First off, if you haven't seen the old skyblock map... you're missing out on a lot of context. But the short version is: I made a lot of rails. Check out this overviewer-powered render of the map here (download and extract the large zip file, and then open index.html, allowing scripts if prompted - it's an interactive render). The skyblock map is also (still) up for download on mediafire (you will need 7-zip or another extractor to open this RAR file); there's access to the nether if you fly behind the windmill (~100 blocks).
I really enjoyed handling this transportation for the community, and I'd like to do something like this again. But, right now the islands are fairly close, so there's no real reason to make it in the nether. Instead, it should be done in the overworld.
Basically, what I want is a set of overworld rail lines, that run between people's islands. This would be usable both as an alternative method of transport to /visit, and a way to ship items between islands.
There would need to be some kind of standardization (e.g. size of the lines/free space - probably 3x3 so that things don't suffocate, and placement) that would need to be handled. But players would have free control over decorating the rails as they wish. At this time I'm not sure who would build the basic line - probably players with help from others.
I have several rail control circuits already designed, but advanced automated routing would be really neat if possible (but, I don't know if it is). Using rails for shipping would be the more practical purpose, although not the only one; being able to send things to the correct location automatically would be ideal. If people are interested, I'll look into it.
There's only a few development considerations, both more with worldguard than anything:
- We'll need some way to the rail as open to the public.
- This would probably be done with custom worldguard regions, but there'll be a LOT of those, and automating them would be important.
- Probably also we'd want to only allow the owner of the island and their guests to build on the rail, but allow anyone to enter it — without changing the actual permissions for the island. I don't know how worldguard's nested region system works.
- Reseting islands would be a concern, since we don't want to trash the rail line.
- When the islands are resized, there'll suddenly be a large gap between the rails; that'll need to be filled (probably by players, but either'd work).
- Chunk loading. This is the challenge with shipping, but probably we don't need to handle it yet. Just a thing that could cause issues.