World Switch - Please Read Carefully!

There's a lot of misinformation going around regarding the impending world switch so as things are coming together now I thought I'd clarify things.

Yes we are switching to a new world very soon, this is currently planned to happen no later than December 16th to avoid having to do it over the main Christmas holiday dates. With Tekkit Classic in particular it's inevitable that this will have to happen eventually and under the circumstances ours has actually lasted much longer than your average server. The problem is that two 'full sized' worlds would push us beyond our maximum backup size and so create storage and performance issues (our backup size would inflate to almost 10GB) so unfortunately it will not be possible to run the old and new worlds at the same time.

I'm trying to look at this as an opportunity, for the server to survive past January many changes are required, specifically when it comes to automation, so I'm using this switch as a chance to make fundamental changes to that end, I'll post a full list once all the details are worked out. 

In the long term this switch could actually be a blessing in disguise as it makes some other necessary changes easier to implement.

It's a lot to take in but please go over this information carefully and ask a Member of staff for clarification if you are not sure about anything!

What should I do now?

Carry on as usual!

If you're Member rank or above get a room in The Vault asap and store items you want to transfer to the new world, the suggested way to transfer maximum EMC is to condense any 'extra' items into RM Furnaces and store those.

Don't dismantle your builds just yet! You may have heard of WorldEdit Schematics, this tool enables us to save players builds as a small file, effectively letting us copy and paste builds between the old and new world. I will personally be doing this for VIP's asap and will announce details shortly of other staff that will be able to do this for Member & Member+ players very soon. 

What can I keep and what will I loose?

Any items can be stored in The Vault, no new items will be added to the banned item list (in fact some are coming off) so you don't need to worry about that.

Alchemy Bag contents may or may not be successfully transferred, they can be flakey at the best of times so I can't guarantee anything in this regard. By all means store items you can't fit in the vault in Alchemy Bags but don't be surprised if you loose some or all of those items when we switch. Storing an Alchemy Bag in The Vault is doing just that, storing the Alchemy Bag, not it's contents!

Player data will have to be reset. Because of the way locations are stored in player data this will have to be sacrificed, including economy balances, however with the economy still being relatively young I think we should look at the last couple of months as a trial run, the economy will have more uses after the switch which will give players new goals to aim for, I think everyone will enjoy the changes.

All players will be given a cash bonus (amount yet to be decided) when we switch to kickstart the economy, you can also transfer money to the new world by storing Industrial Diamonds.

Finally, if you know of any players that are unlikely to make it on over the next couple of weeks but are likely to want to transfer items or a build etc, then please get them to take a look at this post asap so they have time to try and get something sorted out.

Old Promotion System Removed

The old promotion system has been completely removed as the new one is working out fine and catching everyone that had been missed, please be aware that the requirements for Member rank have changed slightly and is now configured as:

A minimum of 15 minutes play time on 7 different days.

From Monday all players will be able to check progress towards Member rank accurately themselves, all staff will also be able check the progress of individuals or all players online with a simple command.

Scheduled Downtime On Monday

There will be another another scheduled downtime  on Monday for what are hopefully the last of the major technical changes in preparation for January.

1. Take a full backup/clone.
2. Update TekkitRestrict.
3. Update 3 mod patches.
4. Test updates.
5. Switch to new rank colours and add new ranks (more details coming soon).
6. Permissions cleanup.
7. Test colours are applied correctly and ranks promote in correct order.
8. Tweak auto-promote plugin.
9. Make around 30 changes to permissions, specifically relating to Staff ranks.
10. Test permission changes.
11. Clear out some old and redundant data.

Downtime Monday;
Start:    9:00am (UK)
Finish:  10:30am? (UK)

Casino Slots Change

I've made a quick change to the Tech Slots in the casino, from now the bottom prizes will be scrap boxes rather than exp to add a little more variety.

Enjoy!

New Promotion Plugin

The trial of the new promotion system starts today, unfortunately though as a side effect the times shown by /seen & /playtime have had to be reset so we are all starting at 0 again.

If you've missed out on promotion don't worry we will get to you, I'm running the old check every two hours as well for the time being to try and catch everyone.

I'll post more details on the new plugin and what it means for the way promotions work very soon.

UPDATE: 

I've turned on a feature that will attempt to calculate a players first join date from the main player data file, this will work better for some than others and will always give a slight underestimate at best, however for new players waiting for Member rank this should help get you closer to the usual 1 week! The calculation is individual and will take place the next time the player joins the server (may take several minutes from login).

Down For Maintenance

The server is down for scheduled maintenance as follows:

1. Apply management interface update - Done.
2. Full backup/clone - Done.
3. Disable all portals and set up warps to replace them - Done
4. Update spawn to fit with changes - Done.
5. Replace multi-world plugin and set up permissions - Done (took a lot longer than planned!).
6. Remove all old plugin permissions from main permissions file - Done.
7. Make several config changes - Done.
8. Fully test relevant changes - Done.
9. Install and configure new auto-promote plugin (trial) - Done.

I'll update here as things progress.

Moderators can connect but I may be afk doing config changes and there will be restarts.

The server is now open and the whitelist has been removed!

World Issues & The Future

As some of you already know we've had a few random restarts over the last week or so, I can confirm that with one exception these were chunk problems being detected and fixed.

I have been monitoring this and the crashes, although still a significant time apart, are becoming more frequent, I have tried every available tool to try and correct the root cause of the the problem with no success. Although to be honest any fix would be unlikely to be a long term solution, most chunk repair tools I tried would require removing 20% or more of the worlds chunks, leaving it in quite a mess with a large number sudden terrain / biome changes in a straight line, many peoples regions reset or possibly cut in half etc, and with no guarantee that the issues wouldn't return a month or so later.

As I'm sure most of you know most Tekkit Classic servers with similar player numbers to us reset the world every 2-3 months or have regular rollbacks for this very reason, so we are actually quite lucky that our map has lasted 7-8 months without a single rollback of more than a few minutes required, especially when you consider that on an average day we have 300+ players log in and have an average of over 400,000 block changes.

Again some of you already know that I've been working hard behind the scenes to try and keep the server running without my major involvement next year due to other commitments and this has included the building of a new spawn, the intention now is to keep the new spawn where it is and make that a new world to replace the current one. 

However there is still significant work to be done before we can switch and I am unsure whether we can support 2 full size worlds at the same time so whilst I hope to be able to transfer builds across at least for VIP's, Staff & hopefully Member+ players I really cannot say at this point what will and won't be possible. For now though please make use of VIP Island and The Vault to backup your items just in case things get significantly worse and we suddenly have to switch worlds with little or no notice.

I'm also concerned that the process of switching etc may be so time consuming that it may hinder my chances of getting the server ready for January, as always I'll try my best but cannot make any promises at the moment as this is incredibly bad timing and it makes testing some of the required changes very difficult due to random errors and the possibility of more serious crashes relating to the main world having the potential to cause problems with mods/plugins and other worlds (I had to replace a couple of mods and a plugin with fresh copies after a crash yesterday).

So please encourage your friends etc to make use of The Vault and keep your fingers crossed that I can work things out for the long term, I will post updates here as soon as I know more. 

New Commands

As some of you already know a couple of new commands are now available to you, these are:

/playtime

Allows you to check how long it's been since you first joined the server, the plugin is only aware of the last 8 days history (since it started logging) so this is the longest playtime anyone will have at the moment. This will also allow NewBuilders to check whether they are eligible for Member rank yet.

/seen <name>

Allows you to check when a player was last online, obviously this is of limited use at the moment but longterm this will enable players to check if buildings are abandoned as long as a lockette sign is present or it is protected.

Enjoy!

Scheduled Downtime On Monday

There will be a scheduled downtime on Monday to perform a number of changes as follows:
Full backup / clone.

1. Apply management interface update.
2. Full backup/clone.
3. Disable all portals and set up warps to replace them.
4. Update spawn to fit with changes.
5. Replace multi-world plugin and set up permissions.
6. Remove all old plugin permissions from main permissions file.
7. Make several config changes.
8. Fully test relevant changes.
9. Install and configure new auto-promote plugin (trial).

Warps will all be sign based for now rather than using /warp, but this will not be the case longterm and I'll be bringing in changes to how we use them gradually over the next couple of weeks.

The new auto-promote plugin is obviously impossible to test thoroughly on the test server, it seems to work fine but it's impossible to say without a live trial, so I've decided to set it up on a trial basis, if it doesn't work out I'll remove it but from I managed to test on the test server it looks promising.

Initially it will just be used for time based automatic NewBuilder to Member promotion like we have now, but I hope to enable a couple more features if all goes well. Obviously there may be bugs to work out so if you're a NewBuilder waiting for promotion please bear with us.

Downtime Monday;
Start:    9:00am (UK)
Finish:  11:00-11:30am? (UK)

CoreProtect Switched To MySQL

Coreprotect has now been switched over to MySQL and records of block changes etc will now be kept for 21 days rather than 10!

For technical reasons the existing data (the last 10 days) could not be transferred so staff only have access to records from around 1pm (UK) this afternoon, however I do have a backup of that data and can perform lookups on the backup/clone for that period if needed.

Joeygerace Completes Parkour101

xPhantomY2Kx sent me these screenshots of joeygerace completing Parkour101 in GameWorld:

For submitting the images xPhantomY2Kx has received $2500 and for starring in them joeygerace has received $500!

Got some screenshots you'd like posted on here and want to earn some shards at the same time? Just send them to pics@diggyminecraft.co.uk, don't forget to include your player name and that of any others in the images!

Right Click Changes

I've switched over to the new direct method of blocking DM & RM tool and other EE actions, this has reduced overhead and means you will receive more specific messages too, It also means that certain exceptions are now in place, for example you can finally use the basic shear & hoe functions normally as these no longer bypass WorldGuard protection! The 'Gust' function of the Swiftwolfs Rending Gale is now completely disabled.

RM & DM tools will now appear to charge as normal, however you will receive a message notifying you what charge level the tool is capped at.

Enjoy!

Void Ring Unbanned

As of now the Void Ring is restricted to Member rank rather than being completely banned.

Like the enderpearl it's teleport function has been disabled (you will teleport, but then instantly teleport back) and like the Black Hole band it cannot be used to remove liquids, however the passive functions of attracting items to you or a chest and 'condensing' them function as normal.

Enjoy!

CoreProtect

I'm working on switching CoreProtect to the MySQL server provided free by our host, this should allow me to increase the time records are kept, currently 10 days, this may involve a couple of extra restarts this morning.

I'll post again when I've finished.

Update - 10:50: Put on hold, the existing database is too big to import remotely by any means so I've asked the hosting company if they can do it for me!

Warps Slightly Delayed

The details of how warps will work has had to be changed a little so they've been delayed, it shouldn't take more than a few days to get it all up and running though so watch this space!

Server / Website Stats

Thought some of you might find these stats for the last 8 months or so interesting;

Player Operating Systems (by unique tekkit connections):

Windows (64%)
Linux (27%)
Mac (9%)

Web Browser (by unique website visits):

Chrome (55%)
Firefox (16%)
Internet Explorer (15%)
Safari (9%)
Opera (1%)
Mobile Safari (1%)
CromeFrame (1%)
Mobile (1%)
CriOS (1%)

Nice too see so many Linux users and so many people using different browsers :)

Changes To 3 Hourly Maintenance

The maintenance that runs every 3 hours was completely redone today as part of the config changes, as of now one of these two messages will be broadcast...

"Checks Running, Server Will Restart Within The Next 60 Seconds Without Further Warning, You Are Advised To Quit Any Active MiniGame To Avoid Possible Inventory Loss."

Or

"Checks Running, Server May Restart Within The Next 60 Seconds Without Further Warning, You Are Advised To Quit Any Active MiniGame To Avoid Possible Inventory Loss."

The first message will always be broadcast at the midnight and midday checks as these will always require a restart to rotate logfiles etc.

The 3am/pm, 6am/pm and 9am/pm checks will virtually always be the second message, and the server may or may not restart, by shuffling the maintenance around a bit I've made it so the server is far less likely to require a restart at these times.

Server Downtime

The server is down for scheduled maintenance as follows:

1. Full backup / clone - Done.
2. Switch to modified version of EE - Done.
3. Upgrade of TekkitRestrict - Done.
4. Install & configure a new small plugin - Done.
5. Tidy up main permissions file a little - Done.
6. Make several config changes - Done.
7. Fully test relevant changes - Done.

The server is expected to be back up and open by 11am UK time.

UPDATE: 10:45 - All done, whitelist has been removed :)

I decided to not make any changes to banned items for now, some aspects still need a bit more testing.

More Blocks Lockable

You can now lock...

Mk1, Mk2 & Mk3 Charging benches
Jukeboxes

...using Lockette signs!

Scheduled Downtime On Monday

There will be a scheduled downtime on Monday to perform a number of changes as follows:

1. Full backup / clone.
2. Switch to modified version of EE.
3. Upgrade of TekkitRestrict.
4. Install & configure a new small plugin.
5. Tidy up main permissions file a little.
6. Make several config changes.
7. Fully test relevant changes.

As a result of the modified EE mod there is likely to be a number of changes with regards to banned / restricted items, I'll post a list of changes and update the website once everything has been tested.

We should also see a noticeable reduction in CPU overhead as for example, changing the max charge level of an RM tool at the mod level is much more efficient (and reliable) than having the mod charge it and then the plugin discharge it a fraction of a second later. 

Downtime Monday;

Start:    9:00am (UK) 

Finish:  10:30-11:00am? (UK)

Old Minigames Removed

The old arenas / minigames at spawn have been removed now that all reported bugs in the minigame world have been resolved!

New Moderator

xPhantomY2Kx has been promoted to Moderator, making him our 2nd regular player to reach this rank, congratulations!

New Powers For Helpers & Mods

As of now Helpers are able to use the CoreProtect inspector tool to investigate griefing to ensure the responsible player is jailed etc as soon as possible.

Moderators also now have access to the CoreProtect rollback and restore functions, meaning that they can roll back griefing incidents, please bear with them as they learn to use these tools, they take a bit of getting used to!

Both Helpers and Moderators can now also send other players to spawn if stuck etc.

Updated versions of the Handbooks are also now available for download!

Player Portals Closing - Warps Coming

As some of you already noticed I have closed off unused player portals, just to confirm, no new player portals will be assigned to players.

Existing player portals will be closed / removed over the next week and replaced with warp signs, the Portal Hub will become the Portal / Warp Hub for now and warp signs will be on the main wall of what is currently the player portal area.

Other than clicking a sign rather than walking through a portal things will basically stay the same and Member+ players can request a warp easily using modreq, i.e. '/modreq Can I have a warp here please!', as it records  the coordinates the ticket was opened at!

We will lose the ability to set a minimum rank but to be honest hardly anyone used this option and players just got around it by tp'ing to someone else. One major advantage is that the setting up of new warps is a lot simpler and can be done in seconds once the destination is approved, Moderators will therefore also be able to handle warp set up requests themselves without any Admin involvement.

To clarify though, no new warps will be created until the existing Player Portals have been changed over and the portal hub has been modified, which should be in a few days. The World Portals, Vault Portal etc will remain as they are until we switch to the new multi-world plugin.

Minigame World: Update

Testing is now officially open to all ranks!

Changes / fixes:

Made the parkour just a tiny bit easier as one bit was puzzling virtually everyone, also added quit signs at start and half way checkpoint.

Added a couple of signs to the main lobby building so that Member+ players or above can set the time in that world to 'Day'.

The PvP setting has been fixed for all the lobby areas.

Marble End is no longer team based, sadly this proved to have too many compatibility issues with Minecraft 1.2.5 so we've made it a standard last man standing deathmatch instead. It's still 4-16 players and you can still buy virtually every weapon somewhere in the game for exp, but the player starting positions are now far more spread out and the bases / HQ's have been modified to be less safe, this game will likely be tweaked more over the next few days.

The minigames at spawn are now disabled and if all goes ok they will be removed next week when we switch permanently to the minigame world. 

Enjoy!

Session Issues

Just to confirm that the Mojang's Minecraft Session server has been down for several minutes, if you haven't got it bookmarked already here's the link to check the server status...

http://xpaw.ru/mcstatus/

Update: 23:00 - Looks like they've fixed it now :)

Minigame World Testing

The portal for the minigame world is now open to players of Member+ rank or above for testing, if all goes well testing will open to Members soon at which point the games at spawn will be disabled, if you have any issues or feedback regarding anything that might need to be changed etc then please let me know, thanks!

Server Back Up

The hosting company made some changes for me including installation of a new MySQL database for use with a couple of plugins, unfortunately the server locked up during a restart shortly afterwards and this was not detected so it's effectively been down for a few hours, I'm pleased to say however that it is now back up and running!

Down For Maintenance

The server is now down for scheduled maintenance;

1. Full backup / clone - Done
2. Removal of the multiple inventory plugin and all related data - Done 
3. Removal of Halloween Challenge Map - Done 
4. Apply a couple of glitch prevention patches to mod files -  Done
5. Upgrade of TekkitRestrict - Done
6. Removal of banned item plugin and all related data -  Done
7. Switch to TekkitRestrict's new banned / restricted item system -  Done

I'll update here as I go, the server should be open again by 10:30-11:00am (UK time).

Update: 10:45 - Just investigating a glitching in-world item, shouldn't take long!
Update: 11:00 - All done, whitelist has been removed!

The New Minigame World

As a lot of you already know the plan is to move the Spleef, PvP Arena & PvP Village into a new Minigame world, with the same inventory as the normal world but certain commands disabled to help ensure fair play (like in Marble End and The Halloween Map).

To clarify, the casino will be staying at spawn and is not being moved with the minigames.

The plan is for the world to have 6 minigames set up, slight variations the three existing ones, a team deathmatch we've nicknamed 'Mini MarbleEnd', a single player parkour type game, and a two player 'race'.

The games are pretty much set up, although the world still needs some tidying up and decorating so we'll be doing some testing next week, this will mean temporarily disabling the games at spawn and getting as many volunteers as possible to stress test by having multiple games running at the same time. Then I can look at resource use and make any necessary changes before it officially opens, which should hopefully be a few days to a week later.

If you're interested in getting a preview of the world and helping to test the new games then watch this space, I'll post more details once we've decided on a date!

Yogscast On The Server!

Not the real ones of course, just a build on the server that DiggityDuck wanted to share...

Downtime On Monday

As mentioned before there will be a scheduled downtime on Monday that will involve some major changes, including:

1. Full backup / clone.
2. Removal of the multiple inventory plugin and all related data.
3. Removal of Halloween Challenge Map.
4. Apply a couple of glitch prevention patches to mod files.
5. Upgrade of TekkitRestrict.
6. Removal of banned item plugin and all related data.
7. Switch to TekkitRestrict's new banned / restricted item system.

The new banned item system will return ingredients to you when you try to craft a banned item, however the customizable messages will not be working straight away so you'll be told the item has been removed as it's banned but you won't be given a reason why it's banned, this will be sorted out in another update very soon. If a banned or restricted item that you don't have permission for is given to you it will change into a water bottle rather than just vanishing.

This could be quite a long downtime as there are lots of changes to test so I'll post regular updates here as thing progress, I hope to have the server back up in under 90 mins, but it's hard to say as things rarely go to plan with Tekkit Classic!

Downtime Monday;

Start:    9:00am (UK) 

Finish:  10:30-11:00am? (UK)

Halloween Challenge Map Pics!

Here's a selection of some our favorite screenshots submitted by 

the various people who played DiggyBrine on the day...

Halloween Challenge Map Winners!

The top 3 scores for the Halloween Challenge Map are...

Name	Score
sam_the_chicken:	1013
niki2008:	450
jabbawokkey:	396

Jack-O-Lanterns have been added to the winners chest...

1st Prize - Jack-O-Lantern x 64

2nd Prize - Jack-O-Lantern x 32

3rd Prize - Jack-O-Lantern x 16

Congratulations!

Whether you were in the top three or not you can now trade your pumpkins and Jack-O-Lanterns for prizes to be transferred to the normal world a bit later! You have until midnight tonight to claim your prizes before the chest is moved to your home!

A special thanks to DigginChickin, Tatankore & freaksdesign for their huge contributions to the map, it wouldn't have stood a chance of being finished on time without them!

Halloween Map Closed!

The halloween map is now closed and the scores are being counted!