Access returned to TOG Mindcrack

[Sorontar]

I am pleased to say that access to the TOG Mindcrack server will be returned tommorow morning some time after 9am (about 9 hours time). This will allow me to be on-hand/awake if anything goes wrong again.

You will see a few changes to your game. Things are now a lot more like they are on Frontier.

• As seen by the coloured names, players are in groups. As with Frontier, the access to commands is defined by your group but all TOG/VIP/JrVIP have the same commands. If you appear as a Guest and can't interact with anything, tell the Admin team.
• There is now a Message of the Day when you login. This is accessible via the /motd command
• No longer do the admins have to teleport you places. Though it might have trouble with working in non-standard dimensions, now you can do it yourself with:
  • /tp - teleport to another player, with warm up and cool down times of 5 secs each
  • /spawn - teleport to spawn
  • /home set - set your home point
  • /home - teleport to your home point
  • /bed - teleport to your spawning bed
• You will occassionally see community messages every 30 minutes or so. Some may be funny. Some may be helpful. Some may just be reminders. They are written in [square brackets].
• You may see messages about world saves every 10 minutes. This presently what it is set to save to file all the world changes.
• The world border is now enforced. If you reach it, you will get a message and be prevented from going any further forward. If this doesn't happen on any non-standard dimensions, remember that they too have the border regardless.

There are further commands we hope to add to the server like /warps, but they require testing.

Players might see a comment in-game asking them to /register a password. You don't have to do it at this at this stage. It is a built-in feature we cannot yet turn off but it doesn't stop players doing anything. We will explain it once we have done more testing.

Of course, these are all conditional. We have tested these changes on our own machines. We have tested them in isolation on the TOG server, but we don't know how they will go with greater player demands. There are a lot of settings so we may have adjust them as we go.

Things are still buggy. Mindcrack is buggy. The additional mods are buggy. Even Minecraft is buggy. The lag is still an issue. In the coming weeks we may have to try updating Mindcrack and removing various mods. Some we may be able to reinstate. Others might have to go. With the changes we are introducing tomorrow, we will have a lot more flexibility as we won't be as reliant on things like linkbooks from Mystcraft, regardless of how much we like them.

The priority here is to have a server that works, is manageable and is fun. Sometimes the concept of fun has to be tempered in order to make the others possible. We regularly have to do changes like this on the Bukkit servers for updates (even though some of the mods' changes are hidden in the background). Likewise, we may have to do it on the Mindcrack server.

So enjoy your new and improved Mindcrack but be prepared for more changes.

Sorontar

[Deweyoxberg]

Huzzah!

[Cheith]

Thanks for the update Sor, now how does one time travel 9 hours into the future?

[Fox]

Originally Posted by Cheith

Thanks for the update Sor, now how does one time travel 9 hours into the future?

Go to bed and in what feels like 5 minutes, youll wake up, the sun will be up along with the server.

[Obsi]

/tp - teleport to another player, with warm up and cool down times of 5 secs each

Just to remind players - the tp etiquette we have for Frontier will be in place on this FTB/MindCrack server too.

When tp'ing to another player, you must fist check it is safe to tp to them, wait for them to respond, then tp. Generally this is done as a "safe to tp?" type question, in mumble or in game chat.

This is because a player suddenly tp'ing to someone, can sometimes cause them to fall into lava/off a cliff or other such situations if they are in a precarious position. Asking and waiting for confirmation allows the player to get into a safe spot before you arrive. It is also polite to ask and not just barge into someone's house :P

[DaedalusAlpha]

Neato

How does the server fare with the 10 minute saving though? won't that slow the server down?

[Irimar]

Hey, great! This will be ready about the time I get home from work.

[Sorontar]

One more thing. The buggy nature of the Mindcrack server has caused some confusion for some players. Items have seemingly disappeared or not appeared in chests when they should have. Mining and construction they have done has been undone. This has produced doubt in the minds of some.

In most cases when the Admin team were alerted to things like this, it was the glitchy server. Logging out and in made invisible things visible. Moving things in or out of a chest again or from a different position fixed it. Sometimes, that block you placed in the same space every day for a week will still disappear the next day. These things happen. Hopefully if we decrease the amount of lag and server demand, they will happen less.

The admin team is not dismissing your complaints. By all means tell us anything that is strange or suspicious to you.[1] We just ask that you bear these bugs in mind. While we do look into any player's report, there may not always be an immediately obvious culprit or explanation.

Thanks,

Sorontar

[1] If reporting something, please tell us as compleletely as you can, what has happened, the coordinates of where it happened, when you noticed it and your best estimate of the timeframe in which it might have occured. "Lost some gold bars from a chest in my home yesterday" isn't very helpful.

[Sorontar]

Originally Posted by DaedalusAlpha

How does the server fare with the 10 minute saving though? won't that slow the server down?

On Frontier, it empties its cache even more regularly. We can make it more regular for Mindcrack but with the lag, we are trying to save periodically instead.

Again, we will see how it goes once we have more player activities.

Sorontar

[Sorontar]

The server is now online. Please note that the /tp etc commands may seem a little slow sometimes. If you are suffocating because it has placed you in rock etc, I recommend players use /spawn or a linkbook to try and get to safety.

Sorontar