Diseño de muros de corte de concreto armado

Tim: Joined the game.

John: “Tim! Come here. See if this is steep enough.”

John: “Still a bit too noisy though.”

Tim: “Is there a point on which it starts from 32?”

John: “No, I think the lowest point is around 40. Spawn is down there. If

you re-tp this world.”

Tim: “But basically yeah, that will feel like a long ass stride through the

mountains.”

John: “Oh yeah and I will probably make ranges running alongside.” Tim: “It’s awesome John. It’s how I would’ve imagined it. The feeling

of walking up a mountain, looking back, not seeing the bottom and still tons of climb up higher.”

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John: “Tim, yay! I am glad! And there’s even room to build across on

top of the highest peak, or even a shack.

Tim, that’s the final draft I think. I am going to turn on terracing very hard with a map that puts it only in select spots. So here and there you will have some very sharp ledges and turn down the noise ever so slightly. With those two changes, it’s done.”

Tim: “So, it’s what you’re going to do for the final draft? Or this is the

final draft I’m looking at?”

John: “This is the final -1.” Tim: “Ok, I get it.”

Tim’s evaluation of the terrain mainly revolves around the feeling of playing in it. Being able to simulate the feeling of being in such a landscape and wandering around was part of the specifications, as reflected in Tim’s comments upon navigating through the landscape and walking through it (“the feeling of walking up a mountain, looking back, not seeing the bottom and still tons of climb up higher”). Additionally, Tim considers the available “room to build across on top of the highest peak or even a shack,” which accounts for the intention of performing in-game building in specific areas of this mountain. This is linked with the immediate next steps in the project (that of in-game building) and it showcases the considerations of those involved in doing it as to the space they would have for creating content on the landscape.

This judgement is reached upon exploring the land himself, which is achieved by walking around the mountain tops and descending to its roots. These mechanical actions are constantly at play during in-game evaluation and will become relevant during in-game building too.

Besides the invited builder’s comments on the map, the one who generated it in the first place accounts for the flaws in the map (“still a bit too noisy though”), as well as for future work (“I am going to turn on terracing very hard with a map that puts it only in select spots”). This is an important detail, as the builders’ job (and the overall progress of the project) depends on terraforming’s completion; before that, Jim (and the rest of the team) cannot start working directly on the land, build content in it and evaluate how it will look in-game.

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This is another indication of terraforming’s iterative nature; collaborative evaluating, as exhibited in this vignette, concludes with the specification of (1) the changes that were made since the previous iteration of the mountains and of (2) the changes that have to be made towards the finalisation of this region.

5.2.4 Recapping terraforming

5.2.4.1 What is accomplished through terraforming

This activity’s completion results in the creation of a landscape that is either going to be delivered to the clients as the final deliverable of their commission or is going to be further populated with content during building. In the latter scenario, terraforming becomes a crucial step in the overarching job of commissioning and creating a Minecraft map, as its outcome becomes a resource for in-game building.

5.2.4.2 How terraforming is coordinated

Given that this job of work is carried out via the use of specialised software (World Machine and World Painter) external to the game, it is conducted by individuals who are experts in using them (see section 4.3). Coordination, at this stage, happens mainly between these individuals and the builders; the former need to account for the progress of their work, as the latter’s tasks (the population of the world with in-game content) depends on the successful construction of a Minecraft world. This draws upon either (1) terraformers sharing (verbal or textual) accounts about their work or (2) by exporting work- in-progress versions of the world and cooperatively evaluating them with builders (see: Vignette 4). As revealed through the conducted fieldwork, the criteria for evaluating the land revolved around the project’s specifications. The builders’ goals and expertise come into play here, as they assess the produced world based on the gameplay modalities it can accommodate (which are driven by the project’s specifications), as well as space availability for performing their own creative work.

Coordination actions can be either coincidental or intentional. In the example presented in Vignette 4, the terraforming expert and a builder coincidentally happened to be inside a game world that the former had just finished working on and uploaded to the team’s server. Examples of intentional coordination in

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relation to giving updates to conducted work will be discussed in subsequent sections of the work of crafting.

5.3 PREPARING FOR IN-GAME BUILDING

Upon having a vision for the build and an in-game world to work on, a preparatory phase is initiated. During this phase, builders set the groundwork and gather all the necessary resources for in-game building. The first matter they attend to is deciding on the building task they will work on during their building session. Additionally, they gather the in-game referential material that will be appropriated during building. The remaining two steps revolve around creating the material palette (a set of the materials that will inform building) and, lastly, demarcating building grounds (the borders in which they have to create the commissioned build).

5.3.1 Deciding on the building task

The first matter builders attend to while preparing for in-game building is to decide on the building task they are going to work on. Three distinct cases are unpacked here, each of which has its own characteristics:

1. Resuming a building task;

2. Collaboratively deciding on the building task;

3. Choosing a building task by checking the commission’s specifications.

5.3.1.1 Resuming a building task

Builders can resume a building task they or members of their team left incomplete in their previous building sessions. This draws upon: (1) recollecting what has to be done; (2) checking the specifications of the build in order to make sure nothing is missing; or (3) using ad-hoc systems for keeping track of unfinished or future work. One such system is presented in Figure 25, in which case the depicted pink blocks delineate where roads need to be placed (a task that the involved team had not yet accomplished).

John: “We’ve tried various systems to make it easier for one

person to pick up where another left off. Cid and I have agreed on a process for expanding pink lines into real roads.” [Observation material.]

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Figure 25 Example of demarcation for future work; annotating the placement of roads

Another matter relevant to resuming a building task is the occasional briefing that takes place when more than one builders work on a project. In that case, it is possible for those involved in the commission to brief each other on the work they had conducted in the absence of others, either via Skype or in-game

John: “I wake up in the morning for a Skype that[‘s] saying

‘John, go check out on the workshop map ; I’ve messed around something new, I am curious what you think about it.’” [Observation material.]

5.3.1.2 Collaboratively deciding on a building task

It is also possible for builders to assign building tasks to each other in real-time while being logged in and working on the same server. This is initiated either by an individual (the requester) who wants to work on a particular task or by any of the available team members, who suggest a task to the rest of the team. Part of this job of work draws upon establishing the specifications for the suggested task. These two activities are further discussed below.

Suggesting a task. Such a case is exhibited in the following sequence (Vignette

5), where the requester (Cid) states that he wants to perform a specific type of job (terraforming). His request is then picked up by one of the two logged-in team members (Roy), who replies positively by saying that he does have a task that meets his request (“something to terraform”). The actual delegation however is carried out by both Roy and John (the third team member), who establishes whether Roy’s suggested task warrants further work. All three of

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them were part of the same building team, which, as was previously stated (see Vignette 4 on 101), had the goal of creating a realistically looking world with diverse landscapes and cities.

Part of suggesting a task is providing a reason for the necessity of carrying out this task. This can become a collaborative matter when the suggested task was initiated or was part of the work someone else conducted. Drawing upon the same sequence (Vignette 5), John states his belief that “that was not a bad looking cliff,” without objecting to further terraforming it. On the contrary, he acknowledges the lacking characteristics of the existing landscape by accounting for his own terraforming work (demonstrated through the reference to height-maps; he was the one who terraformed the existing landscape through World Machine and World Painter).