go to waste. If I ever do feel like I can't continue work, I will still try to get a playable demo or whatever finished.

btw I saw your post about you resigning from Sr. Mod, though does this mean you're gonna keep working on Spelunking, or stop development on it for now?

Yes, I have considered making a Discord. Only thing which is holding me back is simply managing it and making sure it doesn't go down in flames. I'll see if I can get a few extra people to simply moderate or upkeep the server while I'm busy with other things.

Looks awesome, can't wait until the open alpha! Btw, I think creating a discord for this project and linking it to the forums would be a good idea. Mainly because I feel like way more people in this group check discord more often than the forums so it'd be easier to get news and updates to them. Also it'd allow for a place for us to talk with the development team and feel more engaged in it. Hope you consider it.

We finally got off our butts and started to make the game somewhat playable.

Are any of you still alive? Good, at least we have somewhat of an audience to show off to! This past week we have finally pulled up our socks and got down to business with building (and some developing)! I'd say we've done about 20% of building required until there'll be enough for an open alpha for all of you to come and try out. Enough talk, here's a few screenshots of what has been done: The Quarry. The first area you will visit, For the future pictures, none of the stone has been detailed as we have yet to decided what areas will have what stone variations, so not all the caves look the same! Groveshire, the first town you visit. Here, there'll be a few NPCs to interact with, along ways to acquire and upgrade items. It's a peaceful but very drab place due to the economy here not doing so good. Simply a sceenshot of a part in the Groveshire mines. Nothing to spectacular, but this will be a common sight throughout the first half of the first area. The 'Forgotten Drop'. A hub of sorts, with many caverns connecting to the huge drop with a broken elevator in the middle that runs all the way down, with scaffolding around the outside of it. There's water at the bottom so it's a perfect place to practice diving. A small ravine with lava at the bottom, utilising the new 'campfires' to add a lot more atmosphere to the place by making the smoke look like it's coming from the lava. 'The Great Bridge', a bridge made of a peculiar blue stone that has began to crumble over the ages. It goes across a large ravine with a sea of lava at the bottom. I wonder where it leads? Thanks you for sticking with us, I cannot promise to give regular updates but I can promise you updates nonetheless.

I have considered it, yes, but with how much we have planned and how large the world is going to be, the amount of people willing to do it for free for the amount of work required is going to be a challenge, yet alone have the experience and skillset. The team right now has done servers like this on a smaller scale, and scaling it up isn't difficult, just tedious and time consuming. But thank you for your concern about the development, it is a bit rocky but things are hopefully going to settle eventually.

Have you considered getting more help with some of the simpler stuff like building? I know that it might make the server not feel as much like how you had wanted it with other peoples building styles, but seeing as this looks like it's going to be a fairly lengthy project it might be worth considering so the rest of you can work on the textures, music, items & lore. Besides, as long as you get someone good enough they could probably make whatever you're going for pretty well, possibly with some monitoring and help along the way to make sure they're getting it how you want it.

I know that many of you are excited for this server, so am I. development has been extremely slow due to many things getting in the way and I wish to address what I plan to do. I do not want to give up on Spelunking, it's the one thing I constantly avoided throughout this month but work on the server has been minimal. One of the main reasons is my computer simply struggling to handle Minecraft and averaging less than 10 fps. Building a huge world such as Spelunking has been more frustrating than fun due to it being like playing Jenga with a tank. I am happy to say that I have ordered a new computer with some of the most up to date specs and I hope this will make development of Spelunking much easier and more fun. Not only this will effect the physical world of Spelunking through builds, but I can handle making custom models much easier. Yes, that's right; CUSTOM MODELS! Since building the world has been a chore and a half, I decided to continue development through other means, this case; models for special items or blocks. Here are a few sneak peaks of the models I've made so far: This item is what I call the 'Navigator'. It's a item you receive later on and is basically an upgrade to an item you start with which I call the 'Miners Guide Book'. It's key purpose is to open a GUI with useful information such as the area you're in, the temperature, how deep you are and to also act as a way to post updates and see the staff list. Obviously, the Miners Guide Book won't be able to tell the temperature or depth and stuff like that. This item is obviously a crown. It will be an item that a certain character will wear. Still considering if it should be made an actual item a player can equip. I have also made a few extra soundtracks which are pretty neat: "Sanctuary": Sanctuary.ogg "Funginfestions": Funginfestions.ogg I have to admit, these themes in particular are p-r-e-t-t-y groovy.

This server already looks incredible.

Awesome!

I should probably mention that some of the ores are animated. Some pulsate eerily, others ooze and some flash violently. I would make it a GIF but unfortunately that's just far too much effort.

I believe I should update ya'll on our textures so you can have faith in us to at least have some decent texture work, haha. To push this experience to the limits, blocks that we feel will not be used will be used to either be new ores or new building blocks to give areas their own identity. It also allows us to make locations closer to how we conceived them. Here are the textures for the ores we've made so far, this is only HALF of what we have planned but it puts into perspective to how expansive we plan to make the server: We put the ores into order to how late they appear and how powerful they are. You may be able to guess what some ores are but we have came up with some of our own and you will most likely have to wait a later date to learn their names. Of course, we have our own blocks for building as well. I have only made one new 'set' of building blocks, but expect there to be many more to be shown off! I call this set 'Cobaltstone' A dark tinged-blue stone used as the main material for many ancient buildings lost in the underground! It has a very gothic look to it, which I personally find very cool, hehe. Finally, the tools. I haven't been giving tools a lot of attention since they're not as important for the stage of development we're at right now. But that doesn't mean we don't have anything cool to show you! You'll probably be able to see what ore those tools are forged from, hehe. There is one issue which did make things a bit complicated, which is the new textures added in 1.14. Since that update revamped all the vanilla ones, it made a few of the textures I've already made look a little out of place, however it's not a glaring issue. I probably won't update those textures due to not wanting to waste time on things which aren't a huge deal. I'm always open for suggestions such as ore ideas, areas, enemies, basically everything! If you do suggest something, make sure to comment on how you think it will affect the gameplay and what other things it may enhance!

Right now, everything is going quite slow due to many complications, such as my computer being barely function, Mega going through some personal issues and Ryan being busy with other projects. However, once we pass these hurdles development will begin to look a lot smoother.

knowing Ryan is on the development side concerns me, he's on my friends list and I only see him on at least once a week, and he's never on the server from what I've seen, is he going to be more active to work on the server in the future?

Right now, we have 3 people working on Spelunking; Myself, Mega_Rascal and RyanDxxx. We all have our assigned roles, such as me working on the creative stuff such as the resource pack, music, story and building, Mega works on the building and Ryan is working on the development side. Obviously it's quite a small team for such a large project but we have worked on many RPGs before, some even rivalling the expansiveness of Spelunking. However, I believe many met their fate due to being released too early in development which made people get bored of it much quicker than us being able to add more content. However, I do hope to make an early release which will be open for a few days which will allow us to get a good idea how how players would act and see if we can make any improvements. I hope to make this early release when the first 1/4 of the server is complete, with the (I guess you can say) trial ending when you finish the first dungeon, or a little after it. The server will be structured in a way that you need to complete a dungeon at the end of the area in order to continue further down the caves. You'll be able to continue by either getting a new item that allows you to do certain abilities which will help you bypass an obstacle or simple get a key to unlock a big door or gate. This will stop players from running down all the way to the end, however if you simply aim for the dungeons, you will be missing a lot of optional quests and mini dungeons where you can unlock cool items. We have planned 3 main 'big' dungeons, which will have VERY different environments, the first one being an expansive castle/fortress submerged underground. However, after the last main dungeon, you will be required to go back and find 4 sacred shrines that will open the final barrier to the last area where the big bad guy resides. These 4 shrines can be considered mini dungeons and combined together will probably be the size of a main dungeon, so I suppose there's 3.8 dungeons, hehe. Development right has been quite stagnate due to all of us having things to do and never getting the time do really sit down and work on the server. But don't worry! I do spend every ounce of free time away from my laptop making sketches of concept art, extra notes on the story, thinking of new themes by humming them, etc. Myself and I hope the rest of our team are very determined to make the best RPG experience Minehut has ever seen and for this to be a first step to expanding the current Minehut Server RPG formula. Our plans for Spelunking after we eventually complete what we have planned, is to continue expanding it and adding new places to explore. Our main goal isn't to simply make an RPG, but a world with many stories to tell and experience. It's a big risk to take as a large percentage of players who play on Minehut are not interested in storytelling and compelling worlds, as they prefer the more action oriented stuff. This server will be more about... taking in the environment. Of course there will be action; and lots of it! But expect to be not only rewarded with items, but serenity.

Noice

Loving it so far! Excited to see what more's to come.

This is going to be revolutionary! Can't wait for release!

holy shit custom texture pack and soundtrack? can't wait!

This is probably gonna be super fun

from what I've seen, this seems to be on the levels of a short indie game or an adventure map, how many hours of content is planned?