Here's a big one I've been wondering for a while!

Multiple users have either tried to make map art themselves, or talked about projects they've wanted to do, but it doesn't really go anywhere. To this day I'm the only one who's made a full map-sized piece of art, and it was so tedious it killed my enthusiasm for the game, and it now takes up a 128x128 chunk of the ocean. Saul.

1) Image-to-Map Plugin
Like ImageOnMap (though, I just realized this one hasn't been updated in a while, and I can't find anything equivalent for 1.20, so that might be a dead-end anyway)

PROS:

• People can upload whatever they want without telling me (I hate this, personally, but I understand it would be a pro for users)
• Nobody has to wait for me to get around to it

CONS:

• Instant gratification has its problems (I don't like that ImageOnMap gives free maps to the player)
• Feels un-Minecrafty
• Could clutter up the server (item frames aren't cheap to render)
• Gives me another thing to have to moderate, and you know I won't remember to

2) Requests Queue
They submit the picture, I map-itize it with something like MapartCraft and upload it

PROS:

• I can individually review pictures
• Keeps a sense of Minecraft-y-ness (I could ask for people to submit blank maps first)

CONS:

• I will do it at my own pace
• Can't surprise me on stream with weird shit

3) Keep making map art by hand
And continue letting things take forever.

PROS:

• Texture pack paintings stay special
• Bragging rights?

CONS:

• Waste of resources
• Waste of time

I know the forum has polls, but we don't have enough users here yet for that to be fair, I think. So just reply here or in the Discord and I'll try my best to tally everything up and pick what I think is the most fair.

IF 1 OR 2 ARE PICKED, the next major texture pack update will make the texture pack paintings high-resolution. I think that at least is a fair balance!

Some discussion from the Discord

One user raises a fair concern - what if the best color for map art is something really expensive? (using a real example of a map that asked for diamond blocks)

Another user ponders a closed set of decorative graphics. I've been trying for a while to figure out making Eggcraft-exclusive decor, but Optifine is the main way to do that; getting everyone to use Optifine was hard enough before people realized that Optifine actually sucks, and now all of its functionality is across several replacement mods that aren't all up to 1.20.

Some more of my own thoughts

I think my main issue with map art is that it's just a lot more asocial than anything else you could do on a server, for something that otherwise could open up a lot of creative expression. It takes forever, uses up a lot of resources, takes up a lot of space (I was especially frustrated rendering our map and realizing that we don't actually have a lot of open oceans to just fuck around in)

And if there was a free way to do it, people could still do it for bragging rights if they wanted to, by having it be a place you could actually visit. Since generated maps won't actually exist in the world.