Bye Bye Town :(

I am sad to say that I have "shut down" the server. It was fun while it lasted, and I'm sure we all learnt a lot from it (especially me). The reasons for shutting it down are (in no particular order): Exams coming up and me not having enough time to manage it (you all know what I'm like lol), lack of donations and me wanting to spend money on other things, the "quiet-ness" on the server, the lack of successful shops and trading within the town (I wanted that to be qutie a big thing), and also me wanting to spend time on a texture pack.

Will the town ever come back? Maybe, but not in the next couple of months at least. Anyone else is welcome to "take over" and create a server with the town map if they like, you can download the map here.

I'm very sorry if you feel like you've lost a lot of work you did on the server. Hopefully whatever it is your missing, you can make 100 times bigger or find 100 times as many on another server or singleplayer.

Although I have officially closed the server, I'm sort of still running it as a very small un-maintained private server for a few particular individuals. If you would like to play you'll have to be willing to use the texture pack I linked to up there, have a mic, put up with the map changing when I feel like it, and even then it's unlikely I'll let you on (but you can still ask).

Thank you everyone for making the town fun and interesting, I'm pretty sure we accomplished something awesome.

20/03/2011 - Map Downloads

Server Updates:

• BenneyBoy444 Citizen.
• I enabled the "vegitation" plugin so that long grass (wild grass) would grow, but then because it was making the server use too much RAM, I disabled it. The grass is still there.
• You can now download the Town world save.
• If you really want, you can download the last temporary map save, or even the "underground experiment" save.
• I'm currently trying out this cool Minecraft map renderer, if anyone wants to make a "map" of the town save, that would be great! If nobody says anything about this, then I'll make one myself sometime.. maybe :)

Recommended Mods and Texture Pack

Do you want better looking textures which don't explode your computer that runs on donkeys and coal? Do you want grass which grows upwards and tickles your knees, and torches that emit light as you and other people throw them at each other? Then this pack of goodies is for you!

Please do not use other mods on the server without asking me first. I'll probably say it's fine as long as it's not something like flying ^^

This pack which includes Wild Grass and Dynamic Lighting mods, and a heavily customized texture pack which is mostly Jolicraft. These mods are equally awesome in singleplayer, giving it a more "realistic" and "wildernessey" feel. Full credits and installation instructions are in the download.

Click here for the very awesome collection of nice things.

The Town is back up!

YAY, FINALLY!

Home sweet home (:

Even our fireplaces are still warm! It seems like forever that the town has been gone, but it's back.

Your chests should still be locked, but you might want to check them, just in case.

If anyone who isn't yet a member of the server wants to join, now would be a great time :)

Sorry about the delay...

Switching back to the town map has been delayed by a few things..

Firstly, I'd been having quite a bit of fun on the temporary map:

Secondly, I "crashed" my car avoiding creepers (no pic sorry), and it's been weeing everywhere "I wasn't even going that fast" etc.. I've been looking for a new one. Might get this tomorrow :D (I'm going to be needing donations even more badly after this >.< thankfully, insurance and petrol cost will stay the same)

<Picture was here>

Thirdly, bukkit (an admin tool, basically) hasn't been having it's updates properly recorded. There have actually been a few updates, but there was no mention of them on the wiki! And on top of that, there forums have been a bit on and off recently, so a few times when I've had time to, I haven't been able to update everything.

Forthly, I've been trying out new Minecraft texture packs and mods, and have settled with Jolicraft, Wild Grass, Dynamic Lights, and 4x supersampling AA forced on by Nvidia control panel. If anyone else is enjoying the wonders of Wild Grass and wants it on the server, or if anyone needs some help installing any of these mods, then leave a comment and I might help you get it working :)

And finally, I've been pretty ill recently *sad face*.

Anyway, everything important is now fixed, updated or replaced and we should have the town map back up this weekend :D

It seems I'm making progress with my "needs more pretty pictures on the blog" aim :)

Log in problems and update

If you've been having problems logging into the server the last few days there's bad news, It's only going to get worse! But thankfully, it's not my fault at all!

The reason why logging on to Minecraft or the server has been tricky recently is because of Minecraft.net (where you log into) having some issues.

Notch has said: "Minecraft.net is suffering some difficulties at the moment, with the database getting overloaded. We’re working hard on fixing the problem."

So why is it going to get worse?
Well as you all know, every time Minecraft is updated in a big way, it breaks all the posh admin tools. The update should be coming tomorrow. But knowing Notch/Mojang it's going to be at least 2 days late.

Whats in the update? (That hasn't been mentioned here already)
Most importantly, this:

 

Also, betterlight is being made official and may be in this update, if you know what this mod is, then you know how awesome this news is.

The information about this update is rather spread out throughout the mess that is the internet, shall I put more information up when I find it or it gets published?

So whats going to happen to the server when the update is released?
To be brutally honest, I have no idea!
It's highly likely that I'll be creating a new temporary map to play on until the admin tools are updated, at which point, the town will be slapped back onto the server. It would be great fun to do a multiplayer lets-play if we start a new map, if you have a mic and you'd like to be filmed/recorded then leave a comment. Like actually leave one, not just think about leaving one you muppet.

 

19/02/2011 - New Pages

If you haven't already noticed, the blog has been going through a lot of changes. There's now a twitter feed on the right, which contains messages from the server about people logging in/out and dying. It also has notches and my messages on their too. If the server goes down I'll post updates there so everyone knows whats going on. There's lots of new pages under the new banner, you should have a look at the updated rules.

Server Updates:

• IMsoxy has become a Citizen.
• The map has been extended a lot in the last couple of weeks, most recently I expanded it by 100 blocks today. It will not be expanded again - unless we get loads of donations and/or the new save file format takes up a lot less space.
• Half of the regular members went on an awesome "adventure" a couple of days ago, we might make these explorations a regular thing because they are fun :)
• There was a redstone repeater in Seeks and Chowders basement, this caused about 10-20% less FPS for anyone near it. It had a switch, so I just turned it off. Repeaters like this are absolutely fine - but you should turn them off before you leave the server.
• Mumble has been working well. Anyone who doesn't have a microphone, should get one, I'm never going to say you have to have one, it's just nicer than typing.
• I've been switching around bukkit plugins loads in the last week, check the "Server Information" page for the updated list.