Hey all, I am right now on vacation until Monday so there will be nothing happening in terms of the 1.14 update information until then.

Once I am back home, I’ll take a look at the situation and update news then. Until then, the server is running 1.13.

Thanks for your patience!

Uncovery

I have done some research now on the item icons and found a nice way to get a 99.5% full set of all block and item icons. I am using the update item name page of the wiki and parse the data to get all the icons from there.

So the shop manager now has a full list of all icons. Yay!

As you remember, we had, in the past, often the issue that new blocks being added to incoming minecraft versions and I used to create online Excel sheets for people to help me fill in the data.

Since 1.13, I had the hope that a new project that tries to get this data straight out of the minecraft files would solve this issue. While this project made it easier to get the current item names and their proper names, the other information given is often incomplete or plain wrong. For example, there is no data about which items are creative-only, the stack size is wrong for many items, and we have the issue that there are “items” and “blocks”, blocks become items when you mine them etc. While I have been submitting bug reports, the issues have not been fixed over the last months and we are close to being forced to go back to a manual system.

What are the consequences of this?

• We cannot give out “random items” in the lottery since we would have to curate a massive list of items that should be available to make sure you don’t get something you should not.
• Deposit withdrawals are a risk if you accidentally withdraw something in a quantity that does not fit into your inventory. This only affects stuff that stacks less than 64 items, but this still can be tricky since the rest just drops to the floor. You can only hope you’re not standing near lava.
• Shop/deposit display might be broken

So here are the options:

• We keep everything as it is and just live with it – no work, all the hassle
• Someone who has the time and java knowledge gets involved in the above and helps fix it – this is the most sustainable way. No idea how complex.
• We dump the current system and move to excel files again – some hours of work now, again for every version. I need to create the excel, ask & educate people how to use it and then convert the data for use in-game
• We create a new system that let’s us crowdsource the information via a better interface. Changes would be live more or less immediately – lots of work now, then only small incremental stuff going forward. Ideally someone with PHP knowledge would help me here.

So this is just and FYI update. If you like to get involved, let me know.

Dear all,

there has been a bug in the lottery. It has been giving out items that are normally not available in the game. Those items might be mob eggs or other non-survival play items & blocks.

If you have received such an item, please destroy it ASAP. I have for now disabled the “random item” lottery winnings until I find a sustainable fix for this.

So as you might have noticed from the 2D map, we now have a new empire. All empty lots have been reset and now have full 1.13 features, ores and biomes. This includes the by now quite dated granite etc, but also underwater features such as seaweed, sunken ships and floating icebergs.

This also means that anyone who has an empire lot has now the unique opportunity to go an reset or abandon their empire lots and start from scratch with the help of the lot manager.

But we did not only do it for the beauty of it all, there is another reason for this: Our mapping programs are all unable to deal with pre-1.13 worlds. That means that every time a lot resets, those lots become black spots on the world. And that is not very nice for people who try to get a new one. While there is a workaround for this (load the “mint” worlds into the game and visit every single chunk), it’s a hassle. We’d rather review how the by now very dated maps would look like in the new format and upgrade them all. For some worlds that does not matter (e.g. flatlands), but for others this might be a game changer (e.g. the kingdom).

So what I am working on right now is to re-create all the worlds with 1.13 tech and looking where the differences are so big that we should not upgrade them. As a first step, I took a look at the kingdom, and unfortunately, despite using the same seed, it would look completely different in 1.13. The current one is using 1.3.1 version generation, too old. So upgrading here is not an option. One option here is to create another world like the kingdom with 1.13 tech as an optional environment.

I will update you all once we have some more info.

There was an issue with the lot reset process. This affected all the empty lots I wanted to reset but also all the resets that have been scheduled by users.

If you want to have your lot reset to 1.13, please schedule it in the lot manager again now, it will happen then at the next restart.

thanks!

ATTENTION! IMPORTANT: I always get panicky mails/questions from users who don’t read the blog after this type of posts: I always get asked if their lot will be reset. It won’t! We NEVER reset occupied lots. PLEASE tell that when people ask you in-game.

As you know from previous posts, I have been investigating a possible reset of the empty lots in the empire to the latest world generation method. The original purpose was to get all the current types of granite and other natural resources into the empire. Another issue that popped up now is that the 2D map cannot process the data of the old empire and every lot reset creates black areas in the 2D map until someone goes to that location.

For this to happen, I needed to make sure that the world generation from 1.13 does not look completely different than 1.9 and before (when we created the empire). I now tested that and can confirm that there are no major differences on the 2D map. Most visual differences is that there will be ice in 2 of the oceans that we have and some of the waterways will have slightly different outlines. Trees are also not in the exact same location. Otherwise, it seems to be pretty much as expected.

This means that I will replace the “mint” world that we use to reset the empire with a new version that was created after the release of 1.13, and then I will manually reset all empty lots. There is a chance that if you had a tunnel/mineshaft that enabled you to walk into a neighboring empty lot, it will be gone. There is also a high chance that your trees that overlap into neighboring empty lots will be cut off. The impacts should be minimal however.

I managed now to resolve the 2D map issues and all maps should display correctly now.

If there are black areas in the map, it’s because the place has pre-1.9 version files. This can have 2 reasons:

1. The area has not been visited since we upgraded to 1.13
2. The area has been reset recently. This is usually the case if the area is exactly along lot lines. Our “mint” maps that we use to copy regions from are pre-1.9.

In both cases, this can be resolved by visiting the area and waiting until the next reset when the maps are being updated. I will now work on 1.13 version maps to use for the reset so we don’t have to play catch-up every time a lot is reset.

Thanks for all your patience as this took quite some time to be resolved.

I just wanted to let everyone know the issues about the 2D map since I have received a number of emails recently from different people with more or less the same content.

The current software that generates the 2D map has not been fully updated to 1.13 version. The issue is that while the map is being generated, the function that allows me to map only a specific area (i.e. where we have lots) is not working. I have escalated that to the developer but I am still waiting for this to be fixed. I will contact the dev again this week to push for an update, but we will in any case have to wait until this is done.

As a consequence, the image is not aligned with the lot grid. The flatlands and the empire are shifted diagonally by an amount of lots and therefore it looks like as if the lots how the wrong owners. The lot number however is showing the correct owner, just the image is the wrong one. Here are our options:

• Keep everything as it is until the map software is updated. No work, and some confusion with the few new players that we have. New players will need to refer what they see in-game instead of what they see on the map. As a work-around, I could add a note that the lots are shifted.
• Make a working map manually once, but disable daily updates. This would create a correct map, but that map would be static. Changes would not be reflected until we fix the map system. Lots and players would be correct on the map, but not graphic representing the builds/reset lots etc.

Let me know what you prefer.

Ok, as promised, even though a bit late, I have now moved the temp server into the main server and replaced the darklands. There are still a couple of server bugs to be fixed (see comments to the previous post), but overall the migration to 1.13.2 should can be seen as completed. Please let me know if you find any additional issues.

Regarding the new darklands: I made some effort to remove non-redstone lighting from the darklands. There is likely the one or other area that I missed, specially if it’s further out. I recommend you to manually replace all the lighting yourself. If I find any areas with non-redstone lighting in the future, I will replace those myself, and that will then include lighting that is there by game design (villages for example) and also will happen outside of your control, so please don’t take this lightly (pun intended).

Everyone, I am planning to shut down the temp server in the course of next week. Please finalize whatever you need to do before the end of the coming weekend. Here is a list of things that will happen to help you prepare:

• Temp Server: All worlds except the “normal” will be deleted (end, nether etc).
• Main Server: The darklands will be deleted.
• Temp Server darklands will become Main Server Darklands.
• Torches/lit pumpkins/sea lanterns in the temp server will be removed as much as possible automatically.
• UPDATE: Your inventory & Ender chest content will be wiped on the temp server. Put your stuff in normal or shulker boxes.
  

Thanks to the notice from VixenGold, I have realized that Echantment storage has also changed from numerical IDs to text IDs. I updated the database accordingly. This means that previously deposited and stocked goods (books & items) should now be fine to buy/withdraw from the store/deposit.

• Snow blocks deposit has been fixed. In general, I could get rid of a whole process that would fix item names. There was always so far a weird issue that a list of item names would show up wrongly in the user inventory and needed to be reverted back to the original item names. This was most likely another plugin (Essentials) which did that. Since the latest version of Essentials sticks to the real item names, that conversion is not needed anymore, so I could just remove that process from the code base. Less complexity. Yay!
• The internal enchantments list has been fixed. This means that enchantments will now display correctly in the store for newly added items. Further, new 1.13 items also will display now correctly (turtle helmet, trident) when enchanted. Lastly, the lottery has now the right data to hand out properly enchanted items. Enchanted stuff given from the lottery until now might not be enchanted anymore. I will check if there is a large number of this and potentially fix those.
• We have now 2 super-enchanted items in the lottery: A wooden pickaxe with silk touch, efficiency and unbreaking and a wooden sword with unbreaking, sharpness, sweeping edge, looting, fire aspect and knockback
• Jack-o-Lanterns have been fixed so that they can be deposited now.
• Getting spawn eggs from the lottery is fixed now.
• We used to have a list of common items you could win. I did not have the time to assemble a new list, so as a workaround you just get 1 item of any possible items. There might be a couple of things in there that you cannot get so there will be still a few bugged items, this will be fixed soon.
• Getting a single-enchanted item from the lottery is fixed as well. Enchanted Trident! Whooo!
• I re-balanced the chances a bit to have less “common” items and more saplings and potions instead.

One of the biggest issues is that I thought we can rely on data for items and blocks automatically retrieved from the game code by this project here. Unfortunately, the blocks and items in this data has quite some errors that make the data not 100% reliable. I have submitted several issues on this to the developers and I hope they will be able to fix this soon.

So to my knowledge, there are only 2 larger items left to do (for the 1.13 upgrade at least):

1. fix the 2D maps. Here I am waiting for the dev of the mapping tool to fix a bug
2. Create a better list of common blocks from the lottery or find another type of reward.
   

After a long number of attempts on my side to fix, compile and run a replacement plugin for our legacy 2D maps, many exchanges with it’s developer, we finally have the 2D map back! Yay! (They are rendering as I am typing this).

This means that I can now make a better comparison between the 1.13 generator and the 1.12 generator to decide if we re-generate the empty lots in the empire (and potentially other worlds such as the kingdom) at one point. Stay tuned for updates!

Note to the current status of the 2D maps: There are some small fixes to the 2D map website I need to make for everything to display properly, but the rendering works finally. Namely, there are 3 issues:

1. Places where so far nobody has been since the update might not render at all. This is not an error with the 2D map, the 3D map is affected by this as well. As I have been posting before, I am working on a program to fix this. It generally works already by simply loading every piece of the map. The issue is that I cannot just let it run since that takes a lot of processing power and would boot everyone off. I am trying to write a slower mechanism, but it’s tricky.
2. Places might have pink textures. This applies to locations that have been fixed with the process above, but still nobody as been there yet. This can only be fixed by someone actually going there it seems.
3. Some maps are not properly aligned with the lot grid. I will try to fix that today.
   

[Update] It seems that there is a bug in the 2D rendering process that cuts off part of the map. I will have to wait for the tool author to fix this before all the 2D maps work properly again. [Update]

So I have checked deeper into the 2D and 3D online maps and came to the following findings:

1. Minecraft does not update the worlds to 1.13 when the server starts but only when an area of the world is actually loaded.The rest of the map is still 1.12 until someone actually goes there.
   
2. Mapping tools, be it for 1.13 or 1.12 can only read their respective version. If I use an old mapping tool, it will show only areas that have not been visited since the upgrade, if I use a new tool, only areas people visisted since the upgrade are visible.
3. The tool for the 3D map (dynmap) has been properly upgraded. I am right now re-rendering the worlds. The city for example is done, but you can see that there are empty areas. Unless we find or create a tool that will load & update the blank areas to 1.13, someone will have to visist those areas to get them updated and therefore enable them for rendering. This is not so much an issue in the city, but larger worlds like the kingdom are much more affected.
4. The tool for the 2D map is working only half-way. I have contacted the author with a list of bugs I found and I hope he will be able to help fixing those. Otherwise I will have to do some manual workarounds to get things done. It will take some time and this is an issue since new users will have troubles finding lots with the current incomplete maps.
   

1. The Darklands are dark again
2. I fixed a bunch of code pieces where we still used numeric item IDs instead of names, so now Kits work again, the Darklands are dark again, using water/lava in creative worlds is blocked again
3. Some code improvements in the background as well.
4. Some lottery items don’t give you anything right now (the “common” stuff)
5. There is now a trident in the lottery!
6. I upgraded the temp server to 1.13.2
7. I am testing now how the 1.13.2 world generator makes the empire look like. I am re-generating the “emp_temp” world now with that one and will then compare it with the existing empire. So far, the worlds look VERY similar
   
8. All 3D maps need to be re-rendered, I will do that over the coming days one after the other
9. The 2D maps seem to be messed up as well, I need to look into a fix there.
   

So some more new stuff:

1. I have fixed the RegionbreedLimit plugin, a.k.a. headcount. The issue here was that the plugin itself was broken for 1.13. Once I fixed that, I found out it conflicts somehow with the ModifyWorld plugin which regulates who cannot do some things in a world (like Guests cannot do anything in Darklands despite that there is no region that prevents them). When I tried to update Modifyworld to the latest minecraft version, I realized it depends on PermissionsEX (those two used to be a bundle from the same developer), which is managing all our Permissions. I had to update that as well. So once I tried to update that one, I basically failed. This let me to believe that I need to find an updated verison, which also failed. So I started looking into new plugins and quickly realized that this will be much more complicated so I went back and managed a way how to update ModifyWorld without updating PermissionsEX. That make RegionBreedLimit work again, but I somehow could not fix Iron Golems from being able to be built. So I had to change the debug-code in RegionBreedLimit, found that the name of that mob changed from villager_golem to iron_golem, and now (for now) this is fixed and works again. Yay!
2. I am still running into stuff in the deposit/store stock that was not properly updated in the database to 1.13. I am updating all of those things as they pop up in alerts on my screen. So there might still be some instances of stuff failing when you retrieve it from the deposit, please let me know ASAP if that happens.
3. [Update] I also managed now to fix Voting. I still need to make sure that all the rewards work, from a plugin point of view, the functionality is back. [/update]
   

Ok so a long list of Updates here:

1. I found an issue how glass was fixed. I renamed it from “glass” with a color info separated into “black_glass”, the correct should be “black_stained_glass”. I fixed that now. I still have to do that for the failed transactions that users reported
2. Concrete was not fixed, but only one user had it, it was all light gray and this was also fixed.
3. Potions were not yet fixed, and those are now also correct
4. I have fixed a long list of items that were not yet renamed in the deposits, former transactions and shop stocks to the correct, current version.
5. Wood planks and wood slabs where misnamed and have been fixed (jungle_wood_planks vs. jungle_planks)
   

What is not yet fixed?

1. Kits. All /kit commands are still broken, this will follow soon
2. The old darklands is of course still there, that will have to be moved
3. The online shop does not show yet new blocks. I am working on automatically get all the icons from an external service, but there are some issues outstanding. If I can fix this, I will get it from there, otherwise we have to continue with the old method and manually update each icon.
4. I have yet to fix the regionbreed limit. By itself, it works, but it depends on 2 outdated plugins which break the regionbreed limit which I so far failed to fix. This is also the reason why we have iron golems around.
5. Voting is still broken as well.
   

Please let me know if there is anything that does not work apart from the list above.

This is a daily update on the status of the work done behind the scenes.
Our webserver is completely open source, hosted on GitHub. You can help improve the server by fixing issues here.

• Issues Closed:
  • Issue No. 326, Items probably missing from the /shop

I am quite busy since the start of the weekend so I have not been able to improve the shop/deposit issues.

I have made some inroads fixing other plugins as they are abandoned or outdated, but it’s Abit of a chain reaction to fix one and then another one throws an error that then needs to be fixed as well. I still hope that I can solve most of the issues this week.