WayneByNumbers

Why don't you use Electrifried as your MC username? Do you even have that one? Was it already taken? Did you just get used to your current one?

But who's going to ban me for hacking now? :(

I'm going to have to take some exception to what you're saying, Magnyus; it seems to be coming down to making it explicit policy to give large builds (and builders) "priority" over smaller builds. If you plan something large, then you should claim, and probably border, what you plan on using (large borders make protection easier, especially in polygon cases, and demonstrate that someone is more likely to be committed to building if they're willing to make that much border). I don't think it's fair for someone making a build of indeterminate size (like a city) to look at small, neighboring builds and think "I want that land, I'll get that thing moved." To be able to "plan on planning on using" land, at the expense of other players, is a little to favoritist, in my opinion. I'm not saying someone couldn't contact the owner and make a modreq about moving something, that's our current practice already, but it shouldn't be policy that large builders can mandate it. Of course, if the owner can't be contacted (getting back to the idea of abandoned builds), then it's up to admin discretion. Edit: I do agree, however, that there should be some better way of dealing with abandoned claims. Perhaps something like if an area is unedited or only barely so for at least 3 weeks or something, and the owner has not been on in that time, it can be unclaimed. If they have been on more recently, then an attempt to contact them is made; no answer within a week results in unclaiming. If they do answer, they can either agree to the unclaim, or restate their intention to build there within a week at most.

Ever tried Camstudio* or NCH Debut? Both are free, though I don't know how they compare framerate-wise to the expensive big names. *Tip for Camstudio; the 2.7 full release messes with Minecraft controls, making the keys sticky. The most recent beta release does not have this problem.

Would there be any easy, practical way to do this without client mods? (a little detail like this would get nowhere if it needed a whole new plugin or something) Also, it could perhaps ruin any PvP matches by giving unlimited accest to potions and other gear. On the other hand, /i already does that I suppose... would there be a way, perhaps with CombatTag or a WorldGuard region, to disable survival mode commands when someone is in a PvP region?

I've got a small quibble; tpmode. I do agree that it's nice to give players a way to manage their own teleport availability. However, I still do occasionally see in chat players (often newer players) talking in circles as one attempts to tp to the other as advice about typing "/tpallow" is helpfully lobbed at them from all directions. Also, I'm still not convinced this is entirely due to miscommunication; it's possible that the tprequest message isn't showing up at times. I would suggest we simply change the default tpmode to "allow." Anyone who finds this a problem can simply change their mode to "ask" or "deny" (maybe an alert message could be tailored to this in case nobody is available to tell them about it). Another little detail; Rei's Minimap player radar has not yet been enabled. I don't know the tech aspects of this, such as whether this is a viable option for the server as long as Rei's is still in beta. If it's possible, tho, I think we could use this. The Dynmap isn't a bad workaround, but doesn't quite have the same effect. Oh and another detail (wonder if I'm losing sight of the big picture here ); now that grass-proof dirt is available (only via /i, with ID dirt:1 or 3:1), perhaps grass spread could be enabled, as long as it wouldn't put too much load on the server.

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.

I don't really have any arguments against having some more extra-Minecraft community organization, but I think it's worth mentioning that we would want to make sure we somehow discourage this from separating those who only play MC and those who don't (being one of the former myself is what brings this to mind).

I'm definitely behind Mag on this one, the tag system could help accomplish what we're going for but does need a little streamlining. Consolidating the colored bubbles with the end tags would both help clarity and save space, and an extra tag or two might help as well. Just to throw in one more detail; if more visible tags are used, then there should probably be a tag limit to avoid posts making a long, colorful mess.

As much as I believe you when you say that you don't want to introduce status ranks to the servers, I just don't see any way to go about allowing water placement to some players, but not others, without doing that. No matter how discretely implemented, the basic facts of the situation would be that some players have abilities others don't (and there would be no way to keep that invisible for long anyways). If it's granted by a threshold of playtime, then we are indeed offering a quantifiable and potentially exploited reward of some kind; if it's granted by unofficial reputation, we invite accusations (and the possibility itself) of the "popularity contest." The idea that staff has powers that other players don't is risky enough, and I think only survives by basic necessity. It's hard enough to keep staff positions from becoming, or seeming to become, ranks. Adding further distinctions that separate players from one another is not something that I feel would be consistent with these servers' overall goals. But hashing out this suggestion is only one part of this discussion. The real aim here should be, what do we do with SafeBuckets? Myself, I find the idea of a water-damage-blocking plugin or plugin addition attractive. In fact, starting here in a previous discussion, such a fix was considered that seemed attractive to all involved, including the SAdmins. A more objective way of adjusting the pros and cons of liquid use is probably better than trying to adjust the players. Everyone seems to have agreed that any such changes should wait for a new rev before being implemented, so obviously nothing can be done immediately. It would be nice, however, if a SAdmin or Tech could pop in and just let us know if any progress or decisions have been made concerning this?

Just thought people would like to know, there is a working Rei's Minimap version for 1.7.2 out. It is not Forge-supported and must be installed manually (including deleting the META-INF folder), but I have begun using it and it seems to work properly on my laptop. It can be found here, and I of course can not make any guarantees about it's stability. Figured since it's such a popular mod here, people might want to know.

Quick workaround; if you accidentally break a block, you can get it back with the pick block key, but you must then open your inventory, click on it, then put it back where it was. If not, it will revert to white again. This way you don't have to scroll through the inventory finding the color you need.

Given the low player count on C I figured I'd put up a particular nice example from last Tuesday of how the player/staff experience affects players, especially new players. A player named TheShoelaceKing logged on and asked if any staff were on (it was me, nick, and neva, so he was the only nonstaff on), then asked if anyone could skype with him. Of course, our warning lights were flashing on this guy, but we decided to humor him (and maybe get a funny recording like the one on BestOf). We directed Shoelace to our mumble channel, and he joined in with some standard concerns, like how the server had changed since he had last been there a long time ago, and that he'd heard a group of people planning to "attack" the server with a powerful modded client he had provided them (for other purposes, naturally). To demonstrate what he was talking about, he directed us to an AVO video demonstrating a similar function (it was a year-old video just showing off a printer-style nuker/reach hack). We assured him that we have plugins which block such behavior, including suspicious packet behavior. Pacified, he just got to talking with us about building on the server, playing spleef, and chatting. Once he got more comfortable, he eventually admitted that he had joined half-planning to grief, but after talking with us and seeing some builds, he stated that he'd rather stay and build than grief, saying he "expected something completely different." Audio Clip (MP3 256 kbps 4:14) (Speakers by order of appearance: WayneByNumbers, NEVAstop, TheShoelaceKing, Magnyus) The audio is mostly rather boring (and an hour long), so I've just posted the relevant bit I'm talking about. Will this guy become one of the pillars of the community? Not too likely. But this is the kind of thing we can do that makes players want to stay. And like I said, I'd rather get a new player than a funny troll any day.

Whatever happened to your Tea video? It was like your entire nerd.nu career summed up in 10 seconds :)

Would it be possible to leave out the fishbans auto-check on login? While /fishcheck is useful, having it every time someone with a ban elsewhere logs in (like Dumbo ) was a bit screen-spammy.

Figured I'd BUMP this thread back up with an idea that popped into my head while digging in Soleil (the mind tends to wander). It mainly concerns the CTA. CTA has kind of petered out over time, and the reasons aren't too hard to determine. There's little incentive to build it or use it. The colored wool rail lines are kind of bland, misunderstandings/lack of information about how the rail system works discourage people from connecting their builds/cities, and of course, flying is faster than minecarts. My idea hinges on the possibility of applying status effects within certain areas/regions. I imagine a network of roads or tubes, rather than rail lines, in which something like Speed 10 is applied. There are a couple disadvantages from rails over this; you can't AFK travel, you'd have to read direction signs to get to a destination, and your FOV gets pretty wide, for instance. I think there are more advantages, though. Since there would be no specific rail system, stations could be more varied and easier to integrate with the network. Data systems would be unnecessary, players could stop whenever and wherever they want. A strong enough Speed effect could be significantly faster than flying, encouraging use of the system. Speed only applies when walking or running, so perhaps use of the CTA would encourage more ground traffic and scenic travel. Somewhat related to this, I've also been thinking about how C (and the other servers) is dedicated to being as close to vanilla as feasible, and how we've tended to avoid adding certain things to stay true to that. However, I think some of the more recent developments in Minecraft, particularly some of the new commands and command blocks, bring a lot more possibilities under the umbrella of "vanilla." Obviously, command blocks and many of the new commands are far too dangerous to consider lightly, but I wonder if, perhaps during map setup at least, some of the newer functions of Minecraft could be included. For example, the /playsound command adds a lot of options for affecting the environment of things (one option I've been toying with is for the CTA idea; if the lines are tubes, a sound like a creeper hiss played every 20 blocks could perhaps give the impression of being inside a pneumatic accelerator). /setblock allows for vanilla map possibilities previously only available through WorldEdit (and looking forward, the coming update will also introduce /blockdata, /fill, and cubic regions for command blocks). Alternatively, if command blocks are ultimately considered too risky, there are probably plugins that perform the same functions that we could look at. Since these functions are now available in vanilla, I wouldn't call it breaking with the MCPublic tradition to add things like that, even if it doesn't rely on vanilla tech.

Glad you've owned up to it, that makes this go smoother. From the screenshot, it seems it wasn't entirely shut down, but had in fact glitched to a standstill (some of the clocks are frozen in place). While this is convenient, it's not something we can really rely on, so it would have been better if you had deactivated it completely. In any case, 5 days seems a sufficient ban for something of this scale, so I'll go ahead and lift the ban. silasjames can also be unbanned as soon as he makes his own appeal. Unbanned, go build stuff!

I'll have to enter a guilty plea here, as one of the C mods who has drifted away a bit. Just to give some of my own reasons, one is that I've been playing quite a bit on a different server and am still a bit in thrall to the "new friend is best friend" stage, but that, I expect, will wear off in time. Another is that I actually find it difficult to play on C at the moment in terms of framerate; I'm one of those people who pretty much requires Optifine for some things, and the severe delay (srsly, it's getting ridiculous) on the MCP update has been holding a lot of common mods/plugins hostage. A third reason, it pains me to say, is a bit of boredom with C (and MC in general). I'm generally more of a solo builder, and I've been a bit short of ideas recently (as well as biting off more than I could chew with the Menger Sponge), I am working on it tho. Reason number four is work. Bleah. I do intend to stick around, tho, and plan to work on the above. Since the topic (a rather touchy one) of Magnyus' not getting modded has been brought up... I've been thinking I've gone too long without mentioning this, but it didn't seem to be a matter of arbitrary veto overriding anything AFAIK. The rough percentage for appointing mods is a matter of public record, and the vote was frustratingly shy of that number. Not to say I was at all happy with how that vote turned out, see next paragraph. In that same discussion, the idea of a "neutral" option in the voting process was discussed briefly, but eventually dismissed. Given what we've seen so far and what's been discussed here, my feelings have grown stronger on that point. With the servers having an unevenly distributed playerbase atm, voters simply not being familiar with someone has become more of an issue than before. The change in format after the forum move may also have slightly altered the voting culture that developed there, removing the "yes to all" response favored by many. I am in full support of a third option. Ok, enough whining from me. C does need something, but what? As for changing things around and such, in principle that sounds good, Minecraft isn't new anymore and a lot of things people have wanted to do have been done. Donator perks, "trusted" status, etc. are obviously out of the question, the server community has always had "public" and "free" as core principles. As for the "vanilla" principle, however, I think vanilla Creative mode has stagnated at Mojang a bit. One of the attractions of Survival mode is progression and maintenance--you work to get more advanced, and you work to stay there, and updates introduce new ways to do that. I wonder if we could somehow implement some way to achieve things in Creative in-game. The other servers have such distinctions; people being able to say they killed this guy, or were part of that widely feared clan, or mayored this town, or built that big public grinder, or built in this big city, or won that spleef tournament, or had the dragon egg in this rev. C has few such badges of honor besides getting a warp (which is a good one, a Creative server is all about building), it could use more. Short minigames can get short, strong bursts of interest, but those inevitably end. We may not want to become a roleplaying server or a modded client server, but leaving it a completely unstructured sandbox risks falling into a spiral: fewer people=less stuff on the server=even fewer people (ok, maybe the word "risk" is obsolete by this point). But all that begs the rather big question; if playing on C were to have more of an ongoing purpose, even a side purpose, what would it be?

Phooey. And phooey again. What will it be like with Watson without the Holmes?

Apparently this is a Bukkit bug with the "Direct connect" button.

Just one little quibble I've tripped on a couple times so far. Would it be possible for ModMode to remember one's vanish state while outside of modmode? It seems that if you auto-vanish when going into modmode (which I definitely like), then it might be more convenient to auto-return to your previous vanish state when you exit modmode. Ok, so it's hardly a necessity, maybe I'm just too lazy to remember to type /modmode and then /unvanish every time.

Voting no as well. It seems that one of the big reasons for giving players compasses would be to equalize gameplay between players and staff. From the way this thread [Removed Link] is going, that may soon be a moot point as mods could be losing that function outside of modmode. If that happens, then compass access for regular play would just be a building/traveling aid, which I think goes against C's focus on being mostly vanilla.

Since we seem to be getting down to the nitty-gritty details, I've got one. If the page is going to be geared towards accepting all suggestions, and not just self-suggestions, the current URL might be a little misleading. Perhaps it could be changed to something like nerd.nu/modsuggestionbox or something similar, and the old applyformod address redirect to that (so as not to break old links).

As much as I agree there would be frivolous applications, I don't think it would be too terrible to have some kind of way for people to submit their own names. As I see it, the main problem that this would be solving would be the possibility of certain players who are otherwise qualified for modship, and would make very helpful additions, flying under the radar due to time zones, or a quiet manner, ect. Self-nomination would be a way for some of that type of player to get their name into the nomination thread, and we could then try to interact with them more. Yes, there would be derplications and power plays. Those may well be the majority of submissions, and we would hopefully recognize them for what they are. Allowing applications (or perhaps just self-nomination if we don't want to make this too official a process) would just be a way to cast a wider net for those who would do well on staff.

6 whole weeks? Dang, that's awesome, thx.