Sakura 桜
Inspired by the craggy landscape and the tender Blossom trees found in Japanese nature, this map adds a new twist to a classic layout.
This map looks very familiar when compared to any other map from the top-down perspective, featuring 3 spawn islands connected to the sub-mid island which then connects to the middle island.
Looking at the map from the side reveals a different aspect.
As you progress towards the middle there is a big height difference between islands which creates a funnel-like effect, meaning that once you enter the next island, it is significantly harder to get back to the previous island.
The center island itself features a spiral staircase and a King of The Hill layout for people to battle on, in the very middle-focused combat of the map.
The chests are laid out in such a way that everyone who goes to mid should be able to get a chest instead of one person taking all of them, however the first to the top gets rewarded with 2 additional middle chests.
Should you want to enchant or use the anvil? Then you better prepare to fight off anyone climbing the hill.
View the map!
I added an embed to a Sketchfab page of the map, feel free to roam around the map and explore.
Tip: Go into full-screen mode, the controls are: Right-click to move, left-click to rotate, scroll to zoom.
Top-down perspective of the map layout
Height differences between spawn, sub-middle and middle.
A shot of middle showing off chest locations and the spiraling hill
An aesthetic shot from the spawn island perspective.
Iterative design.
In the process of building the map, I hosted several games of SkyWars in order to playtest the map in order to improve things that might not have been clear during the building process.
Some things that were improved or change include:
Reducing crevice size between islands to prevent people from teleporting in the cracks with an Ender Pearl and camping out.
Removed tall grass and bushes in order to make the flow of PVP more natural.
Changed the location of the ores to be in more obvious spaces and added more ores to suit the need of Normal Mode players.
Lowered the height of the Spawn islands by 1 block but moved it out by 1 block as well.
Overall these few changes added a lot to the gameplay and level design of the map, making it a lot of fun to play on.
Heightmap / Top down sketch
Side profile and initial measurements