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Kingdom lots too cheap?

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As you all know, the original usage for the kingdom was to have a larger space for group builds. And I know some people build some cool stuff and they use the kingdom exactly for what I created it for. But we have – just by counting – 24 main lots that have not even one member apart from the owner. Do not get me wrong please – I don’t want you to just run around and search for members now or add random people to your lot. But I have somehow the impression that some people bought a lot to have it as a personal space on top of the empire lot, and not for a group build, or even to build anything larger than 128×128 either. Some might have bought one to have it “just in case” or even because it seems cool to have one.

I might be wrong about this. But I am worried that the original plan failed to a certain extent. I wanted, as you know, make a new city world that is identical to the kingdom where we can move mega-builds one-to-one over so people can see it and fly around. If most of the space in the kingdom will be given away for mining spots or to people who just throw their towel on the sun chair to occupy it, I wonder how this will work out.

But I also do not know really what to do to fix it or if I should just ignore it. One option could have been to make kingdom lots MUCH more expensive so only people can afford it if they group together. Or I could have forced people to submit a plan for a build before I give one to them. Or if kingdom lots should expire sooner than normal lots.

Suggestions are welcome. How can we make sure that the kingdom is more then a status symbol or a mining spot for people who want to avoid the darklands? How do we fix it for the future? Shall we do anything about the rules for the future? Change the price only? Make an application process? Both? Or leave everything as it is?

Exciting stuff!

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Here is a little announcement for the coming weeks. We have Halloween coming up as well as our 2 year anniversary. Also btw we just overstepped 700 days of server activities AND 700 active users!

So what is coming up? First of all I have some fun goodie for all users during the last two weeks of October in the spirit of Halloween! Announcement will follow around the 14th of October.

Second of all, some bigger news regarding userlevels and voting rewards during the month of November where we will have some long term new stuff and one surprise every single day on which I have been working on together with the elders.

I went through some ideas for trick-or-treat, most of them abandoned. Here is a list of what was abandoned:

  • Replace all Diamond ores with pumpkins
  • 1% chance for a ban for the lottery
  • Converting all of empire into a snow biome
  • 1% chance for lightning strike on any shop transaction
  • random, secret & changing word triggers 1-week channel mute

If you have ideas on how to trick-or-treat, please let me know here!

 

Kingdom Lot purchases

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Guys, it seems that some people think it is smart to buy random street lots because they suspect sections of a stronghold within them or something else. Please be aware that I consider this a pretty idiotic thing. If you want to mine some stronghold blocks, go to the darklands. Imagine some guy being able to afford only one large lot, planning to expand and someone else coming and buying all the street lots around him to lock him in. If you are building a road, to your lot, fine. Get the street lot and build a road. But do not buy those just for mining or whatever other reasons.

I made now a new rule on the kingdom lot registration page:

ATTENTION (2): Do NOT BUY random corner or street lots somewhere. Those are meant for people to be able to connect their far away lot with the spawn with a road. If you buy those lots just at random next to other people’s lots, you limit those people from expanding their builds at a later point in time.

A ban and some technical stuff

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I have banned the user LevahjAK for Xraying. In other news, I have transferred all the worlds we have maps for onto a RAMdisk in the hope to reduce lag. We will see how that works. If you have an idea about linux HD caching and java memory settings you can read this here and try help me optimize the settings for the server.

And now to something completely different: I have finally capitalized all the ranks in the same way.

Parkour Contest

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The parkour contest is now copied over and ready for voting for those who have not done so yet. There were quite some issues with this one. First of all, I got delayed several times copying the entries. Luckily, with the new system, that will not happen again. Second of all, during the contest several of the people who submitted an entry moved their lot to the empire and the lot was reset. In the end we have 3 entries of which 1 I am not even sure who built it since it does not match at all the description (himisawesome’s one). I sent an email to him but did not get an answer. On top of that one user made the surface that much bigger than the rules stated and he refused to change it, so I disqualified him.

All the entries are now in the flatlands lot K10. Please go there ASAP and vote if you have not. I will close this finally on Friday.

Classic one

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Today I got this email:

Hi this is <username> well his older brother see i was playing on his account while he was gone and it was me and a friend and i was stupid and got his account banned. i am truly sorry for acting up on your server and believe it or not i am grounded from my computer except from this because i got him banned and he got VERY angry and mom and dad found out and seen how truly mad he was. I ask from you to allow him back on the server it was completely my fault and once again i am sorry.

This was my reply:

Hi there,
thanks for your email. See, there is are several issues here:

  • He should have never let you play on his account. That alone is an insta-ban by the rule. We want to avoid people doing stupid stuff and then claim “my brother did it!”.
  • I cannot verify what you say. I do not know you or your family. I am running a community of several hundred people and cannot spend time to worry about who lies and who tells the truth. We ban people who do stupid stuff and move on.
  • I am not even supposed to send you THIS email. My principle is to spend time on the users who are NOT banned instead of those who are

The only solution is that your brother gets a new minecraft account and registers again on the server. If he does not have another email address he can delete his current account from the website (see link below) and register with the username of his new minecraft account and the same email. Maybe you want to buy him a new account then? Maybe that’s a good lesson to respect your brother’s property.
However, his lot and his inventory will be reset in any case. See this here for further explanations:

http://uncovery.me/bans-appeals-second-chances/

I post this here not to make fun at the user or to point fingers at people but to leave a message not to mess with other people’s minecraft user accounts. It’s bad for those people, bad for the server and in the end, bad for you. You are stealing someone’s identity and in every term that’s illegal. We had this issue several times before and the outcome was always more or less like that.

Lot expiry clarification

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It seems that some people who have been here for a while did not catch up on the posts that I made about how the system for the lot expiration and reset works. For the new users, I updated now the “become settler” page to include the relevant information. Since the existing users usually do not read that page anymore, I re-post that updated information now once here in the hope that everyone reads it:

LOT EXPIRY: If you do not login on the server for some time, your lot will expire. The normal lot expiry time is 1 month after your last login. If you are Architect or above level, and while you are DonatorPlus the expiry is 2 months. Also, all skylands/aether lots expire after 2 months only. Lot expiry is fully automated. During the automated restart on the day your lot expired, you will be removed from your lot and it will be reset to an untouched status. Other people can then reserve it again. If you go offline for a longer time, there is no way to extend the expiry period. You simply have to login once with the 1 or 2 months (depending on your level) to keep the lot active. To find out when a user’s lot will expire, you can look at the user list page and see their level and last login time.

This means that I strongly hope not to get any of the following questions anymore (added to FAQ):

  • I will be on holiday, will my lot reset? – YES. If you do not login within the reset time, it will reset and I will not do anyhting about it.
  • Can I keep my lot even if I do not login for a month? Yes. Become DonatorPlus.
  • I do not want to donate. Can you reserve it for me? No.
  • Do I have to tell you now that I will be offline? No.
  • When will the lot next to me reset? – Find out yourself. Go to that owner’s page on the userlist and calculate yourself when that will be according to the users level and his last login date.
  • Can I get a warning before my lot resets? No. Use a calendar.
  • My friends lot will be reset, but all my stuff is there and we built the lot together, what can I do? Go there and take what is yours before it resets. I will NOT stop the lot from resetting. If anything o your stuff is gone during a reset, it is your problem.

Custom plugins interface redone

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I have now upgraded to the latest version of the plugin that does the interfacing between the game and the webserver as well most of the custom functions we are having such as the webshop, stories, karma etc.

It should all work fine but there are MANY small changes to the code so please have a lookout if everything works fine and if all messages and texts display properly. If you have a command that does not give you the usual output, please post here so I can fix it. Thanks!

by the way… Kingdom is not large biomes.

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I had a suspicion before, but now confirmed it: I must have made a mistake when first generating the kingdom world. It is NOT large biomes but just normal. I have rendered a map of how it would look like if it was large biomes and while the center looks quite similar, all the rest from there is quite different. Take a look here. It is essentially zooming the whole map in by a factor 4. Given the fact that large biomes are that large… I guess this is a good thing.

Skylands discontinued – Aether is here!

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I have removed all free lots from the skylands and will not give out new lots there anymore. I am instead now creating the “aether” where new lots will be given out. It is essentially the same except:

  • the lots are 192×192 instead of 200×200 since the 200×200 does not align with the save-file chunks can can therefore not automatically be reset.
  • there are mobs now in the aether, just like everywhere else where we have survival

Current users of the skylands are encouraged, but not forced to move to the aether. If you do not use your skylands lot or only for mining, please comment here and I will remove you from your lot. You will then be able to register a new one in the aether world.

World plans: Kingdom, City, Skylands

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Here is some info about what will happen in the future with the worlds Kingdom, City and skylands. First:

Issues

  • The city cannot be enlarged currently w/o creating chunk breaks. Since it was created before the jungle biomes came out, enlarging the city would mean to terraform around a very large area.
  • Kingdom is becoming popular, but what to do with finished builds? If we leave them there, people will not be able to fly around them like the city. If we copy them to the city, we need massive amounts of terraforming.
  • Skylands has an issue with lot resets. Since the new lot reset function depends on the lots starting in line with save-file-chunks, and the skylands lot does not do that, I cannot reset skylands lots w/o accidentally cutting into neighbor lots.

Solutions

  • I will create an exact copy of the kingdom. It will be managed the same way as the city. When a kingdom lot is finished, I will move the chunks with the finished builds to the new kingdom – with the same function that is currently used to reset lots. Then I will copy the built-in areas from the current city into the new kingdom, close down the city and make the new kingdom the new city. Then we have a better environment to deal with huge builds and have people see what was built. This will have to happen only when the first mega-build is ready to be copied to the city.
  • I will delete the empty lots in the skylands. Then I will create a new set of lots that actually align with the chunks. Then, I will delete all of the new lots that overlap with existing lots. When an existing lot expires, I will remove it also and fill the space with the new, regeneratable lots. When a new lot expires, it will be regenerated normally.

Kingdom world open for business!

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The kingdom world is now officially open for business! Please check your account for and after buying. I tested it all, but just to make sure there is no bug in the system. The 2D map and the 3D map are updated, too! I still have to go through the website and update stuff, but otherwise we should be 100% ready! Yay!

Kingdom lots finished!

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I have just now finished the creation of the kingdom lots. You can see them already on the 2D map. What’s left to do now?

  • create a new world with less water and in the proper size.
  • write a function to buy lots
  • write a logic that allows you to buy street lots only when you own the normal lots.
  • update the website with instructions etc

New command for lot managment!

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I have now finished fixing the broken commands for lot manangement. We had a temporary solution for adding members, but the command for snow fall and ice formation was still broken. I now made a new command with the all-new plugin-like code structure this was even easier.

How does it work? Well, check the userlevels & commands section or use the not yet finished but working brand-new help system: Type /helpme (new, also known as /shophelp) and find out!

Contest lots moved, please check your entry!

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I have now moved the contest lots to a different area. Please go there and make sure there are no mistakes. Check that your building is there as expected and that you can edit the whole area. This was a manual process so there is a certain risk that something went wrong. Please do /contest warp 29 <id> to get to the now location!