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Hey everyone! Just wanted to pop in and give an update on the Space Expedition project!

Both Compsogbrickus and I are still pretty busy, but it looks like we should have the time to resume work on the next update in March, with the goal of final release sometime this summer! We are keeping the map in MC version 1.12 for now, but I'll be porting it to MC version 1.14 eventually after final release. Here's a quick overview of the plans for the next update.

Beta 1.12: Growing Storm:

This will be our first experiment expanding the game story significantly based on player choices. So far we have basically allowed you to get everything. Now we want to expand on the alien factions and allow you to learn more about them, take quests, and make friends. You won't be able to join every group, so your choices will change the way the endgame story and quests go.

New additions planned:
- Blue Faction Base
- New Ice Cavern Village quests
- New alliances and alien groups planned

- A large custom event with the Blue and Red alien factions
- New tech items, both alien and synthesizer-based
- New Ghast mount available
- Tweaks and changes to jetpack such as hover-mode
- 2-3 new ship upgrades will be craftable
- Reworking intro

There are 2 more updates planned after this before the map will be in final release for 1.12 version.

Also, we are thinking to playtest SpaceEx in February with some of the still active builders as we return to the project to help us get ideas for improvement and what we want in the final release. We haven't decided if we are going to record a POV for Youtube, but let me know if anyone here would like that! It would give you a place to see us talk about the map, our plans each week, and you could leave your own thoughts/suggestions for improvement as we play through each area.

Haha, well to be fair, we could have finished the game up as a space survival scenario, which was the original plan. The main delay is that we developed an extensive plan for the story/adventure and game ending, and implementing it has been a lot more work than we bargained for xD. After that comment is about the point we added ship upgrades and started majorly on the storyline!

Glad to know you are still looking forward to final release! The plan is to still resume work on the map this month like I said above. I've been in a big transition for the past few months irl right now so really not much time for SpaceEx, but Comp and I expect to have the free time to restart work on the last few updates again in a couple weeks. As prep, we have been playtesting the map and we are having a fun time catching bugs and brainstorming for final polishing of the map.

Oh, by the way Xalveris, if you want to chat about this project, help out with testing, or get more frequent updates, I recommend joining the Caplex discord server. It hasn't been that active while the project was on hold, but that is where I'll be posting fairly regularly when I get the time to resume the project. Message me if you want to join.

And a quick update: Compsogbrickus, Lezandria, and I still won't have the time to resume development for another week, but we have playtested several times and I have a nice list of improvements we are planning for the next 2 updates to early-game balance and intro. I'm excited to start work again

Hey everyone! Compsogbrickus and I are back, and finally have some time to finish up this project!

We met today to discuss details of our work towards the final release of Space Expedition. While we originally had discussed doing a lot more endgame additions and storyline adventures like Red Faction Fortress, it looks like this will take far too much time to complete in 1.12 and we still have limited time to work on this project. In addition, a lot of the planned features are difficult to implement in 1.12 and will break anyway after the port to 1.13/1.14.

So here is our current plan: We will continue our full builders playtest. We are already into Winter of Year 1. And will fix bugs and improve balance as we go. Our goal is to really polish up the custom survival features, seasons, space tech, and current ruins as this is what makes the map unique. Comp and I are working on a final ending to the map that will tie all the ends together so the player can obtain the final SpaceShip item. The map can then be officially "completed" and released in 1.12! Our current time-frame for this now that we have a better idea of what is left and our schedules is a summer final release. It's been a long wait, but we are really excited to get back into it and give this map a proper ending!

We are also interested in porting the map to 1.13/1.14 afterward and adding some new features from those versions, but it doesn't make sense to do that until the map is finished. It would take a lot of time and will need a fair bit of bugtesting, which will be easier when we have more players playing and reporting bugs.

Anyway, I will keep this thread posted with our progress each week. Thank you to everyone who has supported and enjoyed this map throughout development! We are just about to pass 40,000 downloads!

I'm super happy for you guys. It's been really awesome watching this map progress.

Thanks Goodra, Same with your Zelda Adventure map!

Quote from patrickdemooij9»

Damn, sounds like a crazy map to play on. Gonna give it a shot on my next stream but it looks really cool Good job!

Thanks! It does take some dedication to explore and discover everything, so streaming is probably a good fit for the map. Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you enjoy!

Hey guys, just wanted to give a quick update on what we've been working on for Space Expedition:

The next update is still a way's off, but we are working hard on fully testing every aspect of the current version to flush out and fix all the remaining bugs, issues, and rebalance. We have a playtest going on the latest Beta version where we play and test various survival features, tech, and ruins each week. We are currently about 1/3 done with the testing and have caught over 20 small bugs or issues and had some good ideas for improvements!

While this progress may seem slow, I think it is necessary for us to do this testing to remember everything we've made over the past 2 years for the map and make sure it all still works well together and has no issues. We expect to have a bit more time for this over summer, so you'll see more updates as we continue to move toward final release over the summer season! I'm hoping to have a new build to publish in a few weeks in May! It won't add many new features, but will contain all the rebalancing and bugfixes we've done so far and hopefully some of the following new features (all WIP):

• Adding a hovering mode to the jetpack to make it easier to use for fine maneuvering, cliff-mining, building, etc.
• Experimenting with adding an airship-like system the player can use as a slower, more sustainable way of air travel that doesn't burn rockets or jetpack biofuel
• Adding the final 3-4 ship upgrades, which are all installed from items you retrieve on exploration quests
• Adding a synthesizer recipe to create arms to add to normal armorstands in survival
• Making the magnetite items work when held by armorstands with arms, so new farming potential!
• Working on a method to make the grappling hook work better (improved range and reliability) or replacing it
• Improving all current boss monster fights
• Improving introduction and reducing tutorial text
• After a long debate, we have finally decided to disable completely the feature where summer heat lightning strikes and meteors can occasionally start forest fires. It has been too hard for players to save the giant oak forest and other areas with this happening. You will still have to be careful of ghast and blaze shots though.
• I am also attempting to find a way to fix the vanilla bug where logging out/in drops you back to 10 hearts if you had more than that, without allowing the player to abuse it for healing
• Working on a system for saving items when players fall into the void (I know a few players rage-quit after this experience)

Quote from rndmorris»

With the Minecraft Forum going read-only starting July 16th (https://www.minecraftforum.net/news/60727-important-minecraft-forum-archive-announcement), do you have intentions of making the map available through other channels, e.g. CurseForge or the like?

Hey, thanks for checking in on us! This map is already available through curseforge, the download links all link to the project folder there so the last few updates to final release will continue to come out as usual over there and hopefully update the download widget here, which points to that:
https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/space-expedition-to-epic-204

I don't really have a presence on the curse forums though so it is a bit unfortunate this side is going read only.
I plan to spend the next few weeks until the forum goes read-only updating the descriptions and providing hard links to the curseforge projects on all my maps just in case. After final release this summer, I will submit the map to a few more sites such as minecraftmaps.com and we'll see if they accept it.

Also, I know it has been a bit quiet here, but we are still testing and making progress on the next update. It was just a bit slow the past few months because of irl reasons I won't go into. Suffice it to say, they are over and I have some time finally this summer. We have been testing the map once a week for the past month or so and have caught a lot of bugs and are making changes to polish up the map for final release. And progress has been picking up lately as all 3 of us still on the project have more free time this summer!

EDIT: Looks like the forum did not actually close! That's great! I can start posting updates here again

Quote from Govindas»

I have a question, playing this on a multiplayer server, I set view-distance in server.properties to 6 because the person I'm playing with has a lot of internet lag with higher distances and gets timed out, is it safe enough to have it set to 6?

Sorry, must have I missed this last month! View distance 6 used to cause lag on this map because it would put some of them mob spawn radius around the player in lazy chunks (which disabled some checks). I think we have fixed this actually with the new custom mob-spawning system, but I still recommend 10 or so just for navigation. You need to be able to see from island to island in some areas.

In other news, I have an update!
It has been a slow year with me moving, new job, and having much less time to work on things in my free time. Sorry about that for all who were looking forward to seeing this project finished sooner rather than later. However, we are very close now to releasing the next Beta version after testing and optimization over this past year! The build team has done a full, thorough playtest of the entire map and we have made many, many bugfixes and optimizations to improve balance and play in various ruins and areas. We are also completing the last of the ship upgrades, adding several new features, and also have built a secret new area "Lonely Temple" to be found. This will be the second to last update, and I'm looking to release it in January when I get back from vacation after a bit more testing and some final additions. After that, we will work on the final update, which will add one last adventure area along with a story conclusion to the map for those that work through all the alien ruins and complete all the ship upgrades. I'll post more details in January.

Alright guys, was waiting to post here until we had this new update together, but January is almost over now and we are still testing the final few things, so I thought I'd give a progress update and a sneak peak at the upcoming new Beta release! (It's a big one). Coming soon to you...

Space Expedition, Beta 1.12: Final Mechanics Update

- Added: Lost Temple Location

- Added: A completely custom SpaceEx fishing loot table! Now you can fish up custom SpaceEx water treasures such as pearls, fish scales, shell scale, crab eggs, silver shards, copper shards, turtle shells, and more! Compatible with the custom treasure fishing rods and luck potions for higher chances!

- Added: Hover mode to the jetpack! Crouch while you have the rockets on to hover in place! Now enables cliff-mining and other cool aerial maneuvers that give it an advantage over vanilla rockets!
- Added: Living Wood Hoe, Verdant Crystal Pickaxe
- Added: Coffee custom potion that can be brewed from cocoa beans
- Added: Armorstands that have 2 sticks thrown near the base get arms added to them!
- Added: Armor stands with arms that hold magnetite tools now attract items like players do!
- Added: Fungal Cavern now has Fungal Spider Nests, egg sacs, and more giant mushroom stages
- Added: Cave Path between Abandoned Village and Obsidian Ruins
- Added: Updated The Hideout location and improved Boss Fight with Sorceror
- Added: recycling for golden carrots, golden apples, and enchanted golden apples
- Added: enchanted books can now be disenchanted
- Added: Players can no longer lose items in void deaths. When you die in the void, the game will teleport your items and death marker to Y=1 above where you fell.
- Optimization: Radio Signal and Crashed Orbiter Quest now start Spring, Year 3
- Optimization: Icy Asteroid Chain begins further away
- Optimization: warp crystals now transport all entities within a radius to outside the ship stairs
- Optimization: Night vision goggles and augmented limbs, if activated, automatically reapply their effects upon death
- Optimization: Improved the intro and reduced text reading
- Optimization: Improved and rebalanced Red Faction Fortress
- Optimization: Improved laboratory upgrade, now comes with additional storage, shelves, and brewing stands
- Optimization: Improved closet upgrades, now craft with cobble and come with piston stations to place down shulker boxes
- Optimization: Advancements are now disabled for Space Expedition
- Optimization: Reduced lag in holodeck
- Bugfix: Fires could start from single meteors sometimes
- Bugfix: Heat Lightning in summer could start fires
- Bugfix: rare bug where unequipping elytra or a server glitch could lead to having no biosuit armor and cause lag
- Bugfix: replaced old versions of ruin items throughout game
- Bugfix: Summer Seasonal spawning could get stuck on in other seasons
- Bugfix: Firefly summer spawning was broken
- Bugfix: holograms will no longer despawn if in multiplayer a player not holding a book walks closest to the hologram display

- Bugfix: Grappling rods thrown vertically (such as up cliffs) would sometimes not teleport the player when the hook landed

Items Remaining Until Release:
- Finish adding last few ship upgrades (designs completed but not fully craftable/operational yet)
- Small remaining improvements to text and intro atmosphere (we've reworked most of it already, but will add a few last changes such as floating items in zero-grav, etc.)
- Fix a few bugs in Red Faction area + make the capture vent capture 100% (we are removing the combat so no one misses the escape puzzle)
- Testing the update features before release (features are all tested, but beta update package needs to be tested)

I'm away this weekend, but will return to work when I'm back to finish this up! Here's some pics for now:

Custom SpaceEx Fishing Treasures Test:

New Ship Upgrades!

Reworked Control Room with interactable systems indicators and gauges:

Expanded Laboratory (includes more storage, EnderChest, and double the brewing stands)


The 'Totally Safe Nuclear Reactor Core'

Hello everyone! I hope that you all have been safe and well during this time! It has been an interesting and busy year for me with moves, job changes, and pandemics, but I'm back to working on Space Expedition with the help of our lead builder Compsogbrickus and I have a gift! Beta 1.12, The Final Polishing Update is complete!

Here is a link to the experimental new game build. I haven't uploaded it as the default download yet as we aren't done testing, but I'm headed off on a trip for a few days so I'm letting people try it for now (should mostly be working):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ML879VXWHxJIv7rnnf8XyXYHqQ1dZnu2/view?usp=sharing

You can also use this file to update your maps (or new games) to this version by copying these regions files into your region folder of your game. This will give you the mechanics changes and the new Lost Temple location but none of the changes to the game-start areas:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OfBOvisHftayshOT8A8RgWpMRnE6YxbY/view?usp=sharing

Changes in Beta 1.12: The Final Polishing Update

- Added: Hover mode to the jetpack! Crouch while you have the jetpack on and it is firing to enter hover mode and hover in place!
- Added: A custom fishing loot table to SpaceEx with rare items ranging from metal shards to fish scales!
- Added: Lost Temple Location
- Added: Living Wood Hoe, Verdant Crystal Pickaxe
- Added: Coffee custom potion that can be brewed from cocoa beans
- Added: New Mechanic! Armor stands with arms that hold magnetite tools now attract items like players do
- Added: Fungal Cavern now has Fungal Spider Nests, egg sacs, and more giant mushroom stages
- Added: Cave Path between Abandoned Village and Obsidian Ruins
- Added: Updated The Hideout location and improved Boss Fight with Sorceror
- Added: recycling for golden carrots, golden apples, and enchanted golden apples
- Added: Arms can now be added to armor stands by throwing a stack of 2 sticks at the base. Players receive a hint for doing this the first time they pick up an armor stand item.
- Added: enchanted books can now be disenchanted
- Added: Players can no longer lose items in void deaths. When you die in the void, the game will teleport your items and death marker to Y=1 above where you fell.
- Optimization: Radio Signal and Crashed Orbiter Quest now start Spring, Year 3
- Optimization: Icy Asteroid Chain begins further away
- Optimization: warp crystals now transport all entities within a radius to outside the ship stairs
- Optimization: Night vision goggles and augmented limbs, if activated, automatically reapply their effects upon death
- Optimization: Improved the intro and reduced text reading
- Optimization: Improved laboratory upgrade, now comes with additional storage, shelves, and brewing stands
- Optimization: Improved closet upgrades, now craft with cobble and come with piston stations to place down shulker boxes
- Optimization: Advancements are now disabled for Space Expedition
- Optimization: Fixed terraforming errors in starting asteroid area
- Optimization: Reduced lag in holodeck
- Bugfix: Fires could start from single meteors sometimes
- Bugfix: Heat Lightning in summer could start fires
- Bugfix: rare bug where unequipping elytra or a server glitch could lead to having no biosuit armor and cause lag
- Bugfix: replaced old versions of ruin items throughout game
- Bugfix: Summer Seasonal spawning could get stuck on in other seasons
- Bugfix: Firefly summer spawning was broken
- Bugfix: holograms will no longer despawn if in multiplayer a player not holding a book walks closest to the hologram display
- Bugfix: Grappling rods launched vertically (such as up cliffs) would sometimes not teleport the player when the hook landed

We will be continuing work on this project over the summer with an aim of finishing up the final release of the 1.12 version in the next few months. We do hope to eventually update the project to 1.16, but this may take awhile given the large number of command block functions and features, but know that it is on our radar and a long-term goal of the project! Thanks for your patience everyone!

Hello guys! I hope that you all have been safe and well this year! Sorry for the long delay since my last update. Life became very busy mid-summer and I just have not had the free time that I used to have. This project went on hold for a few months while I navigated all of that, but I went ahead and finished debugging and preparing the final release for Beta 1.12 and it is now live in time for the holidays.

You can use this same file to update your maps (or new games) to this version by copying these regions files into your region folder of your game. This will give you the mechanics changes and the new Lost Temple location but none of the changes to the game-start areas:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OfBOvisHftayshOT8A8RgWpMRnE6YxbY/view?usp=sharing

Changes in Beta 1.12: The Final Polishing Update

- Added: Hover mode to the jetpack! Crouch while you have the jetpack on and it is firing to enter hover mode and hover in place!
- Added: A custom fishing loot table to SpaceEx with rare items ranging from metal shards to fish scales!
- Added: Lost Temple Location
- Added: Living Wood Hoe, Verdant Crystal Pickaxe
- Added: Coffee custom potion that can be brewed from cocoa beans
- Added: New Mechanic! Armor stands with arms that hold magnetite tools now attract items like players do
- Added: Fungal Cavern now has Fungal Spider Nests, egg sacs, and more giant mushroom stages
- Added: Cave Path between Abandoned Village and Obsidian Ruins
- Added: Updated The Hideout location and improved Boss Fight with Sorceror
- Added: recycling for golden carrots, golden apples, and enchanted golden apples
- Added: Arms can now be added to armor stands by throwing a stack of 2 sticks at the base. Players receive a hint for doing this the first time they pick up an armor stand item.
- Added: enchanted books can now be disenchanted
- Added: Players can no longer lose items in void deaths. When you die in the void, the game will teleport your items and death marker to Y=1 above where you fell.
- Optimization: Radio Signal and Crashed Orbiter Quest now start Spring, Year 3
- Optimization: Icy Asteroid Chain begins further away
- Optimization: warp crystals now transport all entities within a radius to outside the ship stairs
- Optimization: Night vision goggles and augmented limbs, if activated, automatically reapply their effects upon death
- Optimization: Improved the intro and reduced text reading
- Optimization: Improved laboratory upgrade, now comes with additional storage, shelves, and brewing stands
- Optimization: Improved closet upgrades, now craft with cobble and come with piston stations to place down shulker boxes
- Optimization: Advancements are now disabled for Space Expedition
- Optimization: Fixed terraforming errors in starting asteroid area
- Optimization: Reduced lag in holodeck
- Bugfix: Fires could start from single meteors sometimes
- Bugfix: Heat Lightning in summer could start fires
- Bugfix: rare bug where unequipping elytra or a server glitch could lead to having no biosuit armor and cause lag
- Bugfix: replaced old versions of ruin items throughout game
- Bugfix: Summer Seasonal spawning could get stuck on in other seasons
- Bugfix: Firefly summer spawning was broken
- Bugfix: holograms will no longer despawn if in multiplayer a player not holding a book walks closest to the hologram display
- Bugfix: Grappling rods launched vertically (such as up cliffs) would sometimes not teleport the player when the hook landed

Govindas, I'm really sorry for missing your support question. I thought I was checking this forum semi-regularly but it looks like the forum logged me out and I was no longer getting notifications the past few months. I thought no players were playing the experimental build anymore. Yes, there were some serious issues with the experimental build I put out this summer and linked on the above post. Several things were broken in that copy including the stray command block you mentioned and the meteor shower event not working properly (which is what opens up the ship hangar and upgrade instructions on Day 2). I'm sorry you had to play for so long without all those features! The new version I just released (and the update file) should fix that for you and open up the area. I'm not sure if you are still playing at this point, but let me know if that works for you. If not, I can fix your copy for you with some commands.
If you want to get ahold of me more quickly in the future for bug support or to chat, you can comment on the project page of curseforge and it will send me a notification so I know I have a question: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/worlds/space-expedition-to-epic-204

To All still wondering about the progress on this map: It is mostly finished at this point with this update. Pretty much everything I originally intended is in the map other than the final 3 ship upgrades and ship escape sequence, so for the meantime you can keep playing on this final, semi-polished version. If I again have the time/energy we were planning some additional custom adventure areas, more alien encounters, a ship launch sequence, and a port to MC 1.16 where we overhaul the custom creatures and incorporate the new mobs/lore, but I can't promise I'll get to that anytime soon. If I do, I'll be sure to post here. I hope you enjoy the latest version though!

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you all have been doing well!

As announced, we have a new upload for Beta 1.12 for Christmas, which fixes the latest round of reported bugs and adds many new features. This is the final beta update for Space Expedition. The game is now fully fleshed out with all the adventures and survival features we had planned and all that remains is to make a custom ending for the map! Stay tuned for final release, coming in 2021!

In this version, most ruins and adventure areas have been rebalanced and polished after 2 years of player feedback and all reported remaining bugs have been fixed. We have also added numerous new features including: a hover mode to the jetpack, coffee potion, a custom space expedition fishing loot table, a new location: The Lost Temple to be found out in space, magnetite now works with armor stands and players can add arms to armor stands, and a long requested change: players can now no longer lose their hard-won items in void deaths. If you fall off of the map, your items will collect at Y=1 hovering above the void and you will have the full hour to retrieve them like usual. Full changelog is posted above. Enjoy!

The team and I have decided on how we will conclude things using existing areas and add a game ending and I am aiming to work on the final release for MC 1.12 the couple weeks after Christmas. Have a great holidays everyone!

I see I missed several kind comments inquiring after the project and my plans for it on the CurseForge side. Not sure if anyone is still checking the mcforums side, but just wanted to post a final update to make the status clear: the Beta Version 1.12.1 release January, 2021 was the final version. There are still a few small things missing in this version that you might find, such as a few final end-game ship launch upgrades that when placed in the Synthesizer do not craft. This was because I never could quite figure how I wanted to end the map and didn't program a ship launch ending due to not having the time that I used to have in my early map dev days. I could have finished the map with those upgrades and a text-out ending a long time ago, but it just didn't seem right.

Many players have given me feedback over the years that they love the map for the novelty and the survival, and that was the goal: to create a unique, out of this world survival adventure, much more challenging than normal vanilla and full of interesting things to discover and explore. I think I succeeded in this goal, so I'm just going to leave the map "as is" given my lack of time these days, and let the fans that still play keep developing their worlds and their survival experience ad infinitum. There are a lot of easter eggs to discover, including a full suite of automation mechanics that make for some very interesting long-term farm play! I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did! Thank you for all the kind comments <3

~ danaphanous