Command Blocks and release information

We're inching ever closer to a release! With the 1.4 update to Minecraft came command blocks, a key development in the creation of the Pokécraft project, which allow us to portal all of our interiors (as well as do a bunch of other cool stuff). All we really need to do now is actually link interiors and exteriors.

After some initial teething troubles, we have the blocks up and working, as well as links to each of our three main regions set up from the phoneboxes in the spawn town. As of the time of writing, we're going through and sorting out Kanto's interiors, with Pallet, Viridian and Pewter linked up and working. The discussion of interiors however brings up a note about our inevitable releases.

Release System
The first release of the map will come soon, however it will also be fairly basic. We plan to release it in several versions (the release being version 1, and then using standard software versioning practices for subsequent updates).

The version of the map which we release as v1.0 will feature the following:

• Kanto + interiors
• Hoenn + interiors
• Sinnoh + very limited interiors (caves and some early-game houses)
• The Sevii Islands + very limited interiors (as Sinnoh)
• An interconnected world of all the regions - they're all in a pastiche of Japan, in roughly the position they might be in the real world - Hoenn is rotated through ninety degrees for example
• Many easter eggs! This map contains the fruits of over three years of Minecraft labour by a group of ten people, and we've transplanted some of our best works into the world for you to enjoy. Honestly we reckon there's several hours of play-time just exploring the non-regioned parts of the map - to walk from the Northern tip of Sinnoh to Ever Grande City takes about 30 minutes at sprinting pace alone!

The first release after this will likely focus on one of two things, the first being general beautification. Since 99% of the maps were built in Creative Classic, they sort of show it - only 50 available blocks sort of limited us a bit. The other is getting interiors into Sinnoh - this is a pretty big update, and will be the last before Johto.

Because yes, we will be doing Johto since I know the Pokémon community seems to adore the region, despite its lack of any notable features at all aside Ecruteak and Goldenrod City (no, caves and lakes don't count - get me a desert or a rainforest!). Johto will likely see version 2.0 of the map, as it will also necessitate a recreation of Kanto to bring it in line with modern standards and to make it fit into the Gen IV reworking of the land. Again, this will likely be released first without interiors, then with, but this remains to be seen - it's the first region we've built since leaving Classic, and only the second where we've actually had interiors in mind (Hoenn and Kanto were both built on vanilla Classic serverware, while Sinnoh used iCraft and later Archives). This will then be followed (probably in about 2036 at our current rate of building) by Unova. Since at this stage the map will have been split into two different types (Gen 3 and Gen 4 Kanto), building the subtly different BW and B2W2 renditions of Unova aren't much of a challenge.

Server Maps
We'll be releasing two versions of V1 of the map, one for Bukkit servers and one for single-player/LAN play. The SP one will get the most attention as it's future-proof, and can't be influenced too heavily by Mojang's mod API - we don't want to rely on a plugin only for it to be removed by the cessation of the Bukkit project. As it is we've been keeping mods to a minimum, the only "required" mod at present is WorldGuard by sk89q, which we use to prevent grass spreading.

If you want to see the project become completely plugin-neutral, please email/tweet/reddit Mojang and ask them to include the option to turn off grass spread please. Otherwise we'll be forced to always rely on third-party mods, and we don't want that!

Apologies for the large amount of text in this blog post, maybe next time we'll have some images for you, or heck, who knows, maybe even a download!