2D Map issues

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.

Temp server shutdown, it’s darklands now!

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).

Temp Server shutdown next week (Updated)

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.

Progress #13

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.

Progress #12

  • 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.

Progress #11: 2D Maps are back!

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]

Progress Update #10: Maps Special

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.

Progress Update #9

  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.

Progress Update #8

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]

Progress Update #7

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.

Quick update

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.

Update Progress #6

So, first some good news:

First of all, I found an updated version of EssentialsX which is doing a lot of stuff on the server, and that one now includes a translator between the old item names and the new items names. That means that the deposit and shop should be working now since the inconsistencies between the items will be resolved automatically – where it matters most, at least. So Shop & deposit are re-enabled, please try it out. If you run into issues let me know immediately, in 99% I can give you a refund.

That means that if you withdraw from your deposit, you will get your stuff, properly. The only hickup here is that if you have a “noteblock” (ver 1.12 naming) and deposit a new note_block (1.13 naming), it won’t allow you to put it in the same deposit slot. You will have to withdraw the old ones and re-deposit all of them. I have a list here of suspected items that we will work on together (wait for another post here) to fix that issue as well.

Second, it seems that Websend is working nicely so far. I have not seen anything that would raise concerns.

Third, there are still some things that still need to be fixed:

  • Voting does not give you anything, the plugin is outdated. I need to find a new one, I guess other servers have the same problem so there must be something around.
  • Even if it was not outdated, the list of items you can receive as rewards still relies on 1.12 item names and needs to be updated
  • The regionbreed limit / headcounts seems to be broken and needs to be fixed. Please don’t abuse that.
  • We still need to move the new darklands over to the server, but I guess that will happen earliest next week.

Update Progress #5

Hey all!

so I have managed to fix a major portion of the Websend plugin just now with the help of some people over at the spigot forum.

What was fixed was the main communication between the website and minecraft, so now we can run minecraft commands again from the website. So announcements about new website posts but also the scheduled darkland changes etc seem to work fine again.

If you are online in the game and some commands do not work (apart from shop/deposit) please comment on the latest update progress post here on the website!

Update Progres #4

So good news and bad news:

Good news is that I made some progress in getting the store/deposit back to work. I was able to create a preliminary list of items that need to be updated due to changes from 1.12 to 1.13. There are some items that are not automatically assignable for the conversion of 82 items. In order to shorten that list I will run that 82 item list against the actual database to find the items that are actually present in the system and then write a manual block conversion list for the leftovers.

Bad news is that Websend seems to be broken in much moreplaces than previously thought. This is extremely frustrating since my Java knowledge and my knowledge about this plugin is just miserable. So all I do takes 10x longer than with the stuff I wrote myself. Right now I managed to find out how to add much more detailed debug info into Websend so that I can track down better where errors are generated. This has led me to this issue here.

I hope that someone at spigot can help me how to solve this.

If you know any Java, please look into the above issue. I can use any help I can get.

Update Progress, #3

So I made a lot of progress behind the scenes to make sure we are up and running properly with 1.13. I managed to figure out how to build websend properly with all updated dependencies and without it being 40MB large. This is some java technicalities but it’s quite important in order to be able to work on plugins and to keep them up to date in the future. As a consequence, I was able to simplify the code in the websend plugin a bit as well. This removed some unnecessary error messages.

The next step will be to convert the stock & deposit to 1.13 blocks without losing anything. I will have to find a safe way to do it since it will be quite hard to find out if I messed up something in a subtle way. I hope I can make some progress there today.

Update Progress, 2nd edition

Ok, so I managed to get the shop up and running. Luckily I found some new resources some weeks ago which allow us to generate the list of all available items automatically from an external source.

The tricky part is now that there are tons of items still in the store with the old format that need to be updated. Withdrawing these items will returns the wrong stuff to you. Therefore I first have to write an update process for these items before we can re-enable to the store and deposit.

Still, all I have to do now is write a transfer-code and then we can re-enable the store again. This might be happening within the next 12-18 hours.

I am not sure if I can re-enable voting until then.

Update progress

So there are good news, but we are not there yet.

I have managed to get the server running now, but there are still inconsistencies in the item names from 1.12 to 1.13. So shop and deposit as well as voting is off now.

I have figure out how to fix these (except voting, there seem to be additional complexities), I still need to do so however.

Once that is done, we can enable shop & deposit, but I have seen other errors of currently unknown source that I need to identify and fix as well.

The whole thing might be a bit complicated and last for a couple of days until all is back to normal. I would recommend everyone to just stick to the temp server right now as the main server will have frequent reboots without warnings for the time being. The remaining bugs might further affect game consistency.

Websend update help required for server upgrade

Dear all,

I am working right now on trying to upgrade websend to 1.13.x but I am running into issues with the compiler. If you want to help, please take a look at the Java source: https://github.com/uncovery/Websend and let me know if you are able to make it run.

The current issue I am facing seems more generically related to Java, but I am not knowledgeable enough to solve this:

Let me know if you have an idea how to resolve this.

Thanks!