I am currently working on a improvement of the system where exceptions in the code will generate an email sent to me. This allows me to react in an extreme case at the same time or even earlier than you realize that there is an issue.

On top of that, I am working on removing old code that was used to do the old lot application processes. This is a bit tricky since I have to make sure that nothing important is deleted. So it takes abit more time than just deleting a file.

On top of that, as you all know, I still have to activate the new lot reset process. I am quite busy right now and want to make sure it works properly and not delete someone’s stuff. I will hopefully be able to finish that this weekend.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• Tar_Bender (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• cousac (from Architect to Designer)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I have now activated the new lot manager. If you are above Guest level, you should use that for any lot changes that you want to do. This includes lot resets and so on. At the same time, I have also re-done the code behind the settler test.

Unfortunately, this is a huge, complicated process. There are several different databases in the background being affected, from user rights over lot management and custom ones. There are dozens of places where the process can fail or unexpected things can happen. Please be so kind and help me debug this by NOT abusing errors. Whenever you use a function, please try to see if:

• you can use only stuff that you are supposed to use. If you can suddenly get lots that you should not, get something for free that you should not etc, please report it!
• you can use all the tools properly. If something fails, please report it!
• check if new users have issues with the settler application. Unless they get a message that they answered the questions wrong, please tell them to be patient and to file a ticket.

Also, I have not enabled the actual resetting of lots yet. So if you chose to reset your lot, please be aware that your choice will be stored in the system but not executed yet. I want to make sure everything works fine before I need to undo lot resets….

I was made aware by ktechwhiz that we did not have a server logo for the server list in the minecraft client that is possible now since 1.7.2.

That made me think that we do not have a real logo for the server at all. I thought it would be great if we had one, so here is the first step in the process to get one: Ideas.

We need ideas for the logo first. What should be in it? It should not be just text in my opinion. I am also not sure that my in-game face would be the best thing, since minecraft faces are already all over the place.

So please post your ideas below as comments! I will then list them all up and the one I like most will win something™!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• tbrewda36 (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• Prowler14 (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Since it is now New Year in Hong Kong (where I am), I wanted to wish you all a happy new year and all the best for 2014!

I also wanted to thank you all for being such an awesome bunch of people! If you weren’t, I would have closed the server a long time ago! Thanks to all who help make this a better place, be it by helping others, organizing builds, donating, banning and of course having fun!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• Sleeping_Owl (from DesignerDonatorPlus to MasterDonatorPlus)
• KennyKenz366 (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I will be on a trip until the 13th of January. The time where I will be significantly off-line will be until January 1st. So please do not burn the server down, and report any serious issue that persists over 30 minutes to me. I can still come in and fix things, but there might be some hours delay until I get to a PC. I hope I will have some time to advance the lot manager. The issue is that all the code we have been writing over the last years has been developing into a kind of patchwork and while I have been doing the first things to clean it up, everything I do now for the lot manager makes me bump into more areas where I think that the code needs a cleanup.

So I hope you all have a good time over the holidays and have fun building! See you in the new year!

I am currently working to revamp the complete lot reservation & reset system. We are moving to a much more integrated lot manager page. Here is what you will be able to do with the new system You will be able to…

• abandon, move or reset flatlands lots
• chose your new flatlands config from a set of different versions or move to empire.
• abandon, move or reset skyblock lots
• chose how your new skyblock is configured from a set of different versions.
• abandon, move or reset 1.2.1 version empire lots
• see and change members of all your lots
• see and change snow-fall option in case you are donator
• reset your aether lot (we will generate a version with 1.7.2 biomes soon)
• abandon or transfer kingdom lots
• register to new lots in all worlds

That means that the current lot reset page will disappear along with the lot reservation pages under the “access” tab. However, for the coming couple of weeks, further lot resets will be suspended. Since I am on holiday for some time, I do not want to run an automated system that resets lots when I am not around. the risk of something going wrong is too high.

I have recently received (and executed) a ban request. However, the ban request was supposed to send me attached a logfile of the recent chat. This did not work properly so now I simply take the logfile and scan every line for the mention of the username and attach those. The requesting user gets a report of the lines being scanned and how many have been sent to me, so if there are zero lines, something went wrong and the requestor can submit a trouble ticket.

I have reviewed all maps now and simplified the process of generating them. As a consequence we now have lot maps for all user lots in all worlds, including corner and street lots in the empire. Now the heatmap and the locations of users on the map is now 100% accurate, too.

I have now managed to get the creator of the 2D rendering engine to fix the last bugs and so our 2D map is now hopefully free of errors. If you ever see bright pink pixels on the map, please tell me then I can fix those.

Regarding the lot reset process, we have written this nice process now and will use it in the future. As you know, all users who have not yet reset their lot will have the possibility to still do so in the future. The interesting thing about the process is that we will be able to use it also for all future world generation updates in all worlds where lots are given out.

I am currently working on the next version of the system that we wrote to be able to deal with any lot & world we like. It will store the current version of any lot (for example, the current skyblock and flatlands is version “1”, empire upgraded from 1.2.1 to 1.7.2, skylands is still 1.2.1) and the moment I tell the system that there is a new version available, the lots of older version become upgradeable. For the flatlands we can introduce lots for example that re automatically framed with white wool, skyblock with different configuations, aether with new biomes etc etc.

Once that is done, every new feature that was brought in by 1.7.2 is finished and we can continue working on the “normal” stuff again such as the PVP/Wither arenas etc.

There was an error in the lot reset code: all lots that have been reset 30 hours ago, have been reset again. So anybody who worked on a reset lot in the 24 hours before the last restart 6 hours ago, lost that work with that last restart.

I am currently restoring the last backup that we made 6 hours ago and will restore all of those affected lots. Please stand by until this is done. I will update here again once I am finished.

[Update]

I have managed to restore all lots that have been reset twice. So the final status is this:

• All lots that have not been reset 30 hours ago are unaffected.
• All lots that have been reset 30 hours ago have been restored to the status 6 hours ago.

Sorry for those that have been working during the last 6 hours on their lots, but I think the number is VERY small. Only one person notified me of the issue in the first place. The error was on my side since I did not properly introduce a check so that lots would not reset twice. Oh well.

Thanks to all who have already now submitted the choices for their lot as reset, abandon or move. We could clean up a very large part of the empire and the whole map looks much better now.

As you know, it is never too late to reset, abandon or remove your lot even now. Just make sure that you are ready, fill out the form (you can find it later in the Access-menu) and your choice will be executed with the next server restart (daily 16:00 HKT time).

This option will be available to you indefinetely, and to everyone again when the next severe biome change comes along with a new minecraft version.

After I have figured that there were some issues with the 2D renderer not painting the 1.7.2 blocks, I tried to find out what was going on. I tried to write my own datafile to fix this, and finally managed to get some good results. However, there were still some issues left so I asked the dev of the software to show better debug info. I now managed to finish all the block information for 1.7.2 but there are still biomes not showing properly as you will realize on the empire 2D map. I am waiting for a reply of the developer to fix that. In the meantime I also got him to add the feature to limit the map in size to the renderer so that I can remove some of the code I have written to do so. So since the dev replies quite quickly to these requests, I have hope that latest by tomorrow we should have a 100% working 2D map with all blocks and biomes included and no more pink areas on the map.

I have seen some days ago on reddit a post on how to permanently trigger redstone lamps with an arrow and a pressure plate.Today a user asked me if it was OK to use that.

I won’t give instructions here but it relies on an arrow being shot so that it will never despawn and permanently sending trigger commands to the pressure plate. These contraptions create entities (the arrow) and permanent action on the server, which both create unneccessary lag.

So I am asking you to generally NOT do anything that looks like a “cool hack” but stick to standard minecraft behavior instead. If you are in doubt if what you are doing is standard minecraft stuff, please either check the minecraft wiki or post it to the forum and you will get an opinion on it. If I discover heavy abuse this might result in a ban.

Since we have more and more things that are announced on a schedule, I have now included the server time and date in the server status box on the side. I also show now the time posts were done on each post so I can make announcement what will happen when.