As I wrote earlier, I have been quite busy the last weeks with becoming a father, on top with some huge projects at work. Since this week, the biggest part of these projects were finished and I have a bit more time now. So here are some updates on what was going on in the last days on the server, and what to expect in the coming weeks:

• We got listed for some weird reason on a pixelmon server list and attracted a lot of new users who then got disappointed that this is not a pixelmon server after all. I had to go there, claim the listing and fix it.
• There seems to be an issue with Vanity titles. I looked into the code and could not find any obvious issues. Please do me the favor and try it out with small and short vanity titles. Please write down exactly what you did, what you expected to happen and what actually did happen so that I can fix this.
• Minecart mania still is bugged, even the latest version is creating issues on this server. I will have to do a reduced test-server and see if there is a conflict. If I cannot find it, I will have to switch to something else for good.
• There were several strings (color codes etc) that people can write into books that would make the in-game commands to fail if you carried the book on you. I informed the author of the plugin causing this, and the error was fixed. I am waiting now for the new version of the plugin being released and then we should be good. It’s not a critical issue but can be confusing/annoying.
• The shop data website is bugged. There is so much stuff in the shop now that the code generating the table times out before it can finish. I need to either aggregate it or split it over multiple pages.
• The settler test has room for improvement. When people click “back” on the page after failing the test, their selected lot is changed to the default (first in the list). I am not sure how to best fix this. There could be a second confirmation step where people are shown the lot they get again before it’s assigned for example.
• The user voting needs to be fixed. This should be done soon.

Mojang clarified some things in regards to monetization and it turns out that the system I came up with was exactly along the rules all the time. So we’ll be continuing as we did.

The Websend author confirmed the issues that I am having and is working on a fix.

So you probably realized that things seem to have been falling apart recently. So here is a quick wrap-up of what’s been going on so you can make you own guess how it will proceed from here:

I have been extremely busy recently in business since a large project started in the company I work. the project takes place largely overseas and theoretically I should be there to join the project. I have traveled a lot in Feb/March for this project but on top of this my wife was pregnant and I had to stay home to help her with the preparations and then recently with giving birth. So good news: I am a father. Bad news: I have to be at home in the evening and afternoon to join telephone conferences with Europe, normally until 23:00… I have additional family in the house now to take care of on top of this.

On top of that, the server upgrade did not go as smoothly as I thought. While there were some kinks that are normal, and which I could figure out quite quickly, the biggest issue still ongoing is websend, a plugin that runs 90% of the custom server functions, including whitelisting, settler upgrades, etc. I updated it to the latest version but in the latest version the link from website function back to the server became extremely unstable. It works sometimes, and sometimes it does not. I wanted to contact the author through the plugin website, and my password there did not work. I tried to reset it, that did not work either. I reported the issue, let’s see what happens. So I will have to downgrade the version and undo some changes that I did to install the new version. Once that is done, I hope we can go back to normal operations.

On top of that, because of the kinks mentioned above, one lot reset cycle ignored the donator levels and reset all lots owned by donators who have been absent since 30+ days instead of 60+ days. I have to find out who was affected and restore their lots, too.

I will try to do all of that as soon as possible, but I do not know when I will have time – as you can guess….

Since there are still quite come issues with the update (whitelist does not work. lot reset process is broken) I have suspended new user registrations and lot operations until this is fixed.

I have now fixed the very last user ranks (I hope) but there is still some issue with the whitelist. If you are a new user, please stand by until this is fixed. If you register now, I will add you manually to the whitelist, so you should be able to login, you just have to wait a bit.

Vanity titles were also fixed. If you find anything else where you did not submit a ticket yet, please do so.

I am upgrading the server. This might take a while, so please stand by. Not all went through smoothly and I still need to fix some functions on the server. If you do not have the right userlevel, please do not worry, it will be fixed.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• comeelio (from DesignerDonator to MasterDonator)
• pagreifer (from DesignerDonatorPlus to MasterDonatorPlus)
• Tar_Bender (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• kalmins (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• electrofuzz6 (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• JoBilly (from Designer to Master)
• tbrewda36 (from DesignerDonatorPlus to MasterDonatorPlus)
• mikemike64 (from Citizen to Architect)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• poke0523 (from ArchitectDonatorPlus to DesignerDonatorPlus)
• floored1585 (from Citizen to Architect)
• linklux (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

You all probably noticed that I have not been around a lot. The issue is that I am extremely busy at work at least until the end of May. I am planning to upgrade soon to the latest minecraft version and then to do the promised upgrades to enable username changes.

When that will happen, I cannot say right now. I hope I will get down to upgrading the server someday in the next 1-3 weeks and then later do the name change upgrade, maybe in June.

What I have to do for the upgrade is essentially run a test with all the recently updated plugins. If that runs well, it’s a 2-3 hour work.

So sorry that I have not been showing myself a lot, but right now I have hardly time to spend at home even.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• camerissan (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• ImaWeezul (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)
• sleepystrangekid (from DesignerDonatorPlus to MasterDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• chenoa (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

Mojang is preparing right now for people to be able to change their username. Instead of a username, people will have long, random code (called UUID, for example “87a39b0fd47b445dbd2e9ff86f0c70d3”) that will ensure their identity. They username will be just a kind of nickname which will not matter to minecraft anymore for identifying users.

While this is nice for minecraft, this is an issue for us since we store the username also in many databases and most prominently on this blog and forum to identify users.

In order to deal with this, there are several steps required:

• Make the custom-written code UUID-aware. Whenever some of the code is called that we wrote ourselves, it has to know the current username AND the UUID of the users. This is done already.
• Track username changes. The custom code has to be able to update it’s database whenever someone logs in after changing their username and potentially even keeps a history of usernames to be able to track actions back properly.
• Upgrade the minecraft and all plugins as they are released and start working with UUID instead of usernames. This is work in progress. The first plugin was released already. I also have tested briefly all the existing plugins with the new minecraft version and there does not seem to be a huge break in the system. So we might be able to upgrade to the latest minecraft version soon.
• Make the custom-written code able to deal with changing usernames. This is a major issue, since we store a LOT of information based on usernames. All the tables will have to be updated to use the UUID instead. This is a major coding effort that has to be done before we can upgrade to 1.8, whenever that is released.
• Make the blog UUID aware. We cannot continue to allow people to manage their lots, karma or other things on the blog if the username on the blog is not always the same as in the game. So we have to replace the logins of all users with their UUID, and then manipulate the login form so that you can enter the current username, the blog will then retrieve your UUID from the database and use that as your actual login. Instead of your userlogin, your nickname field will then be updated with your changing username as we go, so people can recognize commenters with their username instead of their UUID. This is the only way to ensure that your permissions and ownerships are safeguarded while you change your username over time.

So, as you can see, there is quite some work ahead with this. I am not sure when I will have time to work on all this, but the fact that I have now, after thinking about it for several days, come up with a comprehensive strategy to make this work out at all is a huge progress for myself. There are still a couple of things I am scratching my head over but hope I will see the solution once I start working on it before I go bald. One challenge for example is to deal with individual databases upgrading themselves along with plugins to be UUID-based instead of username based and my code having to be flexible enough to deal with the transition without me closing down the whole system for some hours of testing each time.

CHANGE YOUR MINECRAFT PASSWORD – WHY

A recent exploit found in OpenSSL (an open-source security socket layer, meant to secure/encrypt internet traffic) called “Heartbleed“, made it possible for hackers to find and use passwords on systems using OpenSSL.

WAIT, MOJANG WAS HACKED?

No, Mojang was not hacked. Their servers are not vulnerable to the OpenSSL exploit, but the load balancers they use from Amazon were. As a precaution, it has been recommended that you update your Minecraft password, just to be sure.

Mojang said:

WAIT – DO I CHANGE MY MINECRAFT PASSWORD, MOJANG PASSWORD, OR BOTH?

If you have not migrated your account, change your password at Minecraft.net.
If you have migrated your account, change your password at Mojang.com.

Uncovery.me never used the affected versions of OpenSSL, so nothing to do here.

Regardless of whether you have or have not migrated, it is crucial to change your password.