Da Rules
The meeting had quite a few rule changes/additions. This led to a lot of discussion around wording and handling of certain cases.
300/500 Block Rules
Staff approved a proposal from Frumple to rewrite of the 300/500 block rules to revise the wording and clarify that you must contact the mayor when building near a town. Here is the updated text:
300-block proximity rule: If you want to build within 300 blocks of any town or structure belonging to another player, you must obtain explicit permission from them before you start building. The town/structure owner has the right to deny permission for any reason.
One exception is that if you want to build a road or railway that is near or through an inactive town/structure (where the owner hasn’t been on the server for at least 3 months), you can submit an Inactive Town Bypass request to staff, which will be considered at the next staff meeting.
Revised 300 Block Rule from Frumple
500-block communication rule: If you want to build within 300 to 500 blocks of any town or structure belonging to another player, you must make a reasonable effort to notify that player before you start building. The town/structure owner must accommodate you in a reasonable manner. If no response is given within a week, you may proceed with building.
The 500-block rule does not apply for inactive towns/structures.
Revised 500 Block Rule from Frumple
Plagiarism Rule
One major topic of the meeting was about clearing up the declaration of builds that are copied or taken from other places. Staff agreed on Frumple‘s wording (with an amendment from yours truly) that will be updated on the site.
Plagiarism (that is, presenting builds or creations of another person as your own) will not be tolerated. Give credit where credit is due.
When submitting a town review or when requested by staff, you are responsible for truthfully declaring the origin of all buildings in their town. Failure to be truthful in this declaration may result in warnings. Any buildings that are not declared will be assumed by staff to be primarily built by the town mayor. Franchises are exempt from this requirement and do not need to be declared. As a rule of thumb, you should declare builds if you contributed less than 50% of the effort towards the construction of the build. If you are unsure of the percentage of your own effort or if it’s close to 50%, it is recommended that you err on the side of caution and declare it anyway.
If you are copying a build from another source (such as another player or an external website), you must first ensure that you have the appropriate rights or permissions to copy that build. Franchises are exempt from these requirements. Town Mayors must keep a public record of copied builds that describe the original source/builder and location of build.
These public records can be in the form of:
– List of builds on the MRT Wiki
– Public spreadsheet (i.e: Google sheets)
– In-game sign placed in an easily visible location on the copied build
Requiring IAT Requestor to contact Owners
Staff approved a proposal from sesese9 (me!) to require any person seeking to IAT any asset have to attempt to contact the original owner. The final wording that was settled on was:
Before submitting an IAT, you must contact the owner and ask them to transfer the asset to you, also stating your intent to submit an IAT. If they do not respond within a week, you may submit the IAT request. If the owner declines to transfer the asset and you believe there are extenuating circumstances, you may also submit the IAT.
There was also talk about whether we should apply this to Inactive Bypasses too. Staff agreed that it should so the site will be updated with the wording for both IAT’s and Inactive Bypasses (abbreviation TBD, blame chief).
Event Polling
Staff approved a proposal from Frumple that requires anyone seeking event funding to poll interest in the future event before requesting for funding. This will help the planner have a good idea of who will participate and also affirm to staff that an event will go through and not be cancelled due to low interest/turnout.
Fish Spawning
Staff denied a proposal from Sasha9076 to disable fish spawning on the server. In our current setup on the server, it’s not possible to only disable fish on the server. Frumple did find a plugin called MobsManager that can allow for specific disabling of spawning animals however worries of overhead and bugs that can arise from installing it.
Miles of Asphalt
We had a lot of transport projects this GSM! Love to see more infrastructure and transit connections through the server. All of them were approved! Here’s the list:
- A8 Extension: VickiTori_
- Inactive Town Bypass: hvt2011
- A980 Reroute: Sasha9076
- 2 Canals in NW Server: Noahrebl_ (with staff supervision)
- B417 reroute: Avaneesh2008
- B34: Freskooo
- B354: Jonathan0930
- B38 Extension: Racer395
- A892 Phase 1.5: CodyHM (Former stub from main A8 to Vegeta will be folded into the road too)
Musical Transfers
Misss_Solemnis was approved to take over Tirivio. This was proposed last ISM but was re-proposed after staff asked Missa to check with ModernArt given the close proximity. Since they were good with it, everything was cleared.
Sasha9076 was approved to take over an unfinished plot in Central City.
CodyHM was approved to take over the remaining 10% of Oceanic Langus Airways from MaxStewartS.
And that’s a wrap from me. The lateness is a total “Blame Sese” moment so yeah. Otherwise, see ya next ISM on April 25th.