RULES
This page offers a set of guidelines that you have to follow in order to build a proper prison and to validly escape a MC prison too.
The rules can be broken by you at will, but keep in mind that some are more severe than the others, rules marked on green are the least enforced and you can play with them if the concept of your prison requires so. Rules marked on yellow are more serious and are important to follow, these are broken occasionally but not without punishment in the form of validity/feasibility points on the ranking or generally lower scores on the subjective list. Rules marked on red are essential, they're the absolute most commonly agreed upon rules in the prison community and breaking even just one of these can get your prison severely punished, if accepted at all within any ranking list.
Most of this page builds upon the rules from Inescapable for JE, as most of these rules are commonly agreed to already.
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PRISON BUILDING RULES
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This list provides the commonly agreed-upon rules to Minecraft prison building, but keep in mind that breaking them wont get people furious at you or anything, we prioritize having fun over following these rules to the letter. That said, we aspire to keep some order in our ranking, to make prison building fair and balanced while also being thought provoking and competitive (which we wouldn't have if every prison were to be a bedrock command-block-powered cage), so prisons that break too many of these rules (or enough primordial rules) wont be added to the Main List, however there is a chance that they may be added to the Extended List and/or the Subjective List, there is no promises here though due to the biased nature of the rankings themselves.
1. Punish the prisoner, not the server:
A prison is made to punish a prisoner for their actions by taking away their freedom, please make sure the server's integrity is not lost or sabotaged in the process. Permanent server-wide lag machines, server crashers and blocking dimensions (particularly, access to the End dimension or its outer islands) is not allowed. Server crashers in the form of memorybans are usually not too frowned upon and are encouraged to be used (with a minimal validity penalty), however, abusing of them in the form of rollback-spamming, detection spam and permanent banishments are heavily frowned upon due to their global effects.
2. Make imprisonment fair:
Spawn-killing is not allowed, an slightly inhumane prison can only get you so much as a low validity score, but spawnkilling, preventing the prison from respawning, preventing the prisoner from logging off of the game and similar punishments that fit this definition of unfair are not allowed on a prison and will just stain it in both ranking systems. Also, you can't ban the prisoner at all times for no reason, permanent switches are allowed but only when the prison is in critical danger.
3. All parts of the prison must be buildable in the same version of Minecraft (and server version):
You cannot use glitches from earlier versions and combine that with features from newer versions. Minecraft Bedrock doesn't have a (default) version switcher or dedicated launcher, so prisons must be made to be up-to-date with current versions of the game.
4. the prison must be buildable and usable in survival with no cheats or outside software:
This should explain itself, all of the components of the prison should be accessible in vanilla cheatless Minecraft, defunct glitches or exploits should not be taken into account at all and are not allowed to be used, with a small exception made for prisons that were made during the time that the glitches/exploits were accessible with just vanilla-friendly glitches that then were patched by Mojang in later versions, keeping in mind that this obsolescence will still get points removed from it if it relies heavily on them (This rule is implemented mainly with the thought of the glitches that allowed you to obtain bedrock in survival mode in mind). You can create the world in creative mode as building a prison megastructure without worldedit, commands and/or even creative mode is absolute masochism, but it's invalid if you could not make it in survival. Guarding the prison with cheats or hacks is equally invalid. If you say you're using "Baritone bot guards" we'll laugh because it is both stupid and because that's not how Baritone works.
5. It must be possible for a visitor to meet the prisoner:
Just like a regular real life prison, visits should be allowed for people that wish to meet up with the prisoner. If the prisoner and visitor are in the same room, or are even separated by glass, that is allowed, otherwise with methods like X-ray glitches or texture packs or even no visiting process at all then it's gonna be quite a bit shamed.
6. It must be possible to let the prisoner out:
You cannot maintain a prisoner inside a prison forever, at some point one must be able to set them free, with any method or process of your choosing, after their set sentence ends.
7. Your prison must be finished, downloadable and public:
The list won't take half baked prisons or unfinished betas, we want to rank the prison fairly and on it's full release so we don't have to worry about the issues that could come from the prison not being finished. There must be a way to safely and freely download your Minecraft prison for everyone, therefore, assume the workings of the prison are entirely public. Your prison's guards should know every wire of the prison down to the block, and escapists should know as much as your guards do. Your prison is and will be intended to be publicly known and "the guards cant let anyone know how the prison works" is not at all an excuse we accept.
8. Perfect 24/7 guards are incredibly frowned-upon:
Either guards that are awake 24/7 with no rest or a system of guards "all around the world taking shifts" is not realistic, lazy and stupid. Using them will probably be laughed out. Additionally, using guards at all outside of a visit or a standard maintenance is a sign that there may be something wrong with the prison.
9. Have fun (The most important rule):
Prisons aren't made to be mass produced by these guidelines and these guidelines only, notable examples are ImpossiVault, Victus, Antares, Spongebob's Void and, heck, all areabanned prisons ever built for Bedrock Edition. These rules are the norm for this ranking because we need order and fairness for balanced competition, but this ranking site isn't all there is, make sure to put enjoyment first, the community might find your big invalid prison more interesting and unique than the most valid non rule-breaking prison ever made. Back when Hade's Vault was the latest in prison design we could mine from the roof of every prison, sure thing, nobody was caring though because they were trying to improve every aspect they could as well as making their prisons cooler and with more (sometimes overcomplicated) things as redundant showoff… If you know how to build a good prison, you can 100% get away with making anything you really want. Go wild, be creative, be unique, don't be Blacklight, build prisons, go build NOW!
my lawyer has advised me to tell you that you should take your time and not rush prisons, make sure you're enjoying working and not overworking yourself, take breaks, don't become MSP build team on early to late December 2023…
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PRISON ESCAPING RULES
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Prepare to see a ton of red here, as escaping a prison isn't as subjective as building a prison, as an escape can be completely invalidated if not done correctly. Escaping a prison is meant to showcase the flaws of it by exploiting them to free the prison indefinitely. The goal of an escape is simple, to free a prisoner (even yourself if it's a solo escape) from the confines of the prison they're locked in.
1. The prisoner must, at some point, be willingly imprisoned in the cell:
This means that the guards must think they have no items (unless it's involuntary) and cannot escape. An escape truly begins once the prisoner reaches the cell, therefore any kind of way to prevent capture or sabotage the prison without getting in the cell does not really count as escaping.
2. Assume the guards are intelligent and know the way around the prison:
Guards cannot be stupid, they are knowledgeable in the workings of the prison they're guarding. A guard must have common sense and know how to use the resources at their disposal and act according to the threat. You must be very cautious, smart and knowledgeable too to make an escape relying on guard influence or error, because it is not only tricky and potentially unreliable, but you have to know exactly how the guard force works and what resources they have to make sure your escape can't be debunked.
3. Using a mechanic that is secret is invalid unless the method is fully released:
Private exploit bad. If you showcase a brand new exploit or tech, you most show that it works and how it works. If the exploit is already public, shown and demonstrated to work, you can skip this step and just use it, but keep in mind that for new exploits you need at least a bit of footage demonstrating how it works. ALL escapes that you showcase must be able to be replicated by anyone, so showing off an escape that uses private, undisclosed technology is considered invalid.
4. If your escape method is universal or semi-universal it may be considered invalid:
Escaping a prison is usually meant to showcase a builder's design flaw and/or outsmart the security, universal escape methods are more often than not considered to be cheating and unfair given how the builder's can do very little to mitigate them. Semi-universal escapes (escapes that work on a large majority of prisons) that can be patched are usually fine, a prison builder might decide to ignore them but that's more subjective than anything.
5. No modified clients or addons that makes something impossible in vanilla Minecraft possible:
Hack clients are invalid for reasons that should be quite obvious for everyone: they're unfair and absolutely prohibited in almost every server (specially the ones that Minecraft prisons are built for in the first place). Along with that, you can't escape a prison using plugins or addons that the prison isn't made for given that prison's are usually not designed to support them. Keep in mind a ton of prisons work with areabans due to a plugin that exists to mimic them, it is allowed to use areabans to escape on prisons that use them, however it is not allowed at all if the prison does not implement them.
6. A prison's guards must be loyal to their duties and must never sabotage the workings or purpose of the prison they guard:
No rogue guards, no, just no. Just like an escape team can't sabotage itself and just how the prisoner can't be 100% willing to never escape, a prison's guard force cannot sabotage or betray the prison by freeing the prisoner(s) and doing anything that threatens the security of of it.
7. Usually escaping a prison made during older versions with newer exploits/tech is frowned upon:
Keep that in mind :3