ZacNVR

**ZacNVR**, who was known as **zac5** during much of Seacraft's history, is the owner and co-founder of Seacraft.

Over the years, ZacNVR has been the driving force behind Seacraft's updates and official construction projects. He also works as the server's administrator, taking care of all the technical additions to the server.

In the past ZacNVR viewed Seacraft as a "community survival" server, hoping players would play and enjoy Seacraft while playing in survival mode. As of Seacraft 3.0, this attitude of his has changed, allowing players to change their game mode at will through the use of the Trigger Commands Data Pack.

## Contributions

### Early Days

#### Seacraft Alpha

zac5 was a co-founder of the server, along with jacobme32. zac5 had envisioned creating a survival server, to contrast two other creative servers that existed among his grade at school. jacobme32, on the other hand, wanted a creative server for himself and his friends. Their father allowed them to get a shared Minecraft server, with the intention of getting them separate servers if they actually played it. Thus, Seacraft was born.

zac5 began on Seacraft by building a lighthouse on a nub of land just off of what would become Sunflower Island. Once he finished that, he helped jacobme32 construct the first Spleef arena.

The next day would see josh20202 join, who joined zac5 in creating the Boat Race minigame.

#### Seacraft Beta

zac5 wanted to at some point establish an economy on Seacraft, and so he planned to create a shopping area called "The Plaza". Originally, zac5 had build a flat piece of land close to Spawn to establish this plaza, building a pet shop on it.

zac5 built a few more structures around modern-day Sunflower Island, including an underground disco, a bedrock jail and a house for himself. He also built a pirate ship near Spawn and also a court house on the road from Spawn to Mainland.

During October of 2013, zac5 began work on Slender in a jungle at Mainland. He built some locations for players to find pages, 8 of which were hidden around the island.

zac5 soon established the first Warp Room, going to seven significant locations. It is possible that Sunflower Island was first named "Horse Island" for its warp.

He also established a spot at Spawn for players to send suggestions regarding the server.

The First Grief soon struck the server, and while its largely unknown what was griefed, it is known that zac5 became incredibly concerned for the server. In an attempt to catch the griefer, he constructed a house on the road connecting Spawn and Mainland Plaza, took an invisibility potion and monitored the house. Perhaps this plan had become known to the griefer, who suddenly stopped griefing.

When jacobme32 and Zossimov2000 built a pokemon arena on the area meant for the plaza, zac5 built a small plaza at Mainland, establishing the iconic Mainland Plaza. At the plaza, he built a "trade centre" with a redstone device for players to safely trade items with one another.

At some point, he built an underwater hotel at the site of the modern-day Triple Arch Bridge and the start of the TACC Parkour Course. A number of players at the time had a room in this hotel.

He soon began work on the Temple Maze minigame, which was planned to essentially be survival games in a maze.

#### Version 1

Seacraft Version 1 was established on the 26th of November, 2013. At its release, players were switched to survival mode and given 50 "Gems", Seacraft's currency at the time.

In preparation for the upcoming holiday celebrations, zac5 built the Celebration Area, hoping to host a firework show on New Year's Eve. He crafted many of the fireworks used for the show, but also received donations from other players. zac5 hosted the firework show at 8pm on December 31st, 2013, and was joined by jacobme32 and Oliveriseating.

At the beginning of the new year, zac5 joined jacobme32 and aa11ron in building the Zoo near Mainland Plaza. The trio also built animal houses for each other a Mainland Plaza, zac5 getting a pig.

In February, zac5 was responsible for building Seacraft's first Railway Network, which reached some of Seacraft's recent extremities including the Bombing Range and Freebuild.

zac5 began preparing an Easter egg hunt for Easter 2014, but this was never finished.

### Version 2

#### Seacraft 2.0

After server suffered the Downtime Period, in which no one was able to join the server, it was brought back and zac5 declared it as Seacraft 2.0.

One change he likely made early on was the beginning of the construction of the Underground Expressway, and underground railway connection from Sam's Dragon Village to the Seacraft Castle. The purpose of this tunnel was to replace the existing overground connection, which was plagued with peaceful mobs walking on the railways that sent any unfortunate players back in the opposite direction.

zac5 built the Auto-Announcer to announce reminders to the server community, after noticing similar messages on other Minecraft servers.

zac5 also established Town with Seacraft 2.0.4. He intended to make it a "residential area" which was an area dedicated for survival players. This was achieved by setting up a mine and a tree farm. Since this was the first time the term "residential area" was coined, it's possible zac5 also expanded the Seacraft Centre with a residential area section.

#### Seacraft 2.1

When Minecraft introduced prismarine blocks in Minecraft 1.8, jacobme32 and zac5 took the opportunity to redo Spawn and the Seacraft Centre with the new blocks.

zac5 would later establish "New Town" off the coast off Sunflower Island. It was a completely flat piece of grass.

#### Seacraft 2.2

zac5 made many of the features released in Seacraft 2.2. He built the Underground Expressway, Survival Games, the Animal Range and the Seacraft Suspension Bridge.

#### Building 2.3

In October 2014, zac5, along with edwardseychelles and samdogboy2, conceived the idea of creating a horse racing stadium. zac5 and edwardseychelles designated an area behind Magma Mountains for the project. The area was flattened and the stadium's dimensions were marked out.

zac5 then began work on the railway overhaul. He had become inspired to make Seacraft's railway systems function like real trains, having a number of minecarts constantly circulating a number of dedicated railway lines, stopping at each station for a short time. Players intending to ride the railways would have to wait for a minecart to arrive at the station. He planned for three railway lines to be built, and began constructing the system at the Triple Arch Bridge in Island Ocean.

zac5 also conceived the "Maze Runner" minigame, now called Maze Run. The idea of this game was for players to have to escape a maze in a limited amount of time. He planned to use Seacraft's end stronghold as the first map, as he considered the stronghold sufficiently complex.

zac5 split the update into two phases. The first focussed on the railway network, particularly the South-western line. The second phase focussed on the minigames, Horse Race and Maze Run.

zac5 was also involved with the development of Five Nights at Caves, incorporating it as part of the update.

By 2.3, he would also have extended the Road Network to most of Seacraft, except maybe Freebuild.

zac5 finished and released the update on the 17th of July, 2015.

#### Creating councils

During the development of Seacraft 2.3, zac5 had been developing the idea of having local governments over certain areas of Seacraft. He initially established the Ocean Isles Council, the Mainland Plaza City Council, the Council of Berk and the Castle Council. He also had the idea that each council would be run by a dedicated 'Council Member', now called mayors.

During October 2015, he reached out to various players asking if they wanted to be a council member. Im\_Uncle\_Eddy (formerly edwardseychelles) and xX\_Death\_Lord\_Xx took up the offer. The council members would officially be released shortly thereafter as part of Seacraft 2.3.7.

#### New residential areas

zac5 had already begun making plans for Seacraft 2.4 before the release of 2.3. Jakemaster\_360 had already proposed a location in Stagnant Swamps, which zac5 considered part of 2.4. He also thought of creating a village within the large craters of Crater Plains, known as Crater Village. Each of these areas would also see a new council created for them: Stagnant Swamps would be governed by the Northern Regions Council and Crater Village would be governed by the Outer Reaches Council, which was eventually renamed to the Crater Council.

When ItsMoose originally built a new location called 'The Intersection', zac5 did not approve and hoped to see it removed. However, ItsMoose persisted and zac5 adopted the location as part of 2.4, but renamed it to Moose Forest. It would also see its own council in the form of the Moose Forest Council.

#### Minigame updates

A new version of Slender had been planned for Seacraft 2.3.8, since it had not been updated in a long time. This was eventually postponed to Seacraft 2.4.

Survival Games was also due for an update for the automatic refreshing of chests, so the game could be played by any player at any time, not requiring the owners to come and replenish the chests. This would eventually be planned to come after the release of Minecraft 1.9, so zac5 could take advantage of the random loot tables.

Maze Run also needed fixes for major bugs, and would be updated.

zac5 also planned to create a minigame currency called 'Game Points'. These would be used to by various minigame perks. These were planned to be used to by custom cages in Survival Games as well as boosts, which were potion effects applied during the game.

He would work on these over the course of 2016.

#### JAZ projects

During the Intermittent Period, zac5 would join Jakemaster\_360 and Sir\_Azza in various games throughout the server, often travelling outside Seacraft's civilised area.

One of the first places was a survival area started after the release of Minecraft 1.9 in March 2016. This area was found by travelling 3000 or so blocks north from Stagnant Swamps, and was called 'The Crib'.

In April, they built a survival PvP area west of Moose Forest. zac5 created a village within a savannah plateau.

In June, zac5 and Sir\_Azza would return to the Crib for a short time. They would soon be joined by Jakemaster\_360 again and establish what would be known as the Railyard. Initially, it was a cooperative survival challenge where each player operated a cargo railway line and various train stations. They were each responsible for a certain set of supplies, sending each other what the others lacked. zac5 was in charge of farming, sending wheat, wood, and eggs on the 'NVR Cargo Line'.

At the end of July and early August, the trio established a modern mansion on the edge of Puddle Plains. zac5 had the middle portion, creating a large modern house.

zac5 would also grant Sir\_Azza mayorship of the Crater Council, even though it wasn't released yet. He assisted Sir\_Azza in his developments to the area, including building a castle.

#### Civilisation Update

zac5 released Seacraft 2.4 after the New Year's Eve firework show on the 31st of December 2016. He would soon work on Seacraft 2.4.2 in order to finish incomplete features for the update. This saw the addition of tutorial books, player registration and Puddle Plaza, a shopping centre in Puddle Plains. The hope for this shopping centre was an attempt to spark activity on the server after the success of the Shopping Centre. However, this unfortunately failed.

zac5 also released Seacraft 2.4.5 to finish extra features for 2.4, particularly in the realm of minigames. It added Game Points support for Spleef and Horse Race.

#### 2.5 development

zac5 began the development of Seacraft 2.5 by releasing a survey to the Seacraft community in order to get their feedback on Seacraft, hoping their input would inspire updates they would like to see, meaning they might return to the server. Due to feedback from the survey, zac5 decided to allow for players to build locations anywhere instead of restricting them to the main civilised areas.

In construction for the update, he built the following features:

* Country Towns
	+ Blossom's Edge
	+ Cliff Town
	+ Coco Plains
	+ Wolfwood
	+ Cuprum Bay
* Highways
	+ A highway connecting Crater Village, Blossom's Edge, the Railyard, Stagnant Swamps and The Great Redland, now called the Coastal Highway
	+ A highway connecting the Railyard to Cliff Town, now called the Northern Highway
	+ A highway connecting Moose Forest to Coco Plains and Cuprum Bay, now called the Southern Highway
* Minigames
	+ Survival Games 1.3, with its new 'Mountains' map
	+ Maze Run 1.1, with its new 'Pyramid' map
* A new version of the Warp Room

He also has begun construction on a Pokemon Arena minigame, inspired by a minigame planned by jacobme32 and Zossimov2000 in Seacraft Beta and Version 1. However this was never completed.

Due to a lack of activity during the Desolate Period, he eventually decided to close the server. He initially worked on it behind the scenes, in hopes of a 'Seacraft 3.0', but later considered this a fruitless effort.

### New Seacraft

By the time zac5 established New Seacraft, he had changed his username to ZacNVR. This article will not detail his full contribution to New Seacraft, but only the parts that are relevant for modern Seacraft.

#### New Seacraft data packs

Among these features were the various data packs developed for New Seacraft, including the Automatic Announcement System, Player ID, Trigger Commands, the Warp Book and even Spleef.

#### Drakkenheim

ZacNVR also worked with Sir\_Azza to build Drakkenheim on New Seacraft.

### Version 3

#### Seacraft 3.0

After the failure of New Seacraft, ZacNVR instead decided to revive Seacraft. To do this, he released the features he had constructed for Seacraft 2.5, and imported the new data packs onto Seacraft, making modifications as necessary. He also imported Drakkenheim onto the server, pasting it south of Spawn. He also disabled Reef Crystals for the time.

#### Railway network overhaul

He also initially planned to overhaul the Railway Network a second time, hoping to make it more streamlined and less convoluted than the 2.3 version, while also bringing up the standard of building.

He began the overhaul in Ripped Earth, working his way westward towards Moose Forest and The Great Redland. He would progress the network slowly over many months and has still not finished the network to this day.

#### Crater Council contributions

In Version 3, ZacNVR has also assisted SirAbrahamy in revamping the Crater Council L.G.A. The duo have worked together, changing Crater Plains into a fantasy forest with a hobbit village and a dwarven keep, now known as Craterwood. They also expanded and revamped Crater Village.

#### Mainland Plaza contributions

He also helped jaykobe in his mayorship of the Mainland Plaza City Council. ZacNVR built the Mainland Tower to accommodate the council, and also built most of the Zoo's new underside as part of jaykobe's renovation to the Zoo.