I had to take a break last week because of other committments. Yesterday I could pickup the work again and I am progressing on a _virtual_ level on the migration. What does “virtual” mean? More later to that.

Well, I am going through the list of the plugins as they were in the old server and (for those that are externally written and still being developed) download the latest version or (those that were custom-built for the server or those abanadoned) find the source code and try to update it for the latest minecraft server version.

The first part is relatively straightforward, the second one is much more complicated – in cases. While the plugins that we wrote for this server are all very small and often very easy to update, others are rather complicated because the core function is completely deprecated or because my Java skills are not sufficient to quickly do the job. So far I fixed 9 out of 10 plugins of this type and more to come (i.e there is one I could not fix so far).

The issue now is that I changed the plugins so that the code compiles and does not throw any error. This is where the “virtual” is coming in. I have not had the opportunity to actually test them in-game. There is a high chance that most of them will be easy to fix even if they prove not to work initially or if other issues arise. Another option will be that if one plugin REALLY proves to be hard to fix that we restrict some feature for a while or find a workaround until we can sustainably fix it. I hope that I will be able to start proper testing towards the end of this week and see some sustainable progress. Will keep you guys updated.

Update Monday 2025-03-17:

I have now started to look more in detail if the plugins actually work. I have updated a few more plugins and downloaded recent versions of still maintained plugins. So far, all is looking good and I am working myself through them one by one.

I had to adjust the functionality of one plugin: The custom built plugin that prevents people from getting on the nether roof with ender pearls other other means. In the past, we used a program interface (API) to another plugin that included a function for a “safe” teleport. It allowed people to be relocated somewhere near without being dropped into Lava. The interface for safe teleport has been removed from external access so now we just configure a default warp point and send people there instead.

More updates will follow.

So to clarify how this server upgrade is working and what is in question:

1. Everything that is physically in worlds outside of the old darklands, nether and end, be it in chests, in your inventory or in itemframes etc, will be preserved.
2. Everything that is in the shop offered for sale, or in your depositbox – the does NOT have enchantments or extra data, will be preserved.
3. If you had something special in the store or deposit that was enchanted or had other extra data (books, potions, tipped arrows) that you need to be preserved, please let me know. We can restart the old server for a while so you can pull it out and put it in a chest.
4. Same goes for the nether or end. If you had something REALLY special there, let me know then we can restart the old server for a short while to clean it up.
5. Once we upgrade, the old nether, end and darklands will be reset. All other worlds will be kept.

I will add here the current server upgrade progress. Stand by for more updates in the future. I am using that to update you as well as a to-do list for myself.

Monday 02-24:

• I installed a (hidden) development server to test stuff and installed only the websend plugin. All others are still up for testing.
• I managed to upgrade the Websend plugin after several iterations using AI coding tools to get it running, ditching several old parts of the code that are not compatible or safe anymore. Websend processes all our custom commands, economy etc. It seems to work fine sending and receiving commands.
• There is an issue (I expected that) with displaying enchanted stuff from the shop. The new version of websend had to ditch some very old legacy code that managed the handling of enchantments and now uses a different process. Right now I could identify a correct syntax for the code to display e.g. deposited enchanted items. I still need to get the backend code to format it correctly.
• I also found out that minecraft is now getting pickier about displaying text. All the nice formatted shop text is at risk of breaking somewhere now. I could fix some obvious issues but expect to find more.
• I also then need to see if stuff currently in the shop or deposit would break with the current websend version.

Tuesday 02-25:

• I found out how to program websend so that items in the inventory can be converted into a text to store in a database and that the text is able to be converted back in the game in order to be given to a user.
• What is currently broken is to actually remove the item from the user inventory after it has been deposited or sent to the shop.
• What is also broken right now is how to get stuff from the deposit and give it to the user if it was deposited with the old minecraft version. There are several ways to fix it, I just have to find the most time-efficient and reliable way.

Wednesday 02-26

In order to translate old deposit enchantments into ones that can be accepted by the current minecraft version, I need to be able to translate them. Do do that, I have created a version of Websend that knows both the old and new minecraft version and can accept both enchantment versions. The issue is now to find out how to convert them. In the past, all enchantment <-> database transfer was done through the inventory of a users. So either I have to start a temp server and then write a code that takes every item in the inventory with enchantments, gives it to a dummy user with the old method and then takes it away immediately again with the new method. Or I need to find a java code that can somehow handle items without the user being there – but I do not know how that would work. So I likely need to test the first method and see how fast and practical that would be.

Friday 02-28

After a LOT of tinkering yesterdey, I came to the conclusion that there is no automated way to translate the enchanted items in the store and deposit through a native in-game mechanic for use in the new version of minecraft. The old format has been discontinued in version 1.17 and the new version has been introduced in version 1.18. It’s not possible to integrate both versions in one plugin.If we want to have the current store and deposit enchanted items (including potions, enchanted books, books with text in them, mob heads etc etc) we have the following options:

• Find a programmatic way that goes through the text and translates it. The text is similar but not the same, and a program has to be made for every type of item. Workload: 2-3 days
• Do it manually, only on request. I.e. I will give manually people a few important items in-game, we delete the rest (a lot of the items in the deposit are by users that have not been around for a while). Workload: Not too much, but tedious.
• We re-open the old server for a short while, let everyone withdraw those items and delete what was not withdrawn later
• We just delete everyhing.

I am also working already to upgrade a lot of other custom plugins to 1.21.4 with one proving to be quite difficult. But there is progress in general. The main biggest progress is that the Websend plugin is now 100% finished and works very well.

We are live now at new.uncovery.me:25565
You need to be whitelisted at the normal server as usual.

It’s pure, raw, minecraft vanilla.

Let me know if there are any issues. Have fun!

Note: The server will become the future darklands. The Nether and End will likely become the future nether and end. If there are a lot of stuff left behind in the nether and end, we can swap the old one in for a while and clean it up before we put back the currrent in. I am making backups, so we can do that.

Thanks for the comments on the last post. My proposal would then be that you guys start working immediately on the Darklands cleanup. I will be working on the migration of plugins first to make sure they work – on a hidden server for testing only.

We will see how the progress with plugin testing & darklands demolition progesses. Let me know when you think that you are done. Then we can figure out the sequence of upgrading and if we need a temp darklands or not.

Dear all,

I am finally getting around to upgrade the server to the current minecraft version 1.21.4. This will happen in the following way:

1. I will setup a new, blank, temporary darklands server that is using the current whitelist.
2. While that server is running, I will work on upgrading the current server, it’s plugins etc to the current version.
3. We will then switch the updated server live and replace the legacy darklands with the new darklands.

Topics to be decided:

1. Will the new darklands actually be permanent night or only once the whole server goes live?
2. Do we absolutely need a lot of time where the old darklands can be deconstructed?
3. What plugins do we need (or can even have) during the temporary server time.

Please note that the hardware that the current server is running on will be decomissioned. I am moving everything to a new machine. So not keeping the old darklands around for long would be helpful in closing down the old machine sooner.

Let me know your thoughts!

Uncovery

Hey all, we were kindly and very positively featured by RedLyne in a video about “Forgotten Minecraft servers”. Check it out and subscirbe to this guys channel!

FYI, if anyone is wondering about the status of the server, I am still around (in the sense of “alive”). I have actual plans to upgrade the server to the current version of minecraft, but it’s a long, long story of started attempts and many issues along the way that did not allow me to do so yet. But I promise it will eventually happen, I just cannot put a date on it yet. We will move the whole server to a new machine and in that process I will also upgrade the version. So stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

Hi all,

the maintainers of my linux distro decided to remove the Java version required to run the minecraft server. I will need some time to get and reinstall the required version. Since I am on vacation, that cannot happen immediately. I try to do it as soon as possible. Please watch this space for updates.

Issue is fixed, we are back up!

thanks for your understanding

Uncovery

Dear all,

the Darklands is now reset and fully 1.17 generated! Have fun finding all the new blocks and building new infrastructure!

Unocvery

Hey all, so we have some good progress:

First of all, the shop is now updated with 99% of the block/item pictures and 100% of the stack sizes (needed to properly withdraw stuff without overfilling your inventory). The remaining item pictures that are outstanding are also missing from a central fanmdom wiki page and we have to wait until that is fixed there.

The other thing that is still outstanding is the 2D map. I am working right now with the dev of the app that is generating the map to make it ready for 1.17. Since there are a bunch of new blocks that need to have a color in the 2D map, those need to be added. You can track the progress on the above link. I assume that we might have some progress within the next 7-12 days.

Otherwise everything should be fine. Let me know if anything else is broken.

Please also let me know which animal eggs you want to see in the shop.

Ok, so this time we are trying something different. We are now live with 1.17.1 and the darklands are still around. However, we will reset the darklands end of August. So you have basically 6 weeks time to demolish whatever is in the darklands and we will reset/wipe the darklands to make room for all the new crystal caves!

Please let me know if something does not work. To my knowledge everything except the 2D map should work.

I have now tested the server with Java 16 on MC 1.17.1. All plugins seem to be working (they start without errors). So I will attempt a 1.17.1 upgrade very soon.

FYI I have started now to make sure all our hand-made plugins work with Java 16 (previously Java 8). After that, I will check if all other plugins are ready for MC 1.17.1 and so on. Thanks for your patience.

Paper (our MC server software) has just released an “OK” version of MC 1.7. This means that there are no major known game-wrecking bugs in it anymore. We have to expect a MC 1.17.1 to be released soon since there are still many known smaller bugs in the official MC server 1.17 which is the base for Paper.

I am also very busy this week on different projects so I won’t be able to spend time on the upgrade – which does not make too much sense yet anyhow. I will likely spend more time next week then and prepare for the version change by first moving the existing server to a newer Java version as this is anyhow required for 1.17.

I hope that until then 1.17.1 will be ready and also more plugins will have updated for that version. Then, once Paper catches up with this, I will attempt to move the server to that version as well.

Stand by for more announcements.

Dear all, some updates first:

I have worked on the 2D map and fixed some issues after some back-and-forth with the developer of the software that generates them.

I also fixed most of the userlevel issues. There is still an issue where people are not properly downgraded after their donator status expires (they just stay donator), but I should be able to fix that soon.

Otherwise the server seems to be running smoothly, let me know if you are aware about any additional issues.

Regarding the 1.17 upgrade, there is of course not yet any 1.17 version of the server out that we can use, but there is an additional roadblock in the way: 1.17 does not run on Java 8 anymore but instead requires java 11+. This is a small issue since we are using some plugins that require java 8. While I have been working in the past already to upgrade some of them to Java 11, this is not finished yet.

Anyhow, as previously, once the update is done, we will have to check all the other plugins for compatibility and since 1.17 is a quite big upgrade, there is a certain risk that this will take longer this time. Let’s wait and see how it goes. So no ETA for this one yet.

Dear all,

There is still an issue with the userlevels. As you might have read before, I had to urgently switch to another userlevel system since the old one suddenly caused severe issues on the server.

I have now found out that the new system stores userlevels in all lowercase instead of the old one where the levels where stored with the first level in upper case. This difference is causing various problems on the server.

To fix this, I will need to change a couple of hundred lines all over the code and test it. I am afraid that this is a major issue and I hardly have any time for this.

I am not sure what to do here. But I am afraid that we have come to a point where keeping the server alive and working without problems is getting more work than I have time for. I am not sure how to go on from here but there needs to be changes and a likely dramatic downscale of the server complexity. But even that is also additional work…

At the minimum I will most likely not allow any new users on the server to reduce the issues.

I will try to fix this over the coming days but it will likely take a longer time.

thanks for your understanding.

Uncovery

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• torresfury73 (from citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I have now checked all the users in the system to find those that have incorrect ranks and found the following:

1. Users who had wrong levels did not have double levels by default as it seems. The double levels came since they reported to me that they have the wrong level and I then promoted them, which wrongly left the old level around and gave them the new level on top of that – which it should not. I need to find out why that is. This issue could be fixed by migrating to another permissions plugin.
2. There were a number of users (6 or so) which had the wrong level and I manually now set the right level and made sure they don’t have several. The big question now is if the problem reoccurs or not.

If we are lucky, then this was a one-off and simply was not properly fixed (see point 1). I have a hunch however that this will happen again. Please let me know if you see yourself not having the correct userlevel so I can investigate further on this.

Since we had issues with the userlevels since some time now, I had suspended the upgrades/downgrades for donator status (and other things like lot resets etc) for some time now (somewhere in November). Since I have now verified that at least the donator status is fixed, I have checked all active users and corrected their respective status. This has resulted in donator status fixes in 3 categories:

• People who donated recently but did not get the update immediately since the upgrade was suspended. Those have been made Donator now. Affected people are:
  • misterhelpfull
  • seasnailsplatoon
• People whose Donator status has expired in the meantime but kept their status. Those have lost their status. Affected people are:
  • linklux
  • emberstorms
  • shadowagentstorm
  • puttmutt
• People who donated in short succession in the past so that there was an overlap of the donations, but the system wrongly counted each donation from it’s respective start instead of stacking them. Those people have been made donator now. Affected people are:
  • greysquare
  • kidcodiwise
  • spaceidiot

I’m still having the issue that some few people have multiple user levels and are being assigned those automatically by the system. I hope I’ll find out why this happens soon so I can fix this.

As some of you might have experienced, we currently have a bug in the userlevel system. Some users have the wrong userlevel displayed in-game despite that they have the correct access rights. This is an issue with them having 2 userlevels at the same time, but since only one can be displayed (in the color of their username), it shows the lower one.

While I am able to fix this by removing one of the levels, the issue comes back because the system re-applies the double userlevel.

So I am right now working on debugging the whole userlevel system to find out where this happens. Since the userlevels are touched in various places (Donations, citizenship etc), I am doing this now step by step to make sure all of these are working properly.

As a first step, I have improved the donation level transparency. If you have ever had donation status, you will find now additional information on your user page such as this:

In this case, I discovered that, like shown above, donations given while an older donation was still active were not added to the end of the expiry of the previous donation but rather acted as if there was no donation previously. This has been fixed now and I will fix the status of the affected users as a next step.

Please note that you will see this ONLY for yourself, not for user users.

I will be going through more of these reports to fix the issues that we have in the hope that we will get to the bottom of the issue.