I had some thoughts about how to develop the server further. Here are my ideas. Comments are welcome as usual.

• Expand the city to fill the whole public area. If more space is needed, claim free lots on the borders for it.
• Create a public world for peasants only instead of the public area. It would be regenerated every night/reboot. Settlers+ cannot go the public area anymore and have to go to the darklands for free mining/building
• Use the current spawn area only for guests, peasants and maybe settlers. Remove mall and other buildings form the current spawn that are not essential for beginners. Use the city for all others to spawn there. Architects and VIPs spawn in a different place/floor/building.
• Move important functions to the city (Arena, Mall, Hospital, etc)

So far so good. Opinions welcome!

I got the question today if griefing in the darklands was allowed or not. Of course it is not. But if someone wants to complain to me about griefers in the darklands, he better have a proof in his hands. This can be a screenshot, video or time (GMT or Hong Kong time please!) where a chat occurred that prooves WHO was griefing.

If I do not have a concrete proof who was griefing, I cannot do anything. So if you want to be safe from griefers, please do not start building in the darklands!

The fact that some people seem to like to build in the darklands a lot makes me think however if I should start making lots in the darklands. If enough people agree to this, I might do it. The previous post I made was more to state that I do not want to start manual protection there. If I setup once a lot system for a certain limited area, its a piece of work to get it once done, but it would be then easier to make a system out of it.

[Update] Please let me specify on the above: The lots would only be on a part of the land, the rest of the darklands would be still public area. I would probably take the current buildings as a starting point and make a dozen lots around them. Nothing as big as the normal world, and stuff outside the lots would still be public. The map would also still be endless. I limited the map outside the lots on the normal world because I did not want to mess it up in case we want to expand the lots. With the darklands map being endless, I can have lots anywhere I like, also in a new area. [/Update]

[Update 2]As an added security level I have blocked Peasants from building in the darklands. Guests have been blocked already since the beginning.[/Update]

• Using the warpgate to the nether occasionally knows out a whole chunk of the map where the gate is. I do not know why this happens, but so far it did twice. If you see that, please tell me immediately so I can fix it.
• destroying a minecart while you ride it teleports you back on the track. You have to exit it normally instead of destroying it.

I have seen that some of you have been starting to build some larger structures in the darklands, and made them easy to find. I want to make you aware of the following (just in case you wonder): I will not protect property in the darklands, no matter how great it looks. I created the lots in the normal world so that I do not have to go to every user and protect their stuff manually. So I will not go back to “manual mode” in the darklands. If you build there, griefing is your risk only.

I have transferred now a bunch of buildings to the city. I have come to the following conclusion: I will NOT give the owners building rights once the buildings are in the city. It is just too much work to do and manage that.

So if you want to have your building in the city, I will copy it there unless you want me to remove it from your lot. Those people whose building was already moved by me, can get a copy of the building back on their lot. Contact me here and tell me where you want it. I will put it back.

If your building is in the city and you want to upgrade it or make considerable changes, please change the building on your lot and I will then overwrite the updated building in the city with the new one.

I now installed a cheat protection software. The important part is that it does not allow you anymore to lag-climb out of holes by quickly placing blocks below you in restricted areas (spawn, other people’s lots etc).

This means that there is a risk for you to get stuck. While in the normal world you can get out of a hole by using /spawn, in the darklands spawn area that is not possible. You would have to wait until I come online and get you out of there. So watch where you walk!

If you get stuck, you can leave a message anywhere on the site with your coordinates (press F3) and I will fix the area so you can get out when you log back in.

Worldguard received a minor update today which allows me to prevent mobs from spawning on selected lots. So I disabled mob spawning completely in the spawn areas of all 3 worlds. This does not prevent mobs from other lots to walk over into those areas, which might be an issue in the nether. The other areas should be fine though due to size or walls.

As you might now, Notch has announced minecraft 1.5 for next week. On the other hand I announce holiday 2011.3 next week. This means that I will be off for the second time this year after XMas and Chinese New Year. I will be going to some obscure island in Indonesia for diving (yay!) with some limited internet access (nay!). Which means: I might have trouble updating the server in time if the plugins are quick updating or even to setup a parallel server for those who upgrade their client.

So rather wait with updating your client until you see an announcement here that a parallel server is running OR that your old client tells you it’s outdated when you try to connect.

Today I had the time to update the darklands as I wanted to have them since the beginning:

• They are endless big
• You can mine and do as you like
• creepers explode
• all kinds of illumination except lightstone is impossible
• it is impossible to /warp, /tp, /home, /spawn, /sethome etc

So infinite riches have their price and the play there should be even harder than SSP. Have fun!

To be clear(er): You have to either die or go back through the portal in the tower through which you came in to get back to the normal world. Please do not come and ask what happens if all sand/whatever in a reasonable distance is gone. Once this happens, we will see what we do.

I have added a new warp gate in spawn that brings you to the city. The city currently has 2 actual buildings and 4 more that are more placeholders than anything else. The streets layout as width is concerned is final. The materials used can be changed anytime. I would also favor a non-car-related design. I would be interested to get more proposals. Please think about how it would look like when the streets become really long.

I updated today to the latest versions of the plugins etc. and something must have gone wrong because at least one building got completely messed up etc.

I realized this some 2-3 hours after updating the server. So instead of trying to fix something that is almost impossible I rather opted to revert the map to the status it was when I updated. This means that if you logged in right after I updated, all what you did until this blog post is undone.

Sorry about this, but but could not help it.

I am on a business trip until Sunday night so I won’t be online a lot. If there is an issue, please post to the forum or blog…

I came up with a new project! Here it is:

• The public area is underused and will be replaced by the darklands as soon as the warping issues are fixed.
• I would like to encourage community building and have a larger project where anyone can participate.

This is why I propose a city project where we will start in the middle of the public area to build a large city, with a center made of larger buildings. Here is how you can participate :

The city center should be made of skyscrapers and buildings of the size of 20×20 blocks. You can build them out of any material you like, preferably not out of 100% cobble. Please build them on your lot and I will then move them to public area. We will start somewhere in the middle, build the streets etc and protect the area from griefers.

So here is what you do: Build a 20×20 building with any height and no cellar. Put a sign on it somewhere so people know who built it. Then post a comment here with the lot number and the coordinates of the tower. Make sure that you have a staircase going to the upper floors, no ladders please. At max a hidden water elevator as an elevator.

I will then cut & paste the building over to the public area.

I am also asking for a proposal how the streets should look like. You can post the same here and I will pick one and use it for the whole center of the city.

You can make diners, offices, residential whatever. But please no town houses etc that would not be found outside of a larger city like new york etc.

Finally, the issue that is preventing me from opening the darklands is an official bug and therefore has a chance to be fixed. This does not mean however that this can happen within the next 24 hours. The bug first has to be fixed, then we have to wait for the next recommended build to be released, then for the plugins to be updated to work with that release. That can take a week or two.

So what can we do in the meantime? I do not want to open the gate to prevent people from complaining that they did not see a sign or something and died. So I made a command that you only read here after you read the warning.

If you go into the darklands, you will generate a chunkfail. You might be caught in limbo and fall forever without dying. You have to relogin to die and then you loose your stuff. So to get out of the chunkfail you have to try to be quick and move towards the closest visible block next to you. If you do not manage that. Then you can go there and have fun. So to get there you need to use a warp-point called “darklands” and the command to warp is /warp <warppoint> (leave the <> away of course).

So if you get in there, have fun. If you die in there, don’t complain. There is a save-zone around the spawn tower marked with a wall. The save-zone extends around the wall for a couple of blocks. Do not complain about griefers in that world.

I have updated the server and you can connect to the old port. These things are currently not working:

• Darklands. There is a serious issue with chunkfails. I am investigating what could be wrong. No clue as of yet. Some people on the IRC channels assume its a client issue. We will have to wait until a new version of craftbukkit fixes that or the client gets updated to the next version.
• There are still many smaller things that do not work yet. Pictures can still be stolen, cakes can still be eaten. Most of these I would expect to be fixed in the coming days.

What should work now for the first time:

• You should be able to place minecarts on the “public” railway going across lots. Please test this.
• I have the possibility to allow ANYBODY to place minecarts ANYWHERE. Please comment if you do not want this, and why.

Other info:

• Adding members to your lot – this should be fixed now

I have been investigating just now what the status is for the minecraft server development and 1.4. Generally there are good news. Here is what I found:

• There is a craftbukkit build for Minecraft 1.4. This means that plugin developers have the chance to adjust their plugins accordingly. This means that hopefully over the weekend, all essential plugins will be up and running with MC 1.4
• I tested that craftbukkit release with all plugins. Some work already, others do not.
• Worldedit and Worldguard (the most important plugins) are also broken. The developer made an announcement that a version working with 1.4 will be available on Friday. This will also open the (real) darkworld, the railway and a bunch of other things I have been waiting for since more than a month now.
• I will bring the server to 1.4 as soon as user levels and protection is working. Stuff like minecarts, shops etc might come later.

So if you upgraded, I would assume that until Monday, we should have the server up and running until then with 1.4. No promises though!

I finally managed to open the darklands. As described before, its quite dangerous. So if you go there, I do not want any complaints of people who died in there and lost all their diamonds or whatever….

I want to start building a railway north-south and east-west through the map to make commuting with the minecart tracks easier. The minecart track will go first north-south through all lots of the Q row, later I will decide where the east-west row will go through, ideally through line 14 or 15, but I am flexible on that.

With the upcoming update of worldguard anybody will be able to place minecarts on the tracks and we can have a much better commuting system.

[UPDATE]I now expanded all the lots that neighbor existing public railways to expand above and below the railway. That way the lots are not that much smaller than normal lots and you can better integrate the railway into your lot, as well as bridge over the railway to the lots on the other side.

All railway now occupie 5 blocks horizontally, 4 blocks vertically and run at level 63 height.

I want to build now a North-South railway along the Q-row of lots.[/UPDATE]

The users now affected by the North-South railway are:

• BinkyDude
• Zapp3D
• yoshimanssbm
• rthurber

I would be happy to hear as comments here from the affected people if they are fine or not. I already blocked the area from editing so you guys can see what the effect will be.

I now added the last login time to each lot owner on the map so you can see when a lot might become free if the user does not return until then and discovered that some people never even logged in after registration. These lots are of course now also up for grabs.

I updated the building rules regarding lot-wide cascades. If you have huge water/lava-falls please remove them. I do not mind 1×1 or similar cascades in the center, but if your complete lot is surrounded by a 128 block high cascade, you are overdoing it. This falls under the rule of wide/high ugly structure AND under things that cause excessive lag.

I have been working for the last many days on a new game concept that is supposed to solve some issues with the current environment on the server:

– the game is quite easy. Once you have a couple of torches you only die if you accidentally fall into lava etc, but the mobs are not really a challenge
– the public area gets raided for the most valuable materials in a short time
– the whole concept of exploring new lands as in single player does not exist

In order to fix these issues, I need the ability to expand the map. On the current map this conflicts with the existing and possible future lots. If I want to make stuff harder, such as restricting certain tools or commands, I need to open a new world. These things do not work on a per region basis. Also, since the public area is quite small, I would need to reset it every 2-3 weeks. Some people build cool stuff there however, so I prefer to not reset it.

So the only solution is a new world. This new world should be as hard as possible to make sure that people do not use it to build elaborate stuff. People should go there to get stuff not because its easy but because stuff can be found there. So how dangerous will it be there?

– There will be no fire. No torches, no nether rack, no burning wood. No lava, no pumpkins. Only glowstone from the nether.

– There will be creepers that explode and destroy your buildings

– There will not be any teleport commands such as /home, spawn or else. You will have to walk, just like in single player mode. If you get lost, you better build a compass or look at your coordinates.

– There will be no map. So you will not be able to look out for places others went to and find sand there etc.

As an add-on I created a mob-fortress with a whole lot of mobspawners and treasure inside. The place will be protected so you will have to fight normally through the building to get in. You will need 2-4 people to conquer it and get out alive. I will place the building in random intervals in random places and announce it in a vague way where to find it.

When will this happen? I hope this week. I need the update to the worldguard plugins which is in the world since a month now.

The current public area will stay as it is for everyone to build in and for new players to get some basic resources, but not anymore to get sand etc.

I hope this all will ad new drive to the server. Since this all requires a lot of work from my side, I will not be install any other additions in the near future, since I want to make sure all works fine with this one.

[UPDATE]Regarding the nether, the current issue is the same why I do not open the DarkLands yet. I am unable to give different lot protection there from the normal world. Once this changes, I am happy to make the nether a huge public area, maybe with a protective shelter in the center. It can also be endless.

That said, I have to mention two things: Due to a tool that I have now that measures the CPU clock in comparison with the in-game clock I can tell that the nether and the new world do not cause any lag. But on the other hand, I do not have experience with 10 people being in each world at the same time. All lag in the past 2 weeks has been caused by the server hoster or specific actions on my side that put a heavy load on the server (resetting lots, removing the water from bigdlol’s lot yesterday etc). If I see that the use of the new worlds causes lag, the first solution would be to limit them in size and to reset them more often. If you want to help keeping the server healthy and fast, don’t run for 5 hours into the horizon just for the kicks. Mine the staff that is near the spawn points first.[/UPDATE]