Hey, you creative people! I'm Riley and I'm a Redstone Engineer here at CubeCraft. This means I work closely with other Designers to create innovative and polished minigames and other mechanics. I have been a member of the community for many years and joined the design team in February 2020.
Welcome to this Marketplace Highlight featuring our Marketplace SkyWars project! In these sorts of threads, we go into detail about a particular project to show you our behind-the-scenes.
First thoughts and brainstorming
If you joined a Minecraft server... ever... You will probably have heard of SkyWars, one of the classic PvP minigames where you battle other players in the sky! This minigame has gained immense popularity over the years and is still one of the most prominent minigames to date. We wanted to make a more customised version, use the knowledge we have and apply it to the Minecraft Marketplace!
Production process
We now had a clear plan! We moved onto the next step...@SanCookie and I tried to think of all the different systems we would need; a map loading system, random chest regeneration system, loot system and more. In the end, we agreed on a multiplayer minigame able to support up to four players. It would have ten maps, five kits, five cages and five arrow trails. @Robbedz created the maps and lobby.
Due to the competitive nature of the Marketplace, we were pushed for time and had to scrap a few of our original ideas... big sad We could no longer add different chest modes, team modes, win effects
In better news... @Story was making massive progress on the textures. The plan was to make them very colourful with little shading to give them a cartoony feel.
Technical obstacles
@mitgobla got to work on the chests. Originally the plan was to make them entities. We hit some technical challenges which made thispretty difficult. As cool as the design below is, it was not possible to create a chest entity at the time. So unfortunately this isn't in the game. That being said, we find it important to experiment and try new things... otherwise how else do we learn and improve?
Mockup: Chest Design
After a bit of thinking we decided to retexture the chest instead and @mitgobla created an invisible entity that I would then put at each chest location. Each of these would clone a random chest that I had preplaced.
What proved to be even more challenging is that the entity also had to know in what cardinal direction the chest would have to be facing. I went around all ten maps and gave all the hundreds of chest entities a tag: north, east, south, west... One after the other...
Test your content!
Our QA team is key when it comes to our Marketplace projects. Microsoft has its own QA team but it's obviously better if we can submit a project with as little bugs as possible. This way it will be approved faster, reducing delays by a lot. Especially with this project, it was important that it could be released as soon as possible. We tested this project! I mean a lot!?
Here's me reporting progress on these bug fixes
The finishing touches
We now have a product that is bug free! Time to create a trailer and key art and give it that creative Cube touch! Here's a preview of how the key art was made... shhh I didn't show you this.
Released: 23rd March 2021
You can purchase Marketplace SkyWars HERE for as little as 490 Minecoins!
This was kept confidential upon losing my rank, but was later revealed to the public. I am still a designer and I still work on projects like I did before - I just didn't want the rank. It's a bit more complicated than that but I just don't want to go into too much detail
I understand the confusion that may come with such a situation but would like to keep that somewhere else that isn't under this thread. For now, I won't be elaborating any more, hope everyone understands :)
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SkyWars 
First thoughts and brainstorming
Production process
We could no longer add different chest modes, team modes, win effects
Technical obstacles
Test your content!
The finishing touches
BeeHive
Pet Mobs
Elysium Fleet
