I discovered today that there is a loophole: When people get muted, the server checks if the user account exists or not. It did so by looking for a website account. If the user however deleted their website account, this check failed, and the user could not be muted.

So what I did first was to make a fallback that looks for the userfile on the minecraft server in addition in case the website account does not exist. On top of that, I now added a process that removes people from the whitelist and boots them off the server as soon as they delete their account on the website. Thanks to Albertpuding helping me testing!

While we did not have this issue before, I think it’s an good process to have people removed from the server as soon as we do not have an email address on file for them anymore. It keeps the accountability for them up, at least a little :) and also stronger links what happens on the website with what happens on the server.

You might have read that there are new biomes coming up in the next minecraft version. I am not sure if existing words will suddenly have new biomes, but I do not think so. Most likely only newly generated terrain will have new biomes, but what is certain is that new biomes come with differently shaped landscapes. I have concrete plans how to get them into the game:

• Reset the darklands
• re-create the “mint” copy of the empire that we use to reset lots. This means that newly reset lots will then have the new features. I will also reset all currently empty lots. There is a chance that we will have more terrain ruptures (clear cut lines between lots), but those will be something we lived with and will have to in the future, even if someone decides to flatten their lot etc.
• I will most likely not do anything in the kingdom and other worlds.
• Unless there are important changes in the nether, I will not reset that one, either.

Of course I have no idea when the new version will come out. This is just a heads-up on what will happen to the map since those new features are discussed on reddit and other forums.

I have received notes that the server crashed/reset today and some users lost stuff (one person apparently a lot). I went and looked into the logfiles and found that a plugin froze and then unfroze again, halting the server for some time (not restarting it btw). In this process, it seems that changes done on the server were lost (or not saved).

I was asked subsequently for help from 2 users, the one who lost a lot today, and from someone else who lost other stuff in a similar incident 2 weeks ago. Because of these requests for help, I would like to highlight the general issues with these problems and how they can be resolved (or not) in order to get a better understanding from everyone:

Why this happens
There are a LOT of reasons that can happen. Sometimes, they are user-caused (someone does something that freezes the server, be it by intent or accidentally), but this is rather rare as far as I can tell. More often, it’s a plugin causing trouble. We are running a long list of plugins, and many of them are either in Beta or Alpha/Dev status since they have not been released as a stable version since a LONG time, or because they stable version, despite not being that old, came up with a serious bug I and had to use a DEV snapshot. In other cases, some plugins update almost every week and I simply cannot keep up with every release, since it is not even really clear if the new version changes anything that really matters for the server. When there is a problem, the server freezes for long enough that changes during the freeze do not get saved to the disc and once the service continues, those changes are somehow ignored or overwritten.

What I can do
Well, I try my best to keep up with the plugin updates. People who are on the server around 20:00-22:00 EST see me restarting the server quickly, which is usually because some plugin updated. I also occasionally donate money to plugin authors to coax them to update their stuff or fix a bug quicker. I further chat with them directly and submit trouble tickets to get rid of bugs or add new features. For example, most recently I donated 25 USD to the author who is responsible to enable enchanted items in the shop again, and I am texting him with reports and testing DEV versions for him to speed up the process. But of course these authors are also just people with their own lives and have other priorities also, so sometimes we just have to wait.

What I cannot do
One of the biggest issues is that I have ZERO transparency of what happens during a freeze, what information was stored, what wasn’t, who had what before and what was lost afterwards. So if someone comes to me and tells me he lost 1 diamond in a freeze, they can equally claim that they lost 100 diamond blocks in the freeze, and I would not have any way to check what is the actual amount lost. While I know that most of you are honest about this, the issue is that once I start refunding this kind of thing without having ANY checks or verifications, there is basically a guarantee that these request will exponentially grow since people WILL abuse it. Just like people abused the AFK machines to work around the normal AFK kick, just to get some mob heads. Imagine what they will to for 100 diamond blocks! In the worst case I can imagine someone doing something odd to freeze the server, just to claim later what has been lost. This is why so many rules on the rules page are around the topic of “no handouts”, “no refunds” etc.

So, as much as I regret this, and as much I feel sorry for the people who lost stuff, there is nothing I can do. Unless you are suffering from a repeatable, traceable bug, there will be no refunds in case of crashes or bugs. This is why it says on the FAQ Page:

I lost something during a crash/death/theft/whatever, can you give it back to me?
No. I cannot. I cannot verify what you had before and I don’t hand out stuff. If you had bad luck, that’s what you will have to live with. If someone tricked you, same. Same goes when I personally kill you as a reminder when you violate a rule or ignore a FAQ.

I have now enabled a /kit minecart command which you can use to get a minecart. Duh. The max usage is once every 30 seconds to prevent excessive usage/spamming. I would be happy if people can make proposals on how to reconfigure the minecart blocks since the spawning does not work for us anymore.

I decided to make a proper donation page now. It includes an interactive chart showing the donation balance over the months. I thought it’s better to include some more information why the donations work as they do and give some more transparency.

One question is if users want to be publicly listed with the amounts they donated. There is a chance for an opt-in and a opt-out list. I would like to get some feedback from those that have donated more than 1 months if they are against being listed on such a page or would not mind. If nobody objects being shown on the page, I would make a top-X list and anonymize individuals that do not want to be named.

Update: There is now also a list that shows the top 25 donators without name. If you are among them, it should show the line where you are. Someone please confirm. Also, there is now a mention of the average (currently 14 USD) donation amount near the donation form.

I have just recovered the server from an issue where a simple spawn & transport elevator has created 1900 minecarts and crashed the server massively, and repeatedly. It took me almost one hour to fix this. Due to the massive amount of minecarts in the area, it was even hard to go there without my minecraft client freaking out.

I therefore made the decision to (as discussed earlier) remove minecart auto-spawning from the system. Therefore, unfortunately, all minecart riding systems must be now manually supplied with minecarts that you have to craft yourself.

As a compromise, I am thinking about making a command that would simply give you a minecart instead so you can place it without having to craft it. This will not happen in the next 6 hours however.

I have now finished programming a new back end for the donations. So far, I always manually inserted donations into the database. Since this required always some time and a proper browser, I know have a much easier and faster process that also automatically sends a thank-you email to the user, instead of me having to do a lot of manual input and email writing.

While this will be a little less personal, it will however speed up the process and make sure that donations are activated much sooner than so far the case, even when I am on a trip. Thanks again to all donators, all those are a great motivation to me to keep the server up and running!

I have recently installed and tested a new plugin that detects and prevents AFK-Machines such as water-flow movement loops etc that users have been using to harvest drops, XP and others around farms and spawners. Please note that I do not like these at all. I have now a logfile with locations and usernames of the people using those. Please remove these contraptions ASAP, otherwise I will come over and replace the whole setup with bedrock or something else creative.

I fixed the /mod mute command today. I re-programmed it so that it does not only do a normal /mute but also actually takes all rights to communicate via IRC, /msg and /me from you. It’s also timed, so the mute expires automatically after the set time, and the usage is still the same. So we should have no more /msg and /me spam from muted users. Yay!

I have enabled now 1% chance for head drops to celebrate our 1000 days anniversary!

Enjoy, don’t lose your head! And to celebrate, a photo I took last night. It’s the milky way over Miyako Jima, near Okinawa, Japan. It’s the first time that I managed to take a photo like this, so I am quite happy with it.

So I will be gone for 1 more week now (this summer is quite crazy for me in terms of trips). I will be on holiday and not easily reachable, since I will be without internet most of the day, only having connections afternoons and nights. So if there is an emergency such as long sustained lag, crashes w/o recovery or anything else that seriously impedes game play, please be patient but please make sure to send me an email so I can fix it ASAP when I get online. Do not assume that someone else sent me a message already. I rather get 10 emails than none. You might not want to disturb me, but from my perspective, I think that since I put a lot of time to make the server what it is, I also want it to be up and running smoothly.

Relating to this forum thread, I have now enabled a simple scheduler that enables the following special days:

• Hungry Wednesdays: On Wednesdays, there is no auto-heal in the Darklands. You will have to eat to heal from any damage.
• Bloody Sundays: On Sundays, PVP is on in the Darklands. The area around spawn is safe, but once you venture outside, you can be legally killed by other users. Those users can keep all your stuff, and there is no complaints allowed!

I will introduce more stuff over time to make every day special in some way. I will try to find things that are easy to implement and that offer some kind of challenge and also at times rewards. You will be able to find the complete list on this page under the “Features” menu.

I am about to revamp the shop functions. We will be soon able to trade potions, named items, damaged items etc etc.

During the revamp, I am working with a plugin developer and his beta-version plugin improvements. This means, that for a short while, we might be missing some functions.

Changes:

• Enchanted items cannot be traded (for now). You can withdraw and buy whatever is in the shop, but you should not add any to the shop or deposit.
• Potions can be traded now
• Damaged items can be traded now

I have changed the system we are using for the money managment from iConomy to mineconomy. The iConomy system has not been maintained since more than a year now and I wanted to make sure we continue with a properly maintained system.

Most of the money transactions are currently done directly through the database however, not even touching the system. Also, the new system allows for banks to be created, but all of them have the same interest rate (which we are not using at the moment). But the idea of banks gave me an idea of a system that would be fairly easy to program, and I wanted to know if there is a strong interest in that. Please also comment on how the system could work in the respective details, this is only a draft.

The Uncovery Server Banking System: “Uncstreet & the Empire Bank”

The Empire Bank: Users can have accounts at the Empire bank just as now. There is no interest, and you cannot loan money. It’s nothing more than a piggybank with access to the money-tools we have, such as the shop, the lottery etc.

Uncstreet (User-Run Banks): Users, from a certain level on, can make their own banks and define 4 basic parameters, all of which can be zero:

• Interest on loans
• Interest on deposits
• Fee to open a bank account
• minimum balance

The fee should prevent users from switching accounts too quickly. The minimum balance can work as a guarantee for the bank owner (it can be negative or positive) to make sure the account is worth maintaining, so people do not have to deal with a 1 Unc loan.

There could be also a deposit system that serves as a collateral. If someone takes money (the bank or a user), they would have to deposit (how much %?) a collateral at the Empire bank. If they do not have the cash, it would have to be generated through selling of goods on the market of course. The collateral would be paid if the user owing the money gets banned for example. required deposits would be automatically checked so people cannot take money without a required deposit being available. They also cannot withdraw the deposit as long as there are outstanding loans.

Interest would be always paid out of the lender’s personal account at the empire bank, once a (real life) day. If there is no money available to pay the interest, the account (or the bank) get’s frozen.

There would be credit reports for each user and balance sheets for the banks online so everyone can see what is happening on each bank.

What dynamics would this have?

I can imagine the following dynamics that makes this interesting:

• There would be a certain risk involved in lending money. Is the user trustworthy? How long is he on the server?
• Since people have a way to make more money, they can finance larger projects by paying other users to build something (like the user-run contest recently).
• The server would have a stronger economical dynamic and a stronger “game of life” characteristic.

I would be happy to hear what you think about this

• Is there something that I overlooked?
• Is it to complicated?
• Do we need the collateral deposits?
• What else could we do (in a second step for example)
• Would you open a bank? Would you take deposits or give out loans?
• Would you deposit in a bank with an interest if there was a certain risk?
• Would you take a loan if it would cost you interest?

I have now taken use of a new feature or 1.6.2, which allows to freeze time. So far, plugins have had this feature, but they would reset the time every minute, and cause lag. So the darklands has now been frozen to 23:00 – permanently, without the use of additional plugins. So no more sunrises, no more “safe time” from mobs! Enjoy :)

Also, I have made some conclusions from user reports, logfiles etc regarding the darklands. It appears that when someone wanders the darklands, all auto-generated storage minecarts in the underground mines are being added to the minecart mania database. I am not sure how much lag they cause, but they are listed in the database as “moving” and are in there until restart of the server. I filed a bug report with the plugin author, we will see if this gets fixed.

Someone is apparently running a faulty system that spawns and fills hundreds of storage minecarts. I regularly get messages over 250+ storage minecarts on the server.

I would like that this setup is removed ASAP. The moment I find out who is running this, and I am spending considerable time doing so, the person will be insta-banned.

A plugin we are using changed it’s command structure. When making lot ownership changes, I need to tell the server that something changed and tell it to reload the lot ownerships to activate the changes. Since the plugin update, I cannot simply reload all lot ownerships for all worlds, I have to specify a single world to reload.

So since the upgrade, whenever someone got a new lot or added someone to a lot, the currently used command to reload failed, and the server would not know about it until a restart, when all lot ownerships would be re-read. I fixed the dozen occurrences in the code now where lot ownership are reloaded (contests, etc). I could not test all different options but since it’s quite straight forward, everything should be fine.

If you come across someone who cannot access a lot after a change has been done, but the name is on the 2D map, please ask them what exactly they tried to do and send a support ticket. Then I can check the code and fix it.

I fixed the aether. Some strange bug prevented it from loading, I found a workaround to get it going. People who died when teleporting to the Wither arena should be fine now, too.