I fixed the /mod mute command today. I re-programmed it so that it does not only do a normal /mute but also actually takes all rights to communicate via IRC, /msg and /me from you. It’s also timed, so the mute expires automatically after the set time, and the usage is still the same. So we should have no more /msg and /me spam from muted users. Yay!

I have enabled now 1% chance for head drops to celebrate our 1000 days anniversary!

Enjoy, don’t lose your head! And to celebrate, a photo I took last night. It’s the milky way over Miyako Jima, near Okinawa, Japan. It’s the first time that I managed to take a photo like this, so I am quite happy with it.

So I will be gone for 1 more week now (this summer is quite crazy for me in terms of trips). I will be on holiday and not easily reachable, since I will be without internet most of the day, only having connections afternoons and nights. So if there is an emergency such as long sustained lag, crashes w/o recovery or anything else that seriously impedes game play, please be patient but please make sure to send me an email so I can fix it ASAP when I get online. Do not assume that someone else sent me a message already. I rather get 10 emails than none. You might not want to disturb me, but from my perspective, I think that since I put a lot of time to make the server what it is, I also want it to be up and running smoothly.

Relating to this forum thread, I have now enabled a simple scheduler that enables the following special days:

• Hungry Wednesdays: On Wednesdays, there is no auto-heal in the Darklands. You will have to eat to heal from any damage.
• Bloody Sundays: On Sundays, PVP is on in the Darklands. The area around spawn is safe, but once you venture outside, you can be legally killed by other users. Those users can keep all your stuff, and there is no complaints allowed!

I will introduce more stuff over time to make every day special in some way. I will try to find things that are easy to implement and that offer some kind of challenge and also at times rewards. You will be able to find the complete list on this page under the “Features” menu.

I am about to revamp the shop functions. We will be soon able to trade potions, named items, damaged items etc etc.

During the revamp, I am working with a plugin developer and his beta-version plugin improvements. This means, that for a short while, we might be missing some functions.

Changes:

• Enchanted items cannot be traded (for now). You can withdraw and buy whatever is in the shop, but you should not add any to the shop or deposit.
• Potions can be traded now
• Damaged items can be traded now

I have changed the system we are using for the money managment from iConomy to mineconomy. The iConomy system has not been maintained since more than a year now and I wanted to make sure we continue with a properly maintained system.

Most of the money transactions are currently done directly through the database however, not even touching the system. Also, the new system allows for banks to be created, but all of them have the same interest rate (which we are not using at the moment). But the idea of banks gave me an idea of a system that would be fairly easy to program, and I wanted to know if there is a strong interest in that. Please also comment on how the system could work in the respective details, this is only a draft.

The Uncovery Server Banking System: “Uncstreet & the Empire Bank”

The Empire Bank: Users can have accounts at the Empire bank just as now. There is no interest, and you cannot loan money. It’s nothing more than a piggybank with access to the money-tools we have, such as the shop, the lottery etc.

Uncstreet (User-Run Banks): Users, from a certain level on, can make their own banks and define 4 basic parameters, all of which can be zero:

• Interest on loans
• Interest on deposits
• Fee to open a bank account
• minimum balance

The fee should prevent users from switching accounts too quickly. The minimum balance can work as a guarantee for the bank owner (it can be negative or positive) to make sure the account is worth maintaining, so people do not have to deal with a 1 Unc loan.

There could be also a deposit system that serves as a collateral. If someone takes money (the bank or a user), they would have to deposit (how much %?) a collateral at the Empire bank. If they do not have the cash, it would have to be generated through selling of goods on the market of course. The collateral would be paid if the user owing the money gets banned for example. required deposits would be automatically checked so people cannot take money without a required deposit being available. They also cannot withdraw the deposit as long as there are outstanding loans.

Interest would be always paid out of the lender’s personal account at the empire bank, once a (real life) day. If there is no money available to pay the interest, the account (or the bank) get’s frozen.

There would be credit reports for each user and balance sheets for the banks online so everyone can see what is happening on each bank.

What dynamics would this have?

I can imagine the following dynamics that makes this interesting:

• There would be a certain risk involved in lending money. Is the user trustworthy? How long is he on the server?
• Since people have a way to make more money, they can finance larger projects by paying other users to build something (like the user-run contest recently).
• The server would have a stronger economical dynamic and a stronger “game of life” characteristic.

I would be happy to hear what you think about this

• Is there something that I overlooked?
• Is it to complicated?
• Do we need the collateral deposits?
• What else could we do (in a second step for example)
• Would you open a bank? Would you take deposits or give out loans?
• Would you deposit in a bank with an interest if there was a certain risk?
• Would you take a loan if it would cost you interest?

I have now taken use of a new feature or 1.6.2, which allows to freeze time. So far, plugins have had this feature, but they would reset the time every minute, and cause lag. So the darklands has now been frozen to 23:00 – permanently, without the use of additional plugins. So no more sunrises, no more “safe time” from mobs! Enjoy :)

Also, I have made some conclusions from user reports, logfiles etc regarding the darklands. It appears that when someone wanders the darklands, all auto-generated storage minecarts in the underground mines are being added to the minecart mania database. I am not sure how much lag they cause, but they are listed in the database as “moving” and are in there until restart of the server. I filed a bug report with the plugin author, we will see if this gets fixed.

Someone is apparently running a faulty system that spawns and fills hundreds of storage minecarts. I regularly get messages over 250+ storage minecarts on the server.

I would like that this setup is removed ASAP. The moment I find out who is running this, and I am spending considerable time doing so, the person will be insta-banned.

A plugin we are using changed it’s command structure. When making lot ownership changes, I need to tell the server that something changed and tell it to reload the lot ownerships to activate the changes. Since the plugin update, I cannot simply reload all lot ownerships for all worlds, I have to specify a single world to reload.

So since the upgrade, whenever someone got a new lot or added someone to a lot, the currently used command to reload failed, and the server would not know about it until a restart, when all lot ownerships would be re-read. I fixed the dozen occurrences in the code now where lot ownership are reloaded (contests, etc). I could not test all different options but since it’s quite straight forward, everything should be fine.

If you come across someone who cannot access a lot after a change has been done, but the name is on the 2D map, please ask them what exactly they tried to do and send a support ticket. Then I can check the code and fix it.

I fixed the aether. Some strange bug prevented it from loading, I found a workaround to get it going. People who died when teleporting to the Wither arena should be fine now, too.

I am finally back from my trip and planning to do the upgrade to 1.6.2 this weekend. I have by now received updated versions for most of the plugins and also had a chance to do a test run with a 1.6.2 server, saw which ones are failing and seen new updates coming in for those, so it’s looking good. So most likely Saturday will be the time for the update, let’s hope everything will work!

I have removed over 1000 minecRts from the server now and also heard that some players were toying with large scale TNT contraptions before the server crashed… I will monitor both uses from now on. Please be sensible, or I will have to disable some features.

I just re-setup the ramdisk (should automate that sometime…) and restarted the server. So it should be fine and running now. Not sure if the problems of the last 24 hours will be back.

To give you some background:

I was noticed by some users that there are some issues. Admittedly a bit late, I would be happy if you guys are more proactive with this. I think you guys are trying to be nice, but do not worry, if I do not have time, I will act accordingly. If the server is down or crashing repeatedly, please tell me. I won’t be mad at anyone.

So I check on the server and could not find anything specific. But I also found that some off-server processes (simple stuff, really) would take an intense amount of time. So I assumed that the hard disk might have some faulty places, since this kind of stuff normally takes a lot of time to read/write, but the processor and the rest of the system would appear to be fine.

So I created a file that would force a disk check on reboot and rebooted the machine. It’s impossible to run that during the machine running. I was not aware how long a check would take on 2 1TB disks, so I was not suspicious until I posted a question on reddit and finally contacted tech support who was also not able to connect to the machine. They rebooted it, did a file system check and did not have any issues as it seems. I then restarted the webserver through my mobile phone. I could not install the ramdisk howver since the SSH app on my phone is not really convenient. Since I am back at my laptop now, I could restart the MC server after setting up the ramdisk.

Now the only thing left is to check the file system logfile and to hope that the issues are resolved through the check. If not, we will have to disable maps one-by-one to find out where the issue is in the end. Let’s see. Please tell me if you see the same lag/kicks/reboots occurring.

I have now managed to restart the machine. Since I am on the way, I cannot restart the mc server right now, will do so when I get back to my laptop tonight (in 3-4 hours).

I have completed a file system check, and have yet to see the logfiles to see if there was an issue. If there was not, the search for the issue continues..

I am trying to find and fix the issue that has been lagging the server over the recent 24 hours…

Since the map seems to be corrupted in one place or the other, I am now re-rendering the whole 3D map and see if that returns any spots with issues.

I will be traveling over the coming 3 weeks (half business, half private) and therefore can put only minimal attention on the server. Should something crash, please still send me emails etc as usual. But do not panic if I do not log on too often.

After many attempts to slowly push people over the edge of a cliff without them complaining too much, I finally managed to coax everyone from the paradise-like skylands to the mob-infested hell-hole called “aether”.

Thanks to everyone who has participated early on and thanks to everyone else for finally moving yourselves :D. Just kidding of course.

I think I removed the skylands references from the code wherever I could. If you find it mentioned somewhere, please let me know.

We are closing in on the big date, with about 30 days and 800 users short to the goal!I am looking for suggestions what to do on this event, so please comment!