Map 3 Nether Highway- Submit Your Designs!

by Syntaxvgm on Dec 4, 2024

The nether highway submissions will close 1 week after the start of the map, and voting will commence the next day and be open for that weekend. There will once again be 4 winners. There will be reminders to submit and vote via Discord.

You may have noticed the phrase 'Nether Highway' instead of 'Nether Tunnel'. If you missed the map 3 plan video in Discord, the short story is both the hub and the highways will be on the roof on map 3.

This means the designs can be open, like this-

The following are the requirements and suggestions for your submission

• The ice should be 5 wide, and it should be directly on top of the bedrock. This is because the ice will continue past the overworld length highways for nether builds and farms and we want players to be able to hop right up. If they can't, they'll place spawnable blocks to pillar up, trust me.


• If your highway is enclosed, it should be accessible from the outside by elytra users and people walking on the roof, a good spot is either between every doorway or every few doorways. If it's an enclosed design and you put the access on the top or have an open top with walls, make sure to include regular ladders on the side so people don't pillar up.


• Personal highways will be 9 wide, 11 with walls, and a 1 block buffer between adjacent highway walls. Same as last time. Refer to the template below for that.


• The size of the doorways is not required to be the same as the template, as long as they fit. Doorway covers are optional this time as bedrock is not spawnable and there will be no ugly netherrack


• There needs to be visual indication to back up the width players should make their personal highways, for example pillars or archways.


• Regular ice is preferred, as it's spawnproof, however packed ice is possible if you find a way to spawnproof it that you think looks alright. They are both the same speed. Avoid blue ice for the road. Though we can farm it, it's 70 blocks a second, which may be frustrating to ride down if the server can't keep up on busy days. Everyone will totally glide a mile past their destination anyway.


• The edges or center of the ice needs something to hug the boat against. Carpet works for this and is a common choice.


• If you use carpet for the edges, it's suggested to put soul soil under it for soul speed.


• The highways must be entirely spawnproof, including on the outside.


• The width should be not much wider than the template, but there is a couple of blocks of leeway. Remember that just 10 blocks from the center line is 80 in the overworld.


• If the highways have lights and the design uses regular ice, make sure it won't be close enough to melt it.


• If for some reason you want to make the highways more narrow, you can do that now. Portals don't melt ice as easily anymore.


• If you have a more open design with the walls, make sure to have like stairs or something so you can smoothly walk up, especially if they are higher than one block


• There is no height limit technically if it fits below 255, but please be reasonable. Don't make it Neom for no reason.


• A sprint jumping trapdoor path in the middle is allowed, but not required. If you do one, make it flush with the rest of the ice. Jumping over the center with low trap doors above is annoying.

If a highway fails to meet any requirements wins the vote, it will be fixed, begrudgingly, by me. Remember to use the final official schematics for building the winning highways, even if you made the design yourself. Know that if you fail to meet the hard requirements like spawnproofing and win, your design will be modified, matching your design intention to the best of my ability.

Out of 8 tunnels we've had so far, I've either mildly corrected or entirely rebuilt all 8. Spawnproofing is hard. So are patterns. We don't want to require players to know everything about Minecraft to submit a design. Point is, it's not a reason for disqualifications, but does add more work for yours truly.

Template Schematic Download

Submission rules and how the vote will be conducted

This time, we're laying out the method of the vote and rules around it ahead of time, and we're sticking to it. Submit your designs knowing this.

• You may submit as many designs as you'd like, as long as you made them and they are made to match requirements to the best of your ability. Don't just dump your tunnel design folder if the designs are not the right type.


• The vote will be conducted externally using a form on the website. It will be either validated by generating a link from Minecraft, or by Discord Auth. IDK I haven't made it yet. Numbers will be hidden until the end. Votes will permanently remain anonymous. Only I will know who voted for what, not even the rest of staff will know. Unlike the server, staff does not have access to the website computer. I will not have my own designs submitted.


• The voting will be rank choice. If you don't know what that is, Google it. It's not simply a point system and it requires a majority. The page will have all submissions, which you drag and drop into your order of preference. The initial order a voter sees will be random. Each highway that wins will be removed from the vote counts, and the rank choice count will be run again until we have 4 winners.


• Staff will be allowed to make submissions. They will not have insight into who made or voted for what more than you do.


• It will be possible for the same person to win all 4.


• Highways will be shown with screenshots taken by me at the same angles (when possible) with no texture packs or shaders.


• Submissions will be anonymous until the vote is over, at which time who made what will be revealed. I know some people may rally others to vote for theirs via DMs, but we cannot prevent that. Please vote based on the content of the design's character, not the username of its submitter.


• Submissions should be litematica schematic files, or a world with only your submission(s) in it. Ask someone if you need help.


• Submit by DMing it to me on Discord. Ensure that I've replied that I have downloaded it, just in case I miss a DM. An included screenshot is helpful for me to keep it organized. If you are submitting a ton of designs at once, please, for my sanity, make a zip file and make it one message. I'm talking to you, rabbit girl.


• What design from the 4 winners goes which cardinal direction will be determined by a dice roll.

That's it. Please remember there can be only 4 winning designs and there will be a lot of submissions. Buy topical hydrocortisone ahead of time if necessary.