Hiya everyone! I’m sure fellow minecraft players are aware of the “Build the Earth” project that has been going on for over a year, where people volenteer to build areas from their city or monuments and then a select few people would create cities using these buildings.
Now, there isn’t really any way to add “claim areas” like they have done so all buildings would need to be created on seperate baseplates which could of course amount to some issues with exporting and importing the buildings.
However, it’s not impossible. With paricdil’s Building and Roads generator OpenStreetMaps can be used to get the correct dimensions. It wouldn’t really be possible to do the whole planet but some main cities such as London, Sydney, New York etc could be built with the help of the community.
The main aim of the game would be to teach younger users about the world. They would be free to explore the cities and learn about history, explore interiors and even explore with their friends. All profit would go to charity other than running costs of course.
I wouldn’t be able to actually fund the project so all these would need to be volenteer contributions, but I have made a poll to see who would be interested.
Any suggestions or feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
If this project ever happens, and it actually is funded by ROBLOX itself. I’m sure it will be a tremendous event that will stay on the history books for a long time.
The aim would be to teach younger users the earth, information points can be set up in the cities so they can learn about monuments. There would be a main “airport” to allow easy teleportation to cities and it could also be used to learn languages at some point too!
But there are already ways for kids to learn about the Earth; e.g. reading a book. Having developers create the entire Earth without pay or incentive for this reason is extremely overkill, especially when something like Google Earth already exists.
Books are outdated, I can guarentee that people would rather join a Roblox game to learn and interact with the areas without being there than reading a book. Work would also be completely optional and people would build the amount that they want, there wouldn’t be a limit.
I definitely agree with your statement, people would definitely rather interact with a well built environment than read a book. But, you can’t deny the fact that it is gonna take a lot of work and effort to complete this project, and i’m pretty sure a lot of developers would ask for a counterpart for their effort. Although i think that many volunteers would definitely give it a go.
But you’re asking for developers to spend their time, without pay, to create the Earth - so kids can see it and learn about it. I don’t see any point to this when Google Earth is capable of doing the exact same thing, without requiring developers to manually construct it.
The end product would likely have extreme variance in quality due to having so many different developers working on it, so there wouldn’t be any point in the end.
Like I said it wouldn’t be the whole Earth, I understand that would take far too long. It would focus on large cities that have monuments that are popular, such as Rio, London, or New York. The thing with Google Earth is that it’s still hard to actually get to those monuments, and theres no limit with Roblox so interiors could be built too. Buildings would have info points saying why they are important etc.
That’s why I made this post, to see how many people would be willing to work on it. For most it would be a side thing that they can spend time on to improve their building skills or work with others, and feel like they had a part in this project. All profits would go to charity in the end, and builds would have to go through approval first, there could be an application I am unsure.
Since it would only feature prominent locations such as cities it might be possible - but not as a community project.
You would need the following:
An application process - time needs to be spent reviewing each volunteer as well as a sample of their previous work.
An approvals process - any submitted work needs to be checked in terms of quality and any hidden, malicious junk; this would also take lots of time per volunteer. Consider how many buildings, landmarks and other miscellaneous locations are in a city, and consider how many cities there would be.
Lots of developers; if developers get bored or decide to quit, you need to reopen the application process.
Since nobody is receiving payment, this project would be highly impractical due to the massive amount of time and work that would be required to complete everything above - as well as any additional work which hasn’t been identified yet.
If you hired and paid a team of highly dedicated developers for this, arguably it would be possible. As a community project, I can’t see it happening whatsoever.
Considering it has been done in Minecraft already, I don’t see why it isn’t.
The first bullet point can be crossed out, as volenteers would not need to be accepted first. They would just need to claim a plot and start building! (Plot can be claimed via a website, I know someone who can do that.)
Approvals shouldn’t be too hard as all scripts will be deleted regardless. A team would be hired here and they will be paid to approve and check these.
The application process would not have a limit. Like I said above, as long as a spot is claimed they are free to build it.
Since the approvals team are now being paid, you would require a lot of money for this. Again, think of how many models for how many cities would need to be manually checked and approved. It would take a lot of time, and therefore a lot of money to keep employing these staff.
If there isn’t an application process, nothing is preventing trolls from uploading junk for the purpose of annoying the approvals team. There would also still be variance in the level of quality throughout the map since different developers are contributing.
It would likely be impossible to fund this with volunteer contributions alone; you would also be asking them to give you money as well as to create assets for you without payment.
The idea is still in its first stages and it’s looking like this wouldn’t be possible regardless as most people on DevForum would rather do something that directly benefits them which is a shame.
I have funds that I would contribute if it was a success, but yes, most of it would come from donations. The application is just an idea so it will have flaws, this post was purely to see the quantity of people that would be willing to do it.
