User:SimonScholar

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     SimonScholar
Head of City Rank Promotions
GodzInSegville.png
Basics
LocationYorkshire, England
Time zoneBST (UTC+1)
Language(s)English
GenderMale
Birth date13 Jan 1997
MRT information
Current rank[Admin+]
Notable projectsSegville
Porton
City Rank Promotions Script
Forest Mini-Golf
Various MRT Lines
Joined22nd July 2012
Accepted22nd July 2012
Trustee19th January 2013
Councillor29th October 2014
Mayor16th Febuary 2015
Senator16th April 2016
Governor25th December 2016
Trial Moderator9th April 2017
Moderator9th July 2017
Administrator2nd January 2018
Supporter28th December 2013
Social networks
DiscordSimonScholar#5022
Names
Nickname(s)Si, Simon

About Me

Hi, I'm SimonScholar (though most will remember me by godzilltrain), an Admin of the MRT Server. I've been on the server for over 9 years, and am proud to say that it's been a large part of my upbringing, spanning all the way from my middle school years to now working full time. I'm best known for Segville and Porton, my  [Premier]  cities on the New World, but I've also contributed to a lot of other projects, listed below.

I've changed ranks several times during my time on the server, more so than can be represented by an infobox. These ranks are listed below.

Rank Date
[Guest] 22nd July 2012
[Member] 22nd July 2012
[Trusted] 19th January 2013
[Trusted+] 28th December 2013
[Member+] 31st May 2014
[Mayor+] 24th August 2014
[Trusted+] 30th August 2014
[Trustee+] 4th October 2014
[Councillor+] 29th October 2014
[Mayor+] 16th February 2015
[Senator+] 16th April 2016
[Governor+] 25th December 2016
[Trial Mod+] 9th April 2017
[Mod+] 9th July 2017
[Admin+] 2nd January 2018
 [Premier+]  11th August 2019
[Mod+] 12th April 2020
[Admin+] 4th July 2020
 [Premier+]  28th January 2021
[Mod+] 8th January 2022
[Admin+] 18th March 2022

Towns

Pig Racing

Pig Racing, at  R2  station on the Old World, was my first project on the server with construction starting after I attained membership in July 2012. Despite the name, the project was initially not dedicated to pig race tracks, as the first build constructed at  R2  station was the oil rig, and the station was initially named 'Deepwater Horizon'. This changed in December 2012, when the server updated to Minecraft 1.4.5, which introduced the 'Carrot on a Stick' item to the game, allowing for control of pigs. Though just 5 tracks are currently in use, others have been created and destroyed over time.

Pig Racing was recognised as a major Old World attraction with it being given a warp booth in Spawn Station.

PigRacingPhoto.png

Segville

Segville is my New World town, located at  ZS6 - ZS8 . Founded on 4th October 2014 when the New World opened, it started it's life at  ZS7  station, where the first building constructed was a town hall, now repurposed as a town library. Segville is located in a plains biome approximately 2,000 blocks south of Central City. The town has held the rank of  [Premier]  since October 2017, with it being the closest Premier City to spawn.

SegvilleHorses.png

Elecna Crescent

Elecna Crescent is my second New World town, located on an island in the Northern Ocean, approximately 5,000 blocks north of Ravenna. Elecna Crescent follows a similar build style to that of the Isle of Chez, though my intent is to differentiate it by adding more life to the town with armor stand scenes. Elecna Crescent currently holds the rank of [Mayor].

ElecnaCrescent.png

Sunflower Plains

Sunflower Plains is my third New World town, named after the biome it is built in. It is located in the South West of the world, at  D79 . Sunflower Plains has an urban build style, and currently holds the rank of [Mayor].

SunflowerPlains.png

Porton

Porton is my fourth New World town, and is located in the South West of the world, immediately next to Lake 49 and at  D83 . Porton was build to challenge myself to build in a more organic build style, with the town exploiting the vertical aspect of the cliffs it's built onto. The town holds the rank of  [Premier] 

Porton has notably been featured in two MRTVision screenshot contests, by Valkorion314 and 7d both for MRTvision Screenshot Contest 9

Porton.png

Franchises

Below is a list of the franchises I own. Please note that none of these are routinely sold now.

Martyn's Money Bank

Martyn's Money Bank was my first franchise, and offers banks to towns around the server. As well as the main bank line, Martyn's Exchange Services is available for airports, offering currency exchange terminals. The franchise is headquartered in Marblegate.

This franchise stopped being sold in 2017.

MMB.png

McNeil's

McNeil's is another former franchise of mine, based on McDonald's. Unlike the bank, there was no custom option available, with customers choosing between two variants of the franchise - with or without a Drive Thru.

Like the bank, this franchise stopped being sold in 2017.

McNeils.png

Forest Mini-Golf

Forest Mini-Golf is my most well known franchise, with 33 locations around the New World. The franchise was founded with it's Segville, which became the first Mini-Golf course on the New World (A 3-hole course in Eisitasi on the Old World existed prior to this).

This franchise stopped being sold in 2021.

FMGSeg.png

Staff Projects

City Rank Promotion Script

At the July 2018 GSM, with the batch based promotions for [Senator] and [Governor] having been running for almost 3 years since August 2015, it was identified that there was need for a new system - staff voting on towns was at an all time low, and members had to wait a long time for feedback - sometimes up to 8 weeks if they entered weeks in advance of a batch starting.

To address these issues, a rolling system was proposed by Frumple - Where a player would submit their town for review, and it would start being voted upon immediately, with the results being released 14 days later. As well as this, a points based approach to feedback was introduced, with staff casting scored of 1-10 originally on three criteria (Build quality, Terraforming & Landscaping, and Scale); though this was later expanded to the 6 criteria used today (Interior Build Quality; Exterior Build Quality; Terraforming & Landscaping; Planning & Infrastructure; Scale and Ambience); as well as voting For/Against the promotion as a whole.

With this new system, it was clear that manually checking for new towns and disseminating the results would not be practical, and it therefore called for a script to be made. With that, I started work on the script, which was completed and open to public use on September 1st.

Initially, voting was done on a voluntary basis, with staff choosing which towns they would or wouldn't vote on, however this soon led to the same issues as before - Low staff turnout, and delays to results. With this, it was decided at the December 2018 GSM that staff would be chosen to vote on towns, with initially 5 but later 6 staff being chosen to do so.

The final major improvement to the script took place in April 2019, with the introduction of the #notifications discord channel. Up until this point, all communication of happenings with the script had been done via email, however it was decided to link the script to discord for more widespread sharing of information.

In August 2019, when I had stepped down from the role of [Admin], megascatterbomb took over as City Ranks Coordinator, and became the responsible person for maintenance of the script. Between July 2020 and January 2021 I held this role again, however upon stepping back down from the staff team this was handed once again back to megascatterbomb.

CRPB.png

Map World

In April 2019, I proposed the addition of a new world to the server, the Map World. Prior to its introduction, the Lab World was used to build maps, however this was getting full and a purge had been proposed. With this, to prevent maps being lost should a purge ever take place, the Maps World was added as a permeanent place for these.

One challenge of building maps is identifying where to build, since there is a very specific grid where they have to be located. The Maps World was therefore built as a checkerboard to help people quickly identify where to build such maps. This was achieved using the MapGrid plugin (no longer available), an add in to the CleanRoomGenerator which created a grid pattern.

The map world spawn was built by megascatterbomb, made to look like the MRT logo when viewed on a map. Unlike other auxilliary worlds which are typically 4,000 by 4,000 blocks; the Map World is 3,960 by 3,960 blocks to prevent it falling in the middle of any map chunks.

Map world.PNG

Lab world spawn

Following a topic in the August 2020 GSM, it was voted on by the staff to approve a series of warps across the lab world, to aid navigation and access to the outer regions where empty space was available. MinecraftYoshi26 and I volunteered to carry out this change, creating 80 warps covering every 1,000 by 1,000 block intersection apart from 0,0.

While doing this, we decided that the lab world spawn was too barren to be the centre of one of the worlds, so we decided to renovate it. As part of this, we changed the sandstone to grass, adding foliage, paths and statues.

In addition to these changes, statues were added, the portal area was renovated, the Lift tutorial area was improved, and the ArmorStandTools tutorial area was adapted to better suit the new environment.

The lab world was proposed to the MRT community by a poll in #forum in September 2020, and was unanimously approved.

OldLabSpawn.png

NewLabSpawn.png

Games world spawn

Following the lab world improvement, MinecraftYoshi26 and I looked to improve the games world spawn. Like the lab world, the spawn was very basic featuring flat grass terrain and four huts aiming to advertise different games around the world, though these were underutilised.

With the improvement to the games world spawn, a network of paths and foliage was added, and the four corners were each given a distinct build - A hedge maze, a PVP arena, a parkour course and the world portals.

Like the lab world spawn, the games world spawn was proposed to the MRT community by a poll in #forum in September 2020, and was near unanimously approved.

OldGamesSpawn.png

NewGamesSpawn.png

MRT Lines

During the first 2 1/2 years I served as a staff member on the server, I built 4 extensions to MRT lines, Expo East, Island, Valley and Zephyr North. I was also the founding constructor of the MRT Southern Line, which was made in 2 stints. Southern East, and later Southern West.

During my second tenure as a staff member, I built 5 extension to MRT lines, Plains, Mesa, Expo West, Expo East and Taiga. I was also the founding constructor of the MRT Lakeshore Line.

Altogether, I have built ??km.

Zephyr North

The Zephyr North extension was the first MRT extension I worked on, having proposed it at the November 2017 GSM. The line took 1 month to complete, officially opening at the December 2017 GSM.

The Zephyr North expansion starts from the line's former terminus of  ZN22  to its current terminus of  ZN34  Chalxior Dressell. From here, the line originally headed west to its terminus at Rank Resort, formerly  ZN46 , however this western branch was inherited by the MRT Lakeshore Line, and  L3 - L14  have replaced the former Zephyr North stations, with the track being recoloured to match the new line.

ZNXline.png

Southern East

The Southern East line was proposed at the February 2018 GSM, and was the first MRT line I was the main builder of. The line tool 4 months to complete, officially opening at the June 2018 GSM.

The Southern East line started at  S0 , heading east, with the future transfer stations for the Island and Valley lines being constructed at  SE5  and  SE9  respectively. The line was built to its current terminus of  SE26 .

SEline.png

Island and Valley

The Island and Valley extensions were proposed at the August 2018 GSM, with a lot of their route being shared. The line took 5 months to complete, officially opening at the January 2019 GSM.

Before the line was constructed, the Island Line terminated at  I27  Fort Yaxier Central, however the Valley Line terminated at  V28  Foobar, 1500 blocks north. With this, the extension first saw the extension of the Valley Line to  V30  to meet with the Island Line, before a shared section was build south to  I36 - V39  Foobar. The lines then seperated, with the Island Line extending south to its current terminus at  SE5 - I42  Foobar, and the Valley Line to its current terminus at  SE9 - V47  Foobar. Up until this point the Southern Line had been disconnected from the rest of the MRT network, so these two extensions saw its first connection.

IVlines.png

Expo East 1

The first Expo East extension was proposed at the March 2019 GSM, with the line taking 1 month to complete, officially opening at the April 2019 GSM. This extension saw the Expo East being extended from its former terminus of  XE26  Farwater to  J0 - XE42  Bawktown South.

XEXLine.png

Southern West

The Southern West extension was the final line I constructed before stepping down as an admin, being proposed at the May 2019 GSM and being officially opened at the July 2019 GSM, 2 months after construction began. This extension saw the line go from its former western terminus of  S0  Foobar to its current terminus of  SW38  Foobar, with an interchange with the Savannah Line at  SW28 - H35  Foobar.

SWLine.png

Plains

Having been repromoted in April 2020 to the rank of [Mod], I proposed an extension to the Plains and Mesa lines at the May 2020 GSM, with the Plains being the first of these to be constructed.

This extension saw the line being extended from its former terminus of  P47  Richville International Airport to its current terminus of  P56 - JS17  Foobar. Construction of this extension took just 1 day, however the line was not officially opened until the following month, at the June 2020 GSM.

PXLine.png

Mesa

Like my Plains extension, the Mesa extension was also proposed at the May 2020 GSM, with construction starting immediately after the completion of the Plains extension.

This extension saw the line being extended from its former terminus of  M38  Heampstead to its current terminus of M54  Tembok, via an interchange with the Savannah Line at  M47 - H16  Foobar. The line was completed within a week, and was officially opened at the June 2020 GSM.

This extension saw me reach 100km of MRT track construction, with this mark being achieved within  M46  Foobar station. A gold ring is built within the station to mark this achievement.

MXLine.png

MX100.png

Expo West

The Expo West extension was my second project on the Expo Line, having worked on the eastern extension 1 year prior. This extension saw the line go from its former terminus of  XW31 - WN6  Foobar, westwards to its current terminus of  XW45  Cypress. The line was opened at the July 2020 GSM.

XWXLine.png

Lakeshore

The Lakeshore extension is the second line that I am the main builder of, and is the first line to inherit track from another MRT line, with  L3 - L14  having formerly been  ZN35 - ZN46 . It was also the first line to be proposed at an ISM as opposed to a GSM, with it being approved at the June 2020 ISM.

The line starts in Chalxior at  L1 - ZN33 , where it travels west to its current terminus of  L36  Foobar, via a future interchange with the Taiga Line at  L23 - TX  Foobar. The line was opened at the July 2020 GSM.

LaLine.png

Expo East 2

The second Expo East extension was proposed at the August 2020 ISM, with the line taking 1 month to complete, officially opening at the October 2020 GSM. This extension saw the Expo East being extended from its former terminus of  J0 - XE42  Bawktown South to its current terminus of  XE52  East Mesa. The line was opened at the October 2020 GSM, and was the first MRT line to enter Zeta terrain, with a gold pillar placed to signify this.

XEX2Line.png

XEXZeta.png

Taiga 3

The third Taiga extension was proposed at the November 2020 ISM, with the line being completed after 2 days, officially opening at the December 2020 GSM. This extension saw the Taiga being extended from it's former terminus of  T58  Foobar to its current terminus of  T62 - L23  Foobar.

TX3Line.png

MRTv5.1

When the New World first opened, the MRT stations across the world were version 5, built by Frumple with contribution from others including myself in the MRTv5 lab on the Old World. Since then, an update to minecraft changed the functionality of these stations, causing the departure bays & cart loader to no longer work as effectively, with carts being able to get stuck and jam the station.

To fix this, I designed an upgrade to the station, where the cart loader was lowered to the player's foot height instead of their head height; and the departure bay was shortened to prevent carts getting stuck on it if they went backwards. This change was then proposed at the February 2018 GSM and was approved.

Following the approval, all stations on the network had to be accepted. This involved visiting all 663 MRT stations that existed in the world and manually fixing both directions, a process taking approximately 15 hours.

MRT5 1.png

MRT hopper fixing

In October 2019, a bug in worldguard caused several hoppers to break across the MRT network, meaning the cart dispenser was reduced to a capacity of in some cases only 9 carts held in the dispenser. This bug was caused by the worldguard flag 'chest-access' which had been disabled as standard on all MRT stations, but then prevented hoppers from transferring items into other inventories, and if they tried to do so, worldguard would just delete the hopper in question.

Firstly I noticed that the MRT stations in central city were not affected, and deduced that this was due to a setup quirk where MRT stations in the city were part of the 'central_city' worldguard region instead of the master 'MRT' region. With this knowledge, I looked at the flags in the two regions and realised that the only difference was the chest-access flag. Enabling this on the master MRT region fixed the problem from happening again.

Despite this fix, hoppers at hundreds of stations across the server had already broken. Because of this I visited all 854 MRT stations that existed at the time, checking and repairing where necessary the hoppers. This process took approximately 10 hours to complete.

MRThoppersbroken.png

MRT redstone update

Following a change to redstone in Minecraft 1.16 which allowed individual redstone pieces to be changed from a dot to a cross, it was possible for the arrival bays of MRT stations to be modified by anyone (including guests) to prevent the quick departure from working. This was not stopped by worldguard (as it was contained in the 'Use' flag that needed to be enabled to allow buttons to be pressed), and was also not tracked by coreprotect.

In order to fix this, autobus22 found a solution for an additional piece of redstone to be added. This meant that there was no longer an individual redstone piece to be switched, meaning the redstone would always work. I then took the initiative in August 2021 to update all MRT stations across the network with this new design. This involved all 1,152 MRT stations across the network, and took approximately 10 hours to do.

MRTredstoneupdate.png

Misc staff contributions

#Information discord channel

Central City rank reduction

At the May 2017 GSM, I proposed that the rank restriction for building within Central City be reduced from [Councillor] to  [Member] , to allow more of the community to build there. Before this point, the server wanted people to focus on their own towns and get them to at least Councillor before players could build in a community area, however this left Central City underdeveloped, and would not allow competitions here such as a skyscraper building contest which had been proposed at the time.

Though the full proposal was not accepted, a compromise was reached and the rank restriction was lowered to [Citizen], to prevent any newly promoted members from griefing central city.

Early city rank organisation

Upon my promotion to [Trial Mod] in April 2017, I volunteered to run the city voting system. Up until this point, cities were reviewed in batches on an ad hoc basis.

To improve this system, I first of all proposed at the May 2017 GSM that these batches become a monthly occurence, with voting running from the 1st to the 14th of each month. I also created warps at each city submitted, making it easier for staff to get to the location of these reviews. Finally, I created a google script to make the review document, a process which up till then was done manually and was the main barrier for staff wanting to run these batches.

This system was in place till September 2018, when the system was replaced by the City Rank Promotion Script, and towns were reviewed on a rolling basis instead of by batch.

Mention when it changed to staff being chosen instead of voluntary

Holiday Town Decoration Contest

In November 2017, I organised a Holiday Town Decoration Contest for the community. In this, players had to decorate a portion of their town and have it judged by the community in public voting.

The decorating phase ran from 25 Nov to 17 Dec, with public voting then taking place through till the end of the month.

The eventual winner of this competition was Amber_Pine, with Narnia17 in 2nd place and Shadowboarder in 3rd.

Central City clearance

In September 2018, I organised a clean-up of Central City, clearing several unfinished plots. This freed up several build spaces within the city, allowing more people to contribute to the community town.

Bed spawn convenience

In January 2019, I proposed the addition of the /home bed command, a feature of Essentials which was not being used up until that point. For players to teleport to their bed homes, they had to use /suicide which would put a death message in the chat, and if they were outside of the new world would also empty their inventory which became frustrating for many.

This proposal was accepted, and since Jan 2019 the /home bed command has been enabled for members and above.

Deputy Mayor town transfer policy

In June 2020, I proposed a formal policy for deputy mayor succession, whereby if a town is transferred from one mayor to another, the former mayor becomes the deputy mayor until otherwise replaced by the new mayor. This fixed a loophole where transferred towns had no formal deputy mayor, making inactive successions or IATs difficult

This proposal was accepted and the policy has been in place since June 2020.

Spleef arena command blocks

In month/year unknown, I proposed a standard policy that players could request command blocks be added to spleef arenas allowing for easy reset of pitches without the need for worldedits from staff.

Before this policy was implemented, command blocks had to be requested from admins over email, which became laborious when many towns wanted their spleef arenas to have resets built in. This policy therefore removed red tape, enabling admins to install spleef arena command blocks without having to go to the trouble of sending an email for each instance.

ArmorStandTools plugin

ArmorStandTools tutorial

Halua Island Repair

5th Anniversary Old World Tour

Other Projects

MRT Mail Centre Mass Distributor

Mini-Golf Construction competition

In December 2018, I organised a competition where competing players built a Mini-Golf course in their town or a town of their choosing. The competition was split into 2 brackets. courses with 9 holes and courses with 18 holes.

After the competition was funded at the December 2018 GSM the construction phase began, running until 31 Jan 2019. Following the construction, five judges would review each course, scoring each out of 100 for a total score out of 500. These would be scored based on playability, variety, aesthetics, clubhouse/entrance design and balance between being easy and boring, and hard and frustrating. The judges were autobus22, CaptainObi, LondonThamesLink, TalonPlays and me, all of which had built courses in the past.

The winners of the competition were Hightech_TR for Woodsdale Lilli-Putt Golf Course; and Red_Ray for The 18th Mine. These won $2,000 for the 9-hole bracket and $3,500 for the 18-hole bracket respectively.

Central City Heliport

Central City Heliport (CCHP) is a heliport in Central City proposed by me at the December 2016 GSM. Up until this point, the only transit to Central City was the road network, with a bus station, and the MRT lines themselves. This therefore marked an increased capacity in transit routes out of the city. The heliport was built with 26 helipads in total - 14 small and 12 large, with these pads being lettered from A to Z.

At the May 2020 ISM, 0x10 proposed an extension to the heliport, which saw another 17 gates being added including space for an airship. 0x10 formally took over ownership of the project from me at this point.

CCHP.png

Airport PVP Arena

uCar tracks

Trojan Valley Redstone

Finest Moments

Awards

Glowlight Award.png
Glowlight Award Winner
Outstanding MRT Line Contributor - SimonScholar
Category winner of The Glowlight Awards
Glowlight Award.png
Glowlight Award Winner
Outstanding Non-Food or Drinks Franchise - Forest Mini-Golf
Category winner of The Glowlight Awards
Glowlight Award.png
Glowlight Award Winner
Outstanding Contestant - SimonScolar
Category winner of The Glowlight Awards