The world is yours for the making
– Minecraft
UST Main Building
One of the top universities in the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas, has created an off-campus campus tour for their Freshmen’s Orientation Week, known as ROARientation, this coming school year. The current pandemic has forced schools to be held online, and this put a halt to the traditional Thomasian Welcome Walk, a rite of passage where freshmen enter the campus through the historic Arch of the Centuries, to symbolize their new beginning in UST. However, this didn’t stop their Central Student Council and the UST Minecraft Community from creating a memorable and immersive virtual experience through the widely known game: Minecraft.
The Arch of the Centuries
Minecraft is a sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. It is a commonly used platform to create different worlds, adventures, landscapes, and more. It is known for its different play modes: play to create, to survive, or with friends! You might recognize this because of its pixel graphics, which continue to be the face of the game since 2011.
The UST Minecraft Builders
The team of Information and Computing Sciences sophomore Charles Nobleza, used this game to create something almost unimaginable within a month––but their creativity and ambition put together with access to the virtual world made this possible. Aside from a week-long plan of online festivities and conferences from August 24 to 28, they brought their campus to life in the virtual world by redesigning it on their own Minecraft server. Freshmen and the whole Thomasian community will be able to explore the 21.5-hectare campus straight from their digital screens, through the UST Minecraft server. Participants can even change their player’s skins to their respective college uniforms and edit it according to how they wish.
Uniform Skins
UST MINECRAFT CAMPUS TOUR TEASER
The week will cap off with the virtual UST Minecraft Campus Tour, and will be streamed live in the USTeXP: The UST Minecraft Tour | Experience the Expansion show on August 28, through the UST TigerTV Facebook Page. If you’re a Minecraft player, you can actually access the virtual campus and experience the virtual tour and its additional games and activities! The server will be available until September 6, with schedules for respective academic units.
Cover Photo Screen-grabbed from Youtube
