WDW Magic Kingdom Adventure DLC: Dev Q&A

We recently hosted a Dev Q&A on the official Minecraft Discord server to celebrate the release of the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom Adventure DLC pack (available now in Minecraft Marketplace!).

Joining us were a few key members from Everbloom Games, the developers of the DLC pack.

Did you get to research at the park itself?

Ninja, Art Director: We didn’t actually get to go to the park due to COVID restrictions. I’m sure we would have if we had the chance, but instead we just watched hours of videos of the rides on YouTube.

Kylydian, Sound Designer & Music Composer: I definitely second the videos! Planning out the sound assets for It’s a Small World was the first thing I did, so you can imagine what that was like.

How long did it take to make this?

TRS, Senior Manager & Project Manager: I like having people guess, haha. We started planning in March and finished up main development work mid-October. We continued making minor tweaks up until release.

Is the DLC scaled to an actual Disney theme park?

Wonder, Level Team Lead: It is, for the most part, 1:1 with the Magic Kingdom Park, with a few exceptions (the castle is a little bigger), and we also took some liberties on rotating some buildings to make sure they look good.

How was the design created/coded?

TRS: We have a proprietary internal tool we use for all our mapmaking. It’s VERY powerful and this project would not have been possible without it! It was designed completely by Energyxxer! It’s basically its own development environment with a custom programming language. The biggest thing that made this map possible though was the Timeline feature. Without going into too much detail, we basically have what looks exactly like a standard movie editor, with a timeline and multiple tracks and stuff. Every single ride (with a few exceptions) was planned out and coded in there. This meant we didn’t have to spend hours and hours timing everything as we could test it out in our tool.

What was the design process like for the resource pack? Did it go through a lot of revisions? Was there a discussion on whether it should be realistic, cartoonish, or was it Disney’s decision on which textures to use?

Ninja: We have some basic Everbloom Games textures that we use as a base for all our maps which gave us a starting point. From this we had a look around the park using a lot of Google images and Google Street View to find what other textures we would need for the pack. This was done in collaboration with the build/level team who let the art team know exactly what they needed to replicate Disney World in the game! We, of course, went through a number of revisions to make sure the colors matched up with Disney World just right, especially the castle! This is a bit tricky as different photos have different lighting which affects the colors. In regard to style, at Everbloom Games we always go for an elevated Minecraft style, a little bit cartoony, colorful, and using simple palettes with flat textures. We made sure that this pack was extra colorful to fit with Disney’s style. We chose what textures we wanted to use and then got feedback from Disney. Sometimes they would request revisions or extra textures.

Did you have any sort of nostalgia while working on this DLC?

Kylydian: Ohhhh yeah. I grew up going to Disneyland a lot and went to Disney World as soon as I could when I was older. I have a lot of memories of being there with my family, and friends when I went with the high school band, so being able to help bring this to life really brought up a lot of these memories.

SPRidley, Expert Advisor & Concept Artist: Yes, a lot. I’m a huge Disney parks fan. I even wanted to be an Imagineer, so working on this has been a dream come true. Working on rides like the Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates. You only need to see my office room with ride posters and figures to see how nostalgic I am working on this.

How many command blocks were used?

Energyxxer, Developer: In the world itself, there are only about 674 command blocks. That’s because most of the commands are in the behavior pack. In the behavior pack, there are approximately 380,256 commands, spread across functions, animations, and animation controllers. So, in total, about 380,930 commands.

What was the most difficult thing to make?

Wonder: On the build end, the thing that went through the most iterations was Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s a low-light ride and matching the angles of the build was a real challenge, especially as Disney is known for perspective tricks!

Will all the Disney characters be there?

Ninja: Not all of them! We couldn’t possibly fit them all in, but we do have 29 characters that you can get signatures from on the map, as well as the Dapper Dans! We focused on getting a good range of characters that can be found in actual Disney parks.

What was your favorite part of the project as a whole?

Kylydian: Absolutely being able to write music for this project, especially the trailer and the fireworks show. It was great being able to plan it out with TRS and chat with SPRidley about how to bring it to life. It features a wide variety of styles and stretched my music writing abilities pretty far! It was especially fun being able to write some showtune jazz in the fireworks show and being able to record saxophone myself for that was awesome since I have a degree in saxophone and am a private saxophone teacher. I don’t get to record for games too much, so it was really awesome to have it in the fireworks! I remember seeing the fireworks myself when I was a kid, so to be a composer that had even a small part in creating the music for a fireworks show in Minecraft was honestly a dream come true, and without question the highlight of my career so far.

What are some of the easter eggs you added to the map? For instance, I looked up from MainStreet and saw the second story of the Emporium and Disney Clothiers has something built in it. What is up there and why was it built? (Bonus: What easter egg are you most proud of?)

Wonder: To answer the latter half of the question, the person who built the Emporium noticed there are two stories visible through windows in the real park. We assumed that it was part of the store, however much later on Disney came back asking us why there’s a second floor. As it turns out, what’s up there in the real park is, as far as I know, administration, storage, or such.

SPRidley: About easter eggs, during the concept art process, I added some of the stuff like hidden Mickeys to some of the ride models. For example, the group of plates that make a hidden Mickey in the Haunted Mansion ballroom. Hope people find more! 

Which attraction are you most proud of?

Kylydian: For me personally, it’s actually Dumbo believe it or not. The music in the Dumbo area was originally composed by me, and it’s in the style of a Sousa march. Having grown up as a wind band musician, I’ve longed to get away from traditional orchestra (strings) music, and do wind ensemble music instead. This was an awesome opportunity to write music that I grew up with playing in high school and college, and I absolutely love how it came out. As to what I’m most proud of the whole team for, it’s probably a toss-up between Pirates and Haunted Mansion. These honestly are shocking to me at how good they are! These attractions are so cool in Minecraft, and honestly, it’s such a good substitute for the real experience.

Kwa, Audio Lead: Space Mountain was one of the first attractions I worked on. Initially I thought it would be super easy. Disney provided a lot of SFX used on the ride, so it would be as simple as throwing it on a timeline, right? Not exactly. We needed to create the idea of speed and being jerked around on the coaster. Since the ride is mostly dark, the audio needed to be top-notch. I had to do a lot of experimenting with various effects and new plug-ins. Additionally, I needed to figure out how to create the roller coaster track sounds! I don’t have a roller coaster in my back yard I could just record and trying to find clean samples of roller coasters without screaming or excessive wind was difficult. After several rounds of revisions with Disney, it finally got to where it is today. I’m really happy with how it turned out. A great learning experience.

Wonder: Personally, I’m very proud of Tom Sawyer Island. It was incredibly hard to reference and required watching through countless vlogs and cross-referencing them with the satellite view on Google maps. Shoutout to people who do 360 videos on YouTube.

Ninja: It’s very hard to single any of them out as they’re all so exceptional. 1. Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin – This ride is just so unique it doesn’t even look like Minecraft anymore. The amount of detail is insane and it’s also one of the most accurate areas of the park thanks to SPRidley. 2. It’s a Small World – This ride is so long (14 minutes!) so it needed so many assets. It has way over 100 assets which is an achievement in itself. 3. Peter Pan’s Flight – I love how atmospheric and compact this ride is. I love how it seems like you’re flying over a city!

SPRidley: Haunted Mansion because it’s my favorite ride at the Disney parks (with Tower of Terror) and is the one where I made more concept art and tried to make it as faithful as possible to the real one. BUT also Buzz because it was really hard work for the whole creative team, and Pirates, because it’s so well made (and I loved making concepts for Redd, the auctioneer, and the well scene “Do not tell him Carlos, don’t be a chicken!”)

Favorite Disney food item you created?

Kylydian: I didn’t make any of the food, but I gotta be honest, as soon as I saw that virtual turkey leg…

TRS: I could really go for a Mickey Pretzel to be honest.

Ninja: Our talented artist Farian made the Disney food! My favorite has to be the pickles. I think the caramel apple looks delicious too.

Energyzzer: Chocolate chip ice cream sandwich. We all know the food with the longest names are the tastiest.

These were just some of the fun highlights from last week’s Q&A. To go back and read the full chat, and to be a part of more Dev Q&As in the future, be sure to check out the official Minecraft Discord!