This post is courtesy of the MCCI Map Making Discord! For more info, view our FORUMS POST or join our DISCORD.
A Simplified Overview
- Download all required mods, resource packs, and world downloads.
- Choose which type of obstacle you want to create.
- Create your submission with an appropriate block palette.
- Take screenshots and a schematic of your submission.
- Fill out the submission form and submit it.
Mods
Before you can get started with making your Parkour Warrior submissions, you must download the required mod and world download.
First, we will start with the mod that's required, WorldEdit. I'm going to be making this guide with the assumption that you are using Fabric, as Forge is mostly irrelevant on 1.19/1.20, along with the fact that Lunar Client (and BLC) will not work due to them not having full WorldEdit support to my knowledge. For all intents and purposes, I will assume you already have Fabric downloaded and properly installed. If this is not the case, feel free to look up one of many tutorials on YouTube, they'll be more helpful than I will lol.
At this point, you will need to download Fabric API (not necessarily required) and WorldEdit (100% required). The downloads to these two mods have been hyperlinked under each of their names, so just click on them to get the download links. If you are having trouble with downloading WorldEdit and getting it to work, I recommend looking at THIS installation guide.
Resource Pack
For your Parkour Warrior submission, with the updated guidelines, you must build in the MCCI Resource Pack. This is due to a few reasons, but all you need to know is that some textures are wildly different than Vanilla Minecraft, but regardless it is required. That being said, the link to download the pack can be found HERE.
If you don't know how to add a resource pack to Minecraft, all you have to do is open Minecraft, press the "Options" button, then the "Resource Packs" button, and then finally press the "Open Pack Folder" button. At this point, you'd just drag the resource pack that you downloaded into this folder.
After you've placed the resource pack into the correct folder, just make sure to enable the pack.
World Download
The final thing that you will need to download is the official World Template. You can find the world download HERE. Once you download the file, paste it in your "saves" folder, within your ".minecraft" folder, and unzip/extract the file. If you're having difficulty with either locating the folder or extracting the file, your best bet is looking up a tutorial on YouTube, as different OSs have different methods to finding the proper folder.
Creating Your Obstacle
Choosing the Type of Obstacle
Before you can start working on your obstacle, you must first decide which type of obstacle you want to create. There are three main categories of obstacles for you to create: Main, Side, and Free Form. As something to note, the template world you should have downloaded will include examples for all five main obstacle themes, and examples of some "side" obstacles.
For Main obstacles, you must pick one of five themes: Candy, Downtown, Factory, Farm and Mesa. Each of these five themes have very distinct block palettes and you must build in those palettes, or at least in a very similar palette that does not divert from it wildly.
For Side obstacles, you must design your obstacle around a specific difficulty, with those being: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard (aka Hard Endings). While determining the difficulty of our level can be quite challenging, this is where the benefits of having playtesters comes in! Having other people playtest your level can be a great way of figuring out the difficulty of your level, as well as having many other benefits that I will discuss later!
For Free Form obstacles, there are no criteria! Just let yourself make the craziest idea you have! As long as the theme is somewhat consistent, you got a shot!
However, every submission should still meet some base criteria. Every submission, generally, should fall within 8 to 10 seconds in length, but levels that are slightly shorter or longer still have a good chance of being accepted! Particularly with Very Hard courses (aka Hard Endings), some of them can be upwards of 15+ seconds in length when accounting for pausing, lining yourself up, etc., so don't get too stressed out if your obstacle is, per se, 13 seconds long.
Also something very important to note, is that every submission should have a gold block denoting the start of the obstacle, and a diamond block denoting the end of the obstacle, usually with 1 block on each side just to widen the platform. You can see examples of this in the template world that you'll be building your submissions in.
*Picking a Block Palette
While figuring out which block palette you should use can seem like a simple task, this is usually not the case, particularly with free form levels.
With all of the main obstacle themes and side obstacle theme, all of their palettes can be found in the example courses provided in the updated obstacle template world, so you can use those levels to get a good idea of a base palette, expanding them slightly with your submissions if you so choose.
However, deciding on a general theme and block palette isn't that simple for Free Form obstacles. Your best bet is to try and find something to gain inspiration off of, and then make an obstacle using that inspiration! This inspiration could range from a picture you saw, to something you saw outside, to even taking inspiration off of someone else's submission, albeit without plagiarizing (copying) anything.
In fact, there are many great resources for this! For example, iTMG published around 40 of their old submissions (not all of which were accepted onto MCCI, but the point still stands) onto their 2nd YouTube channel. Furthermore, I have personally published 7 of my own prior submissions to the MCCI Map Making Discord, with plans on eventually publishing almost all of my prior submissions to there for anyone to view! Please don't try submitting any of the obstacles that iTMG or I (or anyone else for that matter) have publicly posted under guise of them being your own, independent work, as that will just result in all of your future submissions being automatically denied for previous plagiarism.
*Playtesting and Receiving Feedback
As I previously alluded to, there are a vast number of benefits to receiving feedback on your obstacles, along with having those obstacles playtested before you submit them. I think having people give feedback on the visuals of your obstacles has fairly apparent benefits, as it can help if you're unsure whether or not a specific detail looks out of place, or if the palette you selected looks off, or literally anything else. When it comes to having your obstacles playtested, this isn't as straightforward, as generally you'd want to ensure the people playtesting your obstacle are 100% trustworthy and won't randomly submit the obstacle, attempting to pass it off as their own. Anyways, having people playtest your obstacles can help in terms of figuring out if your parkour plays well, if it's the right length, or if the parkour itself is actually interesting, as that's an issue that many people struggle with.
In any case, if you're looking for feedback or playtesters, again, the MCCI Map Making Discord is a great resource for both receiving feedback and having your levels playtested by a group of reliable, trustworthy community members.
Submitting Your Creation
In order to submit your obstacle, you must first take a schematic and five screenshots of the obstacle you want to submit. Around each "bounding box" will be four copper blocks (plus one above, to total up to five) where you will take your screenshots. Just make sure that the entire course can be seen in each screenshot and you'll be fine.
For your schematics, execute the command "//wand" to get a WorldEdit wand. With this, right click the redstone block in one corner, and left click the other redstone block in the other corner. After doing this, go to the gold block at the start of your level and execute the command "//copy" followed by the following command for main levels: "//schematic save [username]-pkw-course-[theme]-[variant # (if applicable)]"
The following command for side levels: "//schematic save [username]-pkw-course-[difficulty]-[variant # (if applicable)]"
And the following command for free form levels "//schematic save [username]-pkw-course"
At this point, you can submit your level via the submission form, which can be found HERE. Make sure to upload the correct schematic and screenshots, fill out your IGN & MCCI forums username, and fill out the Captcha! If you're having issues finding your schematic or screenshots, just go back to your ".minecraft" folder, and your screenshots can be found in the "screenshots" folder, with your schematics being found in the following chain of folders: ".minecraft" --> "config" --> "worldedit" --> "schematics". Now, you should be all set to submit your obstacle! Just be aware of the fact that it is extremely unlikely that you'll receive a response of your submission being accepted onto MCCI for at least a month, if not significantly longer. (Also note that if your submission was rejected, you will not receive any replies on the forums telling you so.)
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If there's anything that wasn't clarified super well in this guide, your best bet is to probably check the official PKW submissions forums post, which can be found HERE. If you can't find an answer to your question there, your best bet is to either reply there and await a response from e_mouse, or reply here and I may be able to help out if I know the answer to what issue you're facing.
Anyways, I wish you all the best with your submissions! I hope they get accepted!
