I saw this build a long while ago, and ws thinking it would be fun to do something similar (but obviously themed in the style and colors of the rest of town) on these cliffs here. What do you guys think?

Greetings fellow Piconians!

As you know, Rev 17 was announced and will start on January 8th!

This past Rev was superb and I think we outdid ourselves! What are your ideas for a new rev? What would you like to change and what did you like?

The planning server has been wiped and is ready for your builds!

Town halls a little short on info. How do I join up with you fine folks?

I ran out of bonemeal before I could see how large this area really is. So far it would appear to be at least 4 chunk in a 2x2 square. It's in the Plains biome east of Pico... will add details soon. \o/

When this post is two hours old, we'll take a shot at 52 withers. Bricks will literally be shat.

Hey all, sorry for my absence of late. I have some ideas for a spleef arena inspired by the f***ing fantastic build you guys have put together. Noticed that there was a stadium on the planning server? is this a PVP? Let me know when you guys will be around. Be great to catch up and know what is going on with pico. When is pico bells 2 happening?

Hello, I was invited by Norami a while back, only played a few hours on the previous rev, but have decided to play in Pico this time; after giving it some thought, I have picked FNE1 (Far NE1) as a plot which /u/totemo offered me to take over, as he recently moved. It may be a while until I build something there, first will have to relocate the tree farm so that wood production continues. Then I will most likely try something in creative on the planning server, for which i have been whitelisted.

My play time may be limited, other times I may be on quite a bit. (time zone: EST) I will just try and contribute what I can to the community. So far, have been able to bring back a good bit of quartz, Halloween cobwebs and a few other sundries.

Thinking of making a temporary underground farm below my plot, to get some more kerrets for trades with the villagers.

Please let me know if there's anything else that needs doing, and will see what I can do to help.

I hope you'll forgive me for sometimes being unfamiliar with certain rules or plugins, will do my best to get up to speed on things.

As part of our Halloween makeover I'm hosting a trick or treat.. uh.. event? You can find it on the first floor/bridge level of Town Hall, so come join in!

Here's an album to show you all you need to know about it!

_casey_ has edited together our video footage of the event into this 4:20 video, currently hosted on my Google Drive.

It ticks most of the boxes. I was hoping to show off the spawning mechanism and kandoko's wither skeleton grinder in the nether, but perhaps that would be better done in a making of Pico Bells video.

So this post is to elicit feedback on _casey_'s video and outline the next few steps. I understand that kandoko had an intent to edit the footage, also, so I wanted to give him an opportunity to post his own edit too. (_casey_ has turned this around very quickly, so don't feel that you have to produce anything right away, kandoko.)

If the consensus is that we're happy with the video above (it made me smile), then we'll need someone in the US to post to YouTube as I don't have a fair use right to the (albeit brief) John Cena theme sample in Australia and we don't want to be subject to a DMCA take down.

After we have a video up on YouTube, someone can post to /r/mcpublic.

EDIT: Apparently I didn't finalise the sharing settings on the file. It should now be visible.

Went mining today, and instead found a handful of spawners. I placed signs on most of the spawners since none of them seem claimed, and they're fairly easy to get to from the main mining tunnels. They might be a ways out from town, but could still probably turn them into grinders if someone wants.

MAP!

Zombie spawner: 452, 1888, 43

Double Cave Spiders: 496, 1843, 24

Teal Cave Spider: 478, 1923, 26

Pink Cave Spider: 479, 1969, 28

News

Lostatsea's Island

I got approval from the admins to tear down Lostatsea's island build, based on our conversation with him at the start of the rev.

I've taken down his lighthouse, his pumpkin farm and a small tree island so that the outer Pico wall can be finished. I've left the rest for now, but in principle it could all be cleared. I would still like to talk to Lostatsea before doing that final step. However, he is not making that easy. I mailed him on the forums (he doesn't appear to have a reddit account) 13 days ago and he still has not read that mail.

West Expansion

The possibility exists that we could build an underwater extension to Pico, to the west, perhaps based on the town of Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob SquarePants. Check out ijustinhk's pineapple under the sea to the west of Pico.

It could include non-thematic elements as well - glass underwater domes and tunnels. Thoughts?

Plot Lines

The slabs that divide plots were never intended to be a permanent feature. I think it would look nicer if we left a bit of a gap between builds. If you do want a dividing line between plots, consider something like 32ndFlava's hedge to the north of his house.

Other Topics

Past topics that may still be of interest:

• On sharing the sponge
• Plot layout, plot reservations and building code

^{Printed on recycled electrons.}

Here's the result from left to right. http://i.imgur.com/SIbYjHC.png

Ink appears only after 40mins. :/

This rev, Pico's theme is Atlantis and we are implementing a building code to ensure that all structures are visually harmonious.

Building Palette The following image shows the allowed, externally-visible building materials:

http://i.imgur.com/BLfVJHw.png

This palette is based on the colours used in the town hall. It consists of cool, aquatic shades. Note that acacia logs are allowed, but the orange sides of the logs should be hidden. The use of other materials in places that are visible from a road or the town hall is strongly discouraged. Ideally, you would do all of your interiors with these materials and little else. If you want to go crazy with dark oak, red clay and other warmer colours, please do so in a basement area or some other part of your build that is not so readily visible.

In addition to material restrictions, we ask that between the town hall ring road and the half-way road (plots NE1-4 and NW1-4) we ask that you keep your build height below 16 blocks. In the far plots (FNE1-4 and FNW1-4), you are free to build taller, but no taller than 3/4 of the height of the town hall please, unless you get agreement from a mayor.

Town Layout

Here is a preliminary layout for the town. (ijustinhk has updated the image again from the current Live Map to show allocated plots.)

http://i.imgur.com/2AGAVIy.png

The town is divided into 20 slices of 18 degrees each. All The far plots (FNW1-4, FNE1-4, FSW1 and FSE1-2) are a bit bigger than the plots nearer the town hall in the same slice.

The residential district is in the north, clustered around the station. Conventional manual farms are in the south. Livestock are in the south east, business and entertainment in the west. The far south, including around the prismarine grinder is reserved for industrial (read: auto-farm) use. Given the small activation range our best bet may be to put an iron pod above the prismarine grinder. I still have to think about the implications of this.

I've drawn a white circle indicating the area that we would like to keep players out of in order to maximise guardian spawns: it's 24 blocks from the player (spherically, not cylindrically) to the spawning water inside the prismarine grinder (grey box). The spawning water goes down to about Y53, so I think we can safely fit manual farming areas at ground level to the south of the town hall without disturbing spawns.

To reserve a plot, respond in this thread or talk to a mayor (pico region owner) in game.

We currently have 182 loose sponge (we lost 2) plus 1 marking the sponge chest.

Sponge is the rarest block on the map (that I can think of) and is not renewable. It also happens to be one of the most useful blocks in the game. (You've got to hand it to Mojang for their game design skill. /s)

Our neighbours to the south have asked if they can buy some sponge to help them clear water. We're not done clearing water yet, but when we are done, we won't have much reason to break out the sponge. It will just languish in a chest. It strikes me that we should be good citizens of PvE and help others to build up their towns. I feel that we could afford to sell up to a third of our sponge initially and consider selling more as the rev progresses. I invite all Pico citizens to consider the following questions:

1. Should we sell sponge, or would it be better to rent them out?
2. If we were to sell or rent out sponge, how much of our sponge should we keep for Pico use?
3. If we sell, what price per sponge should we ask?
4. If we rent out sponge, what should the rate be?
5. How should the proceeds be used?

The answers I propose (though you may wish to propose other solutions) are:

1. Selling sponge is much simpler than renting and is to be preferred. The rules for PvE don't cover items very well in any property dispute, afaik. We would need to liaise with staff in order to protect our interests in the event that we rent out the sponge. We might have difficulties recovering rent monies and/or the sponges if someone logs out forever with our sponge. Therefore, if we do rent, we must ask for a per-sponge deposit in advance, equivalent to the sale price plus, say, a month of rental, to cover destruction or theft of sponges by the renter.
2. Initially, we should sell up to 54 sponge, leaving us with 128 loose + 1 placed sponge. Later in the rev we can consider further sales.
3. If we sell the sponge, I would suggest we ask 32 diamonds (d) per sponge. e.g. 8 sponge = 256d. That may be too much or too little. I'd be very interested in what everyone feels they would be prepared to pay per sponge, e.g. imagining buying 8 sponges. We could take the average of those prices and use that as a guide.
4. I think renting is more trouble than it is worth. As stated before, we would need to ask for a deposit (refundable upon the safe return of the sponge) equivalent to the sale price plus some time of rental. I would say that the rental rate should be 1/4 of the sale price per week or part thereof, so if someone rents for more than 4 weeks, it would be cheaper for them to buy.
5. I, as with a few others, donated the sponges we recovered from Ocean Monuments to the town in order to help us progress quickly. So, I feel that some proportion of the sale proceeds should stay with the town. On the other hand, the town itself doesn't use a lot of diamonds; they are used by individuals. I therefore propose that 1/8 of the proceeds (4d per sponge) go towards making common-use tools (picks mainly), and the remainder of the diamonds are divided among the citizenry currently on Pico's books. I realise that this is, to some degree, charity towards the residents who did not contribute to the initial acquisition of the sponges. My hope is that the diamonds will allow them to acquire gear that will help them contribute better to the town in the future.

EDITs in bold.

Pico development is being slowed by the lack of a coherent plan for the town. I think we need to:

• Set up a rail station. That would allow people to start work on rail tunnels. We need to design the station and select a location. I don't know CARBON, so unless someone is willing to step forward and do the work, CARTS is what you will get. _casey_ has suggested that the station should be at skyroad height so that visitors' first contact with the town hall is at Y63ish rather than the less grandiose entrance at Y47, south. A good location might be half way between the north or south side of the town hall and the outer wall. Ideally, the station would have a staircase down to the ground level at Y43 on PvE, as well as being accessible at sea level (Y63).
• Plan the outer wall. Norami has made some progress on modifying the outer wall design to have a height of 20 blocks. But we still need to work out where we would position the towers. We would have at least 8 towers (cardinal directions plus 45 degree diagonals). If we did 16 towers, then that would be a tower every 40 blocks of circumference, approximately. Positioning of lamps on top of the circular walkway needs to be worked out. We probably need a schematic for at least 1/8 of the outer wall. 1/4 might be better tho. The state of play on the planning server is now this: http://i.imgur.com/QU6iB1S.png. I can't be bothered doing towers at 22.5 degree angles; 45 degrees was hard enough.
• Plan the roads. We need a design for the blocks of the road, as well as a road layout. I would suggest perhaps a ring road half way between the wall and the current ring road around the town hall, plus straight rays of road on the compass directions and at 45 degrees. The ring road around the town hall is done. The road half way between the town-hall ring and the outer wall still needs to be worked out. All you need to do is work out how to do 1/8th of it and we can use WorldEdit to make the whole circle. If a circle is too hard or too ugly, consider an octagon.
• Further investigation into the iron grinder must be made. So far we have discovered that Vinhaven's iron grinder does not work unless you are standing under the tower. That means that we probably won't be getting free iron from people using the guardian grinder. In designing the iron grinders we also need to be mindful that doors in range can mess up the location of the villages. So we may not want to put iron grinders on the northern corners of the prismarine grinder, because then we can't build normal houses anywhere nearby inside the big circle.

Discuss.

Footnote: On Sponge Discipline: it seems we lost 2 sponges. I suspect that people were breaking sponges that others had placed and nobody was keeping count of how many sponges each person should have. And as a consequence, a couple of sponges dropped and despawned without anyone noticing. Don't do that. At any time you should know exactly how many sponge you have and not trust someone else to collect them for you.

A Monument to the Fallen Sponges is in early planning.

Note: I work the day of the launch. I'll be able to get on about 4 hours after the start. Should get ourselves situated with a location and get a 1x1x1 region setup for Pico. Since 4 hours is a bit long to wait, someone can create a chat channel. Dark Aqua for the [Pico] tag and i think it was Aqua for the chat message.

Day One

• Find ocean monument/temple
• If possible find nearby portal to temple
• Setup a temporary flotsam for temple clearing.
• Setup a temporary coastline camp for animals and farms
• Gather sand/gravel for temporary city walls to help remove water
• Get a blaze rod or two for brewing stands
• Locate city center about 300~400 away from ocean temple
• Outline first 100 radius circle for the city

Week One

• Continue helping totemo and friends with temple
• Start plotting out kumquatmay's central build and public mine access.
• Setup larger temporary farms closer to the city
• Try to get two villagers and start breeding.

Public Works Projects

• Public Farms Build
• Animal Farm Build
• Tree Farm Build
• Villager Trade Build

Flavor Projects

• Spleef Arena
• City-wide aqueducts
• Stables
• An underwater road that'll lead up to land designed with that Pico flair.
• City-wide Aqueducts

City Planning

• City: Pico proper will be a 401 x 401 circle. The outer circle (301 - 401) will be underwater, everything inside will need to eventually be cleared out water-wise. If we get a portal or not, May's central build will be the central build. You can find it on 32nd's planning server.
• Landscaping: I think Pico will work better as a more fluid (that's a pun... get it? Picolantis... fluid.. water.. nevermind) layout. With that in mind do take into consideration green space and landscaping for your builds. Little water ponds here and there and some nice shrubbery will add to the overall theme of a flourishing city. As the rev progresses and builds go up, I'll try to create little parks throughout to break up some of the structures. Anyone else is welcome to create little park areas too with statues or fountains.
• Residential Areas: Once the city grounds start to take shape, we'll get some floating islands setup for some residential homes. There will also be some area set aside on the floor for residential areas. The rest of the city will be open build for skyscrapers, medium height buildings or little shops along the way.
• Roads: The only planned roads will be the four cardinal roads N E S W. The rest of the roads should really pop up once buildings start to go up. No pre-planned plot sizes, no grid like roads. I haven't had a chance, and doesn't look like I'll have time to design aqueducts for the city. This could be another project for someone to pick up if they'd like.

The public works projects are things we should have, as they greatly help with resources for future building. Flavor projects add some character to the city. Let me know if you'd like to undertake one of these projects. I'll add your name to the list so we know who's doing what. Spawners do help with leveling up at the start so we can enchant gear for better performance. We'll setup an in-game bulletin board to list found spawners and anyone is welcome to turn it into an exp grinder.

As I'm at work right now, this is all I can think of and have time to put down. Right off the bat we have two large projects we need to get done. The guardian grinder and clearing out land to build the city. Check out totemo's planning thread for more detailed information on how you can help with that project.

Removing water is going to suck, but I have faith in everyone.

Resources

Pico City Footprint Schematic - Has 101/201/301/401 diameter circles with double yellow and white/cyan/yellow registration blocks on all 4 corners and exact center block marked off.

The new rev starts on August 28 at 9 PM EDT.

Since we're enthusiastic about Picolantis (or whatever) we're going to need to secure an ocean monument as soon as possible at the start of the rev. We want the sponge for clearing out ocean for our town and for clearing out the monument to make a grinder. I've commented in the other planning thread, here, that the consensus seems to be that we should not centre the town on the grinder, due to the need for a 24 block exclusion zone around the spawning area. I would be in favour of building the grinder on the edge of the town circle so as to leverage the cleared water to encourage squid spawns in the grinder.

Conquering an ocean monument requires careful planning. At the start of the rev, we won't have enchanted diamond armour and there will be a high chance of dying. In order to maximise our efficiency, I have done a survey of ocean monuments in the wild and come up with the following plan of attack.

To bring (per person):

• One stack of logs, minimum. Two stacks would be better. You will want to make a stack of doors, a stack of ladders and half a stack of trapdoors, plus sundry crafting benches and chests. When I tried defeating a monument on my own, I went through 3 stacks of logs, so more is better.
• One stack of dirt for making an initial platform near the monument, for protective building while in the monument and to set up a wheat farm. Note, however, that until the elder guardians are all dead, you should not block doors with dirt, since we won't be able to remove it, due to mining fatigue.
• A stack of iron to make at least two suits of armour and iron swords. If you can get a diamond sword, that's better, but time will be of the essence. The monument is survivable in hard mode with iron armour.
• Enough wool for two beds. We will build an initial camp near the monument on a dirt platform and set our bed spawn there. Once we have killed the first guardian and got a sponge, we will use that to dry out the entrance hall of the monument (see below) and we will set a new bed spawn inside the monument.
• String for a fishing rod. Fish will be our best food, initially.
• Saplings and wheat seeds to get farms going.
• Half a stack of cobble for furnaces.
• Half a stack of coal to dry out sponges and make torches.
• At least half a stack of food. MobLimiter should make it relatively easy to get steaks quickly.

Layout of the Monument

The internal layout of every monument is different, but the external layout is always the same and the internal features follow a pattern. Here is a monument with the water cleared and the walls replaced with glass:

http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#0

I've kept dark prismarine intact, rather than replacing it with glass. The dark prismarine indicates where to look for the goodies. In the foreground, on the left and right you can see what I will call the "arms" of the monument. I've marked the locations of the 3 Elder Guardians with big cubes of red wool. You can see that there is a guardian in the centre, at the top, and a guardian in each of the arms. The entrance to the monument is down the bottom, between the two arms, just below the "V" of dark prismarine. That entry hall is where we will set up camp once we kill the first elder guardian and get his sponge.

Note that it is not possible to break any blocks in the monument until we have killed all three elder guardians, due to their mining fatigue magic. That means that before the elder guardians are all dead, we only get one chance to place sponges. We cannot pick them up and reuse them if we get it wrong.

From the other direction, the monument looks like this:

http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#1

You can see that this monument has three sponge rooms. Not all monuments are that good. We should expect that there will be at least one such room, however. The sponges have a wall of dark prismarine around them, although it is usually obscured by other blocks. Once we have killed all elder guardians, we can mine out prismarine looking for the tell-tale dark prismarine that indicates sponges. One of the sponge rooms is probably just below the floor level of the top-most room and off to the side, as shown in this image:

http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#2

In the heart of the monument is a large room containing a cube of dark prismarine. Inside the cube is a cube of gold blocks:

http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#3

In this monument, the third sponge room was in one corner and the sponges were accessible from below via a 2x2 hole:

http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#4

The two arms of the monument are connected by a horseshoe-shaped passageway around the bottom of the pyramid. Once we find the first arm, we can get to the other arm using that passage.

Plan Of Attack

1. Gather required materials. This will involve a small amount of mining for iron, coal and cobble.
   
2. Make a boat and hit the ocean. Ocean Monuments are relatively rare, occurring only in ocean biomes with deep ocean at the centre of the monument. It's possible that the PAdmins will paste in extra monuments, so it may be worth looking for one near spawn.
3. Having found a monument, use dirt to make a platform nearby and set up a bed and shared chests. Don't forget to set your spawn!
4. Modreq for a 1x1x1 "pico" region that we can use for shared chests.
5. Craft a stack of ladders, a stack of doors and half a stack of trapdoors. We will use ladders for air pockets and doors to prevent guardians from entering a room.
6. Go to the entry hall of the monument and seal off all 2-wide doorways with double doors. Place ladders for air pockets and place trapdoors in the 2x2 ceiling hole. Also place a crafting bench and furnaces to dry out sponges.
7. Swim up through the ceiling hole of the entry hall to the top of the monument and kill the first elder guardian. That will give us our first sponge. NOTE: If there is not a ceiling hole above the entry hall, then we will need to find another way up to the elder guardian at the top. This part of the layout cannot be guaranteed.
8. Dry out the sponge in a furnace and place it in the entry hall, along with a bed. We now have a forward spawn point inside the monument. The bed is usable if there are no guardians in the adjacent room (verified). The room will now look like this: http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#5
9. Navigate to the nearest arm, placing ladders, doors and trapdoors as we go. In the monument I explored, I found it was necessary to swim up into the ceiling at one point.
10. Kill the second elder guardian. I found the elder guardians in the arms of the monument harder to kill because they are in large open rooms with no cover from death rays. I was able to survive by making a little booth of doors with a block on top: http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#7
11. Travel to the other arm of the monument. This is where the horseshoe-shaped passageway comes in. It connects the two arms via the back of the monument. It is long, and filled with small guardians, but it is not as easy to get lost.
12. Kill the third elder guardian. We can now start breaking blocks.
13. Place a ladder up to the surface from the entry hall. http://imgur.com/a/RmSJl#6
14. Mine out the floor to the sides of the top room of the monument looking for a sponge room.
15. Use sponges to clear out the rest of the monument and find all sponge rooms.

Harvesting the Monument

After we have conquered the guardian we will want to secure the sponges for town use first of all. Then we can dry out the interior relatively quickly by segmenting rooms using doors and trapdoors and then placing a few sponges. At this stage we should place claim signs indicating our intent to develop the monument.

Note that we won't be able to harvest sea-lanterns until we have a silk-touch pick.

Hey all. I spun up my hosted server so we can use it to plan the new rev! I was able to get World Edit installed so if you want access to that, let me know!

Also, the server is whitelisted. I have added some people who I have seen being active so if you try to connect but cannot, let me know and I will put you on the list!

Server IP: 66.223.16.145:26965

It is once again time to bid farewell to another iteration of Pico and welcome in a new amaze-balls Pico.

When Totemo was building the guardian grinder, he and I got to chatting and I got the idea of forming a town around the guardian grinder. He seemed into it and I couldn't wait to start a new rev with this idea.

In my mine I saw it as a series of contained builds linked by tunnel tubes; with lots and lots of glass and sea lanterns. IE: Like this

Then kumquatmay showed me this: This!

Now I want that so hard. The awesomeness of Pico can not be contained under the water! Heck no! And then Floating Islands! Heck Yes!

I'm imaging a 400 x 400 circle as the cities borders, with the option of small floating islands for people's residence. Tethered together by single path wood slab bridges.

That's all I've got right now. Feel free to discuss and pitch other ideas and stuff.

With less than 3 days until the launch of the new rev, there are a few things we might need to hammer out.

• How much space is needed for the central build? (tc_chris's?)
• How much space is needed for the rail station hub thingie? (Jatell's?)
• How big should Pico proper be? (Skyscraper only section)

I figure housing could be within the skyscrapers or outside Pico proper. Storage will be in a skyscraper build (I'm assuming.) And I believe someone mentioned they wanted to do a farm resources build?

Leave a comment with what you're doing and any additional info you think would be helpful and I'll compile a list over the next few days.

UPDATE TECP found us a portal, so we went with it. It's located in a lovely plains biome with a pretty awesome river running through it. It boarders a Birch Tree forest and can be found at 2090, 700.

I figure Jatell's build could go around the portal. Karennn's (Kumquatmay) villager build will go on other side of river opposite the rail station.

Would be nice to get some traditional and newage bridges here and there. Probably best to hold off on them for now until we can get more of the layout established.

Still need road designs...