While cleaning up the user files, I searched for users that have an allocated lot but are not registered on the server. These are:

Username – Last login
Zootownian – Tue, 25 Jan
Syllver – Mon, 31 Jan

These users have been on the server since before we started the whitelist process via the blog registration and never registered on the blog.
If you are one of them or see any of them online, please tell them that they have to register on the blog otherwise their lots will be given away.

The portals to the four corners of the map were broken in the beginning, but I fixed them just now. So you can use them again! Have fun!

As other announcements I got the news from the protection plugin developer that

• there will be an option to allow others to place & ride minecarts in a protected area (dont know when though)
• there will be a possibility to reset lots easily as early as next week. Once this is possible, I will find out which lots are not visited since some time and start a clean-up process. This might take some time however since I want to give the owners a chance to claim it.

I am working on fixing lot reservation, basically I have to go through testing of the solution. Maybe I can get it done tomorrow already. Will see.

You might know that I have not been online a lot since Thursday. I was busy doing something else (see image). Anyhow, I will be back home on Monday, fix the lot reservation, the portals and other stuff.

Read for yourself

(l02d) mom
(Scouty13) lolwtf?
(Scouty13) I’e been trying to give you cobblestone for ages
(Bigbuddy1) im not trading u scouty when the 5 stacks grand put in the dispenser was for me
(Scouty13) i didn’t take from disp
(Scouty13) didn’t take from disp
(chpentain) someone took my cobble!
(Bigbuddy1) lol
(Scouty13) lmao
(Bigbuddy1) fail chpen
(Bigbuddy1) fine scouty meed me at the spawn
(Scouty13) nothx
(l02d) hey scotty
(Scouty13) hi
(l02d) do you have the diamonds?
(Bigbuddy1) yes id o
(Scouty13) im not paying diamonds lol
(l02d) k i will start whit the first 10 stacks
(Scouty13) thought you were giving them away
(Bigbuddy1) lol no i wana pay a diamond for 10 stacks
(l02d) scouty more cobble?
(l02d) hey scouty, whats whit the diamond?=!?!
(Scouty13) uh
(l02d) hey scouty are you kidding me?
(Scouty13) ?
(l02d) whats with my diamond??
(l02d) hey scouty damn come to spawn and give me my fuckin diamond!!!
(Scouty13) zz
(Scouty13) fool
(l02d) scouty whats wrong with you?
(Scouty13) nothing, whats wrong with you?
(Scouty13) oh fuk
(l02d) you had to give me a diamond!
(Scouty13) gtg get shitfast back
(l02d) i gave you 10stacks
(Scouty13) no, I didn’t
(l02d) then give me my fuckin cobble back
(Scouty13) relax, its just cobble
(Daiyamondo) Wasn’t it Big who’d give diamond?
(Scouty13) yeah
(Scouty13) I told him so
(l02d) yeah wormy to big and i to scouty
(Scouty13) but lo2d wanted to give me 10 stacks first
(Scouty13) so I was like
(Scouty13) kthxbai
(Marldain) That is the definition of theft
(Scouty13) no, its the definition of ignorance on his part
(l02d) damn scouty i would trade a full chest with u
[Hiosa connected]
(Marldain) That’s like going grocery shopping and walking out the door.
(Scouty13) no its like giving back your groceries because you dont have enough money
(Scouty13) and the cashier gives you extra shit
(Daiyamondo) Just give ’em back, will ya?
(l02d) scouty give back my cobble and stfu
(Scouty13) nah you ruined it for yourself
(allometry) scouty, give back what you owe him, otherwise I’ll make sure no body does biz with you again
(Anpan) l02d: I don’t think swearing is a good idea
(allometry) got it?
(Hiosa) whats wrong?
(Scouty13) I dont owe him anything
(allometry) bad trade agreement with scouty and l02
(Grandiosa_1) scout will become the enron of minecraft
(Daiyamondo) And he did?
(allometry) looking at the logs hiosa, there was a trade agreement that broke down with l02d and scouty
(l02d) damn scouty drive to hell, nobody had to traid with u again
(allometry) it broke down, scotty still has l02d’s trade items
(Scouty13) nothing broke down
(Scouty13) I was gonna teleport to home
(Scouty13) and he threw 10 stacks at me
(Scouty13) and suddenly he goes bitching for a diamond

I have built four warp gates in spawn that teleport you to the 4 new spawn outposts in the 4 corners of the map and back. The outpost are not finished yet, I will see what kind of features I will build on them over time. Suggestions welcome.

Also, I disabled that people can invite others to their home. This should prevent that public homes are used as general warp points for anybody.

I am thinking a lot recently how to add more interactivity, features and rewards into the server. Here are my thoughts:

• I received a couple of donations recently. Some are errr… how do I say this… hmmm… cautious (0.02 USD). Others are outright generous (50 USD!). I want to reward this. I will make a special userlevel for donators above a certain minimum (probably 5 USD) with stages (1-5 or so) and reward them. There will be free lots and possibly in-game cash once I install the iConomy plugin (this week probably). I am interested what other rewards you can think of that still keep the game interesting.
• I have seen some grouping going on and some people who want to make their story heard, do PvP etc. I would be fine allowing people to write their own clan page and submit screenshots etc, by giving them (moderated) write access to the blog. I would be very happy if people would be up to this. Please write in the comments if you want to do that.
• I have reserved 4 lots on the corners of the newly claimed area and will install warp gates there with a new plugin, so people can warp there from spawn. I want to build the surrounding buildings on that lot in different styles, and they should have a set of features like the spawn (hospital, arenas, trading post etc). I most probably will restrict iConomy trading to these places to make people get around more instead of trading stuff virtual.
• I have been thinking if I should reserve more lots for infrastructure and/or additional public areas (possibly smaller than the central one). If you think this is a good idea, please comment which lots you would see suitable for this. I would rather have them symmetrically around the center so access is equally easy for all.
• I am thinking to give architects 2 lots and VIPs 4 lots. The new size of the map allows for this and also from a system point of view there should not be any problem to automate this easily. More about this next week.
• I am very open for suggestions on how to make the game more “real” and less abstract or virtual. While warping around and using /home is nice and all, it takes people away from each other. Having to walk to a warp gate and then jumping from there to spawn sounds more appealing to me than using /home.
• I will be writing code that lets me find users that never applied for building rights and delete them. Also I want to find users that have a lot but did not login for more than a month, send them a warning and delete if they dont login afterwards. Unfortunately, there is no easy way still to reset lots. However, I know that one of the plugin authors is working on that. So even if a lot is “old”, there is a chance for recycling in the future. This will make it easier to let someone move somewhere completely different and leave old stuff behind. I am not so keen on doing this however unless I know I can reset the old lot w/o problems.

Any opinion on this is highly appreciated.

I have just enlarged the borders of the map from coordinates -1000/1000 to -1500/15000 in both n/s and e/w directions. Please go to the 2D map to see the result. This means that we have more than doubled our available lots to almost 860 publicly available regions.

Please not that because of this, all lot names have changed. The owners & members should be still the same though!

I left a 5 block gap where the railway went around the old border for further infrastructure. So those blocks which touch the old borders are 5 blocks smaller than the others. Also, the new lots are not available yet.I still have to decide if I will make space for public areas in the new regions or maybe other infrastructure lots (for later warp gates, nether gates etc). I can well imagine to build gates that teleport people closer to their destination since the new lots are too far away to walk there safely. I will announce once the new lots are available. The new lots that are the outmost 3 fields (A-C, 1-3, 28-30, AB-AD) will be generated newly so they have the new trees and ores in them!

So feel free and go around exploring the new areas, they will be up for grabs in a couple of days!

I just updated the system including all plugins. These are the news:

• the /home command now has a warmup and a cooldown. This means you cannot run from mobs and cannot jump around permanently.
• The IRC chat is broken for now. Chat from the server does not arrive on the IRC channel. ope this will be fixed soon . Works again!
  
• The in-game chat channel system changed. Read the respective page for instructions.
• Since the server has become very noisy, I have changed the channels. Switch off the /n channel to have a quieter chat. the /g channel should be the standard.
• I also took the server off the serverlist again to slow the influx of new people.
• The PVP Arena works now!

Since there are so many new people recently, I decided to introduce another level to reward those that have been with us since a long time. Two VIPs can recommend another user as Architect. The Architect has the same rights as a VIP, but the VIPs can now get 2 lots for themselves.

Thanks Hiosa and Sockso for the suggestions & Help on this!

I got two lot reservation emails yesterday. 2 almost identical email addresses including realnames at almost the same time reserve two spots next to each other. Thought they were a bit fishy. So ban both users and replied:

Subject: Re: Uncovery Minecraft Area Protection B10
Nice try buddy.
Please go somewhere else

Uncovery

Today I get a reply:

But please, its just my mates account but he just doesnt have an email, please we thought this would be the perfect server, what would be the point in me having two accounts on the server??? Please

If he is honest, the conclusions are:

• He would not know what to do with more space – bad. All other people want 2 spaces if not more because they build large things.
• He is too young/stupid/whatever to register an email – very bad
• He gives his realname email account to someone instead of just registering another one for him – very, very bad

If he is lying, the conclusions are:

• How stupid does he think I am?
• (could not come up with another one on this…)

Ok, I renamed the “homeowners” to “settlers” and the “users” to “peasant”.

Also, if you go to the 2D Map, you will see red boxes which represent the actual position of online users. These are updated every couple of minutes. The upper-left corner should be the exact position of the mentioned user. I also will include a user list on the front page later.

Guys, I was wondering if the User Level “Homeowner” is not too long as a text to be displayed in chat. There are several alternatives that we have. We can either abbreviate it (H.O. / Home / whatever) or rename it alltogether (Member / Rergular / Lot).

Opinions on this are welcome here in the comments!

There are several in-game chat channels. Here are the commands to use them:

• /ch help (displays help)
• /ch <channel> set active channel. Whatever you say will be in that channel.
• /ch list List all people in the active Channel
• /join <channel> Join a channel. You will read whatever is in that channel
• /leave <channel> Leave a channel. You will not see anymore whats in the channel
• /<channel> <msg> Send a message to a channel that is not your active channel
• /ignore <player> Ignore a player (Duh!)
• /ignore Shows all your ignored players

You can use the first letter of each channel as a nickname. So you can replace every <channel> in the above list with the first letter of the channels available.

Available Channels:

• General (‘g’): The channel for everything & everyone, color: White
• HelpMe (‘h’): If you need help using the server; color: Purple
• Trade (‘t’): If you are looking/offering blocks/items; color: Green
• Local (‘l’): Can be read only by people less than 100 blocks away; color: Light Blue
• VIP (‘v’): Can be joined/read only by VIPs; color: Yellow
• Off Topic (‘o’): For all non-minecraft chat; color: Rose

Don’t worry. I do not sell out. There will be no paid accounts for the server. The real estate prices on the map will not go up. There will be no “All hail Uncovery” T-Shirts. But since the mcserverlist  started to give realistic ratings, we have been hammered again with about 10 new users per hour. This is justifying an ad. If you do not like it, please install an adblock. In order to preserve screen real estate, I removed the title on the top. The logo still has to be resized.

So I introduced the achievements, and obviously it takes less than 12 hours until people start abusing them. And even worse, failing in the attempt and then as king me to refund them. So here is a new rule. I do not punish past violations of this, but from now on, this will be in force:

Do not cheat to get achievements or to mine blocks. This includes client-side scripts, mods, transparency texture packs or any other way that gives you an advantage over the standard and intended game play. I know its hardly possible to check on those things, so claiming that you are using such is already worth being banned.

The Stats and Achievement plugins are tracking what you do (in general, not when & where) and give you an overview and rewards depending on what you do.

You have the following commands available once you are “user level”:

Achievements commands:

• /achievements – lists your achievements

Stats commands:

• /stats [category|statname|convert|debug|list|help]
• /stats [player] [category|statname]
• just type /stats to see basic stats
• type /played to see your playedfor-time

You can also see your stats online on this page!

I installed today the pluging “minecart mania”. It makes it easier to steer minecarts and allows for a more comfortable control without complicated boosters and other strange mechanisms. You place certain blocks under a minecart track which determines the speed and direction of a cart. The system works as follows:

• GoldBlock Boosts carts by 8x, disabled by redstone power.
• GoldOre Boosts carts by 2x, disabled by redstone power.
• SoulSand slows carts to 1/8 speed, disabled by redstone power.
• Gravel slows carts to 1/2 speed, disabled by redstone power.
• Iron Blocks eject passengers/mobs, disabled by redstone power.
• Cloth reverse minecart direction, disabled by redstone power.
• Unpowed Obsidian stops minecarts
• Powered Obsidian Launches stopped minecarts
• Signs with a direction (north, south, east, west) adjacent to obsidian can override the standard NESW direction selection.
• Pressure Plates act as rails
• Minecarts that collide with animals/mobs will kill them

I also built a 8000 blocks long double-track minecart line with railway stations every 200 blocks all around the map. I still have to find a way for people to be able to use it without a possibility for vandalism…

Attention: Do NOT build any infinite loops or other mechanisms that run without you being there!

I spent the last three days rewriting the backend functions for map generation, whitelisting, building rights application and reserved lot application. I just finished everything. The process did not change big time, but there are several improvements for the users and for myself.

• The new 2D area map is now, as written before, instantly updated with the lot ownerships. I also changed colors and removed the excel sheet which is now redundant.
• The whitelist application has a new location for the code but is otherwise the same as before
• The building rights application will check now first if you have rights already and won’t let you apply twice. Once you applied, I still have to reload the rights on the server manually due to the limitations of the plugin, unless the scheduled server restart happens earlier
• The lot application now checks if you are already owner of a lot. In that case, it will tell you which lot you own instead showing you the questionnaire. If you fill out the questionnaire correctly, it will check automatically if the lot you chose is available (=has no owner). If so, it will automatically make you the owner and give you “homeowner” rank. I still have to reload the permissions or you have to wait for a server restart. But otherwise there are no actions from my side required anymore.
• The lots have been renamed to lot_a1 instead of lota1. It should be easier to read.

I hope there are no bugs in the system. I tested everything so it should be fine. If you see that there is something wrong, please tell me immediately.

I have been working a lot on the system recently and updated plugins on a daily basis. The result is:

• The 2D map is now updating the image daily, but the lot allocation is instantly updated. If you add people to your lot, they should show up on it immediately. If you build something, it shows latest after 24 hours
• The 3D map was broken for a day or two, and is also fixed now. It’s not slanted 45 degrees anymore.
• Creepers should not make any more craters. I am not sure if they still do damage.
• Fire is allowed to use, but disabled from spreading
• TnT is not making any craters
• Lava use is allowed. You should not be able to use it outside of your area anyhow. It should not put stuff on fire either
• Kits are removed and won’t come back
• Building rights are NOT granted instantly. I have to manually reload the permissions, or one has to wait until the server reboots (once every 24 hours). If that is bothering you (it’s bothering me) drop a note for this guy to have the permissions plugin reload the permissions every time a user joins.
• I switched the region info tool from the string to a wooden sword again. It should be active after the next server restart.

If you see other stuff that does not work as expected please tell me. I am today working on getting protected area half-way automated.