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.

Survival

Armor Stands

As one of the more interesting updates in 1.8, I made them even better on our server. You can attach arms by right-clicking the armor stand with at least 2 sticks in your hand. You can also easily pose them in survival. Just sneak and right-click the part you want to pose and move your mouse. I’ve already seen some clever uses and I hope to add more to this later, including the use of player heads.

Weather

You can now make the rain go away by sleeping in a bed, just like in vanilla but only one player needs to sleep in that world. (this is the same handling as turning night into day using beds)

Horses

In addition to riderless horses never taking damage, you can now teleport with them cross-worlds when ridden (even with Stargates). MC makes this a bit tricky, which is why I can’t use the same method to teleport within the same world. (in tests, this caused the horse to disappear, never to be seen again) So teleports within the world will just teleport you, and not the horse. Also, try not to teleport to tight locations, as horses are wider than players. Dismounting will keep them from taking suffocation damage, should you find yourself in that situation.

Painting Cycler

You can right-click paintings now and cycle through them. It’ll skip ones that cannot fit in the space provided.

Tracers and Death Markers

Those that have contributed to server costs can now see a path they’ve traveled on the live map. Plus, everyone can see their own death markers on the live map, which is useful for those that have trouble with coordinates.

Enchantable Lore

While it’s still rough around the edges, you can now apply lore to items using enchanted books. Just combine a written book with an enchanted book in a crafting table, and then you’ll be able use the resulting enchanted book to apply lore to any item using an anvil. It currently takes the book’s title instead of the name in the anvil, but I may change that.

Frog Park

New Roller Coaster: The Shaft

Infuryo and others built this ride for Frog Park, and yes, it includes a cake. Be sure to check out the graveyard.

New Course: Fire

A small course was added to the park, made by Sydneef.

New Game: SlimeyGolf

SlimeyGolf is a 9 hole mini-golf game with for up to 4 players. Park staff not responsible for the actions of Slimey when he acts up. I want to add more courses in the future.

New PVP: Static

We’ve been working a little bit on a prototype horror game. It’s rough, but working.

The Return of Sumo

Due to popular demand, a three stage Sumo game has been re-added to Frog Park.

Showdown Additions

Steady progress has been made on Showdown, with the addition of a few fun classes, features and tweaks. Refer to its Trello board for continued updates on that.

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Dev/Creative

Item Commands

All commands that help builders create special items are now accessible when in creative mode. (/i, /display, /enchant, /unenchant, /lore, /skull, /dye, /potion)