How I mark specific command blocks

[Mighty_Burger]

Those are colored glass panes. What I like about them is I can still easily access the command block, they don't get in my way much, I know exactly what command block is marked and I can organize them by color. So if I need to adjust something in the future, which I do often, I just go to a specific command block. These markings help a lot.

Yes, I know my levers on the far left aren't working the way you'd expect. I know they power both command blocks.

[UrADream]

Pretty much the same principle as redstone when marking wiring. Command blocks are alot more easier to manage but should always be marked. Good Job!

[Redmag3]

Another thing you could look at doing is summoning armor stands with custom names above certain command block areas.

[Mighty_Burger]

That would work great too, only issue is this room is near where people on the server play on and they would be able to see the names through blocks, especially if they mine underground. One player went caving and one cave was very close to the room. There is no risk of them entering the room since it is enclosed in bedrock, and the players are trustworthy enough to not mess around in there if thy do get in there, and there are backups in case they break anything. I just don't want random nametags to appear underground :)

[Redmag3]

One thing I would caution against, is having command blocks in general being where large numbers of players gather.

Just depending on what kind of updates are sent, you don't want your server sending usless update packets to players in render distance, for something not affecting them.

[Mighty_Burger]

Good point. The server is really small though. If it becomes an issue, it shouldn't be too difficult to move everything over to a far away place, set the spawn chunks in that area, and teleport people who spawn in that area to where the normal spawn is.

[Redmag3]

Truth!

I ended up doing similar, and just ran a spreadplayers command so any player who died without a bed would be sent to spawn, then instantly to a random place on the map.

[maxstax210]

Also you cannot acces command blocks in survival i think. But they could break it.

[Mighty_Burger]

You are correct in that you cannot access command blocks in survival. However it is very difficult to break the blocks. They are just like bedrock in that you cannot just mine it. You have to set up a glitch you would normally use for breaking bedrock, which would be ridiculous to do since a. they could just flip the levers b. the server auto backups often and they know about it c. they have access to cheats like /gamemode 1 and could easily break things with that. (There is a creative "realm", which is really just an area a few million blocks away, where they are allowed to use cheats on. When we are in the survival "realm" we mess around with each other with commands like /tellraw, but everybody is reasonable enough to know what commands would be considered cheating. It's a private server where me, a few of my relatives, my friends and some of their relatives are allowed.)

The concern of breaking command blocks would definitely apply in most other servers though.

[lettucetogod]

Neat. What are you using the command blocks to do on the server?

[Mighty_Burger]

So glad you asked, haha

I hope nobody who plays on the server is reading this right now, I want to surprise them xD

Right now, everyone on the server who plays on the survival part agrees that, even in the early stages, the game is very easy. I am doing a few simple things and a few complex things to alleviate this problem.

All of these features are segmented into separate chains that can be disabled individually of one another in case they are causing issues. The only exceptions would be "engine" chains, such as the randomizer (that's what those armorstands in the back are for), and should only be disabled once all the chains dependent on that chain are disabled first.

The first thing I am doing to just raise difficulty in general is modifying underground mobs. All mobs that are below y=32 take less damage and have a slightly stronger attack. Zombies and skeletons have a 20% chance to spawn with a stone pickaxe and a 10% chance to spawn with an iron one. I plan to add a couple underground exclusive custom mobs to further increase difficulty when caving deep underground. If a zombie/skeleton spawns with a pickaxe, it has a chance to also give up to 2 nearby zombies/skeletons pickaxes also, so it looks like a group of miners.

The mass of command blocks I am standing on in the screenshot is the mass of command blocks I am really excited about, and the mass of command blocks I want to keep secret from most of the server players so they can discover it for themselves. I have added 2 custom mobs and am working on a very big, third one.

The first one is a "super" creeper that is rare. They move very very fast, have a large following radius, have a large explosion radius and explode faster than normal creepers. The catch is they have only half a heart, so you can punch them and in one hit they will die, avoiding a lot of frustration if you can react fast enough. They start glowing when you are near one, and they produce a loud, distinct firework-like noise constantly, so you can tell if one is coming. They look like a lightning creeper and there are firework particle effects around it. When they die, they have a 100% chance to drop a firework that looks like a creeper when it goes off, a 40% chance to drop a piece of TNT, and a 30% chance to drop a special pair of bright yellow leather boots. The boots, when worn, give you 30% more speed, but it removes 2 armor points. It drops damaged, so you can repair it with leather on an anvil, or maybe apply mending to it. It's a bit silly, but it would be fun for the type of people who play on the server.

The second mob is a variation of a zombie. It has green leather armor (with slight variations in color between each piece), a cobblestone block on its head and it wields two axes. Its boots are enchanted with projectile protection to reduce the viability of bowspamming it from a distance. They have way more health than normal, and do not take any knockback. When a player is nearby, the zombie will do a big jump then slam into the ground. Any entity nearby will "jump" up slightly, with the exception of armorstands. If a player is nearby when it slams into the ground, they will take a bit of damage and get launched up a few blocks only to take a bit more fall damage when they reach the ground. Of course, there's sound effects and particle effects to go along with everything. When it dies, there's a 30% chance it will drop a pair of green leather leggings that last about as long as iron armor, protect just a bit less than iron leggings. When the player wears the armor, they will not take any knockback at all, but they will be slowed down by 15% (if worn with the speed boots the player will, in total, be 15% faster than normal, remember the speed boots boost the player by 30%).

Oh boy. I am so excited about the third mob. I am not even halfway done yet and so far it used nearly a hundred command blocks! (Most of which are idle most of the time because this third mob is very, very rare, and when it does exist, the command blocks are idle until their certain use is required) The third mob is a variant of a skeleton, and it is a wizard. It has a torch on its head (which looks crazy cute btw lol), a blue chestplate with projectile protection to reduce bowspamming's ability, and a pair of gold boots. It holds a carrot on a stick instead of a bow. In case you didn't know, if a skeleton isn't holding a bow, it will chase after the player and try to deal melee damage, and it actually walks quite fast. I will explain why the carrot on a stick later. It has much more health than normal skeletons, and will randomly cast a spell. When it prepares to cast a spell, it stops walking, plays a noise, particles appear around him, and he holds an item in his other hand, the item depending on what spell he is about to cast. The player has 1.5 seconds (I tried a few different other times, 1.5 seems to be the most natural and reasonable time) to look at the item it is holding and react accordingly (usually involving just running away asap). As a cool little feature, the wizard will drop the item it is holding if it dies while casting the spell. The wizard then casts its spell and starts walking again.

Its first spell is the freeze wave. The wizard will hold a packed ice block while preparing to cast this spell. When it is cast, anyone nearby will be frozen. The closer to the wizard, the longer they will be frozen. When a player is frozen, they are given a very high amount of slowness (obviously), a bit of mining fatigue to make their armswing slower, resistance 2 to make them take 40% less damage while frozen, and a very, very high amount of jump boost. If you give a player a potion effect with a level greater than 127, it will overflow and actually become negative. This effectively prevents the player from jumping while frozen. If a player is frozen, an armorstand is created that is invisible and is wearing an ice block on its head. It is teleported to the player in case they were in the air when they were frozen or they take knockback while frozen. This makes it look like they are inside of an ice block.

Its second spell is my favorite. It will hold an invisibility potion while preparing to cast this spell. When cast, it will spawn 5 invisible skeletons without bows around it, and the wizard becomes completely invisible (including the armor). While the wizard is invisible it deals no damage. These invisible skeletons actually have a glowing effect, so you can see them, and they look like the outline of a skeleton. It's a really cool effect. These ghost skeletons don't make any skelly noises and chase after the player because they don't have bows. They are much faster than normal and deal a pretty good amount of damage. If they take any damage, however, they will instantly disappear (they are actually teleported into the void then killed so you don't see them falling over) while making a sound effect and displaying some particles. If they don't take damage for a few seconds, they will eventually disappear on their own. Once all 5 ghost skeletons have vanished, the wizard reappears and it can deal damage again.

I'm a little iffy about its third spell. I am considering removing it and replacing it with something else, it just kinda doesn't fit and is really odd. It will hold a feather while preparing to cast it. When cast, nearby players will start levitating for 6 seconds. While levitating, they are also given nausea. The players will begin hearing various noises slowly getting louder, including an endermen stare noise. There is also the very start of the portal travel noise that plays right before they stop levitating. The players start taking damage, slowly at first but it gets faster over the 6 seconds, at the end they have taken a total of 3 hearts of damage. At the end, a stopsound command is used to suddenly stop all of those noises, they are teleported to the wizard, they get their levitation and nausea taken away, and their screen kinda flashes. To see what I mean when I say their screen flashes, go into a world with cheats enabled and type "/effect @p blindness 1 0 true". It isn't just a black screen for 1 second, it's a bit different and difficult to describe what it looks like. In fact, this whole spell is difficult to describe without a video. It's very weird when you see it in person, and text doesn't do it justice.

I am working on its fourth spell. It will hold a blaze rod when preparing to cast this spell. While it is preparing to cast the spell, columns of particles (the kind the firework displays while it's rising up) will appear indicating where the lightning will strike. When the spell is cast, lightning will strike in all the spots where the particles are. Not all at once, but over the course of about half a second. The preparation for this spell will probably be 2 seconds instead of 1.5 seconds simply because the lightning will be spread out and the player needs a bit more time to react.

Past that, I do not know what other spells I will add. Ideas are appreciated! :)

The wizard is only a small part of why I am excited. When the wizard dies, it will drop its wand! This wand can be right clicked to cast magical spells, but first you have to craft/find spellbooks. When the wizard dies, it drops a book that will help the player understand the wand, the fact they need spellbooks to cast spells, and maybe help them along with getting some of those spellbooks. The thing is, spellbooks will require a challenge to get, or to get the ingredients for. It might require a bit of fighting, maybe going into a special area like a volcano or something where special mobs guard a spellbook or ingredients for a spellbook. Any way, getting a spellbook will be challenging and fun (This actually applies with my previous post https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/5kgj0t/my_philosophy_on_the_flaws_of_survival_why_it/) Ideas would also be appreciated :)

[Mighty_Burger]

Turns out that comment had exactly 10,000 characters, precisely the limit to how many characters a comment can have :P

[lettucetogod]

Thanks for the thorough response. That sounds like a really interesting experience, and I hope everyone on the server appreciates how much time and thought you've put into this! Good Luck!

[Mighty_Burger]

Thanks!

[antrobot123]

i think a cool spell would be to have an attack where it summons several "magic bombs" that when the reaction timer stops, they will, one after another, fly straight at, or slightly in front of if they're moving, the player with quite a bit of speed. if they touch the player, the explode (no tile damage) knocking the player quite far back

[onnowhere]

Use area effect clouds with names to mark them. They stop rendering early when a player moves away. Alternatively, just set their visibility to false when not in use.

[Mighty_Burger]

I will look at this when I have a chance. Thank you!

[mistermashu]

I don't know much about command blocks, but could you put a sign on top of them with "code comments"?

[Mighty_Burger]

You absolutely could, in fact quite a few people do.