May Castle Challenge

Don't forget that entries need to be submitted by midnight tonight (UK time), that's just over 4 hours away, see this link for more information...

http://tinyurl.com/maycastles

EDIT: 00:00: The Castle Challenge is now closed, judging will take place tomorrow afternoon at 1-3 pm UK time, good luck!

I Go Away For 4 Days And...

... you guys break the server! lol

Seriously though, the Marble End bug should just take a couple of days to sort out, it will require a slight redesign of the portal setup though.

As for the lag issues / crashing over the last 48 hours Diggin had already pinned down the location of the problem yesterday but was having trouble figuring out what needed to be done to fix it, it was accidental but someone's build was causing the CPU to spike to 100% and locking the server up. 

We've temporarily banned the player because we can't fix it while they are logged in and everytime we try and fix it they join the game! If it's you and you're wondering why you got banned don't worry it is only temporary and you should be pardoned within an hour or two!

Marble End Disabled

I've temporarily disabled Marble End to investigate a bug, it's unlikely it will be enabled again until at least Friday or Saturday.

I'll post an update as soon as I know more!

It's here...

The new building at spawn is opening and inside is a whole new world...

Marble End!

Marble End is completely custom world created by myself and DigginChickin 

for PvP lovers and works very differently to other worlds on the server!

Based loosely on an abandoned mining / military base in the void, the original inhabitants seem to have fallen victim to some pretty nasty little critters so watch out and scavenge what you can when you can!

What's different and how it works:

Portals into the world are one way, the only way to return to the normal world is by using /home so make sure you have a home set before using the portals!

Marble End is a PvP world, looting & stealing is not only allowed but encouraged!

Staff will not intervene or replace ANY lost or stolen items!

This world has an entirely separate inventory, items cannot be transferred between worlds!

To make for fairer fights teleporting and setting home is disabled, so you can't use:

/spawn /tpa /tpahere /tpaccept /tpdeny /back /sethome

Cenotaph is disabled, your items will drop on the floor when you die (stackable items will be automatically stacked) you will NOT get a death chest like in our other worlds.

All blocks are unbreakable, the only resources available are what you can steal or scavenge from other players, buildings, bases, bunkers and supply points.

The available resources are very limited, in order to keep the PVP worthwhile the best weapons and armour you'll be able to make from what you can find is diamond, no DM, RM etc is available.

Tips And Features

Some buildings are lockable, and are good places to go to heal etc, others aren't as safe as they might seem!

Crafting tables & furnaces can only be found in HQ's & bunkers, HQ's are lockable (but the locks are also a little faulty!) and have other perks, how long can you and your friends hold an HQ for?

HQ's, supply points and the central building receive more items automatically every so often (varies between 10 & 40 minutes), another reason why holding an HQ will give you a big advantage!

This feature will be trialled for 2 weeks and will hopefully become permanent!

Something's coming...

Major new feature coming to the server this weekend... 

Helpers

After looking at feedback, what times we had Helpers online and how many we had online at any given time we decided the following:

GethGerlan & yuolyuol 

...have been returned to Member+ rank for now, but will both be considered for Helper rank again in the future.

blad2003

...is now a full Helper!

xPhantomY2Kx 

...is now a probationary Helper!

Protection Stones Changes

I've made some improvements to the Protection Stones plugin as follows:

I fixed limit by rank! The new limits are:

New Builder   - 1   (5041 Surface blocks)
Member         - 2   (10082 Surface blocks total)
Member+       - 3   (15123 Surface blocks total)

If you are a New Builder and already have two stones placed then don't worry you will get to keep them, but if you remove the second stone you won't be able to place it again until you are promoted! 

I've also blocked stones from being placed in The Nether & The End.

Finally I've created the 'Protection Sponge', which will be included in the choice of prizes offered for winning challenges if the winner is Member+ rank or above, as the name suggests it's a sponge block that protects an area... but the cool bit is that the area is more than twice that of a normal protection stone, 111x111 (12321 Surface blocks). Only one 'Protection Sponge' can be placed per player and only the person it is originally given to will be able to place it, it will also count as one of your 3 stones (giving you 22403 Surface blocks total).

If you are wondering how these new limits measure up for a VIP, the VIP region also counts as a stone giving limits of:

VIP Region Only                         - (63001 Surface blocks total)
VIP Region + 1 Stone                  - (68042 Surface blocks total)
VIP Region + 2 Stones                - (73083 Surface blocks total)
VIP Region + 1 Stone + Sponge  - (80363 Surface blocks total)

Temporary Whitelist

As I'm sure you all know Tekkit Classic and pretty much all related plugins are no longer in development, I don't have a great deal of experience with Java/YAML but I am working on a few tweaks and fixes for some of the simpler plugins, most of it is behind the scenes stuff but it will require the occasional bit of downtime to test!

To this end I'm putting a whitelist in place this morning to test a modified version of one of our plugins, I expect it to be in place for around 15 minutes and will post an update here when it's removed or if I need a little more time. The whitelist will be applied in around 1 hour.

UPDATE: 09:45 - I expect to remove the whitelist at around 10:00 UK time (15 minutes from now)
UPDATE: 10:00 - Whitelist will be removed any minute, I'm just tidying up!
UPDATE: 10:05 - Whitelist removed! 

VIP Limit Reached!

The VIP limit for this quarter has now been reached!

Thanks to the generous donations of our players 100% of our hosting fees up to 16th July 2013 have now been raised, a big thank you to everyone who has donated in the past few weeks, whether it was a VIP donation or a smaller amount it is very much appreciated!

To confirm, the donation links links will be put back onto the site on or around 16th July 2013, when we will start accepting donations for the following quarter.

Thanks again!

May Challenge - Castles

We've seen a few castles that people have already started and they are looking very impressive so far!

I thought I'd better post some more details on how and when they will be judged...

Judging will take place on Saturday 1st June, sometime in the afternoon, the July challenge will be announced shortly afterwards.

Entries will be judged by DiggyWig, DigginChickin and 3-6 other random players chosen on the day, judges will need skype (sound not necessary) so we can discuss choices outside of the game.

Each judge will make a first and second choice, being selected as a judges first choice will get you 10 points, second choice will get you 5 points, all your points will then be added up to get your basic score.

As well as the basic score bonus points will be awarded for:

Best moat (water or lava) - 10 bonus points

Best garden / courtyard - 10 bonus points

Best castle name - 10 bonus points

Most unique build - 10 bonus points

Most interesting use of materials - 10 bonus points

For the bonus points each judge will get to cast a single vote for each category, the castle with the most votes in each category will get the points, or they will be split in the case of a draw.

Once all the votes are in, I will add up everyones points and post the first and second place entries on here, the winners name will also be displayed on one of the boards at spawn and images of the builds will be posted here and on the Technic Forums!

The winning entries will also be offered a choice of prizes!

To enter you need to send the name/s of the player/s entering the castle, the name you have given your castle and coordinates the judges should teleport to when judging it. This information can be sent either by skype (DiggyWig or DigginChickin) or e-mail (admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk) but must be received by midnight on Friday 31st May for your entry to be included.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

Item Limits Reinstated

As some of you know we have always had limits on the number of certain items that players can place as an anti grief / lag measure, but before the switch to the new hosting company we lifted some of those limits to see if players use the items sensibly. 

The problems which led to the switch-over made it difficult to assess whether the items were being used in a way which would cause problems so we decided to carry on with the trial on the new server, leaving only the following limits in place as they were on the old server:

Doors (all types), Trapdoors, Pistons (all types), Timer & Sequencer

However after two weeks and with the enhanced logging our new host provides it has become clear that the limits are necessary, over the past week we have had 2-3 crashes per day that would not have occurred had the limits still been in place.

We have therefore brought back the limits for:

Energy Collectors (all types), Antimatter Relays (all types), Condensers, Solar Panels & Arrays (All Types)

However the limits for some items have been doubled:

Antimatter Relay (Mk3):     Old Limit - 32, New Limit - 64
Energy Collector (Mk3):     Old Limit - 64, New Limit - 128
Condenser:                       Old Limit - 32, New Limit - 64
Solar Array (HV):               Old Limit - 64, New Limit - 128

Players who have already placed items in excess of these limits will be allowed to keep them as long as they are not causing issues, however they will not be able to place more of any given item until they remove enough to bring them back below the limit, for example if you have 128 placed and the limit is 64 you would need to remove 65 before you could place 1 and removing all 128 would allow you to place 64.

Probationary Helpers

We currently have three probationary helpers:

blad2003
yuolyuol
GethGerlan

In a few days we'll be deciding which of these should be made full Helpers and which should be demoted back to Member+ for now, so I'd ask that if anyone has feedback they'd like to give on any of these helpers, positive or negative they e-mail or message me on skype. We will also be taking other factors into account but your feedback matters!

Any Helper that is demoted will be able to have another go at becoming a full Helper in the future and shouldn't take it personally, we want to keep the number of helpers at any given time small and make sure that most of the community is happy with our choices!

Banned Items Revised

I have managed to get anti-dupe measures working for two banned items:

RM Furnace & Klein Star (all variants)

These items have now been removed from the banned item list, however they are restricted to Member+ rank or above as attempting to dupe with them could cause a lot of console and log spam.

Enjoy!

I've also re-added Dispensers to the banned item list, I thought they were fixed by a patch but seemingly not, we've had a few crashes in the past few days due to the old redstone + dispenser Tekkit bug :(

PVP Village Now Open!

Some of you wondered why I placed an npc village at spawn and put it in a glass box, well now you know...

I've modified the village and set PVP to allow, giving players a more open space to fight rather than just being restricted to the PVP Arena, and unlike the PVP Arena there are no rules, anything goes!

Enjoy!

Whitelist In Place

A whitelist is in place whilst I fix some problems deliberately caused last night, the players responsible have been banned and it shouldn't take me much more than an hour to undo the damage and put precautions in place to prevent it from happening again.

UPDATE: 11:00 - Backup is running now, whitelist will be removed in a few minutes :)

UPDATE: 11:05 - The whitelist is now removed!

To anyone that saw the changes made to the screens at spawn last night I apologise, it appears the two players responsible where using hacked clients and judging by their spelling quite young kids. 

I have added security measures to the screens which should prevent this from happening again, information on the screens can now only be refreshed by restarting the server. All actions / block modifications by them have also now been rolled back.

Both the players have been banned along with their IP addresses in case they have additional accounts. Thanks to blad2003 for jailing & muting them last night to prevent further damage and chat spamming until I could get on to ban them. 

May The 4th Be With You!

In celebration of Star Wars day a maximum size screen has been placed near the market that will be showing the ComputerCraft version of Star Wars on loop all day!

Enjoy!

Change To Protection Stones

As of today I've increased the area covered by protection stones from 61x61 to 71x71, which is a 27% increase in the size of the area covered!

I thought it was only fair that as the area for VIPs was recently increased other player players should also get an increase, if you already have stones placed then just remove them and place again to update you protected region to the new size.

Enjoy!

Rotary Macerators & Wireless Redstone

Rotary Macerators

As some of you already know we had several hours of downtime last night, this was traced back to a glitching Rotary Macerator setup which I had to remove this morning. 

This is not the first time a Rotary Macerator has caused this kind of problem on our server, though it is the worst case we've seen and is one of the reasons many server owners ban it. Having done some investigation I found that Rotary Macerators were only in use by 5 out of over 200 regular players so I have taken the decision to ban them to prevent further problems such as this.

I have personally visited each of the 5 players homes and replaced the Rotary Macerators with standard ones, each fitted with 14 overclockers and 2 energy storage upgrades by way of compensation.

Wireless Redstone

Like many Tekkit servers we've been plagued by problems with this mod since our early days and around the half the items in this mod were banned very early on, today a wireless redstone setup brought the server down multiple times and I have also linked two other recent crashes to the mod as well. Again hardly any players use this mod, just 2 players had items placed in world, so I have decided to block the entire mod for the sake of server stability.

I don't like having to ban more items and I realise that a few players will not like these decisions but I hope that most you will understand that it is necessary to maximise stability of the server and minimise downtime.

I am confident we have now got an optimal banned item list and will not have to ban any further items in the future!