New Town Boom

The **New Town Boom** was a period of time from September 2014 to January 2015. The period was kicked off by the foundation of New Town (now Sunflower Town) in Seacraft 2.1.6.

It was also the first period in which edwardseychelles joined the server, who would soon become quite a prominent player in the community.

## During this period

### Early days

The period formally began at the 19th of September, 2014, with the joining of edwardseychelles and patseychelles to the server. Initially, they were kept in survival mode, and one of them built a house on Sunflower Island.

zac5 had began writing the Seacraft Weekly newspaper around this period of time, with its first issue likely announcing a problem discovered in the Auto-Announcer, and teasing the upcoming Seacraft 2.2 update.

New Town (modern-day Sunflower Town) and Wally the Whale were released as part of Seacraft 2.1.6. New Town was a large flat piece of land off of Sunflower Island, designed to be an area for players to build larger houses, which some members of the community had requested.

Construction of Seacraft 2.2 would continue, focussing on features like Survival Games and the "Underground Expressway", a railway tunnel from Sam's Dragon Village to Seacraft Castle. zac5 would also construct the Animal Range in order to bring availability to Minecraft's peaceful mobs by giving a function to spawn animals in. He also constructed a road connection from Mainland Plaza to Sam's Dragon Village, called the Seacraft Suspension Bridge.

### Prank war

A minor prank war ensued between zac5 and samdogboy2 after zac5 had recently learnt some new commands such as /playsound, /particle and /title. Both players would use such commands and other means to prank each other throughout the server. zac5 eventually thought samdogboy2 took things "too far" after samdogboy2 had spawned withers in a bedrock cage under zac5's house. zac5 declared the prank war over and warned samdogboy2 that he would be demoted if he continued. This also likely saw a server-wide "No pranking" rule.

### Activity returns

After a short break, edwardseychelles and patseychelles returned to the server. jacobme32's friends Firecrafter4 and RugbyDiamonds also joined. jacobme32 also decided to make Firecrafter4 an operator, demoting Zossimov2000 due to his absence. Zossimov2000 would also soon rejoin the server, initially upset by the demotion, but this was quickly resolved.

### Stadium begins

In early October, zac5, samdogboy2 and edwardseychelles planned to build a large horse-racing stadium. zac5 and edwardseychelles found an area on the west side of Magma Mountains. The area was cleared and flattened using /fill commands and markers were placed to define its dimensions. It was around this time zac5 granted edwardseychelles the rank of community member, giving him access to creative mode.

### Mid-October

jacobme32 and Firecrafter4 made a couple of shops on the beach at Mainland Plaza. This was much to the annoyance of zac5, as it took up substantial space on the beach, but the building was allowed to stay for the time.

samdogboy2 continued to annoy zac5 in various ways, slowly diminishing zac5's trust in him as a server operator.

### 2.2 release

*Main article: Seacraft 2.2*
zac5 finished all the features planned for Seacraft 2.2 and released the update in late October, possibly around the 18th. In addition to the aforementioned developments, the Auto-Announcer's issue was fixed and there was a minor update to Spleef.

After the release of the update, development for 2.3 would begin, with the construction of new railway lines. This overhaul to the Railway Network was planned to have a series of minecarts circulating around a number of dedicated railway lines. New train stations were planned for the Racehorse Stadium and New Town.

### Popularity increases

The server's popularity was quite high around this period of time, with the server reaching a record of having six players on at once on the 28th of October. This wouldn't be reached again or beaten until the Shopping Centre Boom.

November would also see some older players join the server and some of their friends, including TobesP, asasinateddoctor, Hungrybear05 and Lrook242. It's likely these people settled around New Town.

### Reef Crystals

With this apparent popularity increase, it was decided that a currency system be re-introduced. Instead of the previously used “Gems”, zac5 decided to name this new currency “Reef Crystals”. Interestingly, this was not a physical currency based on items, but a currency saved to a scoreboard.

edwardseychelles was making some businesses of his own, including a Commonwealth Bank at Mainland Plaza and an insurance company called R.I.P insurance on Sunflower Island. zac5 suggested that edwardseychelles could get an Auto-Announcer ad for R.I.P insurance, which he thought was a good idea. This would be Seacraft’s first Auto-Announcer ad. Edward also requested that the colour of his name be changed from red to gold, so zac5 agreed to change all community members to gold, which was reasonable since Edward was the only active community member at the time.

zac5 would also begin building a small shopping centre just north of the Seacraft Centre in hopes that people might build shops and trade Reef Crystals. patseychelles asked to get a shop in this shopping centre, and zac5 obliged.

### Suburbs

In early November, it is likely that suburbs were first introduced. zac5 was inspired by asasinateddoctor who had made a mailbox with a fake address on the front. zac5 thought it would be a cool idea to give the possibility for real Seacraft addresses, so he began to designate suburbs.

Existing areas like Mainland Plaza, Town, Sam's Dragon Village, Sunflower Island and New Town would be established as suburbs, but other areas had not yet been named. Some of these newly-named suburbs included Island Ocean, Hollow Hill, Oceanview, Flat Hills and Magma Mountains.

### Memory crashes

On the 15th of November, the server crashed multiple times due to performance issues. In one of these crashes, scoreboard data worryingly disappeared. All objectives, player scores and teams disappeared. Nothing like that had ever happened on Seacraft, so it was a bit of a shock, but it was resolved quickly. It was also on this day zac5 first opped edwardseychelles. zac5 had proposed some kind of op competition between samdogboy2 and edwardseychelles to see who was the better op.

The server crashed again on the 16th, but on the 17th, the worst crash in the server’s history occurred. All player data, scoreboard data and server configurations had been reset. This was particularly worrying, as the stability of Seacraft’s data had become uncertain, and anything done could be lost at any moment. Therefore, Reef Crystals were discontinued until the server's stability (in particular, the scoreboard stability) could be guaranteed.

### New Town Grief

*Main article: New Town Grief*
On the 18th of November, a major incident of griefing occurred. Some of the things that were destroyed included Spawn, the lighthouse at Sunflower Island and possibly some other structures in New Town.

zac5 used the log files to gather a list of suspects. People who were on at the time included asasinateddoctor, edwardseychelles, Hungrybear05, Lrook242 and TobesP. He questioned each of these people in person in order to gather details about the event. He initially banned Hungrybear05, though was suspicious of asasinateddoctor.

On the 22nd, further griefing was done to the Warp Rooms. Upon checking the logs, asasinateddoctor was the only common player between the previous incident and this one, so he was banned and Hungrybear05 was unbanned.

Because of these incidents, a new TNT-disabler was built on Seacraft as part of Seacraft 2.2.10. samdogboy2 would see himself deopped after pressure-testing the system, causing damage to a structure in New Town.

### Later activity

Popularity continued through the end of November, despite the incidents. Firecrafter4 began a new amusement park in modern-day Old Mountains. It featured an ice skate rink, a haunted house and a few roller coasters.

edwardseychelles likely built a court house in New Town around this time, replacing the structure that samdogboy2 had griefed.

zac5 decided to make the server a little festive in preparation for Christmas. He placed small bits of snow all over the server. Additionally, he constructed a giant Christmas tree at Spawn.

edwardseychelles also began building the Shopping Centre, as he was displeased with zac5's small shopping centre in Oceanview. This period would only see the floorplan of the centre laid out, with edwardseychelles becoming quickly inactive.