redwall_hp

It's definitely possible, but it would require designing the data modeling a bit. I kind of like the idea of having a history of sent messages.

That's something I would have liked to do this time, but it would have required building an entire permission scheme from scratch, as modmode confers WG bypass and admin groups necessarily inherit certain things from the ModMode group. There was just too much on my list to justify working on that.

I think that would be a good idea. I'll see about scheduling a time sometime after the upcoming staff meeting. With the CTF test coming up and people being busy with the PvE new-rev boom, I don't want to step on anyone's plans.

To alleviate any confusion: the system is supposed to freeze you in the pre-round. When each team has at least one player, a countdown will start and you will be unfrozen. (A message, printed when you join a team, will probably be added eventually to make this more clear.) So to play, walk through the portal or hit the sign, and select a team. Once the opposing team also has a player, the round will begin. Buzzie seems to have encountered an odd issue with it 1. not applying properly sometimes and 2. wrongly applying in spectator mode when switching back to spectator from another team. Edit: Optifine is weird. Hopefully that'll be patched in a later update o_0

After months of work, and thousands of lines of code (9,482 to be precise!), the Nerd.nu Minigames server is finally nearing its debut. For those of you who haven't been in the loop, the server is powered by a modular minigame framework I've been writing, known as AthenaGM, which can accommodate separate plugins that handle individual game modes. The first companion plugin, of which more are to follow as the core is tested and improved, is a King Of The Hill mode where you can capture and block captures by punching a beacon (or punting enemies away). You can see a rough technical overview in flowchart form if you want the gory details, but most of you probably just want to know how you can get on, play, and help find bugs. :P One major highlight of AthenaGM is that it's extensively mappable, with much of the settings, teams, spawn kits, etc. being controlled via a metadata file embedded in a standard Minecraft world, meaning anyone who wants to make their own maps to add to the rotation absolutely can. All you need to do is make your build and prep the world it's in a little bit, then copy and tweak some configuration. (More on this later.) So those of you who like to build arenas can take this opportunity to make some KOTH maps before the public launch if you desire. How to Connect [Redacted connection information] Everyone should be whitelisted, but ping me on Slack if I missed you. Bugs and Issues If you find any obvious bugs, or issues with the system, please report them in this thread so they can be more easily addressed. Questions are welcome as well, and will aid testing. Mapping Interested in making a KOTH map? The mapping documentation for the base plugin has already been assembled here on the AthenaGM Wiki: https://github.com/redwallhp/AthenaGM/wiki There you will find the basics of making a map, and all of the various things you can configure through the meta file. KOTH maps should include a second, simpler, meta file called koth.yml that looks like this: beacon: x: -19 y: 91 z: -19 capture_time: 6 capture_distance: 6 This file controls the location of the capture point, the seconds it takes to capture, and the radius in blocks (Euclidian calculation) you must stay within to keep the capture timer from canceling. Note: If all this is too far over your head and you'd just like to build a map, I'm willing to assist in rigging up the config file if you can deliver a schematic or world file and answer some questions. The wiki is still worth a read though in order to see what is possible. Recording One last thing...I'd like to edit together a dramatic 30-second teaser trailer to build hype, so if any of you happen to get some footage of the server in action, or some good screenshots, don't hesitate to pass them along! (OBS is good if you want to try your hand at recording.)

My opinion is that all grinders should be mainly public (though if someone wants to skim off half, I don't particularly care) because the creation of excessive duplicate grinders is generally undesirable. This goes especially for guardian ones, which have a nasty habit of spawning insane amounts of mobs and *hopefully* killing them as fast as they accumulate. Couple that with a metric ton of hoppers and redstone to sort and store the ocean of resulting items...and it has a notable impact on server resources.

Oh damn. I guess I'd better stick to pvping. I think buzzie's assessment of buffs is reasonable. A mild strength one would be another option. Also, with Minecraft's regular flight mechanics...speed applies to flight as well, so it would buff your jetpacking.

The combat advantage can be an important balance tool, though. Because a team that's behind can have their parkour-oriented players capture the buff, which makes it easier to catch up in score from a disadvantageous point.

IIRC, wiki is hosted internally on one of our servers. Same one that handles http://mcp-dl.com/ and the Event server.

One minor suggestion: the emboldening on hover of links (like the comment/share/save ones) makes the elements jump around on the page. I'd recommend finding a way to keep that from happening.

Techadmin Battlestation Now with more cat... Since this photo was taken, the mouse has been replaced with a Logitech G300S.

Silversunset and rob_r mostly summed up my largest criticism: that they have little in the way of a business plan and are an entirely proprietary hosted service. If they alter their terms or shut down (because venture funders will demand a return on their investment sooner or later) we'd be screwed. Mumble is 100% open source, highly configurable (we could even increase the audio bitrate if we needed) and hosted by us. It will always be available, and has plenty of OS support. (Side note: the next release of Mumble will add the ability to adjust the volume of individual users, which is my favorite part of Discord.) Moreover, I didn't exactly have the best experience with Discord. It was very slow to load initially, and connecting to voice channels had a significant wait as well. It doesn't seem to perform well on low bandwidth or high latency connections (which is something Mumble does well). I'm not a huge fan of the text channels being decoupled from the voice ones either, which makes sharing links to people in your voice room less convenient. Other than that, the Slack-style chat interface is fairly neat...but that's hardly a selling point when a chat system like that is fairly easy to make. There's even a major Slack clone you can host yourself now. I'm also not a fan of unnecessarily splintering the community. Replacing Mumble, a destination many users know about and go to to hang out, would create significant upheaval...and doing it for a closed product owned by an unproven business is very imprudent.

Heh. I may have to see about writing a CommandHelper script to make that sort of thing easier sometime, so you can set a region name pattern and have it "stick" while you add subsequent ones, and have it automatically set their parent. Something like "/multiregion name region_name" and then "/multiregion add" to create subsequent regions named "region_name_2," etc with them all being made a parent of the original region_name.

I'm on reduced activity and reachability for the next month or two for personal reasons. I'll be around still, and will probably be doing some development work "in the background," but I'm intentionally making myself scarce as far as direct contact goes. I can't be anyone's "go to" person to get things done at this time and need to take a step back. So, essentially, if you need to contact a tech, please reach out to our other very capable techs unless all other possibilities are entirely exhausted. I'll still be around if things majorly go south. I'll still be playing Minecraft recreationally, but I'd like to keep my in-game staff role at a comparative minimum for the time being.

Sapphric's wheat fields! Molon Junction!

Deaygo did some digging into IP addresses and asked into some usage habits. Looks like it's mostly a convergence of VPNs. Some players have used popular VPNs/proxies, which the spam bots' accounts have also used at one point or another, so they all get associated into a big pile o' alts. So while this was probably a false alarm, good password security is never misplaced, and it always pays off to be safe. As for third party launchers, same deal. While there wasn't an issue in this case, and Technic or FTB probably don't steal your passwords, you only really have their word that they don't. If they wanted to, it would be trivial. So use at your own risk.

Who would win in a fight: Ooer or Mr Skeltal?

I'll be at the first one. (Saturday evening for you.)

I will not be available, due to lack of wired Internet slash being busy with other things, for roughly two weeks starting tomorrow. (November 30th, AEST.) If something majorly breaks in a spectacularly horrifying way, I can probably get on with a cellular tether. (Otherwise...) Please direct all technical concerns to the other techadmins, who are equally capable of handling issues that may come up.

totemo rewrote it, so yes, you no longer need the ore block. Just smack it with a blaze rod to toggle the status, right-click to inspect the current value. So admins no longer have that issue where they can't place lapiz ore. \o/

PvE is now running a new SafeBuckets build that should fix the minor lag spikes /sb flowsel could sometimes cause.

Age of Alchemy Dangerous monsters haunt the night. Even a seasoned player will feel like a newbie trying to hide in a makeshift shack. (Buffed custom mobs of various kinds. Along with the occasional wither, etc.) And those you've killed in the past may haunt you, in the form of doppelgangers desiring vengeance... While you may find limited iron ores in the overlands, best saved for tools, you'll find iron grinders to be impossible to make, and no diamonds to be found. The only place to go for them is the Nether, a very dangerous place that requires an eldritch ritual to enter. The skull of a player, doppelgänger, or wither skeleton must be sacrificed, along with a precious mineral. (An individual player will only drop a skull once per hour.) Placing the skull on the ground, and clicking it with an emerald will transport you to the hellish dimension, consuming the reagents. There, you will find hostile pig-zombies—always ready to mob you, they never go passive—and the usual nether monsters, albeit with more frequent wither skeletons. In the nether you will find your diamonds, scattered amidst the lava and roving monsters. But how do you leave? Only one of four portals will return you to the place you left. Hopefully you'll find one while your supplies last... Experience is an important commodity, for it fuels the eldritch crafting system. You'll find that some items may be transmuted into others if you have enough experience to make the trade, but the ratio will have a cost—equivalent exchange. Don't worry, you'll collect it quickly...but you have to stay alive to use it. This requires an Arcane Crafter: an arrangement of bookshelves surrounding an enchantment table. But when you access the table, you'll see a familiar crafting table UI. This replaces enchanting, and then some. Want a feather falling book? You must craft together a feather, a book, a diamond, and a requisite among of experience. Want to bottle some of your XP for later? Brew a potion of the required variety (mundane, perhaps) and combine it with an emerald. You'll bottle a set amount of XP into a "Bottle o' Enchanting," though you'll lose a little more than you bottled. Need a diamond? Craft two emeralds together, if you have the experience. Gold? Out of luck...that form of alchemy is still unknown. Death is an interesting experience. Usually, you drop your items and respawn. But if you happen to be carrying an ender pearl on your hotbar when you are struck down by a player, you'll instead be magically transported to the End dimension, where you will be able to return to your body—with your items—if you complete the trials and reach the exit portal without dying. You must brave a maze of traps, parkour, and monsters, armed with nothing but your wit. If you succeed, you'll appear in a random part of the overland with your inventory intact...and your killer will be transported to the End for judgement. If you fail, your items will be gone forever...and the endermen will reward your killer with extra experience and possibly a mystery gift. The question is: how do you obtain an ender pearl if endermen don't drop them in the overland? You'll have to raid their domain yourself, gearing up for an invasion, finding a portal to light, and crafting eyes of ender with alchemical recipes. They won't take kindly to you entering their lands and killing them for pearls, and you can't place any blocks there, so you must play on their terms... Additional Notes... PvP enabled, but with a RuneScape style skull system that should create both risk and reward for killing players. The game is about surviving, and that means killing or cooperating. Each may be beneficial, but there are consequences for being evil. Killing a player flags you as a murderer for 30 minutes, and players receive some sort of advantage over you, as well as an incentive to hunt you down. Ender pearls cannot be used to teleport No spawner blocks should exist in the overworld, as grinders provide too east of an XP source. Villager trades will have to be rebalanced or removed. Villages will not spawn iron golems, rendering iron farms impossible to build. The general idea is to lengthen and complicate the tech tree, and make the world far more hostile.

Basically, it looks for source blocks in the selection and flips a data value to make them flow.

So far, the lag spikes seem to have cleared up now that CobraCorral is using a mysql backend. TheAcademician is working on some further optimization to the plugin, but overall, it's looking good.