I have just now finished to build the skylands railway. This is how this works:

• Unless you live on lots that end in 11, take the north/south rail until you reach the lots with your number. Then take the east-west rail until you reach your letter
• If you live on a lot ending with 11, you can directly take the east-west railway at the gate.
• Since I copy-pasted the east-west rail in one single piece, I have not traveled on most of them. This means that there can be holes, lava & water spills etc. Please be careful when you travel, there is no insurance! The copy-paste is not 100% reliable, so it has to be checked.
• Since I am quite busy recently, I do not have the time to fix the railway in case there is something broken. Lot owners are responsible for the railway on their lot to be functional and free of lava & water.
• Lot owners can remove fences, add platforms etc. Do not change the position of your station or build deviations that would lead commuters away from the normal track.

Upgrade

I have just upgraded the server. The only changed plugin is the one that makes the gates. Since the old one was abandoned, I switched to a new one. You should not feel any change. This plugin also defines the different worlds and now also the border for the normal world. If you live on the outer border of the world and it has changed for you, please tell me.

Anyhow if anything changed or does not work, please tell me!

New world! Skylands!

We have a new world, the skylands!

This is an early announcement. Not everything is 100% setup yet. Please be patient.

You will be able to reach it from a portal on the roof of the central administration building. This world consists of islands floating in the air. This world is also split into lots, but 200 x 200 sized to accommodate the fact that there is not that much surface per lot. Also only citizens, architects and VIPs are allowed to reserve a lot or build in this world. Otherwise the settings and commands are identical with the normal world.

Since the islands are not connected, it is currently impossible to reach lots since they are protected: You cannot build yourself a bridge to cross lots. I am about to build a transit railway in that world. I also still have to write the reservation mechanic for that world. In the meantime, you can ask me to reserve lots for you manually. [Update] There is a form now in the Server access menu where you can reserve a lot![/Update] Please have patience though while I am exploring the whole map and building the railway. There is 2D map and a 3D map available.

I have upgraded the server 95%. I already copied over the maps for testing. However, these are still temporary. If you connect to 25565, and build something, IT WILL BE LOST!

What’s the status?

• iConomy does not work, neither do the related other plugins & commands. No idea when the plugin author fixes the plugins.
• Portals work, but I cannot create those anymore in-game. Should not be a huge issue, but I have to find an alternative soon
• Single-player-like nether is disabled (the version with obsidian portals). I tested it, and it creates nether portals everywhere, so I had to remove the feature. Nether is and stays like it was over the last months
• automatic level-upgrade does not yet work (guest -> peasant -> settler). I first need to fix the code and remove the “peasant” level as discussed before
• Automatic kicking of idle players does not work

I need to fix the automated level upgrade before I can finalize the upgrade. This should be happening within the next 24 hours, hopefully.

Since 1.6.6 seems to be the final bugfix, there is now a “recommended build” of the plugin-manamgent software available. This means that there will be from now on plugins released for 1.6.6 and I can start testing them and them upgrading the server maps to 1.6.6.

However, there are some major changes in the most important plugin, the one that manages the permissions. There are some changes that make it easier for me to manage users and accounts, which is very good. These changes will not be available immediately since I will try to upgrade the server ASAP without making use of those changes and then later install upgrades to my software that should make stuff easier. One of the changes will be that lot reservation can be done instantly from then on.

I will also have to wait until all the other plugins support the new version of permissions. I will have to see how long that takes. Probably most of them should be upgraded over the weekend however. Also, there are some plugins, namely the portal plugins, as mentioned before, that will not be upgraded. I will have to find a new one, install it, test it and then convert all the portals so they work as before.

Regarding the new features in 1.6.6: I know there are maps now, and I am not sure how to deal with them in the darklands. I am tempted to block them to keep the difficulty level up. Same goes for the darklands. I also want to avoid that the map of the darklands gets even bigger. It is now already several Gigabytes large. If people have the in-game maps, this might get even worse. Regarding the nether portals, I will do my best to find a working way. There are several issues:

• they are noisy
• they create portals on the other side. The nether might be very quickly swamped with rogue portals. Same goes for lots that are protected. People will have suddenly a portal on their lot because someone thought to make on in random place in the dakrlands.
• Most places in the darklands would create a portal outside of the normal world borders which is a huge problem.
• If I make all portals in the real world come out at the same place in the nether, where do you come out when you enter the portal from the nether?

I will therefore most probably disable the portals and keep a system similar to what we have now.

On top of all of this, you might have realized that I was hardly online this week. This will also be the case for the next 2 days since I am very busy right now. On top of that I will have another business trip next week from Sunday night to Thurdsay. I will try to upgrade the server over the weekend, but no guarantee here, sorry. There might be a longer (1 week) delay if I cannot do it until then.

There is a temporary map up at port 25565. The map is TEMPORARY. It will be deleted after we upgrade the main maps to 1.6. The only protection that map offers is the whitelist. Otherwise it’s vanilla 1.6

[Update] WARNING: Notch only realized some time on Saturday 28th how sever the bugs in 1.6.4 are. The plugin community refuses to work on updates until there will be a more stable version of 1.6 out. Several of the new added features CRASH the server and/or the client. Since the temp server here at uncovery.net does not run in the same sophisticated backup/restart/protection environment, it is highly likely that the 1.6 server will have extended down times after crashes. I therefore strongly recommend NOT to update or to downgrade until a more stable version is available. [/Update]

Once the plugins are coming out I will test them there. Backups of the main server should work now during this time.

On another note, the mapper is broken. The lots are shown correctly, but the underlying image is not being updated. I contacted the mapper software author to find out how to fix that. Found a solution and fixed the mapper. Current map now online. Updated daily as usual.

Guys, minecraft 1.6 is upon us, reported to come in the next 6 days. What will happen?

First of all, you will be asked to update. Better not do it. I will be running the server as-is for those who do not upgrade and want their map. For the others, I will be running a parallel server on port 25565, with a temporary map WITHOUT protection, lots etc. once 1.6 comes out. Once the plugins etc will be updated, I will move the maps to the 1.6 server.

On a side note, the portals will most probably break on that update since the plugin author has abandoned it. I have currently not found any plugin that could replace it 1:1. We will see how we deal with this.

I upgraded the server to 1.5 today and made a chain of mistakes. Essentially the issue is that the ‘world’ map got reset to the status of 4 days ago, darklands and nether are fine. For those of you who were on 1.5 already and on the temp map this should not matter at all. For the others who are affected, I am really sorry about this. What went wrong?

• I did not make a manual backup before moving map files
• I made a mistake when copying the files
• The backup failed since 26th. Apparently it does not work when the temp server is running for some strange reason.

As a reminder: There will be NO refunds whatsoever. It’s in the FAQ, read it please.

Upgrade issues in general:

• The mall is off since the plugin was handed over to a new developer, waiting for the update to the latest version
• Lightning will cause fire. The fire should not however spread as all other fire too. It will hurt you too if you get hit. Rain seems to have a bug in that it might not rain in some areas. Don’t ask me why.
• Please check all the functions of minecarts etc and tell me if something is broken
• You will have to replace your gold blocks on your minecart tracks with powered rails sooner or later. I will make them work for now as normal, but please work on removing them!
• Sandstone does not seem to kill minecarts. Trying to fix it.
• The contest for the Egyptian statue will be extended for a week (8th of May)

Oh and in case anyone of you was wondering what I did on my holiday (show and tell, anyone?) check out the best of the 600 pictures here.

For all of you who cannot wait or upgraded already, I setup a 1.5 version server running on 25565 port. This is a “vanilla” server without any addons, protection or similar stuff. The only thing that is working is the whitelist. Otherwise everything is like Single Player. PVP is off.

Do not come and ask me to keep this map after the plugins work with 1.5. I will not.

The current 1.4 server will be online until all important plugins are working with 1.5.

[UPDATE]IMPORTANT: If you are just joining the server for the first time, the whitelisting function will NOT work immediately. I have to manually restart the 1.5 server for new entries to work. So do NOT complain about whitelisting not working![/UPDATE]

I just did an emergency update to the server. This has nothing to do with 1.5, you still need 1.4 to play on the server.

This emergency update is to prevent a crash exploit. Read more here:

http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/mc1-4-new-craftbukkit-build-available-fixes-crash-exploit.13570/

It say that the plugins should work fine with this. If there is however an issue, please post here.

I will be doing my first dive of this holiday in 30 minutes! Wait for the pictures!

Ok so I am officially on holiday now. Just as a reminder, do not upgrade to 1.5. Do not panic while I am away. If there are any issues please post here on the blog so I get an email. The forum does not do that.

Have fun!

I just updated all plugins to the latest version. This means the following changes:

• The Chest shop format has changed. See the new format here.

Watch this space for more as I discover it :-)

If you want to upgrade already (and help me test stuff) you can connect to port 25565 with your upgraded 1.4 client. When testing new plugins etc I will be restarting it frequently, and there is a temp map w/o protection etc, but you can go and tame your first wolf!

What works?

• IRC chat (you can even chat with the 1.3 server)
• in-game chat channels
• Whitelist
• Command permissions
• Minecarts

I will be updating the list for the other things that are tested and working

I updated the craftbukkit core and the plugins

• Metal doors should work again.
• Also the AFK kick should be in place firmly now.
• Will monitor lag regarding nether.
• Please check if minecart signs work