_Rascal

ok.

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.

That's Sir Lord Rascalian, for you.

Many of you may know me so I won't bother with an overcomplex introduction. However, I guess I can give a brief rundown of my time as Staff. I became Mod back in 2018 in February and got promoted to Senior in 2019, 23rd of March; my Birthday. Benny was planning on promoting me a week earlier but he found out it was my birthday soon so decided to promote me on my cake day; whoop whoop. A few months passed and soon I found myself being the head of the build team; along with a bunch of new Senior Mods. Some time passed after that and unfortunately a lot of stuff started to come up and the 'real world' decided to come full force and slap me in the face with a concrete slab. Now here I am, stepping down from my position as Senior Mod to Builder. I may come back and resume my role as Senior Mod, or I may come back as Mod, or never at all. Only time will tell, hehe. Many may be wondering why but to keep things from being too complicated, I've started doing a higher level course in my College which requires a lot more time and dedication, plus, many close friends and family simply needing a lot of support. I stride to offer help and give advice to people and to simply keep the environments I spend a lot of time in pleasant; one of the main things that kept me going as a Moderator. Obviously I'll still be around, making weird comments in the lobby, making weird noises in the voice channels and making weird statements in the discord. I can never truly step away from Minehut; at least not anytime soon. I've probably spent 30% of my entire life dedicated to Minehut. It may sound ridiculous but it's probably true. Some advice to anyone aspiring to be a Moderator, don't take it too seriously. It's not a job, you're not tip-tapping commands all day to steal player's privileges of having the right to speak, to only provide for a family. You're keeping the community members safe. It's like a big family; despite a large majority of players being disjointed. You're like the big brother/sister of the family. You're the role model which needs to set the standards. That's how I think of it, anyways. Maybe I'm just over thinking it. Anyways, that's all I have time for. I need to get back to playing Animal Crossing on my 3DS.

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.

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.

This is me expanding the newest game theory video that attempts to explain the nature of Endermen, I heavily advise to watch that for this to make sense. It is my belief that Zombie Pigmen used to be what half of their name suggests; Pigmen. But how did they come to be? One explanation I have is lightning. In-game, whenever a pig is struck by lightning, they become a zombie pigman. A pig isn't the only mob that has a property like this as well, a villager becomes a witch if struck and a creeper becomes a charged creeper. This leads me to believe lightning has some magical ability to grant creatures greater power or knowledge, such as giving villagers the ability to brew powerful potions or creepers a much powerful explosion. Back to the zombie pigman and them not originally being zombies and simply pigmen, I believe they were infected by something which turned them into zombies; possibly the same thing that resulted in undead creatures roaming the overworld. But what is this infection? My answer and theory is The Wither. That's right. Don't worry, I will answer with all the evidence I have found. The wither to most players is a being which you need to build out of soul sand and 3 wither skulls and is seen to be the most difficult fight in the game (Yes, more difficult than the Enderdragon as well). What makes it so difficult is the effect it gives you, being wither. Something that acts similarly to the poison effect but turns your hearts black and will make your health deplete over time. This virus/infection that resides in the many undead mobs is a much weaker version of the wither effect, which has withered away the host's brain and take control of their movement. Why doesn't this happen to player? Simple. The concentrations of the effect are just far too strong and kills within a few minutes instead, I guess, hundreds of years. We know the wither effect around the wither is far stronger as it can quite literally widdle down blocks to dust in mere moments upon contact, as seen in game. Now, how does this go back to Pigmen and Matpats original theory? During the video, he mentions the humans must have fled to the End because of some calamity. What if the invasion of the Wither was that calamity? or perhaps, the aftermath. What if the humans won against the Wither, however the essence it left infected the humans and wildlife which resulted in hordes upon hordes of zombies to attack the many structures they had? The Wither seeking revenge for destroying his shell. This made the Humans retreat into the End as a last resort and I'd presume you know the rest of what happened if you watched the theory. But one thing that still needs answering is the Zombie Pigmen. What if they originally weren't zombies and waged war against the Wither by going to where it came from; The Nether. They built fortresses in the Nether to protect themselves from the ghastly things that lived there but soon discovered they were all turning into zombies due to the essence which the Wither had left behind. In there attempt to stop, they used gold to cure themselves, as many of you many not have realised; gold has very powerful healing properties. We know this by looking at the many things gold can do, such as making golden apples, the most powerful healing item in the game, healing potions that are brewed by glistening melons (basically golden melons) along with golden carrots having the most saturation. Annddd lets not forget that you CURE ZOMBIE VILLAGERS WITH GOLDEN APPLES (plus a potion of weakness but that's the one ingredient they were missed). Unable to cure the infection, they withered away into the disgusting zombie pigmen we all know that are held together with rotting and withering flesh. One huge piece of evidence I am extremely chuffed to have discovered that supports the 'hive mind' nature of the Wither is what it drops when defeated... The Nether Star. The nether star is used to create a Beacon that acts as a way to give an effect to a player in a certain radius. Read that again. gives an effect to a player in a certain radius. If this power was in the hands of something much more malicious and had much greater power over it, it could effect creatures in the radius and possibly control them. The Nether Star acts as the source of the Withers power. But some Minecraft players may respond with 'But it needs fuel to actually give off an effect' and they are absolutely right. In game, the player needs to use precious materials to make it work but what if it could take in a much more powerful fuel which gave it the power to effect things on a interdimensional scale? What if it used the very life force that it drained from creatures? It gives it a reason on why it's so agitated towards everything living around it, as it will attack animals (and I believe hostile mobs) during the fight with it if you move too far and it loses interest. Now, this all may sound fine and dandy and may make a lot of sense but one thing some keen readers may have noticed is when I said 'the wildlife being infected'. This is when things get interesting and explains why Pigs become zombie pigmen straight after being struck. Every single animal is infected (to some degree) but the infection only works on things with higher brain functionality; e.i, humans and villagers. The pig is already infected and as soon as it becomes a pigman, the wither infection kicks in and turns it straight into a zombie. This leaves the villagers. Matpat suggests the idea that Villagers are a different species from the player. And to that, I kind of agree. They are not a different species, in fact, a more evolved human from the original humans. Not every human escaped to the End and some may have stayed on the overworld and survived. Over time, they evolved to survive the infection by have lower brain functionality in an attempt to combat the infection and developed bigger noses so they could smell withering flesh and bones from a distance. It's why they can detect zombies from some distance without being in direct view. However, they are not completely immune and will turn into a zombie after a large intake of wither (such as from a zombie). It's why they can survive with animals as there's not enough wither within them to turn them. I do want to say that I do not agree with Matpat saying that villagers are unable to build. If they can't build, who built the villages they live in? I want to say that it just requires a lot of effort and help from other villagers to build and is quite rare for them to actually build. This concludes my theory but I wish to leave a few extra things that enforces this theory but has a few things to pick at. Chiselled Red Sandstone has the image of a Wither on it. As far as I know, these blocks do not spawn naturally in game but if they did, it will support the idea that the Wither existed in the past. Becoming a Wither Skeleton is the final stage of being withered. It starts off as Zombie > Skeleton > Wither Skeleton. After that, they basically dust away similar to "the snap" and turn into soulsand. I do not have much of an explanation of why they become half a block taller. Perhaps the bones begin to bloat due to being under so much influence? Illagers may be villagers but under some sort of wither effect but not enough to fully turn. It does say in their name they're 'Ill'. It does make some sense as they do not attack or get attacked by mobs, but their massive mansions leads me to believe there's some other form of evil instead, such as the Evokers magic. This theory does make a lot of sense in my eyes and I may have missed a few things as I thought about all of this while lying in bed trying to sleep but the excitement of wanting to write this thing in the morning made it difficult to sleep, haha. Thanks for reading, and if you can't be bothered to read this wall of text, here's my theory cut short: The Wither effect acts as a way for the Wither to control creatures with higher brain functionality. Your welcome.

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.

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.

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.