Moving Forward: Preparations for CTF Take #2

[MasterCommaThe]

Let's DO this! 

 

The 14th sounds fine for me.

[Mrloud15]

Is there any confirmation about having this on the 14th?

 

If so, we might want to get a post out in the next day or two.

[Guest Former Staff]

I understand JohnAdams has been collaborating with the people involved with the CTF event in preparation for an announcement on the date. However John is currently very occupied with real life for the foreseeable week or two, so Steve, Thrawn and I are going to try to be involved, I can't speak for anyone else but my time is very limited over the next fortnight.

 

I'm glad we're nearing a reasonable date on this event, though I am hesitant to announce a date if we cannot deliver upon it, particularly twice in a row, confidence would diminish. In the interests of gathering numbers of who can attend to help moderate this event if we're aiming for Saturday 14th and ensuring we can deliver on this date:

 

How positive are we that the map and event are going to be completed ready and be completely tested?

 

My opinion is that if we do have doubts, the weekend on the 21st is available too.

[Mrloud15]

Totemo said the plugin is done but needs more testing, and the map is done or nearly done. 

 

As you said this is our second attempt, so I think the 21st would be the better date. That should give us enough time to test the plugin and double check everything and anything.

[totemo]

Barlimore, sorry I missed you in IRC earlier.

 

I believe that the plugin is complete.  If there are issues with it, I don't think that they are serious enough to prevent us from going ahead with the 14th.

 

The gravest problem that we had with it before - one staff member allocated to two teams - occurred after he did a ModMode transition.  I since fully diagnosed that and discovered that ModMode can cause internal errors in the server that result in players not ever appearing on the player list.  And that breaks almost any plugin you can imagine.  It's also why the server sometimes did not feel the need to send people chunks, particularly if they logged out in ModMode from the End.  The simple fact was that due to the internal error, they were not on the player list, so the server did not send them chunks.

 

ModMode is now rewritten and those problems have not recurred.

[Guest Former Staff]

No worries Totemo, thanks for posting here. It sounds like we're in a good position to make an announcement very shortly. While I am available on Saturday 14th, I would prefer the weekend of the 21st just to ensure that we do not have to rush the ongoing testing and final map details which will allow us enough time to be almost absolutely confident that we can launch.

 

If there are objections to this date (Saturday 21st), please say, we can then move forward with planning a time of day that will be reasonable for the various Admins and contributors involved with setting up and moderating the event, in addition to planning an announcement before the coming weekend (possibly by Friday 13th).

[totemo]

About  a dozen of the staff spent a few hours testing the latest plugin version.  The problems that were identified with it were:

• Can't capture a flag while holding a flower. Will not fix - no event sent from the client. Left click the flag you damned hippy.
• FIXED There was a particular slot in double chests that could not be accessed.

On that basis I will save a copy of the current binary in case later changes introduce a significant problem that is not identified until the day the of the event.
 
The following changes were suggested as improvements:

• IMPLEMENTED Disable crafting of helmets.  A very good idea.
• IMPLEMENTED Preferentially allocate players to the losing team. (Suggested by TheRandomnatrix.)  Definitely doable by factoring the team scores into the weighting. Each capture scored by a team decreases the probability of adding a player to that team by the same amount as having an extra player already on the team.
• IMPLEMENTED Automatically return flags carried into a team base.  We have a timeout on hold of flags away from their home, but this suggestion seems like a reasonable addition to prevent the base protections (building and PVP protections) from being abused.
• IMPLEMENTED Add deaths to the score keeping.
• Possibly the health boost power blocks were not allowing regeneration from the buff while standing on the block.  Need to check in a more controlled environment.
• IMPLEMENTED Turn soul sand into a power block and add slowness.
• IMPLEMENTED Personal preference: I'll decrease the strength of the poison potion for yellow stained clay by one level (from 4 down to 1) because they're very strong and change the colour to lime green so they are less easily confused with orange.  Configuration change. A single contact still does 3 hearts damage, total.
• IMPLEMENTED Make carpets work the same as solid wool blocks in the team colour.  Doable.  Must be done carefully. This bridge was mostly crossed when I got soul sand working; both block types are shorter than a full block.
• NOT THIS TIME Add a /top command so that players can see top scorers in each category. I've run out of patience to do that this time round.  All of the other changes above were minor in comparison and minor changes are the only ones I want to do this close to the event.

tompreuss, TheRandomnatrix and I spent some time on event configuring and checking the minigames area, making sure that warp and item signs are in place and that they can't be abused.  I believe that the minigames area in the End is now complete, save for taking down a few temporary signs.
 
I'll indicate which issues I have fixed/implemented on my private test server.

 

None of the newly implemented features are on event or the nerd.nu event test server (event.nerd.nu) but I'll put them up there soon.

[totemo]

No worries Totemo, thanks for posting here. It sounds like we're in a good position to make an announcement very shortly. While I am available on Saturday 14th, I would prefer the weekend of the 21st just to ensure that we do not have to rush the ongoing testing and final map details which will allow us enough time to be almost absolutely confident that we can launch.

 

That will be ok.

[Guest Former Staff]

That will be ok.

 

Great, I'll make sure to check the forums / pms each day and stay connected for this. I'll begin typing up a post ready for the subreddit and forum announcement so that we can put this up once we're confident. If we can aim for the 21st, we'll see how the next few days go and then announce by the upcoming weekend.

[JohnAdams1735]

Since things seem to be moving along I was wondering is this list (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J53n5pUdon5FF6dqKBO3-h_xP63xJnhMIJvsXBIjxsQ/edit) is still current or if it needs to be revised.

It's not. I've not touched it since the stalled attempt in June. I'm sure steve at least has perms to edit or just make a new list :)

[JohnAdams1735]

Great, I'll make sure to check the forums / pms each day and stay connected for this. I'll begin typing up a post ready for the subreddit and forum announcement so that we can put this up once we're confident. If we can aim for the 21st, we'll see how the next few days go and then announce by the upcoming weekend.

Barli, I have a post drawn up already, just double check details and add the date if you'd like. Copypasta suck on the tablet, but it ought to be in you google docs under "CTF Announcement Post." Steve and thrawn also have access.

On a personal note, I'd love for the 21st so I stand a better chance of being there, but don't hold things up on my account, of course :) If you do go for the 14th, I might be able to at least pop in.

In any case, good luck!

[Guest Former Staff]

I have the post John, thank you, this does save some time. I'm checking the forums and IRC each day, if we could collaborate our progress by this Friday, we can continue aiming for the 21st and provided our progress, announce the Capture the Flag event within 24 hours from our progress update on Friday.

[totemo]

Since things seem to be moving along I was wondering is this list (https://docs.google....JvsXBIjxsQ/edit) is still current or if it needs to be revised.

Not really relevant any more. All staff will be able to play.

Being a staff member will not automatically make you cognizant of opposing team chats - you will need to be in ModMode to moderate that. However, staff will be divided fairly between both teams. So even when not in ModMode, there will be people around to keep an eye on it.

[Mrloud15]

Could we see about getting permission from the /r/minecraft mods to post something on /r/minecraft like we did in June?

[tompreuss]

Could we see about getting permission from the /r/minecraft mods to post something on /r/minecraft like we did in June?

For reference, the collection of /r/minecraft CTF posts that I could find:

June 2013 CTF attempt

November 2012 CTF

April 2012 CTF / April 2012 CTF followup

[totemo]

As of yesterday I have lowered the red and blue safe area regions back down to Y20 so that the dungeons that I pasted in would be protected.  I lowered the no mans land regions down to the same level, but I guess they don't have to be that deep and I may take them back up.

 

Each team will have 3 zombie dungeons, 2 skeleton dungeons and a spider dungeon under the safe area.  The spawners themselves will be protected by single block regions to prevent own-team griefing.

 

The dungeons have some fairly epic loots, including XP bottles (not that XP will be in short supply with all these dungeons and PlumpXP), enchanted books, records, saddles, leashes, horse armour, the occasional diamond tool or weapon and, perhaps most importantly, carrots and potatoes.

[Mrloud15]

What will the xp plump be and will there be a mobcap? Also, are there any creeper spawners around the map? If not I think it would be fun to have a few.

[MasterCommaThe]

I recommend that at least a 3x3 region around the spawners be protected to prevent piston grief (using pistons to move the spawners out of the protected area). 

[Mrloud15]

I recommend that at least a 3x3 region around the spawners be protected to prevent piston grief (using pistons to move the spawners out of the protected area). 

They can't be pushed by pistons.

[tompreuss]

I recommend that at least a 3x3 region around the spawners be protected to prevent piston grief (using pistons to move the spawners out of the protected area).

They can't be pushed by pistons.

And they're already in individual 1x1x1 obfuscatedly named protected regions, so we're set.

[totemo]

And they're already in individual 1x1x1 obfuscatedly named protected regions, so we're set.

 

Not to mention that I've already checked that defaults won't have sufficient permissions to list regions or get region info even if they happen to know names.  I consider that important for protecting the locations of things.

 

 

What will the xp plump be and will there be a mobcap? Also, are there any creeper spawners around the map? If not I think it would be fun to have a few.

 

I won't be implementing a mob cap at this stage.  I can keep an eye on mob counts with /count-entities.  It is something I guess we'll have to monitor.

 

PlumpXP will be enabled, as will Enchantism.  I consider those to be essential to teams being able to get started quickly.  I'm a little bit iffy about creeper spawners just because I think they open up the possibility of people using TNT cannons to attack enemy bases.  There is no protection in the plugin against that.  I'm not entirely opposed to it either, and we do have TNT prizes.  But I'd like to be able to control the TNT supply regardless.  I want the safe area to be a reasonably PvE zone.  We can't entirely stop some kinds of indirect PvP - just as we don't on P - except by moderation.

 

Today, so far I've just been tweaking the zombie dungeons. I noticed that the enchanted books didn't survive the WorldEdit copy/paste.  And I've been re-reading my source code for signs of problems. I see a doc-comment here and there that needs fixing, but nothing serious so far.  Later today I hope to finish adding dungeons under the bases.

 

Yesterday, I also made a lava lake in the blue safe area to equalise against the one in red.

[totemo]

Dungeons are done and spawners protected.  The no man's land regions are contracted up to Y48.

 

I've enabled horse crafting recipes as well as invulnerable tame horses and horse locking on the basis that they're a bit more friendly than the normal S configuration.  What do you guys think about the horse locking and invulnerability stuff?

[MasterCommaThe]

Sounds good totemo, thanks for all your work. Can we help in any way? (I would enjoy making statues in the dungeons for added atmosphere.)

[totemo]

Sounds good totemo, thanks for all your work. Can we help in any way? (I would enjoy making statues in the dungeons for added atmosphere.)

 

They're standard looking dungeons.  The only departure from normality being that the chests are loaded with much more and better loot than usual.  However, with the horse crafting recipes enabled, there's nothing really essential in those chests.  They just save some time - particularly the carrots and potatoes.

[MasterCommaThe]

So no antechamber with an EnderDragon statue with Diamond block eyes over a pit of lava?