Org Minecraft Server

[Nigel]

Came online to see about repairs and such, already done. So yes, no problems at all! At least that old shell is getting some love.

Some hot love, certainly....


But yes, I met Sigurd and newO online last night and they both came to help with the repairs (Ivanthefox had donated lots of wool, too).

I must say, Sigurd is quite a wizard at building. The speed at which he puts down the blocks is simply amazing. NewO and I just gathered some wood and helped out a bit here and there but Sigurd raised the walls in no time at all. No wonder he is capable of building something as amazing as his Castle up in the North.

If TinCow ever feels like handing out a Builders Award, Medal of Honour or Knighthood - Sigurd is the one to deserve it.

Still: thanks to everyone else who provided resources or moral support in my dark (well actually light and ablaze) hour.
Nigel

[BSmith]

Work on the Ranch is really coming along. It is basically operational at this time, although I have a few more projects in mind and am looking for ideas on more.

Currently the ranch has the following features:

- Large pens with every sheep color
- Large pens for cows and pigs
- Automatic egg farm and roasted chicken/feather farm
- Automatic sugar cane farm
- Automatic cactus farm
- Automatic Melon and Pumpkin farms
- Auto-harvest fields for wheat, potatoes and carrots.

Projects in mind:

- Stable near the entrance to the ranch
- Re-build the main house to be larger and more like a ranch/farm house. I’m probably going to wait until the 1.7 update as I plan on using mainly hardened clay for the building. If you have a bunch of clay you’d like to donate I may be able to start sooner.

Everyone is free to use the ranch and its production facilities. Getting there is easy, you can either take the new road I built that goes around the volcano, or you can get there via the nether. Nether access is probably the easiest and quickest. Just head east from the train station portals down the hall, and then take a left before the roof ends. Keep going straight and you are there. I’ll make some signage soon that helps with the way finding.

Most of the automatic production facilities only require you to be present in the chunk to work. All items are collected in chests for easy access.

Are there any other items that could be good additions to the grounds? Is there anything that you use that could be automated and made a resource for everyone?

The ranch is relatively close to the city, so it is a good place for production of commonly used items.

If you do go visit, please help increase the livestock numbers by breeding as many animals as you can.

I am wide open to suggestions for future use of the space!

[BSmith]

I’ve been thinking about the upcoming 1.7 release and the tons of new biomes that are included in this update and wish that we could find a way to include them in our main world. We naturally don’t want to remove any of the good work that our players have built, but I feel that we actually have a lot of land in our world that is essentially unused.

Would it be possible to delete these sections of our world and allow them to re-spawn under 1.7 with exploration? Is this even desirable by the player base?

Below is a map of our world with the little used areas outside the orange line. I have marked structures and villages outside the orange line that I found in red (It’s entirely possible I missed some too).

Would anyone miss these areas if they were deleted and new land was able to be spawned?

Not sure if this is even possible, but thought I’d raise the possibility. I know we have mineworld, and that will be cleared with 1.7, but that doesn’t really allow us to build any permanent structures or really incorporate them into our world.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[spankythehippo]

I’ve been thinking about the upcoming 1.7 release and the tons of new biomes that are included in this update and wish that we could find a way to include them in our main world. We naturally don’t want to remove any of the good work that our players have built, but I feel that we actually have a lot of land in our world that is essentially unused.

Would it be possible to delete these sections of our world and allow them to re-spawn under 1.7 with exploration? Is this even desirable by the player base?

Below is a map of our world with the little used areas outside the orange line. I have marked structures and villages outside the orange line that I found in red (It’s entirely possible I missed some too).

Would anyone miss these areas if they were deleted and new land was able to be spawned?

Not sure if this is even possible, but thought I’d raise the possibility. I know we have mineworld, and that will be cleared with 1.7, but that doesn’t really allow us to build any permanent structures or really incorporate them into our world.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not only is it possible, TC already did that before. I'm totally game for a new map generation, although I can't really talk since I haven't played in a while.

[TinCow]

Yes, it is possible. Trimming the current map would be a lot more work than last time, but it can be done. The main problems are as follows:

1) New terrain wouldn't mesh perfectly with the old terrain. This problem can be minimized by deleting sections where natural boundaries already occur (namely, oceans and islands) and keeping all land-connection border deletions to a minimum. I can use the same tool I used last time to 'smooth' the transitions areas so that we do not get the perfectly vertical cliffs that occur as a result of terrain generation mismatches, though that's not a perfect solution.

2) The risk of deleting someone's work. I do not know everywhere that someone has built. If we delete a large area and I am not given specific instructions to spare a spot within that area, the spot will be lost. I would, of course, retain a full backup of the world before deletion, so re-importing the structure would be possible in the scenario.

I will say that I'm not too happy about the idea of having tiny spots of saved land in the midst of large areas of deleted and re-generated terrain. Those old spots of land could end up looking really bad, depending on what gets put around them. Imagine, for instance, a small circle of desert in the middle of a Mesa or Extreme Hills biome. If this is something we really want to do, I would prefer if we could develop a very comprehensive program from IDing the areas to be deleted and the structures in those areas that need to be saved. It might be better to simply move the structures that need to be saved into a matching biome in the 'old' part of the world. That would save them while also allowing the newly generated areas to avoid internal disruption.

[Sigurd]

How would the schematics of our structures work? Let's take my castle for the argument's sake. I have multiple biomes spanning along the length of my castle, with jungle, plain and extreme hills.
Would it be possible to just save a schematic of my castle and put in in any biome makeup in the new world?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If we are going to do this... I only want my castle, the walls of my forthcoming medieval city. The flag can stay. And I want the structure depth to only include the last major floor. The mines underneath that can stay

[Nigel]

An interesting thought.

Well, I guess we dont want to rush into this and make sure we really know what we are doing before we hit delete button on some areas.
But I have to admit, there is a cerrain charme to it and I can see some pretty unattractive areas getting a nice upgrade that way.

Perhaps we want to start carefully and experiment on a small area before we approach big sections of land.
There is a small mushroom island at -5300, -100, which nobody really seems to use.
Also, I could imaginge that some of our other islands with inhabitable climate (-1600, 3000; -800, -3000 or 3800, 2600) could sink below the ocean and resurface as new landmasses without risk of loosing anything.

Just a thought - like trying out a new polish in an un-obstrusive spot, if you are not sure that it does not damage your expensive surface material.

[TinCow]

How would the schematics of our structures work? Let's take my castle for the argument's sake. I have multiple biomes spanning along the length of my castle, with jungle, plain and extreme hills.
Would it be possible to just save a schematic of my castle and put in in any biome makeup in the new world?[/SPOIL]

That is theoretically possible, but the level of work required to do that will scale significantly if I have to start selecting small segments or individual blocks in some areas to transport. For example, it would be relatively easy for me to move a structure that was built on perfectly flat ground with no underground bits. Moving something with underground bits that need to remain underground, without also moving the ground the structure is currently in, would be much more difficult. I would be reluctant to do that, particularly since the rest of the work on trimming and regenerating the map would itself already be significant. In short, simple structures that can be easily boxed in without losing any bits (or at least any bits that the owner cares about) could be transported to other parts of the world relatively easily. The more integrated a structure is into the terrain around it, the more likely it would be that I'd have to move the terrain along with the structure. In such a situation, I would recommend transporting the structure to a biome that is as close to matching as possible, and then doing some manual work in-game to make it blend better.

Do not worry about the actual in-game biome designations. There are tools that I can use to make the game consider specific terrain whatever biome I want it to be. I already had to do that once before to fix some weather screw-ups caused by another game update (which is why there is snow and ice in some biomes around the central area where there shouldn't be).

[BSmith]

Ideally we wouldn't delete areas that have buildings people care about. Are there such areas outside of the orange line in my example other than potentially the structures I found by looking at the map? The couple that may be worth saving are conveniently on small islands that could be relocated to a closer sea. There are a couple of villages, but I assume that new ones would spawn in new areas?

The lines were also just a suggestion based on my perception of unused areas. I would expect the final areas to be deleted to be decided on after some discussion.

[spankythehippo]

How about only removing entire biomes that clearly have nothing built on them? For example, the entire desert biome where Vlad's new village is could be left intact, but the massive tundra biome to the north could be completely regenerated? The number of biomes that have absolutely nothing built on them greatly outnumber the ones that do. But I have a feeling that if a biome is saved this way and an ocean biome is generated around it, it would look odd. Or at least it would look unnatural.

I have a feeling I'll start playing again when 1.7 is released. I'll rebuild the Iron Farm, and I'm feeling optimistic this time.

[Papewaio]

I have limited Internet connectivity until I first get a new house and second a new fixed line. So 12+ weeks.

Given the mine world viability. Is there an issue with creating more permanent satellite worlds rather than rebuilding our current one?

[TinCow]

'll rebuild the Iron Farm, and I'm feeling optimistic this time.

Have you checked to see if 1.6.4 fixed it?

[spankythehippo]

Have you checked to see if 1.6.4 fixed it?

I think it might've been an error on my end. The number of components that could go wrong are huge. I might as well rebuild the thing from scratch. I might just recruit Sazak to help me dismantle it.

[TinCow]

Given the mine world viability. Is there an issue with creating more permanent satellite worlds rather than rebuilding our current one?

It can be done, but it does have implications. Multiple permanent worlds means much larger map space. The map files themselves aren't a big deal, as even our giant world is only a few gb total. However, the dynmap (realtime map) renders are massive. Lack of drive space is one of the reasons dynmap does not run on Mineworld. Adding a dynmap render for a second world would likely require me to upgrade the server (unless the world was very small) because I would exceed the space I've got allocated on our current one. So, the answer is that yes, it is technically possible, but it would require more money (not likely to survive a spousal veto). In addition, I'd be concerned about diluting the population of an already low-population world. In any case, the world can still get much, much larger. If we're ever in a situation where we really do want a lot more land, I can easily expand the boundaries of our world and generate new terrain, which would be done under the most modern terrain generation code. That would also likely require a server upgrade, but I would prefer it to multiple permanent worlds. The only reason I see for multiple permanent worlds is for alternate game modes, such as a creative world, or for running mods like Walls.

[spankythehippo]

Also, is the Village Trading plugin meant to enable limitless transactions? Villagers don't want to trade with me no more.

[TinCow]

Also, is the Village Trading plugin meant to enable limitless transactions? Villagers don't want to trade with me no more.

It's supposed to, but the plugin is currently disabled because the author hasn't released a 1.6.4-compatible version. In any case, I've often found that even when it was enabled transactions weren't limitless like the plugin claimed.

[Papewaio]

Can you limit the size of dynamap but increase world size outside it?

[BSmith]

Looks like 1.7.2 was released today.

[TinCow]

Can you limit the size of dynamap but increase world size outside it?

Yes, that's possible, though not in a nice neat circle. I'm not keen on having an invisible permanent world though, as that would prevent us from showing off new buildings.

Looks like 1.7.2 was released today.

As usual, we cannot upgrade until Bukkit upgrades, and it will take Bukkit a few days to catch up.

[Nigel]

As usual, we cannot upgrade until Bukkit upgrades, and it will take Bukkit a few days to catch up.

Also, we may want to take a few days to check and see that we have visited and uploaded all "important areas" with 1.6.4 before making the transition to 1.7.2.



On a somewhat different note:
It finally happened yesterday and I had my first really "bad day at the office" on MineCraft.

I went into the Nether to mine some Quarz at a nether road that BSmith had recently shown me. It was my first real mining run in the nether and I was very happy to have a good yield in Quarz and a few handful of Glowstone dust, too. Eventually I decided to call it a day and make my way back home. A Ghast appearing in the distance helped that decision, but did not really worry me. Happily I ran along, back the path that I knew - or at least thought I knew.

Suddenly I turnd a wrong corner and the next thing I see is myself diving into a lava lake. I had known it was there, but just had not considered that I would so easily fall into it. The walls were steep and before I could really think again, the respawn button was my only option.

It would not have been so bad about the quarz, but I had worn some quite expensive armour. Most of all, my iron chestplate. That was a piece of garnment I have gotten really attached to. It was old and stitched, but it had been my first ever chestplate I made on this server. Made at a time when iron was extremely precious to me and spending 8 ingots on it had been a real decision. Also the enchantments had been made at a time before I discovered XP farms. So the magic in it had been really hard manual work.

Once I realized my loss, I felt absolutely gutted. I had wanted to keep the old piece as a memorabila and give it a special place at my house when it was eventually time to retire.

Oh, well, I guess something like this has happened to most of you, too.
It is not the material loss. I have enough iron now to make 10 chestplates; and with better enchantments, too. So I should not complain. I guess it is just another interesting side of this game and certainly a lesson to teach me not to get overconfident. I shall know how to take better care next time.

[TinCow]

Also, we may want to take a few days to check and see that we have visited and uploaded all "important areas" with 1.6.4 before making the transition to 1.7.2.

Bukkit has actually released a tool to make sure all structures get properly updated. I will run that before we upgrade:
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/psa...ctures.186617/

[Tamur]

Sorry to hear about that Nigel. It is breathtaking how hours and days of careful work and treasured longtime possessions can disappear in an instant in this game. I say "game", but it's enough of a simulation that you really do feel the losses keenly.

[Papewaio]

I feel you. My seven year old son took my character lava swimming. I was very upset and couldn't play the game for a couple of days. That is when I realized that the game has much better depth then most others and that I really need to give my son clear instructions.

Hardcore is a good way to inflict that pain on yourself.

[TinCow]

Can we get a yes or no vote on this land regeneration thing? The proposal is to delete the areas outside these orange lines:


Developed areas outside those lines will be moved inside the lines. If the owners of those areas want their structures moved to a specific spot, I will do so. If no preference is stated by the owner, I will move them where I think best. Be aware that the red circles listed above are not entirely accurate or complete. For example, the top middle circle is an undeveloped village and will not be moved at all, while the circle to the bottom right of it is also an undeveloped village, but marked structure. In addition, this map does not include all structures outside the orange lines. For example, there is an underwater building (that has no surface lighting) at approx -4000, -1850. I will move everything I can identify outside the orange lines that was intended to be permanent. I will retain a backup of the old world so that I can open it up and copy any structure I missed back into the world even after I delete it.

This process will be complex and will likely require the server to be offline for several days after the 1.7 version of Bukkit is released. Since doing this would add more 'new' terrain to the world than Mineworld could hold total, I would delete Mineworld and not replace it. Mineworld would return whenever a future update adds blocks that could not be found in the main world.

[Ishmael]

I'm all for it. The new biomes look great, it will be nice to have them in our main world.

[Papewaio]

Playing offline single player. I've found lots of deserts and savanah in the new biomes.

Got to say stained glass makes for better buildings. Green glass does blend in with nature better but it is hard to see creepers through it.

[BSmith]

It goes without saying, but I am all for it too.

[Tamur]

Yea here.

[Tuuvi]

I vote yea.

[Nigel]

I vote "yes" with a little "but".

There is at least one structure (building) that is outside the orange circle and not marked by a red circle, yet.
I will point it out when I get a chance to look more closely at the map during next week. There may be more sturctures that are worth saving and in any case, it is good to know that we are keeping a backup and can also recover buildings from that backup into the new world.

But all in all this is a very exciting new project - literally one that will change the world.