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Temp Server semi-upgrade

Posted on by

I now enabled a couple of plugins on the 1.3 temp server. First of all permissions & User levels. That means that elders can ban now on the temp server. Also, all other stuff is now equal to the normal darklands on the main server. This means no more torches can be placed, and guests cannot build anymore. They will have to downgrade in order to get build permissions. Apart from that we now also have chat channels.

I am expecting as said before an upgrade within the next few days – as soon as a recommended build of bukkit for 1.3 comes out.

Upgrade coming soon! [Update]

Posted on by

As I recently found out, the new bukkit version has hardly changed the API that plugins use to communicate with the server. I made a test-run today by simply copying over all the plugins into another temp-install of the current bukkit version. The result: only one rather unimportant plugin is not working (“nolagg”, I use it to find lag sources).

This means that I will take the whole server sometimes between today and tomorrow (likely today), make another backup of the whole thing and simply upgrade the bukkit files that are new and see what happens. Most likely it should work just fine. We will then have to see if the basic permissions & restrictions work.

Later, I will move the darklands over from the temp 1.3 server to the new 1.3 server. I still want to see if I can remove all torches from the map so we have a consistent ‘darklands’ behavior.

What should you do? Empty your darklands inventory into a chest and note down the coordinates where you were hiding it. You WILL have to walk there again!

[Update] I have gone through the list of bugs that have been reported in the last couple of hours and while none of them seem to make the server crash, some of them are causing heavy lag and some nuisances. So I want to wait for a recommended build of bukkit until we upgrade. Given the plugins already work 99% and that there are no huge issues, I would hope that a recommended build is released within the next 1-3 days and we can then upgrade immediately.

ATTENTION: Server Versions

Posted on by

The actual server is @ uncovery.me and runs 1.2.5. Downgrade if you want to see that. (How to downgrade video)

If you upgraded to 1.3, and do not mind playing on a plugin-free temporary server you need to connect to uncovery.me:25564. The Whitelist updates only every 15 minutes, so wait a bit if you just registered.

Re-rendering all 3D maps

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I am re-rendering all 3D maps with a higher compression and lower resolution – with the exception of the city. This should reduce server lag specially when there are many people online and also reduce the time to load the map in the first place.

1.3 release – IMPORTANT!

Posted on by

Tomorrow, 1.3 will be released. You have to make a decision if you want to continue playing on the current 1.2.5 version server with your lots, protection and all, or on a temporary map in a vanilla 1.3 environment where no protection, user ranks, plugins etc work.

You will be asked if you want to upgrade when 1.3 comes out in about 24 hours. If you want to stay on the current server DO NOT UPGRADE. If you want to use the temp 1.3 server, upgrade and then use

uncovery.me:25564 instead of uncovery.me as the server address.

If you upgrade, it can take SEVERAL WEEKS until you will be able to play again on the current 1.2.5 server. We can only upgrade the current 1.2.5 server to 1.3 when a minimum amount of plugins work. Downgrading is a technical job. If you are not familiar with your operating system and how to copy files into hidden folders DO NOT UPGRADE.

How the upgrade will work, how will it affect you:

You have now on 1.2.5 land, chests, inventories etc. If you are on the same time on 1.3 temp, you will have also buildings, chests inventories. What will happen to those when the 1.2.5 will be upgraded to 1.3 and the temp server disappears?

  • The map of the temp server will become the new darklands, with all builds, chests etc. Your player inventory that you had n the temp server will vanish
  • On the 1.2.5 server, the darklands will disappear since the temp server darklands will replace it. Everything else from the 1.2.5 server will remain. Your lot, your userlevel, your inventories, your chests (except those from the darklands).

1.3 Pre-release server live now on port 25564

Posted on by

I have now installed a server with the 1.3 pre-release on port 25564. Unless some major updates happen until tomorrow (I don’t think so) this will be the new darklands map. This server will be updated to 1.3 final when it comes out in 2 days. Our normal server will continue until we can upgrade it to 1.3. You can gather resources, explore the map as far as you like and build stuff.

Please note that

  • griefing is not allowed on the temp server and also all other normal rules apply
  • we know however from history that griefing will happen. So hide your stuff and build far away from spawn
  • the whitelist does not update immediately. I could install a script that reloads it every 15 minutes, but you will have to wait for that.\
  • connect to the server with a 1.3 (latest version) client and enter uncovery.me:25564 as the server address
  • that is a vanilla server, so no plugins at all installed. Once the first versions of plugins come out I will install them one by one for testing.

Once we move the map to the normal server, all the builds and chests will be taken over. Your inventory will be gone however. There will be some warning about the upgrade (1 or two days) so you can put your stuff into a chest if you are quick. I will try to find a way to remove all torches from the darklands map before we go live so it will be the same as the current darklands.

1.3 is coming soon! What to do?

Posted on by

Mojang today released one of the latest snaphots of 1.3 and will go into pre releases and then the final 1.3, likely this or next week. You will be asked to upgrade – what shall you do? When the upgrade comes, it will take us some time, sometimes weeks until the important plugins for protection etc are updated too so we can use them. Until then, we will keep the server running on 1.2.5.

Once 1.3 comes out, we will run a parallel, temporary, vanilla 1.3 server on a different port. That server will have a new map, and no protection. It will have a whitelist however to give at least some protection from griefers.

You have a choice then to upgrade and to play with the new features in an unprotected environment, and be griefed (it happens for sure, we have seen it before many times) or keep your copy of 1.2.5 and continue playing on the normal server.

The map of the temp server will become the new darklands map of the old server once it is updated. So what you build will be taken over, but also not protected from griefers in the new environment.

I will take the 1.3 server live as soon as basic protection and user rights are working. Other stuff like the shop etc might take a bit longer since many plugins have to be upgraded, and I don’t want to wait for the last of them.

TL;DR: Your stuff is safe. If you upgrade to 1.3, you cannot access it until we upgrade too. But you can play on a temp server that will become the new darklands later. If you do not upgrade, nothing changes for you.

Hunger games broken

Posted on by

Hunger games will be out of order for the time being. There is an issue with permissions that I cannot figure out. I will try to find the time to fix it ASAP and re-enable it then.

Some more interesting statistics

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I have programed some new statistics that show the status of the server in some more figures. Here is the most important stuff.

  • We have 3.6k people who did the whitelist test.
  • 2k+ of those people (60% of registered) logged in on the server, Those who never logged in might be spam accounts, but they still did the whitelist. No idea yet what happened there. This surely deserves more investigation to find out why we are losing 40% of all users after the whitelist.
  • 1109 users, 50% of those who logged in, are still guests and never became settlers. Some of them might have given up on the settler quiz, others came just to look around.
  • We still have 623 lot occupants, so they have been online in the last 60 days, this means that almost 28% of all users that ever seen the inside of this server still are around! I think this is quite amazing!
  • 40% of all logged in people  ‘only’ made it to settler level, 57% of them are still active
  • 154 made stayed here for more than 2 months and became citizen, around 7% of those who logged in.
  • We have 54 days in average online time per user. This is distorted of course by recent joiners and people who are here since 600+ days.

See the full statistics here.

Donator auto-adjust & mob disguise active!

Posted on by

I have now successfully implemented the donator auto-adjustment. Your userlevel will now reflect the new donator status. You will be able to see how long your donation lasts in the server status section on the right bar of the homepage. Your donations will remain secret to other players however. We had some upgrades and some downgrades due to the new system. If you think your new level is not correct, please comment here. If someone sees the user Audofrag, please ask him to contact me since I cannot track back his donation 100%.

Also, DonatorPlus level can now disguise as a mob, depending on the userlevel. Higher level can disguise as more mobs. Please see details on this feature on the Userlevels & Commands page.

Donators level decision

Posted on by

I have now made a decision on the donators level topic I talked about in an earlier post. Some background:

I am paying for this server in cash, and I could use a much smaller & cheaper one if I would not be running a minecraft server. However, I do not rely on the donations to be able to afford it. I wont people to understand however that this stuff is not for free, and I want to make sure people do not take things for granted.

Further I want to make sure that a user that donated 2 USD 2 years ago gets a different level of appreciation than a user who donated 50 USD just yesterday. Also. I do not want to diminish the 2 USD since I know people give what they can, and not everyone has the same means available. So after listening to some comments in-game on the issue I made the following decision:

  • People who donate get an eternal ‘+’ status. It’s a badge that you donated something – sometimes. This requires however that the amount you donated is higher than the fee Paypal takes. If you donate 1 Cent, I do not get any of it. Paypal takes it all. So no + for you.
  • The amount I receive from the donation gets used up in a speed of 1 USD / Month. I rather round up here and count only full months. If you donated and still have donation leftover, you get a ++ status with all its privileges. I will add the mob-disguise plugin soon to those. So you can troll your friends by running around as a chicken etc. What mobs will be available? I do not know yet, let’s see. Maybe I keep the creeper for myself :D.
    Calculation Example: If you donated 12 USD 10 months ago, you would have 2 more months of ++ today. If you donated another 10 USD 2 months ago, you would have 10 months left. (12 – 10) + (10 – 2) = 10
  • The level will adjust automatically like your citizen status
  • There are only 4 people that will be “downgraded” by this change. 2 ++ donators who donated a long time ago and 2 + donators who donated less than required so that some money would be left over for the server.
  • I still need to implement this all, so no changes as of this being published.

Roller coaster contest winners!!

Posted on by

I have closed the voting now for the roller coaster contest and here are the winners! Since there were relatively few entries they are not grouped by level.

  1. Fireguy12 wins a stack of diamonds!
  2. electrofuzz6
  3. slash14459

Congratz to all winners!

Since this is a creative contest, and the first one on top of that, we cannot give out prizes like level upgrades and items are not really useful in creative either. The challenge for a creative contest is a completely different one than for the survival contests as discussed before. I will keep the results in mind and will judge on rewards combined with other contests etc.

Skylands mass-regen!

Posted on by

Everytime I regenerate a lot in the empire, there is some lag. The server also uses more memory which does not reset. If the max memory is used, I need to restart it. When I regenerate a lot in the skylands, the lag is so heavy that it might boot everyone off the server. And the memory used is so much that I need to restart the server after every two lots that I reset. You can imagine that this is not the most popular job in the world.

So first I started to reset one lot each day. I got fed up with this however and decided to try something else and started a parallel server with less memory, copied the skylands over and reset it over there. I was able to do resets without causing lag on the main server but had to restart the parallel server after every lot. After 3 hours finally I could reset all the lots in the skylands that were abandoned along with all the faulty chunks that were generated some time in the past and looked like normal world chunks. Then I shut down the main server and copied the new skylands back. Now I am running a full map-rendering process for the 3D map. The 2D map will render on schedule in about 12 hours anyhow.

If i keep up from now on with the abandoned lots there should be no more problem. I also had a new Skylands generator version installed and the new environment looks much nicer than the old one, with more trees etc. Also, we now got rid of the “absent since 300” users that were only still in the users list due to the fact that they still had a lot in the skylands.

Yay!

 

Thoughts, plans & ramblings

Posted on by

I have been thinking and trying out several things over the past few days and just wanted to share a bit.

  • I have thought about how to deal with the skylands. Since many users simply flatten the ground and do not use it as skylands, and since the island structure seems perfect for group builds (like you need to build a bridge to get somewhere), it seemed a bit misused. I do not think however I will change the current skylands from what it is. Resetting lots is a bit of a pain since it often boots all users off the server, but I also do not want to create another world for skylands. maybe just an alternative hunger world scenario?
  • I have been thinking of limiting donator status by 1USD / month. If you donate 1 USD, you are donator for one month. Every month, your level decreases by 1 USD. You need to keep a level of 12 USD to stay donator ++ level. The amount is calculated by what I get after Godaddy substracts their fee and now how much you spend. The question is what happens with a deposit slot if you loose your status? Would the system hand you the stuff automatically if you have space? Would you have a deadline to withdraw? That is a bit more complicated to do.
  • Cake day is another idea. While I do not want to convert too much into reddit, we can give certain gifts on the 1st year (365 days) and the second. This will be possible with the above function since we would calculate how long a user has been online once a day and the donations etc. I am thinking of a nice set of diamond armor or something along the lines.

Nothing has been decided, just brainstorming.