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IRC <-> Discord working now fine.

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There were some initial issues to get chat to display correctly in IRC and Discord working fine but that is now fixed. I was worried for a while I might have to discontinue the IRC chat but I will keep it for now since there is little to none maintenance on it.

New Kingdom system idea

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So based in all your comments on the last post (thanks for contributing), I have the following idea for the kingdom:

Disclaimer: I will still have to figure out how we would smoothly transition from now to the new system, so ignore issues around that for a while please.

If you buy a main kingdom lot, additional kingdom lots get incrementally more expensive, like home slots. Lets ignore the street lots for now. It might be even unaffordable to go beyond a certain number. 9? Who knows, we will see.

However, if you think a lot is “done”, you can give it back at a profit. You would fame. We could have a new version of the Karma system where you get one karma per lot as a badge displayed with your name. You could get a page on the website where your build is exposed. Anything of the sort.

You could also get Uncs, but I am not 100% sure about that. One version would be that you just get the purchase price refunded. One other that you get a reward on top of that. Another version could be that you get nothing. You would have to start from scratch with a new build. I know that last version would not be so motivating but it sounds interesting since it gives the option for a restart and would be good for the server since money and materials would have a place where they leave the economy instead of just creating this endless deflation.

When is a lot done? Well there would have to be an evaluation of the lot, possibly by other users first and if that passes by myself. A bit like a building contest. We could make a small questionnaire for people to fill out, with questions about the lot such as:

  • Is it detailed?
  • Is it unique?
  • Does it use the available space properly?
  • Etc…

To help people rate it so I don’t get a bunch of 5×5 noob huts to approve.

What do you guys think?

New Discord Server! Good-bye Teamspeak server!

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I have made the decision to migrate from Teamspeak to Discord. The Teamspeak integration into Minecraft was outdated and buggy. Also, Discord now has full minecraft integration including userlevels, channel chats etc.

Also, the teamspeak server was hosted by myself, and Discord is not, so there is one thing less for me to care about. To find out more about how to use discord, please check out this tutorial!

Discussion: Kingdom issues & Items Value

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Dear all,

The recent issue (see the previous post) regarding automated farming has raised a couple of questions for me:

  • Are some items simply too cheap to buy in the economy due to automated farming? It seems to me that the opportunity to build mega-farms in all dimensions (End, Nether, Normal worlds) have deteriorated values of formerly valuable things to near zero. Just by voting one day people can afford to buy things to last them for weeks. We might as well switch the economy off and just start sharing things freely since the money is there in abundance for almost anything you want.
  • Is space in the kingdom too cheap so that we have a bunch of half-finished mega builds? There are the outlines/foundations of lot-sized or even multi-lot sized structure on the surface that have not change since months, even years. Some users have several of those structures on the map.
  • Is the kingdom too much used for mining sand & other items instead of building things? The kingdom was meant for people to build stuff. I have seen several lots on the 2D map where the surface was simply stripped and left as is. It’s taking the space away from people who want to build something and turning the Kingdom into an ugly wasteland. With the point above, it gets even worse.

I wanted everyone’s input on this. Obviously I think that these issues are a problem and I would like to tackle them.

 

 

Important: Server Lag issue

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Dear all,
Since Friday last week (9th March) we have a massive lag issue. Normally we have a TPS (ticks per second) around 19 (max is 20) and right now, the TPS is degrading down to 11 during the course of the day. The only thing that I could identify is that the issue is located in the Kingdom world.
I did some initial testing but could not find what is causing it in detail. I would like to encourage all of you to check for the following items:

  • Large surface tiled with slabs: Those cause spawn-attempts that are then cancelled
  • Large surfaces of Ice in winter biomes that have torches on them: The ice melts and re-freezes permanently
  • Automated farms: If you have a mob farm where mobs automatically are killed, there needs to be a switch that can disable mob spawning/killing. The killing method here does not matter (falling, fire, overcrowding). It has to be able to be disabled and when you are not there, it should not operate. If other people than the lot owner goes to the lot, they have to switch it on to operate it.
  • Same goes about observer-based cane farms. If you cannot switch off the farming, it’s not allowed.
  • Large water flow areas / cascades should not exist.
  • Please also look for more info on the “Lag” page.

Please consider the following: I have considerably invested in the server hardware and every 2 years spend double the monthly rate to migrate to a stronger system that should support 50+ users at the same time. On the other side, it’s extremely hard and dozens of hours of work for me to identify causes of lag. If at the same time users operate systems that essentially turn the survival principles of the server into a creative environment because they harvest goods at a rate that overcompensates their consumption by dimensions, it’s simply not lining up anymore.

So please, keep your farms & anti-mob measures at scale for personal use (!) and check whatever you did since Friday so we can stop the lag. I don’t want to start test-resetting kingdom lots to find the issue.

Darklands Reset Update

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Looking at the latest snapshots and the dramatic changes in the underwater landscape with Ravines, Ruins and caves, I have decided that we will, with 100% certainty, reset the darklands after the next version upgrade.

Ideally, of course, we would do this at the same time when the server gets upgraded. I do not know how long it will be until the new version will be ready, there are still several announced features missing in the latest snapshots. It can be well 1 or even 2 months until then. However I want to give everyone enough time to salvage their stuff from the darklands, so there is the announcement that there will be a reset. In the hopes that we will be ready to erase the current darklands once the new version comes out, please go ahead and clean out your stuff. Please note that this is not a permission for griefing what was built by individuals. If stuff is used by the community, please make sure that it will be given back to the community.

1.13: Chest placement & item frames

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From 1.13, Chests can be placed next to each other. This might offer much more compact storage room layouts. Chest will be combined only by shift-clicking them onto each other like hoppers on chests, but if placed normally on the ground, they can be placed next to each other in any manner. Also, item frames can be posted on the top and bottom of blocks.

Will you re-design your storage area? Where will you put item frames if you place them more compact? Show us your best storage area layout!

1.13: Bubble columns

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In 1.13, we will be able to breath under water by placing Lava blocks & Soul sand which create bubble columns in 2+ block deep water. While this is nonsense in real life (steam is not breathable), it seems like a cool option to have. I am not sure what I will do with it to breathe, but it could be a great addition to the floating items so that we can easily transport things in water downward. Soul sand will push items upwards, I am not sure how this compares to normal water that has items floating.

Since the “air meter” of you character will not recover instantly when you get to the surface, previous ways of working underwater will have to be changed anyhow, so using the lava and soul sand blocks will be useful.

 

1.13: Items floating!

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As you know by now, 1.13 is around the corner with some quite drastic changes to the way a lot of base game mechanics are working. Specifically, Items will float: This means that you can transport items vertically upwards in a water column. Interestingly, stuff dropped into 1-block high water with air below still falls through. It seems that a transport is best done with a dropper at the base of the water.

Anyone has a better way to insert items into a water column? Will you change your mob farms?

Today’s development updates

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This is a daily update on the status of the work done behind the scenes.
Our webserver is completely open source, hosted on GitHub. You can help improve the server by fixing issues here.