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Shop Manager history added!

Posted on by

I made a quick add-on to the shop manager due to frequent requests: If you go on the sellers or buyers tab, you can click on any username and get the recent hsitory of all the items the user bought or sold. The layout is not perfect yet, but the data should be correct.

1826 Minecraft account leaked. So far no active users affected – but please check!

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A German IT website has found a list of 1826 compromised minecraft accounts – emails + passwords. I have searched and found said list (since they did not mention where to find it) and checked the list against our userbase.
So far only 2 users (who have not been active for years) have been matched with our users. Of course I can check only for users where the email address used to register the minecraft account is the same as the one they used for the server here. So in case you used a different address, please go here and check if your email is in the list.

New Donator perk: Lot expiry protection

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I am implementing right now a new perk for donators: For the term that you have ++ donator level, your lots won’t expire. I think it’s very fair that as long as you “pay for it”, you should be able to keep your lots, too.

Update: You can now see how many months a user has left as donator (above 12 months it will just show “More than 1 year”) on their user info page that links from the user directory.

item names issues

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You might have seen stuff in the system (deposit, shop) where the name of the item has been missing. This was because of the quite annoying switch in minecraft from item IDs (numbers, 0 for air, 1 for stone etc) to item names (“air”, “stone” etc). Since Mojang decided to move (which in general is a good idea since you can read code easier), there has been some confusions:

  1. I had to change all the code that deals with stuff – which is quite a lot and update all the databases
  2. The new item names have changed over time (“ink_sack” is now “dye” etc).
  3. Websend, one of the major plugins that we use, is using different names (I could not really find out why) so I had to write code that alerts me when there is a name incoming from websend that is unknown and then add that to a translation table.

Because of those issues, the tables (requests, deposit, offers) have started to contain item names that were not recognizable and therefore showed up empty. So I now wrote a function that takes the current names from the minecraft wiki, checks them against the internal code and then finds out if there are any entries in the tables that do not match. Then I get alerts and can fix 100% of all occurrences of the bad names.

So there are still 2 issues remaining:

  1. I did not have the time to check for 100% of all items where websend uses a different name than the standard. I found 50 items and will get an alert each time someone has something in their inventory that was not recognized by the code, so this should fix itself eventually.
  2. If there are new changes in the minecraft code in future versions. I have to run the above check again to make sure everything is OK. If you see any item in the shop that does not have a proper name, please let me know immediately. Otherwise you risk losing the stock of that item.

Dibs on lot enabled!

Posted on by

I have finished programming and enabled the dibs function now.
You can now go to the lot manager and call dibs on a lot on the bottom of the list.
The lots you have dibs on will be listed also on the bottom of the list.
You can select and action (none or reset) on transfer and cancel the dibs call anytime.

ToDo:

  • Write the actual function that transfers the lot to you after it’s been abandoned. This is a part of the lot reset process fix.
  • Make it somehow / somewhere visible how many people have dibs on a lot.

Dibs on a lot – v2

Posted on by

What some people described in the comments  on the last post is pretty much how I planned it anyhow. Not sure why it did not come out in the text above, but let me describe the process here in more detail (this is a draft):

  • You can reserve (or call dibs) on a currently occupied lot – no matter which world.
  • You will get the lot if the previous owner abandons it (then it will be reset in any case) or when the user expires (then it’s up to you if you want to reset it).
  • If several people want to have the same lot, the first who reserved it will get it. The others stay in the queue until they either withdraw the reservation or until they are in line to get the lot.
  • It does not matter if you are next door or not.
  • You need to have the right to get that lot (i.e. you will not increase your overall maximum lot count when you get that lot) or the money to afford it.
  • You should have the option to reset the lot if you want to. (That’s a good idea I got from the comments).
  • Several people can reserve a lot. If someone reserves first, they get it when it’s free.

The big question that I have now is this: Either we make it super-strict or very opportunistic.

  • Super strict: You can only reserve a lot if you can afford it or have a free slot. Once you reserved one lot, and you have only one free slot, you cannot even get a free lot unless you revoke your reservation. You total lots would always be your lots + your reservations. No reservations and not lots unless you you give up a lot or a reservation. If a lot costs money, it’s gone until you withdraw your reservation.
  • Opportunistic: You can reserve anything you like. 20 people could try to reserve the same lot. One person can reserve 20 lots in empire. First come first serve once it becomes free. It would show how desirable a lot is and also build some reputation for the builder. However, once it becomes free, the person first person in line who has the money and available free lots can actually get it.

Both have advantages and disadvantages, mostly psychological though. The end result would be pretty much the same except that the strict option would force people to think about it more often and switch around their reservations as lots are given to someone else further up the queue. The opportunistic option would favor older players and create a kind of rating for the user. I think there is not a lot of bad in the opportunistic way. People have to be careful that their account is not drained once they get a lot they are not prepared to pay for, and empire lots are not easy to get rid of once you have one.

So I am more on the opportunistic path which is also much easier to implement since I do not have to add all the checks in many places. I would like to hear from all of you if you see a fundamental flaw in the system however.

Calling dibs on a lot?

Posted on by

There is again and again the issue that a user has disappeared but the lot is of interest for other people. Be it that someone got upgraded and would like to get the lot next door or that a user built something on the lot of another user and does not want to lose the work.

I have been thinking about enabling a “calling dibs” for lots that are about to expire (for example from 10 days on before the expiry date). It would be on a first-come-first-serve base. Once the lot is due for reset, it’s checked if a user has called dibs on it and then the system tries to give the lot to the user who called first. It’s checked if the user has the free lots/money to get it and if successful transfers the lot instead of resetting it. If we want to do it fancy (and if I have the time) we could progress to the next in line in case the first candidate fails to get it.

The concern here is that this would give quite an advantage to people who have the cash for a kingdom lot, since one could get dibs for a lot, get it, deconstruct all what is there, sell the stuff and then refund the lot.

I would be happy to get some feedback from all of you if you think this would be an unfair process in any kind or if you think that this is something we should do. Should we ask a higher price (2x, 10x?) for a kingdom lot? Since empire lots cannot be refunded, I do not see the issue so much there, but for kingdom lots, this is different.