Much has happened since my last State of the Server post in November, almost 9 months ago! These posts are designed to let people catch up on what’s been happening on the server, especially those that haven’t been active lately. Given that it’s been so long, there’s quite a bit to cover. I’m sure I’m going to cut out and miss many things.

General Updates

Minecraft 1.8

In December I updated the server to 1.8. There were several issues, but I managed to work through them as best I could, like restoring all ocean monuments in Omega. It’s a good candidate for most challenging update I’ve done thus far. We’re now on 1.8.7, but it’s been mostly security fixes. One difference since 1.8.0 is that in 1.8.1 witch hut spawning dimensions increased in size, so I updated all those in Omega to the new dimensions. This means farms can get 3 levels of spawning platforms now.

Name-Changing

This was/is a huge head-ache, but we’re mostly updated to support name-changing. I updated some plugins and wrote some code to workaround issues in others. If you change your name, your former name is reserved on the server. The two notable exceptions for name-changing support are multi-world inventories (that one has multiple complex problems I need to work through or entirely replace) and Frog Park stats. If you want to change your name, you should first log out in a survival world so that you keep your inventory.

You can see people’s previous names by hovering over their name in chat, as well as other information like their world.

Trello

We’re now using Trello to keep track of all ideas and suggestions. Please go there to vote on ideas you like or submit your own. It’s really helpful to me. I also post recently added/updated things there.

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It’s that time of year again.

“Where we wash out our eyeballs and never read Youtube comments again?”

Nooo, it’s Easter. And what better way to celebrate Easter than to hunt Easter eggs… for some reason. I don’t know, ask society. I don’t make the rules! Okay, I sort of sometimes do. That’s not the point. Easter is otherwise known as Resurrection Sunday, celebrating Christ rising from the grave. So in the spirit of zombie Jesus, I put up a new colorful outworld… filled with deadly zombie Easter bunnies. I think I may be doing Easter wrong? It’s too late, they’re loose and deadly. However, they have Easter eggs aplenty, which in Minecraft happen to be spawner eggs.. for some reason. I don’t know, ask Notch!

This Easter outworld will be up for the next two weeks, so it’s your only opportunity this year to get some spawner eggs yourself. But don’t underestimate the Easter bunny zombies. I’ve already been slain by a group of them. It’s a good time to use that diamond armor and potions, if you have them.

Celebrate 4 years tomorrow, Sunday February 8th, our server anniversary! Come play games, eat barbecued dragon wings, and place various cubes in patterns along an axis aligned grid.

A lot of server data is stored under player names, not unique user IDs (UUID), which Mojang now uses. This can cause some plugins on servers to not recognize you anymore if you change your name. So if you plan to change your name, there are things that you can do minimize problems on our server. Sign locks, sign shops, multi-world inventories, and some frog park records are still using player names. However, multi-world inventories is the main sticky point right now that’s harder to address and more immediately relevant. So, before you change your name, you should teleport to a survival world. This will bring your inventory along with your name change. However, if you fail to do so, there’s still hope. I can manually recover your data.

A small side note: all previous player names are claimed, so no one can hijack your old name on our server.

UPDATE 2015-07-05
– Stargates now update the owner name on interactions.
– [PRIVATE] signs, when clicked, now update the names. I’ll add support [MORE USERS] signs later.
– Shop signs, when clicked, will update except when new names are longer than 15 characters.

I’m exhausted, so I’ll keep this brief. The fantastic fellows at spigotmc.org managed to get around all the legal issues and produce an update to support the largest Minecraft update thus far. Many tests, bug fixes, and workarounds later, we are now running 1.8 smoothly. Check out the extensive changelog to see what’s new in Minecraft 1.8. There’s something for everyone. I found myself a furry little friend on the way to my house. If you’re interested in the new stone blocks, head on over to the new outworld. You may even be able to find an Ocean Monument. I recommend everyone install the updated Optifine for much smoother gameplay. I look forward to talking about what we plan to do with all these new features in the coming days.

It’s been a while since my last State of the Server post back in April. So before I talk about the future, let’s see what you may have missed in the last 7 months.

Survival Updates

New Bavaria by The_Vicar

• New recipes — cracked stone brick, coarse dirt
• Re-enabled sponge behavior (some shops have them); Drying is not required until 1.8.
• Disabled block damage from creeper explosions above 62 y
• Halloween event that included mob head drops and new ridable zombie/skeleton horses
• Disabled minecart dispenser parking if the dispenser is powered
• Tilrasmon built the north-south roads in Omega to the borders of the world — a great addition to the transportation infrastructure on that world. I’ve started the work on the east road so that more people can be connected.
• The coin shop is re-stocked to the brim. Just want to get that out there.

Frog Park Updates

Museum of Modern Art & Pants by froggerooh

• New courses — Jungletree and Nethour
• New massive last-man-standing PVP game — Showdown — with 14 unique classes to choose from, and 11 new arenas.
• New minigame by Mortiseraphim and myself — 7 Seconds to Live — where you have seven seconds until you blow up, but you can extend your time by running over ores over several different arenas.
• New TNT Run minigame created by myself and gothem8. Survive the longest while the floor falls away and explodes.
• New gigantic modern art museum built almost entirely by froggerooh. It contains several cakes, a couple challenge courses, some secrets, and a pair of pants.
• New custom spectator mode for PVP games. “/pvp spectate <arena_name>”
• New explorable structures to discover and get cakes.
• Countless tweaks and improvements.

I also updated our server support process and rewards to pay for server costs. If you’ve donated in the past, you’ve been upgraded to this new system. This is still a work in progress, but it now adheres to Mojang’s guidelines better.

Looking Towards the Future (ie. When 1.8?)

It looks like the Spigot team is doing the hard work necessary to update Bukkit to 1.8 — a massive undertaking given the extra challenges involved. They have a working build and private testing went well on their servers. However, there isn’t a public build available yet. Once they release something I’ll be testing it against our server setup. Rest assured, it’s a high priority for me. So when will that be? Unless something goes wrong, it should be within this month!

Moving forward we’ll be needing more staff. If you’re at all interested in helping, please read up on how you can contribute.

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In addition to having costumes for you and your pets, there’s a few other treats on the server this Halloween.

We now have pumpkin mobs running around. They might not be tougher, but they stick around during daylight hours. So watch out! If you kill any mobs during the next week, you might be treated with a head drop. (1-5% drop rate for most mobs) This will include PLAYER HEADS! Yes, player heads will drop 50% of the time from PVP deaths in survival worlds. You just need to fight in a pvp enabled region. If you don’t know where one is, you can use the Colosseum in the West of Final City.

Lastly, any horses spawned (including natural spawns, breeding, and spawn eggs) during the next week will be skeleton or zombie horses! This is your only chance this year to make your own spooky horse and the first opportunity ever on this server. Remember, you can transfer or share ownership of horses.

From the windy spire on the mountain-top, to the spider infested cabin deep in the woods; from the moaning in the swampland graveyard, to the dripping in the dark dungeon below. What are some of the spookiest places on the server? Share the location in the comments. If you’re unsure whether it’s spookiness level qualifies or if it requires a certain perspective, post it anyway! I wouldn’t be playing Minecraft if I didn’t have imagination. I’ll pick some, take some spooky photos, and share those in a follow-up post. If you fancy some photography of your own, share those too!