I have fixed the trading post in spawn. It now works with normal chests and does not need dispensers anymore. I also installed trading posts in the 4 outposts. Please try them out and tell me if you cannot access the chests there. Happy Trading!

There finally seems to be a decent trading plugin that works with iConomy! This means that you will be able to run shops in the spawn and outposts! I will set up market places where you can setup shop and start trading your stuff at your own prices. In spawn, this will most likely happen in the Tower above the Spa. I am not sure when the first version of the plugin will be released but I will test it with some people first before we release it to the general public.

I am hoping to get the whole game a bit more interactive that way. Ideally I would disable even home and instead setup a couple of additional portals to make the whole game experience more action than command-based. I already now have the option to charge for using the portals…

I have a rule that people should not build large walls. Why? Because they are ugly of course. They block the view for others and do not have any effect whatsoever. You cannot keep people out anyhow.

Now some people think it’s better to make them out of glass. like 100 blocks high. Well, I do not think this is an improvement. Then other people come and ask that if they put a roof on them, it’s not a wall anymore but a building. Well guess what: This is hard on the edge of the “stupid questions” ban.

I have reviewed and updated the building guidelines. Please go and read them. If your current construction violates them, please change it. If it’s too big, I can come over and take it away quickly or move it underground when I have time.

In short: Do not build ugly stuff. This game does not have ladders, stairs, 120 materials so that you build a hollow box because you are too lazy to cave the underground out.

If you read the building guidelines and think: “Oh but I wanted to build this huuge box in the air out of [whatever] and if I make it only 80 instead of 100 blocks, wide, it should be ok right? Let’s ask uncovery”, then you are already on the path of the stupid questions.

I found a forum that seems to integrate with WordPress quite well. Please try it out and tell me if it works well for you or not. Help requests, Clan pages/threads should be placed into the forum. Also discussions about specific features will be held there instead

The lot reservation is back up for now. Please note that this is not instant and not fully automated. I have to process the requests manually and make sure that not two people applied for the same lot. I hope that the coming update (tomorrow) for the protection plugin will make this easier.

Today one of the more annoying players who was banned dropped in on the IRC channel and started harassing users. To prevent this type of behavior in the future, I added a password to the IRC channel. You can find out what the current password is by going to the Chat page. The web form automatically inserts the password, so no change there.

Some people did not know, but the PvP arena is active and working. By simply entering it you are vulnerable to PvP attacks. Also, we have a 200×200 PvP lot which is active too. There is also now a warp gate inside the PvP Arena building in the spawn area that brings you directly to the PvP lot. Currently the PvP lot features a larger cave, 3 dense forests and a lava cascade. It is currently not possible to dig/build in that lot, and I do not intend to make that available.
Instead I am asking for idea what to put into the area to make it more interesting.

I went around today to reveal the last corners of the map that no one went to yet. So go right ahead to the 2D map and see for yourself what lands await you there!

Among other updates, the plugin system I am using theoretically now supports multi-world. This means we can have a nether and even possibly parallel other worlds. There is an issue with this however. All the plugins we are using will have to support this function first, which is not the case at all. Then, I have no idea what this means memory-wise for the server. Currently its probably no issue, but still there will have to be some testing before that becomes an option for us.

Also, I am still working on the lot reservation & discovery of old users. I am currently facing the issue that I have to go back to a more manual way of adding the lots which is bugging me of course. I have some hopes that this will change next week and I am a bit reluctant to do a major programming effort if I it would be for nothing already next week. I will try to come up with a temporary solution until then.

The discovery of old users currently stalls on the issue that the capitalization of the users in game and on the blog are different, and I have to write a program first that fixes or ignores that. I hope there will be some more time on the weekend to proceed on that. However it does not make too much sense to find the old users if there is no way yet to reset their lot.

While cleaning up the user files, I searched for users that have an allocated lot but are not registered on the server. These are:

Username – Last login
Zootownian – Tue, 25 Jan
Syllver – Mon, 31 Jan

These users have been on the server since before we started the whitelist process via the blog registration and never registered on the blog.
If you are one of them or see any of them online, please tell them that they have to register on the blog otherwise their lots will be given away.

The portals to the four corners of the map were broken in the beginning, but I fixed them just now. So you can use them again! Have fun!

As other announcements I got the news from the protection plugin developer that

• there will be an option to allow others to place & ride minecarts in a protected area (dont know when though)
• there will be a possibility to reset lots easily as early as next week. Once this is possible, I will find out which lots are not visited since some time and start a clean-up process. This might take some time however since I want to give the owners a chance to claim it.

I am working on fixing lot reservation, basically I have to go through testing of the solution. Maybe I can get it done tomorrow already. Will see.

You might know that I have not been online a lot since Thursday. I was busy doing something else (see image). Anyhow, I will be back home on Monday, fix the lot reservation, the portals and other stuff.

Read for yourself

(l02d) mom
(Scouty13) lolwtf?
(Scouty13) I’e been trying to give you cobblestone for ages
(Bigbuddy1) im not trading u scouty when the 5 stacks grand put in the dispenser was for me
(Scouty13) i didn’t take from disp
(Scouty13) didn’t take from disp
(chpentain) someone took my cobble!
(Bigbuddy1) lol
(Scouty13) lmao
(Bigbuddy1) fail chpen
(Bigbuddy1) fine scouty meed me at the spawn
(Scouty13) nothx
(l02d) hey scotty
(Scouty13) hi
(l02d) do you have the diamonds?
(Bigbuddy1) yes id o
(Scouty13) im not paying diamonds lol
(l02d) k i will start whit the first 10 stacks
(Scouty13) thought you were giving them away
(Bigbuddy1) lol no i wana pay a diamond for 10 stacks
(l02d) scouty more cobble?
(l02d) hey scouty, whats whit the diamond?=!?!
(Scouty13) uh
(l02d) hey scouty are you kidding me?
(Scouty13) ?
(l02d) whats with my diamond??
(l02d) hey scouty damn come to spawn and give me my fuckin diamond!!!
(Scouty13) zz
(Scouty13) fool
(l02d) scouty whats wrong with you?
(Scouty13) nothing, whats wrong with you?
(Scouty13) oh fuk
(l02d) you had to give me a diamond!
(Scouty13) gtg get shitfast back
(l02d) i gave you 10stacks
(Scouty13) no, I didn’t
(l02d) then give me my fuckin cobble back
(Scouty13) relax, its just cobble
(Daiyamondo) Wasn’t it Big who’d give diamond?
(Scouty13) yeah
(Scouty13) I told him so
(l02d) yeah wormy to big and i to scouty
(Scouty13) but lo2d wanted to give me 10 stacks first
(Scouty13) so I was like
(Scouty13) kthxbai
(Marldain) That is the definition of theft
(Scouty13) no, its the definition of ignorance on his part
(l02d) damn scouty i would trade a full chest with u
[Hiosa connected]
(Marldain) That’s like going grocery shopping and walking out the door.
(Scouty13) no its like giving back your groceries because you dont have enough money
(Scouty13) and the cashier gives you extra shit
(Daiyamondo) Just give ’em back, will ya?
(l02d) scouty give back my cobble and stfu
(Scouty13) nah you ruined it for yourself
(allometry) scouty, give back what you owe him, otherwise I’ll make sure no body does biz with you again
(Anpan) l02d: I don’t think swearing is a good idea
(allometry) got it?
(Hiosa) whats wrong?
(Scouty13) I dont owe him anything
(allometry) bad trade agreement with scouty and l02
(Grandiosa_1) scout will become the enron of minecraft
(Daiyamondo) And he did?
(allometry) looking at the logs hiosa, there was a trade agreement that broke down with l02d and scouty
(l02d) damn scouty drive to hell, nobody had to traid with u again
(allometry) it broke down, scotty still has l02d’s trade items
(Scouty13) nothing broke down
(Scouty13) I was gonna teleport to home
(Scouty13) and he threw 10 stacks at me
(Scouty13) and suddenly he goes bitching for a diamond

I have built four warp gates in spawn that teleport you to the 4 new spawn outposts in the 4 corners of the map and back. The outpost are not finished yet, I will see what kind of features I will build on them over time. Suggestions welcome.

Also, I disabled that people can invite others to their home. This should prevent that public homes are used as general warp points for anybody.

I am thinking a lot recently how to add more interactivity, features and rewards into the server. Here are my thoughts:

• I received a couple of donations recently. Some are errr… how do I say this… hmmm… cautious (0.02 USD). Others are outright generous (50 USD!). I want to reward this. I will make a special userlevel for donators above a certain minimum (probably 5 USD) with stages (1-5 or so) and reward them. There will be free lots and possibly in-game cash once I install the iConomy plugin (this week probably). I am interested what other rewards you can think of that still keep the game interesting.
• I have seen some grouping going on and some people who want to make their story heard, do PvP etc. I would be fine allowing people to write their own clan page and submit screenshots etc, by giving them (moderated) write access to the blog. I would be very happy if people would be up to this. Please write in the comments if you want to do that.
• I have reserved 4 lots on the corners of the newly claimed area and will install warp gates there with a new plugin, so people can warp there from spawn. I want to build the surrounding buildings on that lot in different styles, and they should have a set of features like the spawn (hospital, arenas, trading post etc). I most probably will restrict iConomy trading to these places to make people get around more instead of trading stuff virtual.
• I have been thinking if I should reserve more lots for infrastructure and/or additional public areas (possibly smaller than the central one). If you think this is a good idea, please comment which lots you would see suitable for this. I would rather have them symmetrically around the center so access is equally easy for all.
• I am thinking to give architects 2 lots and VIPs 4 lots. The new size of the map allows for this and also from a system point of view there should not be any problem to automate this easily. More about this next week.
• I am very open for suggestions on how to make the game more “real” and less abstract or virtual. While warping around and using /home is nice and all, it takes people away from each other. Having to walk to a warp gate and then jumping from there to spawn sounds more appealing to me than using /home.
• I will be writing code that lets me find users that never applied for building rights and delete them. Also I want to find users that have a lot but did not login for more than a month, send them a warning and delete if they dont login afterwards. Unfortunately, there is no easy way still to reset lots. However, I know that one of the plugin authors is working on that. So even if a lot is “old”, there is a chance for recycling in the future. This will make it easier to let someone move somewhere completely different and leave old stuff behind. I am not so keen on doing this however unless I know I can reset the old lot w/o problems.

Any opinion on this is highly appreciated.

I have just enlarged the borders of the map from coordinates -1000/1000 to -1500/15000 in both n/s and e/w directions. Please go to the 2D map to see the result. This means that we have more than doubled our available lots to almost 860 publicly available regions.

Please not that because of this, all lot names have changed. The owners & members should be still the same though!

I left a 5 block gap where the railway went around the old border for further infrastructure. So those blocks which touch the old borders are 5 blocks smaller than the others. Also, the new lots are not available yet.I still have to decide if I will make space for public areas in the new regions or maybe other infrastructure lots (for later warp gates, nether gates etc). I can well imagine to build gates that teleport people closer to their destination since the new lots are too far away to walk there safely. I will announce once the new lots are available. The new lots that are the outmost 3 fields (A-C, 1-3, 28-30, AB-AD) will be generated newly so they have the new trees and ores in them!

So feel free and go around exploring the new areas, they will be up for grabs in a couple of days!

I just updated the system including all plugins. These are the news:

• the /home command now has a warmup and a cooldown. This means you cannot run from mobs and cannot jump around permanently.
• The IRC chat is broken for now. Chat from the server does not arrive on the IRC channel. ope this will be fixed soon . Works again!
  
• The in-game chat channel system changed. Read the respective page for instructions.
• Since the server has become very noisy, I have changed the channels. Switch off the /n channel to have a quieter chat. the /g channel should be the standard.
• I also took the server off the serverlist again to slow the influx of new people.
• The PVP Arena works now!

Since there are so many new people recently, I decided to introduce another level to reward those that have been with us since a long time. Two VIPs can recommend another user as Architect. The Architect has the same rights as a VIP, but the VIPs can now get 2 lots for themselves.

Thanks Hiosa and Sockso for the suggestions & Help on this!

I got two lot reservation emails yesterday. 2 almost identical email addresses including realnames at almost the same time reserve two spots next to each other. Thought they were a bit fishy. So ban both users and replied:

Subject: Re: Uncovery Minecraft Area Protection B10
Nice try buddy.
Please go somewhere else

Uncovery

Today I get a reply:

But please, its just my mates account but he just doesnt have an email, please we thought this would be the perfect server, what would be the point in me having two accounts on the server??? Please

If he is honest, the conclusions are:

• He would not know what to do with more space – bad. All other people want 2 spaces if not more because they build large things.
• He is too young/stupid/whatever to register an email – very bad
• He gives his realname email account to someone instead of just registering another one for him – very, very bad

If he is lying, the conclusions are:

• How stupid does he think I am?
• (could not come up with another one on this…)

Ok, I renamed the “homeowners” to “settlers” and the “users” to “peasant”.

Also, if you go to the 2D Map, you will see red boxes which represent the actual position of online users. These are updated every couple of minutes. The upper-left corner should be the exact position of the mentioned user. I also will include a user list on the front page later.

Guys, I was wondering if the User Level “Homeowner” is not too long as a text to be displayed in chat. There are several alternatives that we have. We can either abbreviate it (H.O. / Home / whatever) or rename it alltogether (Member / Rergular / Lot).

Opinions on this are welcome here in the comments!