I have now created a table of blocks & items that takes the names for these from the official names that are given in minecraft. So far, the system has taken whatever was stored in a dictionary file that was created by another plugin. The advantage is that we can now have a clear indication for what a block is named, it won’t change and is the same everywhere across the game.

People can still lookup items in the shop with randon names (dsword, diamondsword etc) (using the /search command) which is researched in the above mentioned dictionary, but when it comes to what the system displays, we have a concrete name now.

I now was able to fix the vanity titles. Setting & cancelling along with normal expiry should work fine now. Thanks to khyddinamaani for helping with a detailed report!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• yorllik (from Architect to Designer)
• annajanna (from Citizen to Architect)
• ginger_snaps (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)
• khyddinamaani (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Since I now was able to re-enable minecarts I went through the outstanding tickets that concerned the signs. There was one open since March, where a user notified me that there is a feature called “eject at” that allowed users to teleport them to any coordinate on the map. Of course this is not in the spirit of the server.

Because the permission system for the minecart signs is not really convenient to manage, I had trouble disabling those earlier. I found out now how this works, but this disabled the creation of ALL signs. There does not seem to be a permission that disables the usage of existing signs. I have to figure out a nice way how to manage the plugins permissions.

I know several people have abused this feature in the past. The issue is that I cannot disable already existing signs. If you have any of them, please take them down. So please be aware that if I catch anyone with those signs, it’s a ban.

I have switched the item icons for the shop display now to a graphics source from the minecraft wiki. The only things missing here are some maps, hay bales, some newer wooden stairs and all the different potions. Otherwise everything is here now.

The best part about this is that I can update the code according to the updates in this graphic so we will stay current also in future versions.

I have now fixed an issue in the shop data page: As reported previously, the shop page failed to display detailed pages of the current stock values since there are now more than 3000 different positions in the table which we cannot display on one page without the server shutting down the process for taking to long to finish.

To go around this issue, I have now implemented 2 changes:

1. The stock summary now does not show all item types, damages and enchantments at once anymore. It aggregates items on type-level. So it shows for example only one line for all diamond swords, not matter how much damage or enchantments they have. The items now have a link on each line that you can click. Those bring you to the stock detail page (see next point)
2. The stock detail page does not attempt to show all the stock at once anymore. Instead, it will only show all items of the same item type (e.g. diamond swords) in all variations (damage, enchantments, colors for wool & glass etc). In order to pick an item type to be displayed, you can either go to the stock summary page and chose one from the list or pick one from the drop-down on the top of the stock detail page.

These changes make it a bit more difficult to compare different things next to each other (for example a gold sword next to a diamond sword) but at least they make the page displayable.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• Jns_ (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Minecart Mania is now (once again) fixed. There are some small changes to deal with issues encountered in the past:

1. Powered minecart tracks now only push the minecart forward when the track is ON instead of OFF.
2. Since the directional launches in combinations with launch signs did not work, there are now 4 additional blocks that launch the minecarts in distinct directions. The black wool will still launch, but in the old-fashioned, prioritized directions as available:
   

   Wool Color	Function
   Black	Spawn, pickup, and launch in priority directions as available North > East > South > West
   NEW: Purple	Spawn, pickup, and launch south
   NEW: Light Blue	Spawn, pickup, and launch west
   NEW: Orange	Spawn, pickup, and launch east
   NEW: Cyan	Spawn, pickup, and launch north

As announced earlier today, the user voting is now fixed!

As I wrote earlier, I have been quite busy the last weeks with becoming a father, on top with some huge projects at work. Since this week, the biggest part of these projects were finished and I have a bit more time now. So here are some updates on what was going on in the last days on the server, and what to expect in the coming weeks:

• We got listed for some weird reason on a pixelmon server list and attracted a lot of new users who then got disappointed that this is not a pixelmon server after all. I had to go there, claim the listing and fix it.
• There seems to be an issue with Vanity titles. I looked into the code and could not find any obvious issues. Please do me the favor and try it out with small and short vanity titles. Please write down exactly what you did, what you expected to happen and what actually did happen so that I can fix this.
• Minecart mania still is bugged, even the latest version is creating issues on this server. I will have to do a reduced test-server and see if there is a conflict. If I cannot find it, I will have to switch to something else for good.
• There were several strings (color codes etc) that people can write into books that would make the in-game commands to fail if you carried the book on you. I informed the author of the plugin causing this, and the error was fixed. I am waiting now for the new version of the plugin being released and then we should be good. It’s not a critical issue but can be confusing/annoying.
• The shop data website is bugged. There is so much stuff in the shop now that the code generating the table times out before it can finish. I need to either aggregate it or split it over multiple pages.
• The settler test has room for improvement. When people click “back” on the page after failing the test, their selected lot is changed to the default (first in the list). I am not sure how to best fix this. There could be a second confirmation step where people are shown the lot they get again before it’s assigned for example.
• The user voting needs to be fixed. This should be done soon.

Mojang clarified some things in regards to monetization and it turns out that the system I came up with was exactly along the rules all the time. So we’ll be continuing as we did.

The Websend author confirmed the issues that I am having and is working on a fix.

So you probably realized that things seem to have been falling apart recently. So here is a quick wrap-up of what’s been going on so you can make you own guess how it will proceed from here:

I have been extremely busy recently in business since a large project started in the company I work. the project takes place largely overseas and theoretically I should be there to join the project. I have traveled a lot in Feb/March for this project but on top of this my wife was pregnant and I had to stay home to help her with the preparations and then recently with giving birth. So good news: I am a father. Bad news: I have to be at home in the evening and afternoon to join telephone conferences with Europe, normally until 23:00… I have additional family in the house now to take care of on top of this.

On top of that, the server upgrade did not go as smoothly as I thought. While there were some kinks that are normal, and which I could figure out quite quickly, the biggest issue still ongoing is websend, a plugin that runs 90% of the custom server functions, including whitelisting, settler upgrades, etc. I updated it to the latest version but in the latest version the link from website function back to the server became extremely unstable. It works sometimes, and sometimes it does not. I wanted to contact the author through the plugin website, and my password there did not work. I tried to reset it, that did not work either. I reported the issue, let’s see what happens. So I will have to downgrade the version and undo some changes that I did to install the new version. Once that is done, I hope we can go back to normal operations.

On top of that, because of the kinks mentioned above, one lot reset cycle ignored the donator levels and reset all lots owned by donators who have been absent since 30+ days instead of 60+ days. I have to find out who was affected and restore their lots, too.

I will try to do all of that as soon as possible, but I do not know when I will have time – as you can guess….

Since there are still quite come issues with the update (whitelist does not work. lot reset process is broken) I have suspended new user registrations and lot operations until this is fixed.

I have now fixed the very last user ranks (I hope) but there is still some issue with the whitelist. If you are a new user, please stand by until this is fixed. If you register now, I will add you manually to the whitelist, so you should be able to login, you just have to wait a bit.

Vanity titles were also fixed. If you find anything else where you did not submit a ticket yet, please do so.

I am upgrading the server. This might take a while, so please stand by. Not all went through smoothly and I still need to fix some functions on the server. If you do not have the right userlevel, please do not worry, it will be fixed.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• comeelio (from DesignerDonator to MasterDonator)
• pagreifer (from DesignerDonatorPlus to MasterDonatorPlus)
• Tar_Bender (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• kalmins (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• electrofuzz6 (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!