[completed] New server plans (These are no longer 'new' plans)

[InsaneJ]

Note that this thread is quite old. We've been discussing things for quite some time. This opening post reflects the current plans for the new servers. So if you read things in this thread that don't seem to make sense given this opening post, that's why :)

For the past 4 years I have kept the HappyDiggers servers up and running with the help from a couple of awesome volunteers. During that time I've pocketed most of the expenses involved with this. I've done this because I consider this a hobby and I wanted to keep my servers open to the public as much as possible without them having to join a 'pay to win' server. After some people (Jiro can be a real nag ;)) have repeatedly asked me to open up the flood gates that are your wallets, I'm now thinking about doing a server donation drive to pay for a server upgrade so we can run more and better servers. I'd like your input on the idea, how to present it, the perks and anything else you may have ideas for.

HappyDiggers currently has 2 physical servers. On these two physical servers we are currently running the following:

HappyDiggers MC
HappyDiggers Vanilla (V.I.P. access only)
HappyDiggers Snapshot
HappyDiggers TFC
HappyDiggers TFC Hardcore
HappyDiggers Lobby (for TFC servers)
HappyDiggers FTB (V.I.P. access only, runs dev builds of HappyDiggers AMP mod pack)
BungeeCord Proxy
HappyDiggers website
Email
Cross-server backups


If we were to rent two servers with comparable specs we'd be looking at $323 / month for the primary and $178 / month for the secondary server. Prices from here (https://cubedhost.com/billing/cart.php?gid=23). So that's roughly $500 / month worth of hosting. Obviously we're not paying that much :) However it does give you an idea that what we're doing here costs quite a lot of money.

Both of the HappyDiggers servers were bought by myself. Sverf is generously paying the electric bill for one of them. It's not $500 / month, but take the cost of two servers, divide that by 36 (3 years, 12 months) and add around $50 for electricity and bandwidth and you get a monthly cost of around $130,- So what we're doing is quite cost effective compared to renting a server elsewhere.

The plan is to upgrade the main server. The parts I bought are:


2598
Scythe Mugen 4 SCMG-4000
€ 39,90


2599
Asus X99-A 90MB0K50-M0EAY0
€ 247,40


2600
Kingston Technology HyperX Fury - DDR4 2133Mhz CL14 Kit - 64GB HX421C14FBK8/64
€ 398,90


2601
Intel Core i7-5820K - Boxed BX80648I75820K
€ 399,90


2602
Western digital Purple - 4TB
€ 164,80



Total including tax
€1250.90



Obviously we don't need a donor drive to fund the parts now. However I'd still like to continue with a donor setup for those willing to support our community. I'm not going to go through all the hassle of creating a seemless world. It's a nice idea, but I just don't have to time and energy to do it.

The plan is to create/configure the following (new) servers. Please note that the following lists are subject to change:


Lobby server, free
TFC freebie server, free
Jail server, free
ARK survival evolved, free
TFC regular, donor tier 1
TFC hardcore, donor tier 1
TechnodeFirmacraft (http://technode.enjin.com/forum/m/17014259/viewthread/24660669-about-technodefirmacraft), donor tier 1


Current plan for pricing:

free means free.
tier 1 €15,- / for as long as we're running Minecraft servers. Access to all the tier 1 servers.

People who have donated in June of 2015 or later will gain access to the servers based on the amount they've donated for a full year from the moment we open the servers.

We will open up a market which people can use to donate. This market will also offer several other donate options for those who wish to donate more than €15,- Please keep in mind that we will reward ANY donor package with access to the tier 1 donor servers. Also none of the donor packages will have any kind of pay to win stuff. It's just a few little cosmetic perks you can use to show of your support.

These are the current donor packages:
Donor 15,00 EUR
Support our servers and gain access to our donor servers.


TerrafirmaCraft Regular server
TerrafirmaCraft Hardcore server
TechnodeFirmaCraft server

Each server is 80.000 x 80.000 blocks and fully pre-generated.


players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and/or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
10 /sethome points per player


Donor Awesome 30,00 EUR
Support our servers and gain access to our donor servers. Also get a title to show off your Awesome support.


TerrafirmaCraft Regular server
TerrafirmaCraft Hardcore server
TechnodeFirmaCraft server

People will envy your awesome title.
Dynmap custom icon for towns, request one on our forum.
☺ next to your name
Set a nickname
Disguise as non-hostile mobs
Each server is 80.000 x 80.000 blocks and fully pre-generated.


players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and/or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
10 /sethome points per player

Donor Legendary 60,00 EUR
Support our servers and gain access to our donor servers. Also get a title to show off your Legendary support.


TerrafirmaCraft Regular server
TerrafirmaCraft Hardcore server
TechnodeFirmaCraft server

People will envy your legendary title.
Dynmap custom icon for towns, request one on our forum.
☺ next to your name
Set a colored nickname
Disguise as non-hostile and hostile mobs
Each server is 80.000 x 80.000 blocks and fully pre-generated.


players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and/or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
10 /sethome points per player

Donor Epic 100,00 EUR
Support our servers and gain access to our donor servers. Also get a title to show off your Epic support.


TerrafirmaCraft Regular server
TerrafirmaCraft Hardcore server
TechnodeFirmaCraft server


Peole will tell tales and sing songs of your EPIC support.
Dynmap custom icon for towns, request one on our forum.
☺ next to your name
Set colored and magic nicknames
Disguise as all mobs and items

Each server is 80.000 x 80.000 blocks and fully pre-generated.


players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and/or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
10 /sethome points per player



Outdated perk stuff and server specifications. Please read our Servers (https://happydiggers.net/content.php?117&tabid=107) page to view the current status.
Please keep in mind that all perks related to donors only apply on the donor servers. You can't take perks with you to the freebie server. That would make it unfair to non-donors and thus pay to win.

The freebie server, free to play:

free, free to play
world size 20.000 x 20.000
minimum online time before players can start towns: 12 hours.
cool down on teleports: 1 minute.
strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 8 fruit trees, 8 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 3 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and/or berry bushes.
current minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '5', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '10')
Towns get 16 plots per resident.
2 outposts per town
1 /sethome point per player
chat prefix: freebie[TFC]


The lobby server, free to play:

free, free to play
Loads of games
Spleef Arena
Paintball Arena
Mob Arena
PVP Arena
Parcour
Provides easy access to all the other server without the need to use commands. Just walk through the correct portal.
chat prefix: lobby


The jail server, free to play:

free, free to play
Players who break the rules get send here instead of receiving an instant ban.
Server has labor prisoners can perform while they serve their time.


ARK survival evolved, free to play:

free, free to play
Mods:
Metal with Glass (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510590313) - Metal structures with glass inlays for more visually appealing buildings and more functionality.
Better Beacons Lite (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=514986458) - Updated Loot tables for air drops so all items added up to November 2015 are included.
Server settings:
Standard Ark map "The Island"
3rd person disabled
Crosshairs disabled
Map player location enabled (Only shows yourself, helpful for finding friends)
No character/dino downloads
Standard 1 XP
Difficulty offset 1.0 (Highest default value)
Player max level 94 (Default)
Wild dino max level 120 (Default)
5x Tame rate
2x Less player food consumption
2x Less player water consumption
3x Harvest rate
2x Structure integrity
Mating interval 1x
Egg hatch speed 1x
Baby mature rate 5x
Baby food consumption 2x
Global spoiling rate 2x
Global item decomposition 2x
Global corpse decomposition 2x
PvP Gamma disabled
Dino Turret Damage Multiplier 2x


TFC regular, donor tier 1 server:

tier 1 donor server
world size: 80.000 x 80.000, fully pre-generated and 16 times larger than the freebie server.
players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and/or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
10 /sethome points per player
chat prefix: donor [TFC]
extra perks: the cosmetic stuff we've been discussing
access to both freebie and donor tier 1 servers


TFC hardcore, donor tier 1 server:

tier 1 donor server
world size: 80.000 x 80.000, fully pre-generated and 16 times larger than the freebie server
players can start towns right away
no teleports of any kind
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and / or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
chat prefix: Donor [HC]
player model of each player on the freebie server next to the staff
access to cosmetic/fun stuff
access to freebie and all tier 1 servers


TechnodeFirmaCraft, donor tier 1 server:

tier 1 donor server
runs the TechnodeFirmaCraft mod pack (http://technode.enjin.com/forum/m/17014259/viewthread/24660669-about-technodefirmacraft)
world size: 80.000 x 80.000, fully pre-generated and 16 times larger than the freebie server
players can start towns right away
no cooldown on teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals per town: 12 fruit trees, 20 adult animals.
animals need to be in their own 16x16 chunk fenced in.
towns may have 4 plots (16x16 blocks) of tilled soil a.k.a farmland and / or berry bushes.
larger minimum distance between towns (min_plot_distance_from_town_plot: '10', min_distance_from_town_homeblock: '20')
Towns get 32 plots per resident.
10 outposts per town
chat prefix: Donor [TnFC]
player model of each player on the freebie server next to the staff
access to freebie and all tier 1 servers

[InsaneJ]

I'd like to add that I'll count donations made the past month (May, 2015). Those donors will get the option to 'upgrade' their donation. So if someone has already donated €25,- they can upgrade to V.I.P. by donating another €25,- making their donation for the server drive €50,- in total.

[LegendOfAir]

Sounds like a cool idea to have a Donation Drive! :D

[InsaneJ]

Come on guys, I know you're reading this :)

Please give me some input here. Do you think it's a good idea? Is it a bad idea? Do you have concerns? What would you like to see changed?

I'd like to smooth out this plan before going public so the more people voicing their opinions the better.

[Pernix_8D]

Prices are fair. Old mate who's been on the server for a week isn't going to pay 200 pounds to become an admin, but I also think that most people who would donate that much would actually want to become an admin. Same goes for the moderator rank. Also, I doubt the HD email will get any use, apart from the occasional junk mail accounts and such. :P

How to announce it? No one option will be enough! Make an announcement on the homepage, set up messages with the announcer plugin, and do a promotional live stream or video or something, just to give the donation drive a running start. Get everybody possible in on it! Get as many people as you can to watch, and as many as you can to join in! Get as many Staff and VIP members as possible, including perhaps past staff (like flying and wordie and such). What happens during the LS or video probably doesn't matter if there's that many people on there, the commentary will be enough. :P

She's a lot of work, but if this all works out, the donation drive will be absolutely pinging along.

[Heptagon_ru]

An offtopic first: is it (easily) possible to make some "like" button on forum posts? So when I see a post I like but have nothing to say about it, I'll just press that button and the author will see that. Like an opposite of "Report this" button. Like TFC forums have. Because it is often the case. I hope it's not only me who would like it.

About the donations. I'm thinking in boundaries of TFC server only, since play only on it.

I would enjoy having some more cosmetic/visual perks, like:
:diamond: having access to an unlimited supply of all kinds of fireworks.
:diamond: a snowball minigun.
:diamond: ability to produce the same thunder which staff makes when appears near you.
:diamond: ability to issue some weird sounds , e.g. diabolic laughter, so other players will hear that (i saw it is possible :) )
:diamond: some particle effects (that is less useful and fireworks will do fine instead).
Of course any bad usage of even cosmetic perks should be punished (and their usage should be logged).

Some other funny perks could be:
:goldingot: An access to a random item dispenser. So once a real-time week or day the player can come to Spawn and push a button and get a random TFC item. It can be from dirt to red steel armor.
:goldingot: A free summonable immortal horse, like that Arvak from Skyrim Dawngard. With limitation how many summonings per time period. Maybe just a one-time-use but renewable in a dispencer spawn egg with tamed and saddled horse.
:goldingot: A vanilla beacon, so the person can place it on the base. But without effects, purely cosmetic.

Now some criticism.

Personally I don't like that people can get VIP/Mod/Admin status for money.
It's unsafe - bad :creeper: people or :notch: competitors can get access to data and corrupt, steal, get personal info, etc.
Also this practice could potentially decrease trust to the staff/VIPs. Now we know and sure that staff and VIPs are promoted because of their deeds, and they have earned that and were watched long time before promotion.
I am not sure that the announced money amount will work as a good enough barrier.
Surely I am not experienced in these matters, and I'm sure you guys have discussed it and have solid experience.

About the mail perk ... will it be interesting for people? I guess people either have a personal mailbox already and having another one will be uncomfortable, or they dont use mail at all :) It is useful for staff, for official matters.
Again - not experienced.

Update: lol, while I was writing it, both InsaneJ and Pernix posted :)))

[Heptagon_ru]

Btw, I'm not sure about Kickstarter, I have an impression that it is for heavier projects. Maybe some other platform, like the one Kitty used recently, some Patreon thing.

And another concern about new staff: of course it is unlikely that like 10 people will suddenly pay and become new moderators. But if so - who will control them during the probation? Current staff is pretty busy as I understand, and prism helps a lot. But admins/moderators have powers which are probably not logged, this complicates matters ...

[Marius49]

Btw, I'm not sure about Kickstarter, I have an impression that it is for more heavy projects. Maybe some other platform, like the one Kitty used recently, some Patreon thing.

And another concern about new staff: of course it is unlikely that like 10 people will suddenly pay and become new moderators. But if so - who will control them during the probation? Current staff is pretty busy as I understand, and prism helps a lot. But admins/moderators have powers which are probably not logged, this complicates matters ...

To solve the problem with buying and supervising the Mod. and Admin ranks we could set for our donators some Lite versions of those ranks. The current staff members will be their supervisors which control how they act on the server (if they respect others, they do their job etc.) and after a period, the main staff of the server will decide if we give full access to the guy or not (something similar to VIPs, from Normal to VIP).

The lite versions will be:

Moderator Lite (ML) - their treatment will be on the same level as VIPs but, obviously, they will have more commands and privileges than VIPs.
Admin Lite (AL) - they will be treated on the same level as current Moderators but with a few more privileges than the mentioned rank

Like I said earlier, after a period (lets say we can do this monthly) we will decide if one of the donators are eligible for the full access rank, Mod. and Admin.

[Metamorfos]

Do the perks interest you?
No. I don't care that much for perks. I know that even with donating you wouldn't just be able to buy yourself mod or admin, considering there is probably some sort of trial period. It still feels kinda not right though.
A separate HD e-mail seems kinda redundant. I don't know what the use of it would be.


What other perks would you like to see?
​For me personally, the only perk I'd like to see added is that you can make dispenser in tfc :P It's a config option afaik. Maybe some other people would be interested in changing other configs options.


Would you be willing to donate? If so, how much?
​Yes, 10 euros. Possibly more considering this donation drive is a big investment.


How should we present this? Our website, kickstarter, something else?
I think a big, visible progress bar on the website itself, would be ideal. Perhaps with a link to a more suitable medium for things like this.

[Heptagon_ru]

For me it would be useful to see some separate type of announcement, like annual. So I could consider donating again.
Maybe as some form of celebration, idk ... A server's happybirthday ... And people could gift server stuff ... Then server should have name :))) And naming server can be one of the perks! :diamond: :)))

And the announcement should clearly show somehow that I have donated long time ago, because I will not remember that and will always think that I've just recently donated.
But I should think "hey, wow, a year has passed since I donated, and I still enjoy HD and still have job and earn money, let's donate again".

I.e. the targeting should be divided onto two parts: for new donators and for people who already donated.
I can't think yet about possible good rewards for re-donating.

About that great idea with bar: lol, there could be two parallel bars, one green with donations, and one blue with expenses :)))

Hmmm, since the majority of players are very young, we should found few and ask their opinion. I suspect that staff and VIPs are in general more adult then most of players, so our desired rewards don't match theirs.

[Pernix_8D]

The idea of probationary/Lite permission groups for admins and moderators sounds like a great suggestion. If someone does end up donating just to make a big mess of everything, limiting their access to commands for an allotted time period will minimise the damage that needs to be fixed. I'm sure you guys got sick loading backups and such because I broke something on the server by accident. I don't think you guys need a bunch more admins doing that for you as well. Especially on purpose. :P

Something along those lines would work. I suppose we could set admins to watch these new admins/mods as well (sort of like, lets say, a probationary officer), but that'd be a little excessive. :L

[Marius49]

Also for the 75-100$ we could make a private lobby for our donors. I'm not talking about a private lobby server like we have to separate the HC and TFC servers. What I have in mind is that we can offer them a private world/mini server where they can play with friends and this can also come with a private Teamspeak Channel with full permissions on it. The certain donor can moderate his world as he likes and he can whitelist who he likes.

This can also be on any server, modded or vanilla, if he wants to experience with his fellows a TFC like game or pure Minecraft. I'm thinking about this since the 75$ price range can cover, let's say, an 8, maybe 10, people private server on a hosting company. If we want to we can solve this way the problem with "buying" Admin and Mod ranks, so they can be the staff of their own world.

[Pernix_8D]

This sounds like it'd be an absolute pain in the arse to set up and maintain, though. :L

[Jiro_89]

I wouldn't be too concerned about abuse of power if someone donates enough to obtain a mod or admin rank. We have soooo many safe guards in pace to prevent any ill doing and we'll find out fairly quickly. The only thing I'd be concerned about is global banning. That could cause issues with our server reputation on MCBans. It's a very strict process and even those with the best intentions can make mistakes with the system. If there was going to be probationary specific ranks I would focus solely on the global bans.

On paper of course, there really isn't that much more damage a mod can do versus a VIP. We recently increased VIP privileges to include the /mute command which makes the VIP like a mini mod without some of the bypass privileges. If someone wanted to abuse their privileges then we'd catch on pretty quick and can have it sorted out just as fast. Even an admin wouldn't be a huge risk. If someone ranks up naturally or by donating the players are already in a probationary period so they can adjust. It took me several months to be able to flex the full extent of my privileges effectively and correctly. And as Pernix pointed out, we have backups of backups. It's like a backupception.

Hope that helps clear up some of the abuse of power concern.

[Heptagon_ru]

Nice, maybe the probational staff could be allowed to wield local banhammer only.

Btw, it is probably worth mentioning in the donation rules that previousely banned/warned/... people are not allowed to participate, right? :)

[InsaneJ]

Good feedback so far guys. Just keep the ideas and thoughts flowing. There is no right or wrong here :)

One thing I'd like to mention about the @happydiggers.net email account that nobody seems to realize (because I didn't tell you :B) is the following:

The email server is hosted in The Netherlands.
Email in The Netherlands has the same status as regular snail mail, meaning you can't just open someone's email.
The email server has no commercial aspect. This means your email isn't scanned and used to show you ads.
The email server runs on Zimbra which is just about the best web mail client you can get. It beats Gmail and Outlook hands down.
You can have Zimbra import email from Gmail and Outlook.com and use several identities to send and receive email from a single location: the web mail client.
@happydiggers.net > @gmail.com


That being said. I can understand if people don't care too much for this one since it can be quite a hassle to change your primary email account.

I'm not worried about probationary members abusing their powers. At best they can do that once, then they are banned. If they want to steal our server files, I really couldn't care less. Look at all the public TFC servers out there. They can technically do the same things we are doing, yet for some reason we are way more popular. I don't think that's just because we are better at the server stuff than they are :)

I'm thinking about the idea Marius proposed. To give people a server of their own if they donate a certain amount. Setting that up isn't too difficult, I've done that in the past with the private Skyblock servers before there were Bukkit plugins to make it easier. Such a server would have to be more than just a 5-slot vanilla server (aka sucky Realms). But less than a modded TFC server. I think we should measure such servers in GB of RAM allocated to the Minecraft instance. The biggest challenge in this is to provide safe and convenient access to the server owners. Right now we don't have a central control board. Everything is done through custom scripts and SSH access. Shouldn't be too hard to get a Minecraft management tool up and running.

Alternatively we could tell them: you are the server owner, but we do all the maintenance. If you want something done, send us an email. This way we could setup the server running Spigot, Cauldron or Forge plus plugins and/or mods for them and not worry about the security issues. This would however create more work for us which I'm not sure is something we'd want.

*edit*
About in-game items. There are some rules we need to follow for those. Long story short, all in-game items must be strictly cosmetic only.

In the case of TFC I think this provides us with a little wiggle room, but not much. Which is why I'm not too keen on this kind of reward.

Cosmetic stuff like a holographic head (or body) is fine:
2159

In-game items such as dispensers, horses or food are not. And things like beacons, gold/diamond blocks or cake are borderline since they can't be used in TFC but can be used in regular Minecraft. We'd have to explain this distinction every time people ask about it.

I have no problems giving away a ton of stuff as long as it's all cosmetic. Also installing plugins that do 'fun stuff' without influencing gameplay is on the table. Please focus your ideas there if you think we should do more in this area :)

[DOM]

Also installing plugins that do 'fun stuff' without influencing gameplay is on the table. Please focus your ideas there if you think we should do more in this area :)

I agree that we need to be very careful about our donation perks. However, if we use a couple of plugins that don't influence gameplay, then we can run those without breaking Mojang's EULA. These cosmetic plugins usually come with lot of permissions that we can stratify through the donation ranks. For example I had set up (on a previous server) the DisguiseCraft plugin so that higher rank players had more choices of disguises to become. This was purely cosmetic, but it made a statement when you were a Ghast sitting at spawn and no other player could look like that.

Plugins I recommend so far:


DisguiseCraft (http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/disguisecraft/) (give players access to disguises based on donation level)
MyPet (http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/mypet/) (give players abiltity to capture pets based on donation level, remove PvP and other game mechanics, permissions here (http://mypet.keyle.de/doku.php?id=en:permissions))
Custom icon on dynmap for town. (give players icons based on donation level)


If we are to promote the servers, from an administrative point of view, we should advertise as much as possible. This means I will be streaming much more during the donation drive and probably put up a video or 2 disgussing the benefits of donating.


Also, we need to be sure that the "consumer" is protected by making it clear that their cosmetic donation perks aren't permanent. The chance that we have to remove/config plugins in the future could be very high.

[Marius49]

For cosmetic/fun you can also include something like:

The ability to have a coloured name
The ability to type with colours in chat
A plugin that adds a small minion that you can use for X times a day for X seconds/minutes/hours
An interesting plugin that lets you catch a mob with an egg? (http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/mobcatcher/ ... there is a spigot link too)
A roulette that you can use X times a day to gain something? (an ability maybe, jump higher for 1 minecraft day, be faster, or shine in dark?)

[InsaneJ]

Yes to:

Colored names;
Colored chat;
Ranks based on amount donated. We need to come up with couple of interesting ones. Not stone, iron, diamond, etc.
Minion that doesn't actually do anything for you gameplay wise;
Mob disguise. The mobs you get access to depends on the amount donated.


No to:

Things that give you special abilities (affects gameplay);
Catching mobs with eggs (affects gameplay).


There have been a lot of good ideas in this thread so far. Thank you all for you input. I'll try to come up with new tiers+perks soon. As you may imagine my attention is currently focused a little less on Minecraft with the newborn creating poonamis like it's a sport :B

If someone wants to have a go at the tiers feel free to do so. Saves me some work :)

[fredoduquartier]

I'd love so much to donate some money right now, but I am quite low on money (steam sale + I'm still in high school). But my game seems to currently be quite popular (I really have no idea why) because it has climbed to the top 100 with one demo and one video (some pics too and a patch). It will probably be sold end july. I hope that then I will have enough budget to help you, who gave me an opportunity in my programming career and such a nice time on your servers. I sadly do not stick that much to minecraft anymore :/, so you wont see me allot in the future... for now, my sincere thanks will have to suffice :)

[Heptagon_ru]

Any progress with the tiers and donation table? Not pushing, I know you guys are busy and I feel awesome about that.
Just curious.
Can't wait to have a more significant instrument to ... hmmm ... surprise ... hmmm ... some nice people. Fireworks work surprisingly well, but still :)
Maybe post here some very draft, raw and ugly version of the new table, so people could discuss and improve?
Or you already have this in "Staff" forum section? :-P

[Heptagon_ru]

Oh well, I have already learned to emulate an effect of disappearing in an explosion of fireworks using fireworks and /t spawn :-P

[InsaneJ]

I haven't forgotten about this. I've just been busy with other things lately. A newborns takes up a lot of time, not to mention it doesn't help with my chronic fatigue. As a result thinking up new and creative ideas has taken a backseat lately.

Things I'm considering doing are removing the probationary admin rank. Mod can stay. Filling up the blanks with plugin craziness that doesn't affect gameplay.

We've had private skyblock servers for donors before. It wasn't a success. I don't think offering private servers for individuals will work. But a larger donor server might.

Another thought: the time delayed permission to create a town on the TFC Hardcore server seems to be working well. I'm thinking about maybe adding this to the Regular server as well when we reset the map eventually. Donors then get to skip in line and can create a town right away. This will allow them to get a start and to gain more residents for their town since many players will be looking to join a town. This will prevent the large amount of ghost towns and help make the donor towns better. Thoughts/comments?

Another time related donor perk. Cooldown period for teleports. Now people teleport all over the place. We could add a cooldown period for this and give the donors zero delay for teleports. What's a reasonable delay, but one that motivates people to donate? Maybe 5 minutes by default, 3 for tier 1 donor, 1 for tier 2 donor and 0 delay for tier 3 and above?

[Commiellama2]

Those both sound like good ideas and well-balanced perks, not getting a bunch of stuff for free but a nice little bonus.

I wonder if the teleport delay might be easier in MC time scale, so maybe once or twice per day for regular players and more teleports per day for donators... or would the IRL time system be better?

Somewhat ontopic thought, a year or so we considered using gems for teleport fuel, maybe that could be instated and donators get free teleports? Teleports could also be done via some sort of handheld teleporter (or just an enchanted book) plus gems from inventory?

Donators could get higher animal populations for their town, that's something that would appeal to many people

[Jiro_89]

The idea to be able to bypass the Hardcore time delay for time creation is solid.

I'm not so sure about the teleport delay though. I love the idea, but I'm not sure people would be keen on becoming a bit more limited if they don't donate even though it's too much of a change.

Commie's idea of the increased population is nice but I'm not sure it's worth risking server stability. If it was paired with the teleportation limits it could work to an extent, but it would still be a risk and we wouldn't be able to allow much more than is already allotted for animals and crops.

[InsaneJ]

The way I see it teleport time delay should hurt players only a little, just enough to be an incentive to donate. You teleport to an outpost, do some stuff there, then teleport to your town. As long as the 'do some stuff' part takes longer than the teleport cool down you won't even notice it's there. On the other hand, if you just want to grab some food from an outpost then you will notice the cool down period -> a donation can fix that for you.

It's a bit risky, but it may also motivate players to donate more. If you think this won't work, please share your thoughts.

As for the animals. When we reset the map (no plans for that yet!) perhaps we could start with new rules. Right now towns can have 4 mature animals of each kind. That's a lot of animals. I'm thinking maybe we could change that to 8 mature animals total, doesn't matter which kind. Then the donors can get 12, 16, 20 depending on the donation they've made.

Also we should make new rules regarding pen size. Animal enclosures with more than 1 animal inside should be 16x16 blocks in size (including fence) per 4 mature animals. Bumping animals eats a lot of CPU time so keeping that down helps a lot, and it will make for better looking farms.

[Jiro_89]

There's definitely some major pros to the teleportation incentive. At worst there would be some minor complaints but we won't really know until we give it a try. It's something new and if it doesn't work out we can revert it, but I believe it's worth the risk as you said.

I really like the pen size idea. Having a limit on the number of animals per chunk will go a long way in distributing the load.

[Marius49]

You can add this plugin for donors, I'm sure they will like it! :)

http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/buyheads/
There will be Halloween now every day yay!

And also if you want to look fancy you might want to try a banner on your head. http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/headbanner-1-8-gui/ ;)

[Heptagon_ru]

1. Have I understood correctly: keeping animals together in one enclosure is bad for the server, because it calculates their hits into each other? Good, will separate them.
But: even if we put them into small rooms - what about animals hitting fences or blocks - is it easier for the server?

2. I had a solid impression that Mojang EULA forbids any advantage got from money, which influences gameplay.
Creating your town ahead of others, "forcing" other players to join you instead of making their towns, therefore getting an advantage of growing faster only because of donor perk - seems a gameplay advantage :(
Same with teleports: a donor can instantly tp to a freezer and grab a bite, continuing to work in a mine. Therefore he will mine faster, progress quicker. Again a gameplay advantage.

Personally I welcome these changes, I especially like the anti-ghosttown idea. But still ... EULA.

[InsaneJ]

Animals bumping into another animal, bumpingin into a wall, then the animal again, then the wall again, etc. That's what causes high server load. A single animal inside a small pen doesn't matter much. That animal bumps into a wall and then it just stands there for a while before bumping into it again.

As for gameplay changing donor perks. I think it's a good thing you bring up this point. And we need to figure out a way to deal with it.
About the EULA:

Source: https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/


Hello!
Let’s get one thing clear: we love it when Minecrafters host servers. Tiny or massive, running vanilla or modded Minecraft, we think they’re all great. Playing with friends in persistent worlds is awesome. Everyone knows that.
Over the past week there’s been lots of discussion about Minecraft servers and your right to monetise them. Legally, you are not allowed to make money from our products. There has been one exception to this rule so far – Minecraft videos. We’re about to make a second exception – Minecraft servers.
Hosting servers can be expensive. We want to give hosts a way to cover their costs. That said, we don’t want our players to be exploited or to have a frustrating time unless they pay. The following rules, which may be tweaked at a later date, have been created with these points in mind.
You are allowed to charge players to access your server
So long as the fee is the same for all players, you are allowed to charge for access to your server. You are not allowed to split your playerbase into paying, and non-paying users, nor can you restrict gameplay elements to different tiers of player.
Basically, if you’re charging for access to your server, you are selling a “ticket” and there can only be one type of ticket, regardless of how much people are willing to spend.
You are allowed to accept donations
You are allowed to accept donations from players. You can thank them publicly or in-game, but can’t give preferential treatment for donating. You are not allowed to restrict gameplay features in an attempt to make money.
You are allowed to provide in-game advertising or sponsorship opportunities
You are allowed to put adverts in your Minecraft worlds to help with costs. Used within reason, adverts and sponsorship can be appropriate ways to fund a server.
You are allowed to sell in-game items so long as they don’t affect gameplay
We don’t mind you selling items in game, but they must be purely cosmetic. Pets, hats, and particle effects are OK, but swords, invincibility potions, and man-eating pigs are not. We want all players to be presented with the same gameplay features, whether they decide to pay or not.
There is one exception to this rule – capes! We have a lot of fun making cool capes for extra-special members of our community and Minecon attendees. We’d like to keep them as exclusive as possible. So, yeah, no capes please, even if you’re giving them away for free.
You cannot charge real-world cash for in-game currency
We don’t mind in-game currencies which are earned through playing, but you are not allowed to sell them for real-world cash. Remember – if the stuff you sell affects gameplay, we’re not cool with it.

Don’t pretend to be us. Provide your customers with loads of info
If you do decide to monetise your server, you must clearly state that the purchase is not associated with Mojang, declare who the money is going to, and provide a purchase history and contact details. You should also check the legality of selling digital items in your specific region.
Thanks for reading!
As I hope you’ve noticed, these rules are making attempts to prevent Minecraft servers becoming “pay-to-win.” We hate the idea of server hosts restricting Minecraft’s features to players who have already bought our game! It seems really mean.
We’re hoping that these rules will give hosts opportunity to continue creating awesome Minecraft worlds, and for our players to enjoy them without being forced to spend.
I’m sure we’ll get loads of questions about this subject over the next few days. I’ll prepare a follow-up post once I’ve gathered your queries.
Have a good day!

This is a bit of a pickle. They say: "Remember – if the stuff you sell affects gameplay, we’re not cool with it."
If you look at it in black and white then every change we would make to the server, every single one, affects gameplay. This includes cosmetic changes, as well as blatantly selling blocks for cash and everything in between. In fact, running TFC and charging for access might be against the EULA since it changes gameplay. Which is a contradiction because they allow you to charge for server access in the first place, and then say you can't further down. So I think we should look at this and ask if the proposed changes affect gameplay in a meaningful enough way that it would be considered unfair to other players who do not donate. Because that is what I think Mojang tried to do with their 'new' EULA: prevent unfair pay-to-win servers from exploiting players.

-Does having more animals, that you realistically don't need, affect gameplay in a meaningful way?
-Does removing the cool down period for teleports, which would increase server performance, change gameplay in a meaningful way?
-Does removing the wait for access to /t new command, which is just that: time, affect gameplay in a meaningful way?

So yeah, a lot of the things we could do with the server conflicts with the EULA. However we could choose to ignore the EULA. That would get us kicked of the TFC forum and.... nothing else really. But is that something we'd want to do?

[InsaneJ]

I just had an idea. We could have 3 different TFC servers and charge for access to 2 of those.


Tier 1 server: Free access, small size map, limited farm animals, teleport cool down, wait time before you can make a town.
Tier 2 server: Paid access, medium size map, more farm animals, lower teleport cool down, lower wait time before you can make a town + whatever else we think of.
Tier 3 server: Paid access, huge size map, even more farm animals, no teleport cool down, no wait time before you can make a town + whatever else we think of.


The worlds could be laid out as circles around each other so players can walk between them seamlessly. Once you reach the border of one world, you are teleported to the other server. Just like stepping through a portal on the current server. This will probably take a custom plugin to transfer coordinates from one server to the next, but it would be awesome if we could get that to work.

And by doing this, we're doing what we're already doing. We have rules and limitations which are acceptable by the TFC forum staff in regards to the Minecaft EULA. Everyone on the same tier server has access to the same stuff so there is no pay to win in that regard. Just pay for access which Mojang explicitly allows.

[Marius49]

Why don't we make a single server but with different world borders? You can have a border like we had in Small World and no one will pass unless they are donors, make another world border far away which can't be passed by Tier1 Donors and the last Tier can access it all.

It would look like this:
2301

It's just an idea and the world can be even bigger if it's needed, but this way it would cut a lot of time from setting up 3 servers and checking them for both in game problems (grief, language etc.) and server side errors.

[InsaneJ]

Why don't we make a single server but with different world borders?
You may not charge for access to a world or parts of a world on a server. You may only charge for access to a single server.

It's a dumb technicality, I know. If we use 3 different servers we comply with the EULA. If we use 3 world borders we wouldn't comply with the EULA.

That screenshot you posted is the idea I have for combining the 3 servers. Basically they would share parts of the same map by using the same level seed. I think we can combine them into a single Dynmap too with some effort.

[Jiro_89]

There is also the issue of timeouts and overloading of the server resources. If it's all on one server this would happen too quickly and too often. Reducing the load between 3 servers will increase our overall stability and allow for more perks as suggested in the higher tier access.

This is a really neat idea and would be a fun project to implement. I wouldn't want to push something like this until there is a large update or new build though.

As for being kicked from the TFC forums due to EULA breakage, we should be weary about that. While the devs have made it painfully clear they don't care for us we do still draw from the forum community. I'd say about 1/3 or 1/4 people applying for HC are from the TFC forums and I'm sure there are more stumbling on HappyDiggers on there that don't do HC.

[Lyneira]

Not sure what the latest idea is on interaction between the different tiered servers but I'd like to mention that "a single server" probably also means "isolated from any others in terms of gameplay-affecting items." If Donators can get, say, glowstone blocks on the premium server and bring it with them to the normal server where it's impossible to get, that would effectively also be providing gameplay-affecting perks to them on the normal server.

It seems logical to me that the idea behind the "charge access to a single server requirement" is that the exclusive benefits you can get there do not spill over to another server and create a divide in the playerbase there.

Perhaps this is in a grey area if you were to investigate the EULA in detail, but I would ultimately interpret this as "in-game movement between donator and normal server is OK, bringing items across the server boundary is probably not OK."

[InsaneJ]

Preferably we should reset the map and servers when there's a huge update. However I'm pretty sure we'll only be getting small updates from now on as work on TFC 2 progresses. I don't think there's an ETA for TFC 2 yet so I don't think we should wait for that either. Setting up a new server would take a couple of months probably. Especially if we want to make it another awesome server with roads and outposts like we have now.

Inventories between servers will be strictly separate. The only thing crossing the border would be the player.

Alternatively to creating a custom plugin for server travel across the borders, we might investigate existing plugins further. What if we could create something of a wall with gatehouses every X-amount of blocks. Teleport from gatehouse A on server A to the same gatehouse A on server B. Right now the server travel just let's you join the other server and you end up either at spawn or at your last known location. What I'd like to do is transfer coordinates over somehow. I'm not sure there's a portal plugin that allows you to do this. But if anyone knows of one I'm all ears :)

[InsaneJ]

I may have found a plugin that can allow us to teleport a player from one server to specific coordinates on another server:
http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/ancient-gates-reloaded/
http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/ancient-gates-reloaded/pages/bungee-cord-usage/
If this works as I think it does, we could create a wall around each world with gate houses that fake the idea of seamless transition between servers. It could even transport inventories and animals, but we're not going to do that for obvious reasons.

[Rainnmannx]

THat plug in looks pretty promising :)

Could world guard and that plugin work kinda like the pic? black are walls with gates and yellow would be world guard.


2306

[InsaneJ]

Yes it could. But it would mean a lot extra work to set it up like that rather than using a simple square shape.

Think of it this way. With the squares all we have to do is define 4 regions: top, right, bottom, left. Inside those regions players will not be allowed to build anything. Just outside those regions the world border would keep players inside. Done.

The walls can be a 2 chunk wide area. The floor could be made out of something like bedrock. The walls could be copy/pasted using world edit schematics for the most part. Especially sea areas would be done quickly this way.

If we would go with a more organic shape then we would have to make a lot of smaller regions and each region would need an extra region behind it to keep players inside. Shapes can be rectangle or polygon. With polygon shapes we'd have to define each point of the polygon. It will get messy and requires a lot of administration to get right.

The area for the walls would have to be made by hand. World edit can be used, but only to a lesser degree. Meaning more work.

So yes it's doable, but if we have manpower to spare I'd rather spend it on roads and outposts like we did before.

[Rainnmannx]

Ok, I would pass to if it's that much work.

[InsaneJ]

So I've went ahead and ordered new parts for the server. It cost €1189,70 which is a little less than what I thought it would cost several months ago. The parts should arrive in a couple of days, but it'll be a while before we can actually start using it for our Minecraft servers.

The parts I ordered are:


https://www.afuture.nl/slir/?w=89&h=65&i=icecatimages/prods1000/21/85/18562185-9018.jpg
Scythe
Mugen 4
SCMG-4000 (https://www.afuture.nl//productview.php?productID=1002257)
€ 39,90


https://www.afuture.nl/slir/?w=89&h=65&i=afutureimages/prods1000/84/03/2458403_3.jpeg
Asus
X99-A
90MB0K50-M0EAY0 (https://www.afuture.nl//productview.php?productID=2458403)
€ 247,40


https://www.afuture.nl/slir/?w=89&h=65&i=icecatimages/prods1000/35/88/26203588-9046.jpg

Kingston Technology
HyperX Fury - DDR4 2133Mhz CL14 Kit Zwart - 64GB
HX421C14FBK8/64 (https://www.afuture.nl/productview.php?productID=4081320)
€ 398,90


https://www.afuture.nl/slir/?w=89&h=65&i=icecatimages/prods1000/12/18/23221218_2110.jpg
Intel
Core i7-5820K - Boxed
BX80648I75820K (https://www.afuture.nl//productview.php?productID=2458799)
€ 399,90




Tax (21%)

€ 188,50




Total including tax

€ 1.086,10




Obviously we don't need a donor drive to fund the parts now. However I'd still like to continue with a premium setup for those willing to support our community. I'm not going to go through all the hassle of creating a seemless world. It's a nice idea, but I just don't have to time and energy to do it.

The plan is to have 2 or 3 servers:
Server 1, the freebie server:

free to play
world size 15.000 x 15.000
minimum online time before players can start towns, maybe 12 hours?
cool down on teleports, maybe 5 minutes?
strict limitations on trees and animals (the same we have right now)
current minimum distance between towns
1 outpost per town
chat prefix: freebie


Server 2, the premium server:

premium, maybe €10,- / year?
world size: 30.000 x 30.000
players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
less strict limitations on trees and animals
larger minimum distance between towns
2 outposts per town
chat prefix: premium
player model on the freebie server next to the staff
access to both freebie and premium server


Server 3, the awesome server:

premium, maybe €20,- / year?
world size: 50.000 x 50.000
players can start towns right away
no cool down for teleports
even less strict limitations on trees and animals
extra perks: the cosmetic stuff we've been discussing.
huge minimum distance between towns
10 outposts per town
chat prefix:awesome
statue + player model of each player on the freebie and premium server next to the staff
access to freebie, premium and awesome server


Thoughts?

[Marius49]

The upgrade is neat and the plan for the free and premium servers sounds good. The price is also suitable considering everything they will get besides a bigger world and the pride they get by playing there. ;)

Other than that we will continue adding more donor perks if they are needed or requested. For now it's a good start, we got the base structure of the servers and the server parts, that's all we really need for this to work.

List of other brilliant suggestions that should get implemented:
-Server 4 (Uber Awesome Server) for 99.99$. What you get? You have the magnificent opportunity to play with me of course. ;) You also get a free :cookedpork:.
-I can give autographs for 50$ a piece.
-They can take a photo of Jiro for free. I can sign that too if they want. ;)
-Maybe have some VIP servers for other games like ARK ( that when the game is fully optimized) or even other games, but that later on. The priority is to setup the main servers at the moment.
-More ideas coming Soon™

[Sverf]

Hey J, you know that processor does not support ECC memory right?

[InsaneJ]

Good catch :)

I had that memory selected from when I was looking at Xeon CPUs. Then I decided to go with a single 6-core CPU instead of a dual socket with 1 and later 2 quad core Xeons. The thought being that I could then later upgrade to 128GB while only using 8 memory banks. The 'limit' of 8 came from wanting to use a regular sized ATX motherboard which only have 8 slots for single and dual socket configurations. Reason being that I didn't have to get a new case to fit an E-ATX board. The one we have is quite new still, does an good job at keeping stuff cool, is quiet and I simply don't want a larger case.

Since this CPU and motherboard both only support 64GB I might as well change my order to use regular RAM. Those seem to mostly come in sets of 8 for 64GB bundles but that doesn't matter now.


I've changed my order to Kingston Technology HyperX Fury - DDR4 2133Mhz CL14 Kit Zwart - 64GB (http://www.afuture.nl/productview.php?productID=4081320) which is also a lot cheaper, but I would have preferred to use ECC memory. 64GB are a lot of bits waiting to potentially flip :B

[Sverf]

Yeah, it kinda sucks ECC is still not supported by regular CPU's, with the ever growing RAM size in PC's it gets more and more important.

[InsaneJ]

I'm just glad I managed to changed the order before they shipped the items. I've also edited the post above to include the new items and total price including tax. 21% w00t!! ;)

There's one more point of concern though. Right now we are running on 4x 80GB Intel SSDs. They perform well and I'm happy with the setup. However they only provide ~320GB of space. Running 3 large TFC servers and the AMP server is probably going to require more space. I'm not sure yet if I want to invest in more SSDs or just run a few servers on regular hard drives.

[InsaneJ]

The new hardware has been installed and things are running quite smoothly. Now I'd like to get started on setting up a couple of new servers. I have the following in mind:


Move FTB server to Sverf's server.
Upgrade Internet connection to 500mbit up/down.
Create/configure the following servers:

Lobby server, free
TFC freebie server, free
TFC regular, premium tier 1
ARK survival evolved, premium tier 1
TFC hardcore, premium tier 2
TechnodeFirmacraft (http://technode.enjin.com/forum/m/17014259/viewthread/24660669-about-technodefirmacraft), premium tier 2


I'm looking into setting up an automated pay for access thing using Minecraft Market: http://happydiggers.minecraftmarket.com/
This should work for everything except the ARK server. I'm pretty sure the ARK server won't be too much work to do manually though.

The TFC freebie server will have a timer so new players can't start a town right away. So they either have to join another town or rough it out in the wilderness. For this reason I'd like to begin with 2 or more server towns. These towns can be run by V.I.P. and/or staff but they should all have in common that they will accept anyone who asks. I'd also like each of these towns to have some kind of theme, what kind of theme I'll leave to you guys. This can be architectural, role playing, colors, etc.

@everyone, who here would like to run a server town? I'm looking for people who will be active a lot so they can help new players join a town. The server towns should have plots set up for new members before they join so we'll have to build a bunch of stuff before the server opens.

@everyone, who wants to help with general build stuff for the new servers? Think: spawn region/maze, roads, outposts, etc. We won't do as much as we did for the current TFC regular server though. It was an awesome project, but I don't have the energy to do that again. That being said, if you guys want to and if someone steps up to keep people active/building then I'm all for it of course :)

@Sverf, does your server have enough RAM to also host the FTB server? If not then the next question would be: it has 3 more empty memory slots available right? Then I can order an additional 12GB. Also could you please add a few hundred (3 or 4?) GB storage to the Athrun VM? If possible from the raid-1 array.

[Heptagon_ru]

I would like to help with building of infrastructure, but only as a :elmo: subordinate. Roads, primitive outposts, mirroring or assisting, stuff like that.

[DOM]

I'm up for building and backend stuff as well. I will be available for an entire week after Christmas (no school/work). Also, I will stream and make videos to advertise the new servers.

[Sverf]

Server currently has 6x2GB, with no free slots. :(
8GB is allocated to the Minecraft VM of which atm 4GBish is free. I could maybe squeeze out another GB of RAM from the host, but that's it.

Diskspace wise we still have 400 GB unallocated, I'll add 300 to the VM, giving it 575 GB of free space total. It's needs a reboot now before I can resize the FS.

[InsaneJ]

Thanks! I'll reboot the server somewhere tomorrow morning.

I've ordered G.Skill Rl series f3-12800cl9t-12gbrl - ddr3 - 12gb : 3 x 4gb - dimm 240-pin - 1600 mhz / pc3-12800 - cl9 (f3-12800cl9t-12gbrl). It'll be delivered directly to your address.

Also thank you Heptagon and DOM for volunteering. If anyone else would like to help out please let us know :)

[Rainnmannx]

Ill help when I can :) And depending on when this all rolls out would do the newbie town, or partner with someone to do it.

[InsaneJ]

Thanks :)

I've updated the opening post with the current train of thought and I'm moving this thread to general chat so more people can see what we're up to.

@Jiro, when you've got a first draft for the ARK server would you mind filling out some notable items in the opening post?

[Marius49]

I'll try to help as much as I can with the ARK server when I'm free. That will be in a week from now since we will have a nice holiday break, yay! :D

[MykytaI]

I'm not a member of VIP or staff groups but I could help with running newbie town too.

[RJS1997]

I would be happy to help, should be free after the 18th ( cant miss star wars :P ).

[DennisBurnsJr]

First before I begin, I would like to state that these are only my own personal thoughts, feelings and opinions about this. You can do what you will with these, I am simply sharing them for those that care to hear them.
To begin I would like to say that I am not happy about these changes that will happen. I enjoy the server where it is at currently. I completely read this post, and from what I gathered from it is that you are creating more servers causing the monthly bill to be higher. I am not that much of an active player on the TFC server but from what I can see with your plans with the TFC is that not only will it cost but you will be removing certain benefits IE: outposts. That part is what turns me off for these plans the most. Why pay for less then what I am getting free currently? I don't know perhaps I am reading it wrong. I am just a wee bit aggravated. Every time I find a good server and begin to enjoy it, it gets changed and becomes a tad bit worse. I apologize if this steps on anyone's toes, or if anyone finds this offensive. What I feel is that if these changes from what I can understand of them is that I will lose out on what I found the current server enjoyable to be taken away. I am sorry to say that I doubt I will return for these changes. As I stated though, these are merely my feelings and thoughts. I know my thoughts don't really carry any weight on here but I felt I needed to speak them.

Thank you for taking the time to read this if you did.

[InsaneJ]

@Marius, MykytaI, RJS,
Thanks, your help is much appreciated :)


First before I begin, I would like to state that these are only my own personal thoughts, feelings and opinions about this. You can do what you will with these, I am simply sharing them for those that care to hear them.
To begin I would like to say that I am not happy about these changes that will happen. I enjoy the server where it is at currently. I completely read this post, and from what I gathered from it is that you are creating more servers causing the monthly bill to be higher. I am not that much of an active player on the TFC server but from what I can see with your plans with the TFC is that not only will it cost but you will be removing certain benefits IE: outposts. That part is what turns me off for these plans the most. Why pay for less then what I am getting free currently? I don't know perhaps I am reading it wrong. I am just a wee bit aggravated. Every time I find a good server and begin to enjoy it, it gets changed and becomes a tad bit worse. I apologize if this steps on anyone's toes, or if anyone finds this offensive. What I feel is that if these changes from what I can understand of them is that I will lose out on what I found the current server enjoyable to be taken away. I am sorry to say that I doubt I will return for these changes. As I stated though, these are merely my feelings and thoughts. I know my thoughts don't really carry any weight on here but I felt I needed to speak them.

Thank you for taking the time to read this if you did.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts :) I'll try to address your points. To (hopefully) keep things simple I'll use some bullets.


My monthly expenses will not go up by adding more servers. That's the benefit of hosting everything myself.
If you choose to pay for tier 1 or tier 2 access you will get more than you currently have for free.
The free server will become a little less than the current one, but only a little. This is done to encourage people to pay for tier 1 or tier 2 which will give you a little more.
You say you are a wee bit aggravated. How can that be? To me this sounds like you feel you are entitled to something. Please try to look at it from our point of view. You've never donated in the past as far as I know. Yet you have been given access to the largest and most popular public TFC server in the world for free for the past year. And after we launch the new servers you can continue to play there for free. I seriously don't understand how you can be aggravated by me asking for a small compensation and giving those who would do so something extra on other servers than the free one.
Could you please elaborate on what you think will be taken away from you exactly in our current plans? Perhaps we can address those issues or change our plans.

[InsaneJ]

I'll quote this here instead of the frontpage to try to keep things in one place.


This all seems very reasonable; good pricing structure, very fair. Having been a sysadmin for the majority of my career, I understand the costs involved in running a show like this, and no reasonable person can argue that you should be paying for something that everyone is enjoying.

As an active player, I like the proposed loosening of animal limits, especially for hardcore. Breeding horses with a limit of four, when being both mortal and the fastest way to get around the world, is challenging. Since the main issue with animals seems to be animal bumping, I would be quite happy to see a rule, even right now on the current servers, that says all animals must be individually penned... it looks better anyways imho.

As for any of the talk in the thread of pay for mod/pay for admin... no bueno. That should absolutely be a merit based system only.

My biggest concern with a server switch, is losing everything. With so much real life time tied to mining and smelting ores for materials, losing everything would probably make me stop playing entirely, or start my own server where that wouldn't ever happen again. I'm fairy certain that sentiment would be shared by anyone with a significant time investment in their towns. Personally, I would like to see either a "vault" world, with a shared inventory, where resources could be stored by individuals pre-switch on a plot (maybe accessible only to donors?), or, I would like to have the ability to at least inventory what I have, and maybe have to pay a moving fee to have a mod or admin place the items in the list in the new world. Personally, I like the "vault" idea more, and would likely illicit more donations sooner if accessible by donors only. Maybe one vault world for regular, and one for hardcore?

Anyways, other than that, everything looks good to me. I really appreciate all the time all the staff has put in to making the HD community what it is. Jiro is a legend; I'd be happy to pay a little more to see that guy on the payroll. ;) Talent like that is hard to find! And a big thankyou to you J, for all the time, money and effort you've put in to get things where they are today. It's truly awesome. And I can't forget RX, for always keeping an eye on things and being there to help maintain order :)

Anyways, that's all from me. Keep up the good work! :)

First of all, thanks for making a good post and providing feedback :)

We've decided a while ago there will be no paid staff positions. If that wasn't made clear in this thread yet, this should do it.

We've had the current map since we first switched to the 1.7.10 version of TFC. We don't take switching maps lightly and we certainly don't do it often. Besides trying to spark the interest of a lot of players with a fresh map there's still the issue with graphite being very rare in the current map. After we make the switch I do not expect to switch again until TFC moves on to Minecraft 1.8/1.9 or until TFC 2.0 comes around. Either way it should be quite a while again before we reset the map.

Some people have asked if they can download the map. Please keep in mind that it's a 80.000 x 80.000 map which compressed is around 65GB in size. Perhaps I'll put up a bandwidth limited FTP server in the future for really generous donors in the future. Or maybe set up two mega accounts and split the archive into pieces. Either way it's a bit of a hassle for something that only very few will enjoy or appreciate.

I like the idea of having an archive server. However this means we will need to keep resources in reserve to actually run these servers. I'm not sure that's worth it. Instead of a dead, read-only, server you could also have an active server you can actually play on. Also it's currently not possible to move items between servers. The only way to do that is by adding the old map to an existing server which will cause a significant increase in server load not to mention the quirks TFC presents. It's definitely not multi-world compatible. We've had more than our fair share of problems when we ran 2 TFC worlds on 1 server. I'm not keen on going back to that situation on a new server. However I'm not saying no at this point, I'll keep the idea in mind. Perhaps someone else had a good idea for how to deal with this.

That leaves the matter of the resources people have gathered on the current map. I'm not sure it's a good idea to give people their old stuff on a new map. This would give some players a distinct 'advantage' over other players. I know TFC is not competitive, but people tend to be really envious of others for silly stuff. Having people running around in red steel armor on day 1 is sure to upset a lot of players.

Thanks again for the feedback and the kind words. Please feel free to discuss things further.

As for progress on the new servers:
The freebie TFC server's world is done pre-generating. The regular and hardcore TFC worlds are at 29% and the TechnodeFirmacraft world is at 5%. Currently the three of them are generating about 50 chunks per second. At that rate it'll take about 2 weeks before it's done.

I'd like to move the TFC freebie server from my PC to the actual server once we upgrade Sverf's server with more RAM and move the FTB server there. Hopefully that can be done in the upcoming week. Once the freebie server is up people can get started on building some basic infrastructure like: spawn area, rule maze, outposts, roads, etc.

[LarsonPacific]

That leaves the matter of the resources people have gathered on the current map. I'm not sure it's a good idea to give people their old stuff on a new map. This would give some players a distinct 'advantage' over other players. I know TFC is not competitive, but people tend to be really envious of others for silly stuff. Having people running around in red steel armor on day 1 is sure to upset a lot of players.


I think a lot more players would be upset about losing hundreds of hours of drudgework making blast furnaces, firebrick blocks, iron sheets, bloomeries, thousands upon thousands of pieces of railroad tracks and all the skill levels they've built up over the course of several months. ;P If a person works hard building a business in one country and moves to another and is already wealthy upon arrival, yes, that person has a distinct "advantage" over existing citizens, however, do they deserve the "advantage" they worked so hard for? I think so. Should they be stripped of all their possessions just because others might be jealous of what they have worked so hard for? I don't believe that's how it should work.

Also, if anything anyone does on the current servers is going to get blown away in the coming weeks, who is going to want to play at all until the new servers are online? I'm certainly not going to spend any more time doing anything if I'm just going to lose it all soon anyways... :/

If there is a way to transfer items, even if it's just for a short amount of time, say, a moving window, where people have a week to move their stuff, then the old world is gone forever, I think that would be more than fair.

Failing that, however, can users with their inventories be copied from one server to another? I'm not sure how the file structure works server side with player data, but that might be an easy way to do it. That way, people's skill levels would transfer too (another painstakingly long process to build up). Even bringing a single inventory of stuff would be better than nothing. Anyone else have any thoughts on the issue?

[azariven]

I'll quote this here instead of the frontpage to try to keep things in one place.

That leaves the matter of the resources people have gathered on the current map. I'm not sure it's a good idea to give people their old stuff on a new map. This would give some players a distinct 'advantage' over other players. I know TFC is not competitive, but people tend to be really envious of others for silly stuff. Having people running around in red steel armor on day 1 is sure to upset a lot of players.



Hi InsaneJ

I'm azariven, a 2 year player on the tfc server.

Honestly, I'm quite disappointed with this new server change and I think you're missing the point about inventory transferring. happydigger tfc has been about cooperation. players that have red steel armor understand the effort it takes to make those armor and certainly won't be "dicking around" (excuse my language) infront of new players with their armor. What actually happen, and had happen during my past 2 year on the server, is to help new players settle down and progress OR attract them to join the same town.

In tfc, there are dedicated players and players that would come check it out and leave. In my opinion, no dedicated player will be pissed when someone else had a full set of red steel armor on day one. Why? because it's not that this person get "spawn" with it. This person actually spend real life time on this! Those hundreds, maybe thousand of hour on the server. Having everything reset sort of is like a slap on dedicated player's faces.

I was playing on the server starting 0.78 after watching etho's season 1. And believe me, it was the most fun time I had in quite a while. A 20 ppl town with 4-5 active players, 8 bloomeries, quad-blast furnaces, all the ores and gems you ever need.... etc, i was starting to explore alot of techy stuff in tfc and making fun creations. Then the server reset when 0.79 come out. This I understand because it's a new update, duh. But I was quickly burnt out because the mining was much much more difficult and longer (back then I haven't figure out a new way to mine yet). And I Simply Don't Want To Grind All Those Boring Mundane Simple No-Brainer Starter Chores!!!! I want to enjoy the fun-late-game stuff like mob spawner, efficient cobble generators, quad-,hex-blast furnace techniques, tfc boat docking, railways and most importantly, the chiseling and building. So yes, it literally took me a year before I finally decide to come back to tfc on happydigger when etho released his season 2.

If you're still reading this, thank you. I might sound like a winny bady about not wanting to do chores. But I real life I graduated from college and I'm a phd now, so I have fewer and fewer time to play. And if doing something not enjoyable, it's not gaming, it's torture.

So I think the ending catch is, do you want to keep dedicated players playing, or do you want to shove them away.

[azariven]

If there is a way to transfer items, even if it's just for a short amount of time, say, a moving window, where people have a week to move their stuff, then the old world is gone forever, I think that would be more than fair.

Failing that, however, can users with their inventories be copied from one server to another? I'm not sure how the file structure works server side with player data, but that might be an easy way to do it. That way, people's skill levels would transfer too (another painstakingly long process to build up). Even bringing a single inventory of stuff would be better than nothing. Anyone else have any thoughts on the issue?

I like this idea. I don't think anyone enjoy doing mundane chores.
Losing my 40m boat is ok. I built a 100m one.... and lose it again.... which is again ok because it had flaws and I want to correct that.... but having to gather all the resource again and again and again. I mean, what's the point? it's a complete waste of time.

[Heptagon_ru]

About loosing all the stuff and builds.

There were many players on the server, who played from the start to the color steel end, built awesome builds and then switched to other games or servers. I think the ones who play now are about 1% of people totally played on the current map.
So for all other 99% people the map reset can be attractive - start anew, fresh land, start "working" again after a good vacation from TFC. Some people maybe are waiting for that.

Of course for the people who started recently it will be sad to be interrupted in the middle. But it can't be avoided - the server will be reset at some point of time and at any point of time there will be a group of fresh people.

About loosing interest to play on the server when an announcement about reset comes out - true, I think I saw that clearly on the previous server. But this is unavoidable I guess at some point of time.

Also for some people the fun of the game is to progress, do things differently this time, etc. Transferring stuff and skills can ruin the fun. Why mine and make weapons and armor if you have color steel armor and weapons and tools already. Just build stuff? It sounds like a creative mode.

Unfortunately I loose interest after I get to end-game, so I can't say much about azariven's point (hey man, nice to see you again).


About transferring stuff by copying inventories.

I did propose a similar idea long time ago. But I wanted people to pay for the transfer. E.g. 40 color steel ingots.
The knowledge that a person lost a huge amount of valuables to pay for transfer can silence the envy people.
The backstory can be: you pay to mages for your transfer from the dying world to a fresh one.
Also it should ensure they will not bring lifetime amount of color steel with them, only few good tools.

Maybe inventory copying can be automated by some script, which sees inside the inventory files?
So a player:
1. Signals that he wants to be transferred by placing a predefined expensive item into a predefined place in inventory.
2. Pays for transfer, having 40 ingots in another slot(s).

A script will go through all the files and copy only the ones which have the signal item and the ingots, removing these items.

I have no idea about is it possible technically. I could try to write such thing. Somehow links on Minecraft wiki pages can't be pressed atm, idk why , so I can't see what format the NBT format is. I see there are some editors, they might support automation / batch processing.

And also some disagreements are possible when people group and make one of them a carier. and after reset the carrier refuses to give stuff back.

[TheForestHermit]

Hi there. I've been following the conversation for awhile and I'm usually more of a lurker but in this case I feel the need to chime in supporting LarsonPacific's points.
While I recently started over using a second account for the joy of it, it's the skill loss that is going to bite.
And for inventory carry over I'm not sure it's possible in the new post 1.7+ minecrafts like it was in the earlier version.
That said? I would like to direct folks attention to the hardcore Dynmap (http://tfchc.happydiggers.net/?worldname=hardcore&mapname=flat&zoom=4&x=650&y=64&z=-15294) and the mind-blowing stretches of world-spanning railway that was all built by the painstaking labor of one player. ( LarsonPacific)
That represents vast amounts of time and materials that I feel maybe should be at the least, some of should be reimbursed in the new world.

Otherwise this is exciting and awesome, and I can't wait for the HC world to be ready.
Because once you know the axe is going to fall, any drive to play in the old world dies.

[LarsonPacific]

Inventory carryover I don't think would be that bad to accomplish. If the player inventory is stored in a player.dat file in NBT format like I believe it is, one should simply have to open the file of the players wanting to carry inventory, and set their position and spawn tags to the spawn location of the new world. If they decide to do inventory carryover and that method works, I would gladly volunteer to do the NBT data modifications to the player files of the players wishing to do so.

[InsaneJ]

If you're still reading this, thank you. I might sound like a winny bady about not wanting to do chores. But I real life I graduated from college and I'm a phd now, so I have fewer and fewer time to play. And if doing something not enjoyable, it's not gaming, it's torture.
You don't sound like a winny baby at all. I want people to voice their opinions to get an idea what our community wants and needs. Also please don't be afraid to disagree with me or plans we're posting. The plans I've posted aren't set in stone, they are just ideas we've come up with and can be changed if we come up with something better. So far the input we've been getting is great. So please keep it up you guys :)


There were many players on the server, who played from the start to the color steel end, built awesome builds and then switched to other games or servers. I think the ones who play now are about 1% of people totally played on the current map.
So for all other 99% people the map reset can be attractive - start anew, fresh land, start "working" again after a good vacation from TFC. Some people maybe are waiting for that.
We've had around 6800 individual players on the current map and a little over 10000 on our TFC server counting all maps from Minecraft 1.6.2, 1.6.4 and 1.7.10. The current 50 or so active players are a small minority. That doesn't mean they aren't important though. I'll try to keep all players happy with the new situation, if possible.


Inventory carryover I don't think would be that bad to accomplish. If the player inventory is stored in a player.dat file in NBT format like I believe it is, one should simply have to open the file of the players wanting to carry inventory, and set their position and spawn tags to the spawn location of the new world. If they decide to do inventory carryover and that method works, I would gladly volunteer to do the NBT data modifications to the player files of the players wishing to do so.
The problem with transferring inventories is that it's simply a pain to do. They aren't named <PlayerName>.dat anymore but instead use a player's UUID. For example: 002ea8fb-97f2-446a-80db-aeefe19c9dc1.dat. Also editing those one by one using NBTexplorer is not something I'm looking forward to. So the alternative would be that I figure out a way to write a program that takes each player.dat file and then edit the player coordinates. It shouldn't be too hard since it's a binary file that's been gzipped if I recall correctly. So yeah, I can probably do that.

Which brings me to a new suggestion: How would you guys feel about building a huge Ark? Build it at sea level near spawn and make it huge. Each player, even if they don't help build the thing, will get access to it. In the Ark there should be a lot (maybe 100?) of small compartments where players can deposit chests, barrels, TFC 'machine blocks' etc. Players should lock their stuff using Lockette signs as they would do normally.

Once the Ark is complete and we're ready to move to the new server, I will copy/paste the Ark and all of it's contents to the new world. I'll also transfer all players and their inventories, levels, whatever else is stored in their player.dat file to the new server at specific coordinates. Players will then be able to take their stuff from the Ark. Current active players can then take most of their stuff with them. And players that are returning after a long time of inactivity might get lucky and find some interesting items in their inventories. Thoughts?

The new server is probably 2 months or so away. As always it's difficult to give an exact estimate since I don't know how much time the people working on it will be able to actually spend there productively. Also plans change. So we might want to start simple but end up building several 100KM of roads like last time ;)

[LarsonPacific]

I like the idea of an Ark. :) That would make me, and many others happy I'm sure, combined with the skill/inventory retention. That will also give everyone something productive to do while the new servers are being built. I am a reasonably well skilled programmer with over a decade of systems automation and data migration programming experience (mainly perl and shell script) and would be happy to help with coding the player migration... or anything else for that matter.

usernamecache.json could easily be parsed to pull username to UUID mappings if that needs to be done for any reason. It looks like there's at least one commandline NBT editor that could do the job... could probably have something written in a few hours.

[InsaneJ]

I'm looking for a way to edit the nbt data inside all of the player.dat files directly. This way we won't forget anyone and we won't need to keep a plugin running that will teleport players to a new location once they join the server. I found something that looks promising and might save a lot of work and headaches trying to figure out what goes where exactly.



player.dat is a gzipped file. If you unzip it, you can find the Pos field (string "Pos" and then 32 bytes of coordinates). So, you need to change those bytes.
I used Perl for this purpose:

process_file.sh

#!/bin/bash
FILE_NAME_BASE="${1%.dat}"
echo "Processing ${FILE_NAME_BASE}..."
mv "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.dat" "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.gz"
gunzip "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.gz"
perl -pe 's/Pos[\x{00}-\x{ff}]{32}/Pos\x{06}\x{00}\x{00}\x{00}\x{03}\x{c0}\x{88}\x{c4 }\x{00}\x{00}\x{00}\x{00}\x{00}\x{40}\x{51}\x{67}\ x{ae}\x{14}\x{80}\x{00}\x{00}\x{c0}\x{b3}\x{e4}\x{ 80}\x{00}\x{00}\x{00}\x{00}\x{02}\x{00}\x{0a}/' < "${FILE_NAME_BASE}" > "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.out"
mv "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.out" "${FILE_NAME_BASE}"
gzip "${FILE_NAME_BASE}"
mv "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.gz" "${FILE_NAME_BASE}.dat"

process_all.sh

#!/bin/bash
find . -name "*.dat" -exec ./process_file.sh \{\} \;
echo "Done."
If you run process_all.sh in folder world/players, it changes the Pos field of all players to 06 00 00 00 03 c0 88 c4 00 00 00 00 00 40 51 67 ae 14 80 00 00 c0 b3 e4 80 00 00 00 00 02 00 0a (hexadecimal). Of course, you can change these values to move players to another point.

This script needs to be tested. Then if it works it needs to be modified to accept additional command line arguments. Since I don't know what the exact location of the Ark on the new server will be I'd like to be able to give X Y Z (float) coordinates as extra arguments in the process_all script. It would then have to be converted to hexadecimal and put in the .dat file using the method above.

Do you feel up to the task?

[LarsonPacific]

I would probably just write something from scratch; it's a pretty easy thing to do. I have written ungodly amounts of data migration code in perl so a good portion of the code I can probably grab from other projects in my archive. If I can get an export of the playerdata directory (shouldn't be too big) I will work on the migration script. Can also help with Ark building as well...

[LarsonPacific]

Looks like NBTExplorer has a commandline utility, NBTUtil.exe that will make extremely quick work of the job.

[LarsonPacific]

Actually, no need for a script at all. NBTutil.exe globs filenames, so it will just be a single command with the utility to mass change all the Pos values in all the files.

NBTUtil.exe --path=playerdata/**/Pos --setlist x y z

I just tested it with some MP player.dat files on my system and it worked. :)

Done. Next. ;P

[TheForestHermit]

I would be happy to help build infrastructure / the ark etc. Either following directions for menial things like roads or helping build waystations etc. I often have more free time than I know what to do with.

[azariven]

Which brings me to a new suggestion: How would you guys feel about building a huge Ark? Build it at sea level near spawn and make it huge. Each player, even if they don't help build the thing, will get access to it. In the Ark there should be a lot (maybe 100?) of small compartments where players can deposit chests, barrels, TFC 'machine blocks' etc. Players should lock their stuff using Lockette signs as they would do normally.

Once the Ark is complete and we're ready to move to the new server, I will copy/paste the Ark and all of it's contents to the new world. I'll also transfer all players and their inventories, levels, whatever else is stored in their player.dat file to the new server at specific coordinates. Players will then be able to take their stuff from the Ark. Current active players can then take most of their stuff with them. And players that are returning after a long time of inactivity might get lucky and find some interesting items in their inventories. Thoughts?


That moment of ..... silence.... grasp......

OMG, this is EXACTLY what I'm doing!!! My town is named Haven_Nova (Haven for 0.78). It was meant as an sanctuary for new players to come stay and get equipped for the harsh world. And!!! And Of Course A Haven Has An Ark! I just built a 100m galleon that's too big to do anything with it. I can easily retrofit it to have over 100 cabins. Also I can unclaim the ship part so people can build on it. I purposely build my ark so that it contains a ship and a port to be contained within a 2x6 chunk. So Small cabins can also be built on the port. look for 28334, -2768.

The only downside is that ..... it's not close to spawn. Although, for the players it won't be a problem as they can teleport to my town the same way they go to server outposts, etc. Just put a sign in server spawn saying to come to my place. My question is that will it be difficult for you to copy my Ark instead of an Ark built near spawn?

Regardless, if the ark idea is viable, it might just spark another 2 month of dedicated effort to complete the project and me playing for years to come.

[azariven]

I like the idea of an Ark. :) That would make me, and many others happy I'm sure, combined with the skill/inventory retention. That will also give everyone something productive to do while the new servers are being built.

It would be great if we can fully migrate skill/inventory, which null the purpose of an ark. But we can still have the ark as a symbolic figure and a backup plan? But yes, I totally agree with the fact that people should have something productive to do while the new servers are being built.

[azariven]

About loosing all the stuff and builds.

There were many players on the server, who played from the start to the color steel end, built awesome builds and then switched to other games or servers. I think the ones who play now are about 1% of people totally played on the current map.
So for all other 99% people the map reset can be attractive - start anew, fresh land, start "working" again after a good vacation from TFC. Some people maybe are waiting for that.

Of course for the people who started recently it will be sad to be interrupted in the middle. But it can't be avoided - the server will be reset at some point of time and at any point of time there will be a group of fresh people.

About loosing interest to play on the server when an announcement about reset comes out - true, I think I saw that clearly on the previous server. But this is unavoidable I guess at some point of time.

Also for some people the fun of the game is to progress, do things differently this time, etc. Transferring stuff and skills can ruin the fun. Why mine and make weapons and armor if you have color steel armor and weapons and tools already. Just build stuff? It sounds like a creative mode.

Unfortunately I loose interest after I get to end-game, so I can't say much about azariven's point (hey man, nice to see you again).



Nice to see you again Heptagon! It might be true that currently it's 50/6000+ people that had played on the server, but it's not true that they are all dedicated. Majority of those people log on and spend about a week or two then never seen again. Only a small portion will have reached blue/red steel.

I don't have anything against start anew, new land, because I enjoy exploring and building something fresh again too. But making red/blue steel? What am I suppose to find "new" about punching the blast furnace for 10 minutes? This part is completely repetitive and the only fun is when I'd my quad-blast. Once mastered, it milk out steel for days.

Well, blue/red tools may be op, but that doesn't necessary make you lose interest. First of all, you have a choice t o chose if you want things carry over. If you want to start brand new, just don't use it. I understand some players are more action packed and bored of the late-game. But please understand some players actually Start having fun in the late-game when you're stocked up and worry free to build magnificent structures, detailed streets and most importantly, show it to people and gain a sense of achievement and pride not found in real life. You don't get this as well when playing in creative because you still have to struggle a bit. To me, blue/red tools are only the fundamental necessities.

[Heptagon_ru]

Btw, about the whole transfer thing - this seems to be a new thing which was not done before (?) by maybe anyone, so it is a great opportunity to try this for science and see how it will work. It won't be just another great reincarnation in a long like of great reincarnations of a great server, it will be a next step, an improvement, an added value.
Won't it be sad to miss this chance?


What am I suppose to find "new" about punching the blast furnace for 10 minutes?

Totally agree. This can be ok after a long vacation from TFC, like more then a year, but anything less - the memory of manual grinding is a killer.

And thanks for all the explanations about late-game, very interesting. My passion for MC/TFC/FTB is having hard times atm, I feel struggling against a dead end, so such info helps.

[Jiro_89]

Ark server draft updated and is close to the final draft for server attributes. Many mods being considered and will update as I test and consider their viability for a balanced and fun server.

[azariven]

And thanks for all the explanations about late-game, very interesting. My passion for MC/TFC/FTB is having hard times atm, I feel struggling against a dead end, so such info helps.

Perhaps you can join my town after the reset, there are alot of things I think we can do together for late-game wise

[LarsonPacific]

It would be great if we can fully migrate skill/inventory, which null the purpose of an ark. But we can still have the ark as a symbolic figure and a backup plan? But yes, I totally agree with the fact that people should have something productive to do while the new servers are being built.

I need an ark :P I can't fit 20,000 blocks of railroad in my inventory along with all the ingot stacks, anvils, bloomeries and blast furnace materials lol

Maybe two arks per world? One destined for the paid level servers of the same tier and one for the freebie? There are some younger players on who may not be able to afford or don't have the ability to pay for tiered access, and it would be nice for them if their stuff didn't get locked away in a paid world. Would probably have to not apply inventory copying/level retention though for the freebie world, to eliminate the possibility of inventory duplication between the free/tiered worlds and the issue that a single player on HC and Reg can't combine skills/inventory from two sources moving to one world.

I feel the freebie world is important as well, as it gives people who are new to MP TFC a place to try it out and see if they like it enough to pay for it, and having others to play with while trialing the server greatly increases their odds of eventually moving onto tiered access. Having an Ark for freebie as well should help quell any discontent of any who feel like their stuff would otherwise be locked away, and help retain the freebie players on the server. Thoughts?

[InsaneJ]

I was actually planning on copying player.dat files and the Ark from the TFC Regular world to both the new freebie and premium TFC worlds. While stuff from hardcore will go to hardcore. That way I don't have to make a distinction between who goes where and muck things up, deal with people changing their minds afterwards, etc.

It looks like most people who have voiced an opinion seem to like the Ark idea. We will need people to help building two Arks. One on the Regular and one on the Hardcore server. Who would like to oversee building an Ark and who would like to help build?

azariven has already build something, but I'd really like it to be close to spawn. I'll clear a couple of plots near both spawns and put up a bunch of signs.


I need an ark :P I can't fit 20,000 blocks of railroad in my inventory along with all the ingot stacks, anvils, bloomeries and blast furnace materials lol
2478

Seriously though. I don't care how much or how little you bring. New servers will probably take 2 months to complete. Maybe more, maybe less. We won't wait for players to disassemble their castles though :)

[azariven]

It looks like most people who have voiced an opinion seem to like the Ark idea. We will need people to help building two Arks. One on the Regular and one on the Hardcore server. Who would like to oversee building an Ark and who would like to help build?

azariven has already build something, but I'd really like it to be close to spawn. I'll clear a couple of plots near both spawns and put up a bunch of signs.



Yeah, I think I can be in charge of the freebie server ark. So... what should be the exact decision about the ark I'd built?

1. Have the freebie server ark exactly where it is, I will release the town spawn, signs will be put up in the /spawn to go to /t spawn haven_nova for boarding the ark. (My personal favorite of course)
2. Move my ark from my town to somewhere close to spawn (which is convenient because ship + dock is 2x6 chunk)
3. Discard this ark and build another one from scratch somewhere close to spawn

[InsaneJ]

Two Arks will be build. One on the Regular server, one on the Hardcore server. I'd like this to be a community project so please start from scratch. Recycling materials is fine of course.

I have set up two large building areas. Both are to the west of the spawn area of each server. They are marked by orange wool and can be seen on Dynmap.

azariven please coordinate the building of the Ark on the Regular TFC server. This means laying down a general building plan and helping people build the thing by giving them jobs if they aren't sure what to do. Use signs if it helps you out. Feel free to make a forum thread for building the Ark if you think it'll be useful. You may also want to discuss plans with people so they can continue gathering resources and building whenever you are not on the server.

Given that we don't need to move a lot of player it doesn't have to be as large as the building area. A 2 x 6 chunk structure should be more than large enough. Also please keep in mind that the Ark will be placed at the new server's spawn area. So make sure it looks nice. If it's a dirt shack I'll leave it behind and say it was washed away by the flood of admin doom :p

Who would like to coordinate the Ark on the Hardcore server?

[azariven]

Two Arks will be build. One on the Regular server, one on the Hardcore server. I'd like this to be a community project so please start from scratch. Recycling materials is fine of course.

I have set up two large building areas. Both are to the west of the spawn area of each server. They are marked by orange wool and can be seen on Dynmap.

azariven please coordinate the building of the Ark on the Regular TFC server. This means laying down a general building plan and helping people build the thing by giving them jobs if they aren't sure what to do. Use signs if it helps you out. Feel free to make a forum thread for building the Ark if you think it'll be useful. You may also want to discuss plans with people so they can continue gathering resources and building whenever you are not on the server.

Given that we don't need to move a lot of player it doesn't have to be as large as the building area. A 2 x 6 chunk structure should be more than large enough. Also please keep in mind that the Ark will be placed at the new server's spawn area. So make sure it looks nice. If it's a dirt shack I'll leave it behind and say it was washed away by the flood of admin doom :p

Who would like to coordinate the Ark on the Hardcore server?

hmmmmm.... a land ark..... will it be hard to mc edit it to contain 5 level deep of water? Land arks are certainly easier to build but one on water would be more "immersive" (why am I causing myself more trouble?)

Resource wise, if it's gonna be build in survival, it's definitely gonna be sequioa for something this size. Other resources, I think i've gathered plenty.

My first ark sort of gave me some good intuition about what to do what not to do, I'm going to redesign the ark hull, this time with fitting 100 people in mind. I might need a couple days before I come up with a good design. When that's done I will probably release the single player world save and let everyone comment on it before we start building on the server.

I call dips on the captain's cabin =)

[Jiro_89]

Ark (the game) mods have been tested and chosen for our server.

Metal with Glass - Purely asthetic alternate tier to metal buildings. Same durability as metal and the same cost with using crystal and metal according to how much visible glass is in the item.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510590313

K9 Stacks - Quality of life on stack sizes at a minimum allowing for higher print builds, less inventory transfer times, and less crash instances due to large and quick item movements.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=525507438

Big Raft - Adds a new raft that supports a heck of a lot more structures and a slightly expensive metal barge version to upgrade what's available.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519536568

DinoDetector - Allows for simpler dino level detection and player name and level detection without the use of a spyglass scope. It still requires the scope engram and several scopes in the recipe.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=525207642&searchtext=

Difficulty 8+ no engrams - Allows for the increased wild dino and player levels. Also increases the value of loot across drop boxes based on the difficulty increase.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=512286693

Betterbeacons lite - Adds items and prints to the loot table that haven't been added by the Ark developers yet including post 70+ level items.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=514986458&searchtext=

[InsaneJ]

Build the Ark on land. Await the rising tide. Keep it simple :)

Jiro, is there an easy way to install those mods for ARK? Or do people have to install those mods manually by subscribing to them on Steam? I'm thinking mod packs like FTB or AT laucher, but for ARK.

Talking about two different kind of Arks, hope that doesn't confuse people too much ;)

[Marius49]

Build the Ark on land. Await the rising tide. Keep it simple :)

Jiro, is there an easy way to install those mods for ARK? Or do people have to install those mods manually by subscribing to them on Steam? I'm thinking mod packs like FTB or AT laucher, but for ARK.

Talking about two different kind of Arks, hope that doesn't confuse people too much ;)

Wasn't there an option on steam to assemble a collection in the workshop? That way we can include all those mods in that collection and link it here on the website and even on our steam group.

[TheForestHermit]

I can build/coordinate the ark for HC. But I suspect most will build thier own compartment as needed.
We are building a road down to spawn from the city up north. when we get to spawn we will build Ark.

[Jiro_89]

Build the Ark on land. Await the rising tide. Keep it simple :)

Jiro, is there an easy way to install those mods for ARK? Or do people have to install those mods manually by subscribing to them on Steam? I'm thinking mod packs like FTB or AT laucher, but for ARK.

Talking about two different kind of Arks, hope that doesn't confuse people too much ;)

Yep, it's a one click add for mods onto the server. The only grunt work is configuring the settings which is as simple as changing the startup .ini files associated with the mods. Client side the users will automatically download the required mods through ark when they try to join and Ark will auto update clients.

[Heptagon_ru]

Perhaps you can join my town after the reset, there are alot of things I think we can do together for late-game wise

Ouch, thanks, I would gladly join, but I think I won't return to playing TFC (except reset-related work) for some time. Switched to AMP and it takes all my MC time. :) So will be desynchronized with TFC server start as always.


and who would like to help build?

I suspect there will be plenty of people on Regular to help, anyway I will gladly help building, I still should have color steel tools and resources in my town there. Hehe, hope my slow skills and 2 projects (Ark + new server infrastructure) will not reduce my usefulness to zero :)))

[Heptagon_ru]

It was a good progress on Ark yesterday, glad I was able to invest a bit in that. Can't wait to continue :)

[InsaneJ]

Thanks, TheForestHermit :)

A little progress update. World generation on the new TFC Regular and TFC Hardcore servers is at just over 50%. World gen for the TechnodeFirmacraft world is considerably slower and is currently at 12%. That's going to take a while to complete, which isn't a bad thing.

The extra RAM for Sverf's server has been delivered. He'll try to upgrade somewhere next week and then move the FTB server there. When that is done I'll put up the TFC Freebie server and we can get started preparing everything there.

Then after a week we'll get started on the premium TFC worlds, and then a few weeks later TNFC. Not having all the servers ready to work on all at once will allow us to be more focused on one server at a time.

[Heptagon_ru]

Regular's Ark going great. We even made few rooms for staff already! The best ones ofc!

2492

[TheForestHermit]

HC ARK is finished.
A fairly modest endeavor it boasts twenty-six compartments no less than three blocks high, in varying depths and widths, most spacious enough to accommodate an entire town's goods.
A big shoutout to LarsonPacific and TheRealPoker and Holgrim for the constant supply of tools, sandwiches and time spent combining planks
.24932494

[Heptagon_ru]

HC ARK is finished.
Looks awesome!

[azariven]

I have a question about the ark copying. Are containers shallow copied or deep copied? If we have item in vessels in barrels in droppers, will all the data be copied over or will we get only a dropper full of barrels?

[Commiellama2]

I wholeheartedly approve of this ark and the transferring of skills. I do enjoy starting afresh, but I worked my way up to high tech in B77 here and on my LAN, B78 here and on my LAN, B79 here and on my LAN, on my friend's server, on HC server (twice)... I've made entirely too many iron sheets and would really rather not go through all that again!

I know you said no teleports of any kind on HC, but I've been using a system which I think balances nicely. Take boat journeys for example, they're not dangerous or skillful, it's just holding W for 15 minutes, half an hour... a whole hour sometimes... what I've done previously is construct a harbour of significant quality so I feel I've earned the right to skip "wasted time" in boat journeys by investing time, tech (chisels) and materials in the harbour. Then I place a command block & button in the harbour to teleport from harbour to harbour. I've always thought land journeys should be traveled manually because they can be risky and require pathfinding and navigation. I find hub-based travel works well in games, take Skyrim for example: Town-to-town travel was immersive, believable and saved a bit of time, taking out the simple part of the journey but completing the rest on foot. Teleporting from any location was always tempting, but just felt cheaty and detracted from the experience.

Would you want this on your server? Obviously the players shouldn't get to place or access the command blocks, but once the harbour meets standards it could become admin approved and Jiro (praise be unto him) or another admin could fit the command block. I'm not trying to convince you and am fine with no teleports meaning no teleports :)

[Heptagon_ru]

Ability to transform a place to a fixed teleport location, e.g. by paying a huge price, can give people an additional goal in game and a new reason to collaborate.
Also the price can be per person, i.e. the command block will only tp players who payed e.g. 40 color steel ingots.
Or a certain schematic can be predefined, like a structure with 20 color steel sheets allows the block to be installed.
Hehe, or just that Thor Obelisk with the central column of color steel ingots 6 blocks high :))))

[InsaneJ]

I have a question about the ark copying. Are containers shallow copied or deep copied? If we have item in vessels in barrels in droppers, will all the data be copied over or will we get only a dropper full of barrels?

The arks will be copied using MCEdit so they should retain all their information. I'm saying should since it is TFC we are talking about and TFC goes out of it's way to not be compatible with everything else.


Would you want this on your server? Obviously the players shouldn't get to place or access the command blocks, but once the harbour meets standards it could become admin approved and Jiro (praise be unto him) or another admin could fit the command block. I'm not trying to convince you and am fine with no teleports meaning no teleports :)

Personally I don't like playing without teleports. So it's not a matter of convincing me. I made the HC group because HC members had a problem with other people using teleports while their code of conduct "forbids" them from doing the same. So if members of HC want expensively paid for teleports then I have no problem with that.

Please open up another thread to discuss this more in depth and get more input. What I'd like to know is:

How many people share this idea?
How expensive does it have to be?

Does it require a certain amount of materials?
A certain degree of architectural complexity?
An offering of expensive materials to Jiro? (I'm sure he'll gladly trade a few piles of red steel for installing a command block)

Is it a thing each town can have?

Only harbors at sea that connect to spawn or any large body of water?
If it has to connect to spawn, will that mean you guys are going to dig canals? What counts as a canal? Maybe 5 wide, 2 deep?

Other ideas.

Please try to get as many people to provide input as you can.

[Heptagon_ru]

Hmmm, Azariven's question about the copy made me think: in TFC some mechanics are linked to player and world. Like anvil arrows and taste profiles. When player.dat will be copied with data from old world, could it corrupt some mechanics I wonder ...

[Commiellama2]

Good idea giving the teleport idea a different thread, there's already enough to read through here!

Hardcore teleport thread:
http://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2052-TFC-HC-Teleports&p=14180#post14180

Also, I should be free to help with roads in server development. I learned from the master Heptallama and favour paths with a bit of a natural wiggle to them.

I might consider hosting a server town but mostly likely unofficially, I'm not sure if I can commit enough time to cater to assigning plots to people and I also haven't decided which server to reside on

I'm not sure what I think of donations counting for 1 year, as some players may play for a few months and want a break, what with having work and an infinitely expanding library of other games. A once-only donation may prove much more popular as it'll give people the flexibility to come and go as they please knowing it's not time limited.

Having said that I absolutely think you deserve money, not only for your hosting but the amount of time you put into running the place so well on top of recent hardware upgrades. People's situations and psychology vary, personally I have a tiny budget for gaming, partly because time is limited but there's so many old games that I still haven't finished or even bought yet, I'm still getting through old games or revisiting games I've played already. I really want to try ARK, but not until I've caught up with everything else first and I find myself choosing between paying you (you totally deserve it) or buying a game I've had my eye on for years (but I get to keep).

[TheRealPoker]

Some random thoughts on the server changes:

Whilst I have no great issues with the changes I'm somewhat concerned that splitting TFC players into four servers (a freebie, two premium tiers and a TNFC) will divide the community overly for a mod that is now only really in maintenance rather than development, and is for an older version of MC too. If TFC2 were out I would feel differently I'm sure and I expect in the long run this will become an irrelevant concern.
Perhaps the new suggestions regarding teleports in hc could enable the regular and hc members to reach consensus on settings for a single premium server.

I also think having two levels or membership is overly complex and divisive. I'd rather see a single level which would most likely be easier to administer too.

I'd most likely go for:

Public:
TFC free
ARK free
Lobby (is this used much? I'd rather see a TechnodeFirmacraft free)

Members:
TFC Premium
TechnodeFirmacraft Premium
ARK Premium

The free servers would have a cut-down 'easy' version of the game, with sensible limits on activity and play assistance features for newer players (e.g. roads, buildings, teleports, /homes etc). These servers would act as an introduction to the game, to the HD way of doing things, and as encouragement to become a premium member for those who want a little more.

I also like Commie's idea of lifetime membership so you can drop in and out as you please, perhaps this could be for a larger one-off payment.

[Rainnmannx]

When can the ark be filled? Looks awesome :)
And I am guessing the spots will be first come first served?

[InsaneJ]

Lobby (is this used much? I'd rather see a TechnodeFirmacraft free)
It's doubtful this will ever happen. Not unless we start working with whitelists or something similar. Right now the TechnodeFirmacraft server is taking about 3 times as long to generate chunks as the TFC servers. Tick times are also much higher while doing nothing in the world. Opening this up to the public would result in a tremendous lag fest. The TNFC server will hands down use the most resources of all the new servers.

The Lobby server is a mini game server. It's low resource, low maintenance and for players with a specific interest. Also it serves as a fallback server for when we perform maintenance on any of the other servers. It allows us to move people there instead of kicking them off the server.

As for tiers, complexity and splitting the community. The past week or so I've been entertaining the thought of having just free and tier 1. I'm not afraid about splitting the community at all since we've had over 10.000 individual players and having different servers simply means there's more for different people to like and enjoy. If anything it would increase our community. At least, that's what I think.

The reason for simplifying things is to make our servers more accessible. To that end letting people buy a life time tier 1 rank also makes sense. I think it's impossible to ask for a fair price for a life time tier 1 rank and still expect people to buy those. So I'm thinking about settling in between the prices we've listed so far.
Servers:


Lobby server, free
TFC freebie server, free
ARK survival evolved, free
TFC regular, premium tier 1
TFC hardcore, premium tier 1
TechnodeFirmacraft (http://technode.enjin.com/forum/m/17014259/viewthread/24660669-about-technodefirmacraft), premium tier 1


Pricing:

free means free.
tier 1 €15,- / for as long as we're running Minecraft servers.



When can the ark be filled? Looks awesome :)
And I am guessing the spots will be first come first served?
As soon as they are done. The HC one is done I think. How about the Ark on the regular TFC server?

We should probably also adjust the announcements to tell people about the Arks at spawn :B

[Benanov]

I can say I'm not contributing much to the Ark because I'm probably going to switch to hardcore post-reset. So I can't save anything. :)

[Dourne]

I would be interested if we could go from normal to hc with our stuff. i planned on tier 1 anyway.

[InsaneJ]

@Benanov, I'd recommend using the Ark anyway. You never know if your interests may change later on. We've seen several shifts in popularity between HC and regular. Sometimes most people play on HC, then on Regular and vice versa.

@Dourne, letting players from Regular take items into HC would be kind of cheating from the perspective of HC players. I'd recommend the same to you as to all other Regular players. Put your stuff in the Ark even if you intent to switch to HC soon.

Status update.
The new Regular and Hardcore worlds finished pre-generating last night. The TechnodeFirmacraft world is currently at 34%. At the current rate it will take another month to finish. I'm going to see if there's a way I can speed things up by letting several Minecraft servers generate parts of the same world and putting them together afterwards. It'll be Dr. Frankenstein times one thousand!

The maps are quite large. TFC Regular and TFC Hardcore are about 108GB. The TFC Freebie map is currently about 8GB.

In the upcoming days I'll editing in the spawn buildings for the various servers and then I'll be moving Minecraft instances around on the server. Once that is done we can start building.

[Heptagon_ru]

Once that is done we can start building.
Awesome.

[InsaneJ]

Ugh, my head really isn't working. I had a migraine yesterday and now I'm struggling with basic math. Which is really weird. Setting up servers, typing this post, shooting raiders, no problem. But doing basic math gives me a headache. So if anyone wants to help out, here's what I need.

The world is 80.000 by 80.000 blocks centered around X:0 Z:0. Of this world 34% is already done in a circular motion around X:0 Z:0. I'd like to divide the world into 9 pieces like this:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Piece number 5 is already done but it's larger than all the other pieces as it represents 34% of the total size of the world.

The pregen command is as follows:
/pregen <dim> <minX> <maxX> <minZ> <maxZ>

So what I need to know is for the remaining pieces:
minX maxX minZ maxZ

I'm pretty sure the corner pieces 1, 3, 7 and 9 will be smaller then the other four pieces.

[Commiellama2]

Back in the day when hardcore moved to a different world instance on the same server I was one of the players that lost their player dat when the world was abandoned and a separate world started. Would some players be able to import their current HC character into the new regular server? I consider the whole transfer thing as a privilege rather than a right so I'm okay if you think it might unbalance things or be unfair to other players. The thing I'd want to transfer is skills only since I already have materials on regular.

Second thing, I was considering between residing on the free server and also one of the regular servers for maximum community. There are 2 arks and 3 new servers, will there be no arks going to the freebie server or will a regular ark be able to go to free and/or regular server?

[Heptagon_ru]

So what I need to know is for the remaining pieces: minX maxX minZ maxZ

Well, I googled it and the ultimate answer is 23323.8075794 (https://www.google.com/search?q=80000%2F3&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#safe=off&q=sqrt%28%28%2880000+*+80000%29+*0.34%29%29%2F2)


If by circular motion you mean square motion, i.e. it goes in spiraling enlarging squares, then

The area of the whole world is 80000 * 80000
The area of the rendered area is ( 80000 * 80000 ) * 0.34
The length of the 34% central square side is sqrt( ( 80000 * 80000 ) * 0.34 )
The upper right coordinate of the center square is sqrt( ( 80000 * 80000 ) * 0.34 ) / 2
Which is 23323.8075794, let's round to 23324

So if X axis is horisontal and positive at right side,
and if Z axis is vertical and negative at top side:

For area N1: -40000 -23324 -40000 -23324
For area N2: -23324 23324 -40000 -23324
For area N3: 23324 40000 -40000 -23324

For area N4: -40000 -23324 -23324 23324
For area N6: 23324 40000 -23324 23324

For area N7: -40000 -23324 23324 40000
For area N8: -23324 23324 23324 40000
For area N9: 23324 40000 23324 40000



Sorry if my calcs are wrong, please double-check :)

[DOM]

Sorry if my calcs are wrong, please double-check :)

Engineer Approved

[InsaneJ]

@Commiellama2
I plan on doing the following:

migrate player.dat files from the Regular TFC server to the Freebie AND the new Regular server.
migrate player.dat files from the Hardcore TFC server to the new Hardcore server.


I'm willing to transport player.dat files from the Hardcore server to the new Regular server on a per request basis. Please use this thread to make your requests:
http://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2054-Request-custom-player-dat-migration-for-new-TFC-servers&p=14223#post14223

@Heptagon
Thanks! :)

[Rainnmannx]

I believe the ark from the existing regular world will be copied to both worlds afaik.

[InsaneJ]

Yup :)

Regular Ark goes to Freebie AND Regular.
Hardcore Ark goes to Hardcore.

[TheForestHermit]

Do we have any estimated dates for moves yet? A 'be packed by" dates?

[InsaneJ]

No we don't.

I hope to get the new servers up and running this week, with the exception of the TechnodeFirmacraft one which is talking an insane amount of time to pre-generate. Once the servers are up we need to get the spawn sites in order and do all the other stuff we want to do before we open to the public. I'll start a build thread with task list soon so we can keep track of stuff and people can claim sub-tasks.

Like I've said before, I'm estimating the whole thing would take at least 2 months time. We're now into the third week. But that's just an estimate. I can't really predict how fast things will go, what goes wrong, how soon we think everything is ready enough, etc, since it's all done in people's free time.

Once we get a better idea of where we stand I'll post a release date and let people know they should be packed by then or else they will loose their stuff. This will be done at least 1 week in advance. It'll be posted on the front page and put into the server announcements. It'll be hard to miss if you check in with us at least once a week :)

[Dourne]

Thank you InsaneJ

[TheRealPoker]

Will the hc server be similar to the existing one in that there will only be a spawn building and nothing else added?

[InsaneJ]

Yes. The idea behind the hardcore server is that everything, except spawn, will be community build.

Only the regular servers will be outfitted with roads and server outposts.

[TheRealPoker]

I thought as much, but always worth checking, thanks!

[InsaneJ]

Last night Sverf installed the ARK server and Jiro has been working on getting it configured. Now a select few will play test and I'm sure some more tweaks will be made :)

As for the TechnodeFirmacraft server. Things haven't gone so well. Cutting up the world in sections and pregenerating them all at the same time (well, 4 at the same time. I only have 32GB of RAM in my PC) resulted in corrupted worlds. I'm blaming the Forge mod Admin tools. The worlds got corrupted at some point and the servers got stuck in a loop where they continuously crashed on startup.

Perhaps I'll make another attempt using the Bukkit Worldborder plugin, but right now I'm continuing with the single server instance which currently is at 37.8%. It was all set up and ready to go, all I had to do was start the server back up again. Having an insanely large 80.000 by 80.000 world is nice, but right now I'm just not sure we'll get all the way there in a timely fashion.

[Heptagon_ru]

I am kinda starting to worry about Regular Ark: there seems to be no progress for a couple of weeks now. I wish there were some notification about the plans from supervisor(s).

The Ark seems to be completed about 90% now, mostly decorations are remaining. Sails are just started, using wool as material. This requires staff help because wool blocks are unavailable in TFC.

There were many in-game chat talks how the rooms could be distributed among people/towns, which room size can be claimed by which people, but still there are no publications about it.

Despite there is about a month or two till the transfer, it would probably be better to finish Ark and packing asap, while the future servers terrain is being generated, to be ready to work on future servers infrastructure later.

[Commiellama2]

I noticed there had been one sail since I first saw the ark but there are some new stairs since then so some progress has been made. I saw the statue that you placed on the front of the ship, those colours looked familiar...

[Heptagon_ru]

I noticed there had been one sail since I first saw the ark but there are some new stairs since then so some progress has been made. I saw the statue that you placed on the front of the ship, those colours looked familiar...

The sail was made and remade by Marius afaik, last time about 2 weeks ago afaik.

The stairs ( probably it is called a gangway ) was made about a week ago by me - the only minor thing I could think of to add to the ship while waiting. :)

Statue - yep! It was moved from my stationary temple. First to an inner temple room, but then the room was defiled by some monetary disagreement between deities, so had to move it :)

[Marius49]

All 4 sails are done. One of them only needs to be "colored" with red wool ( if you look at them you will know what I mean by colored ;) ). Anything else building wise is done for the sails. If Jiro or anyone else can color the last one it would be splendid as I don't have enough time to finish it D:.

[Jiro_89]

All 4 sails are done. One of them only needs to be "colored" with red wool ( if you look at them you will know what I mean by colored ;) ). Anything else building wise is done for the sails. If Jiro or anyone else can color the last one it would be splendid as I don't have enough time to finish it D:.

All sails are now colored

[Rainnmannx]

Thanks Jiro :), and all who have helped with the ark :)

[TheRealPoker]

Simultaneous launch for the new servers or will hc start first?

[InsaneJ]

I'd like to launch all the premium servers simultaneously since people are going to pay for access to those and I don't like early access type constructions where you'll get the rest... whenever.

I've put Heptagon's math to good use and started several new servers to help pre-generate the TechnodeFirmacraft world. For the past week this has been my Task Manager:
2528
That's 5 servers using the Bukkit plugin WorldBorder. It's still about a week away. In the mean time I haven't gotten around to putting the finished TFC Freebie, Regular and Hardcore maps on the server and configuring everything needed to run those servers. I'm still sick at home and am not really feeling like (if that's the right expression) to do any serious server work right now.

[TheForestHermit]

This may seem random, but is Happydiggers doing to have a share code to install 'recoomended' optional mods for server play on TNFC? I notice there are some that add difficulty variables etc. Was loading it up for single player exploration and was astonished at the multi-coloured jumble in the 'optional' column. Wasn't sure which to pick
Making a share code might head off being asked this a thousand times.

[DOM]

This may seem random, but is Happydiggers doing to have a share code to install 'recoomended' optional mods for server play on TNFC? I notice there are some that add difficulty variables etc. Was loading it up for single player exploration and was astonished at the multi-coloured jumble in the 'optional' column. Wasn't sure which to pick
Making a share code might head off being asked this a thousand times.

I agree, but at the same time, most of the players trying to connect will be versed in the HappyDiggers community already since TNFC will be a premium server. An example of recommended mod conflicts: the default option for single player is a 96 day/year mod while the recommended setup for mutliplay is a 360 day/year mod. If we choose the 360 day version and people try to log in with the 96 day mod, then they will be unable to connect. I have been playing this mod pack since the announcement with a few of the recommended mods installed and we will definitely have to test each one out on the server before releasing a code.

[InsaneJ]

I have been playing this mod pack since the announcement with a few of the recommended mods installed and we will definitely have to test each one out on the server before releasing a code.

Currently these are the mods I'm using to pre-generate the world:

1.7.10
1.7.10-pneumaticcrap-1.0.0 .jar
1.7.10-technodefirmacraft-2.8.0.jar
animalcrate-0.1.jar
aobd-2.8.4.jar
aroma1997core-1.7.10-1.0.2.16.jar
betterboat-1.7.10-1.1-tnfc.jar
betterstorage-1.7.10-0.13.1.132-tnfc.jar
bibliocraft[v1.11.4][mc1.7.10].jar
bibliowoods[terrafirmacraftv0.79.23][v1.2].jar
bluepower-1.7.10-0.2.-tnfc-b19bf6a.jar
carpenters blocks v3.3.7 dev - mc 1.7.10.jar
codechickencore-1.7.10-1.0.7.47-universal.jar
cofhcore-[1.7.10]3.0.3-303.jar
coroutil-1.1.3 for mc v1.7.10.jar
customitems-1.0.9_beta_1.7.10.jar
farseek-1.0.10.jar
flatsigns-1.7.10-universal-2.1.0.19.jar
fmpintegration-1.2.2-1.7.10.jar
forestry_1.7.10-4.2.1.0.tnfc.jar
helpfixer-1.0.7.jar
hopperductmod-1.7.10-1.3.2.jar
immersiveengineering-0.6.2.jar
immibis-core-59.1.2.jar
jabba-1.2.1a_1.7.10.jar
mekanism-1.7.10-8.1.7_tnfc_96aa533.jar
mekanismgenerators-1.7.10-8.1.7_96aa533.jar
minetweaker3-1.7.10-3.0.10b.jar
mobproperties-1.7.10-0.4.2.jar
modtweaker2-0.9.4-tnfc.jar
notenoughitems-1.7.10-1.0.5.111-universal.jar
openblocks-1.7.10-1.4.4.jar
opencomputers-mc1.7.10-1.5.19.37-universal.jar
openeye-0.6-1.7.10.jar
openmodslib-1.7.10-0.8.jar
plantmegapack-4.29-1.7.10-1492.jar
pneumaticcraft-1.7.10-1.12.1-144-universal.jar
qmunitylib-1.7.10-0.1.114-universal.jar
railcraft_1.7.10-9.8.0.0.jar
redlogic-59.1.11.jar
ropeplus-1.7.10.jar
rpgadvmod-1.0.0_1.7.10.jar
sapmanpack-1.7.10-2.5.1.jar
shipsmod-v1.7.10-1.0.4_dloptional.jar
stevesaddons-1.7.10-0.10.16.jar
stevesfactorymanagera93.jar
stevesworkshop-0.5.1.jar
streams-0.1.6.jar
tabularasa-[1.7.10]1.0.1-3.jar
terrafirmatweaker-1.0.0.jar
toomuchtime-1.7.10-2.4.0.tnfc-4-universal.jar
tubestuff-59.0.4.jar
waila-1.5.10_1.7.10.jar
weather2-1.7.10-2.6.1_tnfc.jar
wr-cbe-1.7.10-1.4.1.9-universal.jar
[1.7.10]decorations-1.0.21_tnfc.jar
[1.7.10]merchants-1.1.4.jar
[1.7.10]terrafirmacraft-0.79.26.tnfc.tempfluiddupefix.jar

Since you are already familiar with the pack, would you mind coming up with a suggestion? Perhaps talk to our resident TFC junky expert (Jiro) as well?

And I have something else that I think you'll enjoy :)
Jail!
Since people pay for access to the premium server I'm not keen on banning them as strict as we do on our public servers. However that does not mean we will become more tolerant of unwanted behavior. So I was thinking about throwing people who break the rules in jail with increasing penalties for repeated offenses.
Something like this might suit our purpose: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/bungeejail.8280/
I'm thinking of setting up a small Spigot jail server. Maybe it could be a small island in the middle of an endless(world border limited) ocean, or maybe something more sinister in a nether world, or ....

Would you like to setup such a server? Meaning, I'll create the Spigot instance with database, bungeecord and whatnot. And you the building part and plugins?

[InsaneJ]

We have a jail server now. DOM is busy with the build :)

I've setup the basic part of the new TFC Freebie and TFC HC server. They needs to get a new Cauldron version and plugins need to be added and configured. Then we can start with building spawn areas and the other things we want to add.

Also I've completed the new TAB list:
2536

Now I'm beat :B

[TheForestHermit]

Wooo! You kick ass J. So much work. This is all awesome.
I'm super excited for the brave new HC world and TFNC.
The mods list looks so cool.
However I'm wondering if 'better boats' may be better omitted if possible? I've played on a few servers in recent months with packs that had them, and the server administrations always wound up removing them serverside as being crashy and causing high thread tick.
Wondering if it's better to head that off at the pass or perhaps you may want to take a wait-n-see if the pack was built with a very recent version? Thought it might be worth mention.

[latyper]

I've read the starting post but I'm confused about how much access to the different servers will cost.

[TheForestHermit]

The plan is to create/configure the following (new) servers. Please note that the following lists are subject to change:



Lobby server, free
TFC freebie server, free
ARK survival evolved, free
TFC regular, premium tier 1
TFC hardcore, premium tier 1
TechnodeFirmacraft (http://technode.enjin.com/forum/m/17014259/viewthread/24660669-about-technodefirmacraft), premium tier 1



Current plan for pricing:


free means free.
tier 1 €15,- / for as long as we're running Minecraft servers. Access to all the tier 1 servers.


People who have donated in June of 2015 or later will gain access to the servers based on the amount they've donated for a full year from the moment we open the servers.

( 15 Euro equals 16.37 US Dollar currently)

[DOM]

I'm wondering if 'better boats' may be better omitted if possible? I've played on a few servers in recent months with packs that had them, and the server administrations always wound up removing them serverside as being crashy and causing high thread tick.

I have also noticed that the boats damage you upon exit in SSP. The only main advantage is the lag prevention. That has kept me out of trouble a fair few times. But I can see how that feature would be server intensive and cause issues. I recommend removing it as well.

[DOM]

I dont think we should center the Freebie world at (0,0). This is in regards to the fact that TFC uses the North/South coordinates to simulate latitude change in the world. The further north you go, the colder it gets.

According to the TFC wiki (http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Coordinates), a 20,000x20,000 map centered at (0,0) will have spawn sitting directly on the equator and the top/bottom limits of the map streching to only 22.5° in either direction. That will mean a lot for the players on the server that depend on having freezers in the north, or just want to have snow.

Google is better at showing why this is a problem:

North Limit (https://www.google.com/maps/place/22°30'00.0"N+0°00'00.0"E/@0,0,4z)
South Limit (https://www.google.com/maps/place/22°30'00.0"S+0°00'00.0"E/@0,0,4z)

I suggest (and I know its a headache for J) that we center the map on (-10,000,0) or higher. This will mean that the bottom limit is the equator and the top limit is at 50°N. We do not have to have spawn directly in the center of the map either, we can shift it down a couple thousand blocks if need be.

Proposed North Limit (https://www.google.com/maps/place/50°00'00.0"N+0°00'00.0"E/@22.5,0,4z)
Proposed South Limit (https://www.google.com/maps/place/0°00'00.0"N+0°00'00.0"E/@22.5,0,4z)

[Jiro_89]

I don't really think catering temperature at such an extreme is necessary on a freebie server. A 10k distance temp freezer won't be a problem, especially if people go to the limits and then move higher in altitude. The altitude increase itself lowers temp considerably as well.

[InsaneJ]

Now that Dynmap is done generating the tiles I'm more concerned with the land/water ratio. It has never been good in TFC, but I think this is simply too much water :/
2543

[TheForestHermit]

Eeeep. If it's relatively small, try a new seed and a do-over? That map looks like it will be used up PDQ.

[InsaneJ]

Actually it won't, but it's that reaction you just gave that I'm worried about.
Take a look at the Regular TFC server currently:
2544
That took 1 year to do and the players hardly put a dent in the map's resources.

But compared to the current Freebie TFC map it does have more landmass close to spawn. And since first impressions are everything...
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=2543&d=1453015255

[Dourne]

Thats a lot of water. whatever you choose boss.

[TheForestHermit]

*nods* I get what you are saying. Shift spawn over to the righthand side of the visible area? ( Sorry you can tell me to stop making suggestions anytime.) So the map isn't so blue at first glance.
I didn't realize that was zoomed as far as it was. I thought that was a scattering of tiny/smallish landmasses that would only sustain a couple towns apiece.
Of course arguments can be made for more dense= more fun/community...

[DOM]

I recommend map regen and still recommend the center shifted up 10000 blocks (sorry Jiro). Freebie server should try to have every element we can cram into it so new(and poor) people can have fun without paying for the premium servers. If they like it, then they will want to play on a much larger server, with less griefers, and with the more dedicated community that I expect to be on the premium servers.

[InsaneJ]

I agree that we should regenerate the freebie world. Shifting spawn up would set it at 0, -10000 right?

The Premium TFC Hardcore server is now running with the basics and I've started generating tiles in Dynmap. The premium servers will get a flat and a surface (isometric 3D) map. Dynmap will first render the flat map and then surface map.

Right now you can see the beginnings of the flat map and it's looking good so far:
2545

[Commiellama2]

ooh, it's so long since I've seen a desert!

[TheForestHermit]

*gasp* IS that really what that is? I thought it was just rendering slowly.. I mean, deserts exist in TFC?!

[InsaneJ]

Fancy TFC desert. It has cacti and everything :B
2546

[Commiellama2]

Time for sandcastles!

[Rainnmannx]

5 Colors too :)

[Jiro_89]

I recommend map regen and still recommend the center shifted up 10000 blocks (sorry Jiro). Freebie server should try to have every element we can cram into it so new(and poor) people can have fun without paying for the premium servers. If they like it, then they will want to play on a much larger server, with less griefers, and with the more dedicated community that I expect to be on the premium servers.

No worries, my thought was to not spend a ton of time on a freebie server compared to what could be accomplished on premium along with not holding back a release to shift stuff around. But since the first generation of the freebie ended up being a bust we might as well do the shift right off the bat in the new map.

[TheForestHermit]

*Squeees* So excite! New server needs to be now.
( Also I'm a 'giant heckin nerd' for thinking a desert in tfc is "SO COOL!" I have embarrassed the natives.)

[InsaneJ]

New Freebie TFC map looks promising:
2548

[InsaneJ]

Finding suitable locations to put down our spawn building is more difficult than you might think. So far we've done the Freebie and Regular TFC servers. I'm looking for a location for the Hardcore TFC server. Are there any objections to having spawn set that fancy desert? I thought it would sort of fit with the theme of the server, but I'd rather let people who actually have to play there be the judge of that ;)

[TheForestHermit]

That would be awesome! Well, maybe a few water source blocks set out in spawn might be in order however.
May we please please please have a spawn that doesn't create large mob-sheltering dark spots this time? >.>
Nothing like the disappointing feeling of finding yourself in spawn to be compounded with having to run screaming under fire...

[InsaneJ]

There are quite a few natural lakes around the location I'm considering. Also there are water fountains in the spawn building, but we may have to replace that water with TFC fresh water.

I'd like more input so if anyone has any thoughts on the matter, please share.

Oh right, Towny doesn't protect against mobs on the Hardcore server. I guess we'll setup a worldguard region this time around to prevent mobs from spawning at spawn :)

Another bit of news. The TechnodeFirmacraft server's world is done pre-generating. Now on to copying it to the server and setting up the Minecraft instance :B

[LarsonPacific]

I like the desert spawn idea, especially since deserts are seemingly so rare in TFC.

It's hardcore; no spawn building needed, just a 16x chunk, protected area of nothingness, and in keeping with the theme, at the spawn location smack in the middle of the desert, put a sign that says "Good Luck!" with water jugs that you can't pick up because it's protected, placed by a single water source block of salt water XD

[Rainnmannx]

The desert one would be cool, was there a corner spawn in a desert on 78?
Thought it was pretty cool if i remember right =P.

[Commiellama2]

On B78 Llamafarm bordered a desert and that was a short walk via bridge and road to the west of spawn

[InsaneJ]

All four new TFC servers are up and running, more or less :)

Here are the (temporary) links to Dynmap for the new worlds:


Freebie TFC (http://freebietfc.happydiggers.net/)
Premium TFC Regular (http://premiumtfc.happydiggers.net/)
Premium TFC Hardcore (http://premiumtfchc.happydiggers.net/)
Premium TechnodeFirmaCraft (http://tnfc.happydiggers.net/)

The humongous Premium Dynmap maps are still being generated which will take a few more days to complete. The Freebie server only has a flat world, while the Premium servers also have a surface (3D isometric) map. Dynmap renders the flat map first, then the surface map. As most of you know you can switch between maps in the top right of the Dynmap page.

Now that all the servers are up it's time to configure the plugins. We can borrow a lot of the configuration from the current servers, but there's still a lot to do. We could start with the build projects now, but I'm to tired to supervise. I'll start a builders thread where we can put all of the sub tasks that need to be done soon.

Something about the TechnodeFirmaCraft server. It won't be possible to connect to it through the BungeeCord proxy. That means it will get it's own port where players can connect to. It will still be possible to share chat between the servers though so you can stay in touch with everybody. This technical limitation also sorts a problem we were facing, namely that people with a TnFC client would try to join a regular TFC server. This would result in the client getting kicked and not being able to join the lobby again as the player would be forced to try to join the TFC server on his next login attempt. The only solution would be for the player to join with a proper TFC only client. But all that is something we won't have to worry about now :)

There is however something else that needs to be considered. We can't just throw someone from the TnFC server into the Jail server. We can (temp)ban the player from the TnFC server and then, from the BungeeCord network, assign the player to the jail server. The offending player can then either go to the jail server and do his time, or simply never get back into the TnFC server. It's a bit more work but we still get to use our jail server.

[Dourne]

ya let's not spawn in a forest please. Desert would be great.

[TheRealPoker]

I see the hc ark coming to rest on a mountain top in the desert.

[DOM]

Jail server is coming along nicely. Work has begun on the interiors of the buildings in the center. I have just installed the script plugin that I will be using to control the various "quests" and the sort. I would like to have a system set up so that prisoners are forced into a regime by the guards. For example: Dawn-Eat, Noon-Courtyard, Dusk-Lockdown. I have found that it is extremely possible to do this with basic scripting and also to have guards that can patrol and catch people out of place.

I have also JUST found out that I have WAY more control over the sneaking/stealth portion of breaking out of jail. I am able to determine if a guard has line of sight on the player, if the player is in a shadow, if the player is sneaking, etc. This will play nicely into trying to get into restricted areas and stealing various goods ;)

[Heptagon_ru]

I am able to determine if a guard has line of sight on the player, if the player is in a shadow, if the player is sneaking, etc. This will play nicely into trying to get into restricted areas and stealing various goods ;)

I feel that some kind of new game is being born :) Is it possible that the jail will be more fun than the main server or lobby games? :)))

[DOM]

Is it possible that the jail will be more fun than the main server or lobby games? :)))

If I have anything to do with its design, I doubt it. I am a decent manager, terrible artist and writer. I can inspire an awesome concept, but deliver a sad jumble of incomplete thoughts. What I'm trying to say is, it won't have the detail of a Bethesda game, but it SHOULD have some interesting mechanics. I'm glad that you are excited to see the outcome and I'm also happy that we can allow non-jailed players to take part.

Work will continue as soon as I get home today. I plan on jumping between script testing and building more interiors. I may stream the construction, so keep an eye on the happydiggers home page or my twitch page.

[InsaneJ]

Awesome :)

Twitch has had a new way of embedding streams for quite some time now. I've updated the widget on the front page so people should be able to watch and/or join the stream on Twitch form there more easily.

[grizzle]

Desert spawn would be unique, and I agree that HC spawn would be fine if it were just the ark. Some concerns though.

I'm wondering if food is difficult to find for new players, since the game was changed to have natural spawned crops die? I started before that change so I have no personal experience with it as a fresh player. But it does seem like I see less crops overall while wandering. This makes me wonder if it would be appropriate to place a few fruit trees within the spawn area, so that newbs could grab some fruit if they join at the right time. Especially a concern on HC, where players can't teleport around to find food.

However, if spawn is at the tropics (HC), fruit bushes are straight out. Fruit trees can produce at the equator, at least the few I've tried - lemon, banana, olive - but in a desert smack dab on the equator, I dunno. I'd be surprised if any natural crops or animals spawn in the desert at all. There might be pigs in the dry plains, but they'll run out eventually.

Beyond food, looking at the desert and plains around proposed HC spawn, it appears to be Slate, Diorite, claystone, gabbro, and maybe Phyllite? I normally consider Diorite, Phyllite, and Slate to be the utter worst stones. Although for this spawn area, they're good for allowing the players to get bronze fairly easily, at least. And of course there's the mid layer, which I can't tell from these maps.

But perhaps most critically, there's going to be 0 clay in this area. Desert and dry plains have 0 clay (well, I've never seen a desert in person, but it seems reasonable to assume this) So you're going to be forcing the player to either run through jungles without armor looking for clay, or take a pretty long swim without a boat. That's if they don't get help, of course. The current HC server at least had plenty of clay around spawn. So depending on just how HC we want HC to be, this spawn may or may not be great.

All this could be alleviated if someone is planning on making a town near spawn, with provisions to help newbs. But speaking from my experience of a tropics base on current regular, you lose a lot. Berry bushes are pointless. Fruit trees seem sporadic. All animals other than pigs are probably a very long drag away. With portals, it'd be really nice if there was a town near spawn, to act as a hub. I'm wondering how likely that is with such a sparse spawn. It'll be fairly easy for Larson to lay his rails into the northern hemisphere though, which is good. And in general it'll be much easier to get to temperate lands than it was on HC, which is nice.

Overall, I feel like it might be better to put spawn in a more clay-available area. Unless you guys just really want it to be THAT hard for newbs.

Edit: Also, do stones appear in deserts? I didn't see any in that pic of the desert. Another kind of unnecessary hurdle. Also, as far as mobs spawning at spawn, I'm fine with it. It's in keeping with HC. Players can deal with mobs, and a newb who dies, just ends up back at spawn anyway. I think just have the ark at spawn, no fancy stuff (rough it up a bit though, like it's been in a storm). Light up the interior well enough to be safe, call it good. But there's no way do 'deal with' lack of clay or food. You just have to run, drinking water by hand, looking for clay, hoping you don't starve to death, or dehydrate to death swimming.

Edit: Oh, there's rocksalt in that desert too! A 6-rock desert, pretty cool.

[Rainnmannx]

Water is number one, you can die without it, and by the looks of it there should be plenty even if you have to do it by hand.
Food, fatigues you, won't kill you, also there will be tons of seaweed in the ocean for food.
The possible lack of clay doesn't concern me to much, heck it may make it a good trade item =p, in HC part of the point of no teleports is you have to make trips to gather resources, basically having clay near by is a luxury. If someone wanted to make a place with clay for people that's cool, but I wouldn't mandate it as a requirment, this comunity is pretty great, i.e. the boat house, made by player(s) for other players.
My towns welcome anyone, and my HC one will be close to spawn if it's in the desert.
Also believe most who come to HC will usually know a bit about TFC before coming.
Great post, thanks for the read :)

[grizzle]

To be clear, I'm not worried about anyone migrating. We'll all have plenty of gear, stuff to make boats, etc. It's new players - players that come after we've all got bored and show up once every couple weeks (which was the situation when I arrived on the current server). I was able to alone get basic gear before I made the long trek south over the super-bridge. Situation here will be more tenuous.

The seaweed may be gone eventually. And I'd call lack of clay less of challenge and more of a nuisance. There'll be clay in the jungle, and anyone with armor can safely go find it there. So I don't think it'll be a realistic trade item for anyone with a desert town. It's just a start-up impediment.
I know there's plenty of water for the most part, but if someone starts out and just heads for the nearest green lands, their only real options aside from running unarmored through the jungle are swim northwest to those islands, or at the very north tip of the dry plains they can squeek between some jungle and swim to the mainland. They're both fairly long swims, and you can't drink while swimming. That was my concern. If there's fresh water once in awhile along land, great. but it's going to be an annoying trip.

But, if there's going to be a desert town, things will probably work out. And as you say, there will probably be infrastructure put in place to ease these things. I'm super-glad there won't be need of gigantic ocean-spanning boring bridges, those were the worst part of current server starting out. Just wanted to make sure all factors were considered.

[InsaneJ]

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The desert is just one area. If you want stuff that's not found in the desert, you can simply walk to the next biome. I doubt that will be much of a challenge to do, even on the Hardcore server. Right?

[LarsonPacific]

Yeah, the people that want to play hardcore shouldn't have a problem with wherever they are spawned. Rest assured, if there's not enough water sources to survive in the desert, there will be soon after anyone with a red bucket goes through...

Also, on a semi-unrelated note, I did some testing today with MC Edit, copying nested containers across single player worlds, using the latest 1.5.x version. Using exported schematics from the source world, I was able to copy ingot piles, droppers, droppers containing vessels and vessel contents, chests, also containing vessels with contents, to the destination world. I forgot to put a barrel with vessels with contents in my test area, though I'm sure it will work fine too.

I was also able to rip a region file out of the source world and overwrite the same region in the destination world with success. It did not work when I tried copying the the source region file to a different destination region file (can't rename region file); I'm guessing this has to do with absolute chunk locations or block referencing being used somewhere in the mca file. So, just in case something poops out with MC Edit and it's not able to migrate the ark correctly, worst case scenario is the region the ark is in can be copied to the new server, people can offload their junk to another region, then the region can be restored to original... though I'm thinking MC Edit will work just fine.

Anyways, just thought I'd post my test results to quell the fears anyone may be having of the ark and/or items in nested containers not copying correctly :)

[Rainnmannx]

Thanks LP :), or how about 45, 72? Vinyl... =P

[TheForestHermit]

That's great news LP!

As for spawn. All HC needs is a place you can load in fully without being attacked. Water would be a plus but if it's nearby it's not an issue.
If players are not knowledgeable enough to survive without infrastructure, and dying isn't something they take in stride then they honestly don't belong on HC.
People are on HC because they are willing to suck it up and make that swim-without-a-boat to find the perfect spot, and actually enjoy building 'long boring' bridges and tracks across the sea.
It's what they do for entertainment. If it's not someone's cup of tea? That's fine too. They aren't any less of a gamer, but HC is not the place for them.
There are not just one, but two other server options with less self-abuse and mental torture involved.

I personally can't wait for the plans to be hammered out so we can get the regular server's infrastructure built and this show on the road. Commence the migration!

Please tell us where to sign up for the build crews!

[DOM]

I've spent many an hour delving into the Denizen scripting language and I think I have gotten a lot better at it. I am confident that I will be able to have fun bits in the Jail server: stealth sections, fetch quests, etc. The current plan is to finish building the interiors of the current buildings, add a few more cell blocks, and build mine. After the construction is complete, I can start scripting the npcs, custom recipes, global events, etc. As far as I see it, there is a lot of work that can be done AFTER the servers go up, so there is no need to wait for me.

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[Heptagon_ru]

Looks awesome!

[Jiro_89]

I know there are a couple people waiting for the HappyDiggers Ark Survival Evolved server to be released. We ran into a few bumps in the road, but I may have found the issue causing the problems so it shouldn't be too much longer. I'll know more in a few days when I'm able to test the server more extensively on InsaneJ's machine.

[Hydralyncs]

Am I allowed to help out with making the new world?

I've been playing for a while and really want to help with what i can on HappyDiggers. :D

Hope I can!

-Hydralyncs

[Hydralyncs]

If there is a thread on something like this plz tell me. I really want to help out!

[DocOlds]

Im super excited about the Ark Survival Evolved server and can hardly wait to have a permanent place to play. I keep having to start over before I can really finish all my projects. I see clone armies and a lot of dino trading in my future.

[InsaneJ]

Currently the Dynmap tiles are stored on two 10.000RPM 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor drives in RAID 0. These drives are fast, have low latency and had plenty of space for our previous Dynmaps.

Now with the new servers I wanted to show very detailed surface (isometric 3D) maps of the premium server worlds. Right now from the 600GB there's only 20GB left and we're not even half way done rendering the surface maps.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda1 220G 188G 22G 90% /
devtmpfs 10M 0 10M 0% /dev
tmpfs 4.8G 188K 4.8G 1% /run
shm 24G 516K 24G 1% /dev/shm
cgroup_root 10M 0 10M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/xvdb1 1.4T 563G 737G 44% /data
/dev/xvdc 559G 533G 25G 96% /data/dynmap

So I have ordered a brand spanking new 4TB Western Digital Purple drive. The purple line of WD drives is meant for 24/7 use and storage of surveillance footage with multiple continuous streams. They should do very well for Dynmap.

The new drive costs € 164,80 including tax and shipping. I'll add it to the list in the opening page of this thread.

[DOM]

I have slightly modified the server TAB list so that the current servers/players are show in the list. This is a temporary fix and will be reverted back to the spiffy way J had it when we get the other servers up and running.

[InsaneJ]

I've swapped out the 2x 300GB drives and replaced them with a brand new WD Purple 4TB drive.

Sverf made sure the new drive would actually work as we need it to. It's running BTRFS with file packing which stores small files (like Dynmap tiles) more efficiently. Hopefully 4TB is enough to store all those millions upon millions of Dynmap tiles. I guess we'll see how it goes :)

For now I've disabled all Dynmaps except for the Freebie TFC one. It has started with a new full render of the world. I'll try doing one server at a time for now.

Right now I don't think I'll put the Regular and Hardcore Dynmaps up again but instead wait for the new maps to finish pre-generating. After that, maybe.

[InsaneJ]

Freebie TFC's Dynmap is done: http://freebietfc.happydiggers.net/

Now moving on to Premium Regular.

[InsaneJ]

I've updated the opening post with specifics about town limits and how much stuff they get.

Players on the premium servers get a lot more plots, a lot more animals, more /sethomes and outposts, double minimum distance between towns, a plot more of tilled soil, no teleport cooldown and can create a new town right away.

[InsaneJ]

We have decided on a launch date for the new servers. About 3 weeks from now, March 10th.

[azariven]

We have decided on a launch date for the new servers. About 3 weeks from now, March 10th.

So is there a close date on the old regular server? When should we drop all our work and pack em in the ark? i.e. when will the ark moving actually be done?

Thanks for the clarification.

[InsaneJ]

March 10th the old servers will close and the new ones will open. I will not wait for people to move their stuff on March 10th. So please get your stuff in the Ark no later than March 9th. Press TAB to see the server's date/time. That's the time I live by.

After the old servers close I need to manually move the Arks to the new server, convert the player data and put that on the new server. Then builders need to build a dock for the Arks. Once everything is done the new servers are ready for the public.

This means that for a period there will be no TFC servers available on March 10th. I'll try to keep this window as small as possible. However people are free to enjoy our lobby server and the many games it offers.

Once the new servers open I will make an announcement on the front page, the forum, the TFC forum and Twitter.

[Heptagon_ru]

Then builders need to build a dock for the Arks.
Maybe to save time the staff could copy all the current Arks (from some backup worlds) to the new servers now, to serve as a size model, so the builders could make the docks now?
This could be a good change of activity for the builders or just an interesting thing to do in parallel to roads, since the Freebie towns are already done and Premium towns are not reached by roads yet.
And 10th March you will just re-copy the Arks.
Or it will create more problems than solve?

[InsaneJ]

I could do that. But I'm not too sure how well I can cut out the ark from the current map and import it into the new. Going from land and all. Guess we'll see.

Btw, awesome avatar!



(it's about time you got one ;))
Larger version:
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[Heptagon_ru]

Yep, it could be a good dry run.

Hmmm... I was wondering for a long time why my initial avatar did not work and after I deleted it why I don't have any option to select another, and was constantly hesitating between asking that and the minority of such a cosmetic feature.
Well, thanks, from the description this character seems to fit me good enough, she even has seven angles in her hair. :elmo:And with this shiny picture my posts will be taken less seriously, which is usually a good thing.

[TheForestHermit]

On the subject of moving ARKs the HC one is resting on a double row of cosmetic blocks that could be cut if needed. in fact the bottom 1-3 rows of blocks are empty/cosmetic and could just be built back on in about 5 minutes without crisis if that makes it any easier when cutting/pasting.

[azariven]

Thank's for clarifying!

[InsaneJ]

Oops, I forgot to mention. I've updated the opening post of this thread a while ago with new information on donor perks.

It boils down to this: every person who donates 15 euro or more gets access to our donor servers as a thank you for their support. For those who would like to, or have donated more than 15 euro there are some extra perks to be had. These perks are all cosmetic and offer no in-game advantages. We don't do pay to win after all. So go check out the donor stuff in the opening post of this thread :)

[Heptagon_ru]

Hehe, that disguise thingy looks very promising ... imaging a group of donors disguised as sheep and traversing some guy's town ... or bears ... need to think how it can be used in combination with the certain highly praised person.

[InsaneJ]

Regarding the TechnodeFirmaCraft server. From the server instance I installed it looks like the Hardcore Question Mode mod is disabled. This mod essentially gives players a book with a clear progression through the mod pack with rewards to go along with it.

However it does have a down side. Which makes it more interesting really :) You start with 20 lives. Completing quests (making TnFC stuff basically) grants extra lives. If you loose all your lives you are banned from the server. However from what I've seen you have to be really, truly, terrible at the game to manage that. I really like the clear progression path that the TnFC authors put into HQM.

Is this something we would want to enable? We could for example let players request to be unbanned and maybe have a 1 week cool down or something.

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Thoughts?

[DOM]

I have not used the HQM addition in my playthrough. Mostly because I do not like rewards that could enable me an advantage in the tech process. I like a grindy game ;)

I do not think we should ever ban anyone from TnFc mostly becaue it is a paid server and there will already be a reduced number of players on it.

[Dourne]

The advantage of HQM is a small one. there is still plenty of grinding required.

Regarding the lives, i ended up storing them in a chest until needed. Something over 60 lives... but ya being banned from something you paid for is kinda sour unless you broke a rule. perhaps a reset of the quest book?

[InsaneJ]

I agree, temp banning would be too harsh. I'll see if there is a way to remove the rewards from the quests if you run out of lives or something like that.

That being said. The rewards aren't significant in that they won't advance you through the tech tiers rapidly. In the grand scheme of things a few "free" nuggets isn't going to make a very big difference. I've been watching some people play TnFC and with all the stuff you need to gather and process it's really nothing more than a pad on the back, an incentive to keep you going. Which I think is really nice because the TnFC progress is more daunting than all of AMP combined ;)

[Heptagon_ru]

I like the quest book idea a lot.

The HQM seems to be necessary for full TnFC experience:
The modpack won't use HQM a lot as much of the tech progression is controlled by tech roadblocks, however some critical items are impossible to obtain legitimately. For example, a quest will provide vanilla saplings for forestry tree breeding. ( via about (http://technode.enjin.com/forum/m/17014259/viewthread/24660669-about-technodefirmacraft) )

But at the same time Bunsan says (https://www.reddit.com/r/Technode/comments/3vfkpp/thoughts_about_the_hqm_quests/)that HQM is pretty useless/empty outside of TFC quests.

About banning. I don't understand exactly what is the reason of such a punishment for deaths. So just few minor raw thoughts.

In the same reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Technode/comments/3vfkpp/thoughts_about_the_hqm_quests/) Bunsan says that the modpack was designed for hardcore and they play it hardcore. Does it mean that hearts actually prevent player from loosing the world (=be banned from server) after the first single death? I.e. they play on hardcore mode, but the world is not deleted until they are out of hearts?

So TnFC's hardcore is not HD's hardcore. HD's hardcore means more "vanilla", TnFC's hardcore means more softcore (permadeath after limited amount of deaths).

What would players expect and want more from HD TnFC server? Ability to automate TFC tasks or having a permadeath suspence?
I think since there is much more technical stuff to do in the modpack, people like it for automation more. TFC is pretty dangerous and permadeath doesnt fit it.

So if there will be no problem to distinguish HQM-banned players from really banned, I'd say - keep the HQM ban and just agree that staff unban these people asap. They still will have to wait for staff and write on forum - a good enough punishment.

I wonder what will be when they login back after unban? All they quests void and they can/have to get all the rewards/hearts again?

[Marius49]

Banning people may be bad since this is a server specially made for donors, but I say we should make a poll about it and let people decide. The idea of getting a temp ban (let's say for a week max) is pretty nice since players will have to be more careful and the race for the end game will be more intense. You will NEED to stay alive to progress. Are you banned?; your neighbor will take over you tech wise. This way it will make things more interesting, but let's leave that to the people that play there most of the time decide.

[InsaneJ]

Going over the HQM config I don't see a way to change what happens when someone looses all of their lives. So we can do a couple of things.

1. always unban players who are bad enough to have died so many times.
2. increase the amount of lives you start out with.

I've increased default lives to 50 on the server and set the max to 255. If you manage to die 50 times, not counting the generous amount of extra lives you'll get from just playing the game. We will simply unban you and make fun of you ;)

[Heptagon_ru]

We should develop a rich and sophisticated instruction for such making fun of!

[InsaneJ]

I just bumped the amount of outposts per town for the Freebie TFC server to 2. Reasoning is: Town + freezer + mine.

[Xrays7]

It is a pity, that so dearly for "tier 1". :(
I have a Minecraft license bought for 13,50 EUR. (year 2012)

[Rainnmannx]

What's are you saying Xrays7??

[Xrays7]

What's are you saying Xrays7??
Perhaps Google translator badly translated. I say, 15 EUR is expensive. And it saddens me.

[Rainnmannx]

Compared to what J and others have put into these servers that's a very small amount. Good thing is there is a free tfc server. Feel free to start your own server. Or choose what ever other servers that are out there. I don't understand why people feel the need to complain about how someone is running their server. Look into what it takes to run one before coming here and being upset.

[LarsonPacific]

Perhaps Google translator badly translated. I say, 15 EUR is expensive. And it saddens me.

If you think 15 EUR a year is expensive, I suggest you go back and look at the first message in this thread and see how much it actually costs to run the servers every month. The server owner has been paying most of that cost out of his own pocket... and that saddens me.

[Xrays7]

You're right. But it is expected that donations should be voluntary. For example, on small features such as: set a nickname, set a colored nickname, and others features.
I wanted to play the TFC hardcore. But "TFC hardcore, free to play" server is not in the list of scheduled.

[InsaneJ]

Some people will be disappointed, some people will be happy. This is always the case when things change.

I've tried to find a common ground that would allow the majority of players to be happy about the new situation, while also making it really worth it for people to donate and thus help out our community financially.

[Chogata]

I'm new to this forum, but not new to TFC or TnFC. I played on Happy Diggers for some time, but that was about a year ago, then I moved on to "modded" TFC.

I'm insanely (no pun intended ;) ) happy that Happy Diggers will open a TnFC server. To date I played on two public servers, but both folded (the first for sure, the second I'm not certain, but it is more off than on). Happy Diggers has a solid reputation and I really, really hope that this one will stay on for a LONG time. Thank you for starting it! I will be eagerly awaiting the launch announcement :D

I have a question also: will there be any help in initial dispersing of the players or does everybody have to walk to their intended destination? I will go far away in any case (I've already found a promising spot on dynmap), but I wonder if the initial settlements will be very spawn-centered or more evenly distributed on the map.

[InsaneJ]

The TnFC mod pack is using a ton more resources than just TFC. So we urge players to start towns together. The more players that start their own town all by themselves, the more resources are used. Once all the resources are used up, things start to lag.

Because of this we'd much rather see 1 town with 10 players, than 5 towns with 2 players each. Bigger towns are key to keeping things running smoothly. Right now we don't know how the server will perform in the future when people start building all kinds of contraptions. We may have to set additional limits like we've done for the TFC stuff.

So in short: we're not setting up an initial dispersion of players because that would send players to all parts of the map instead of encouraging them to work closely together inside towns.

[Rainnmannx]

You can play HardCore style on the freebie tfc server, just don't use teleports, and toggle mob protection off in town, and there you have it :)

[InsaneJ]

Yup, that's pretty much it :)

[InsaneJ]

I'll continue this discussion here since the other thread got a bit heated :)


...but all we are saying is maybe find a better way to recoup some of the costs, one that will both bring in residual income and make Everyone happy.

With that said, how about offering a monthly 'package' where the people that play on the Freebie server have the option to pay for more set homes or more outposts for the town, shorter teleport cool-down or something in that nature. If they don't continue to pay, then they don't have those perks. And please keep in mind, that the majority of people that play are kids and young adults, who may not have a lot of money. But that would be money coming in Every month, not just the one-time fee.

This was my first suggestion actually. To have a monthly subscription kind of thing. However a lot of people complained about this because in the end it's more expensive for players. So we switched to the current model: a one time donation for access as long as we run our servers.

Now that we are using MinecraftMarket I'm considering adding a monthly package. We are having some technical issues with MM right now (donors are registered, but not added to the servers automatically so I have to do that manually right now), but when those get resolved I'll do some experimenting so see if it can reliably grant monthly access. I'm thinking maybe have a one month donor pass for 5 euro. This way players can try out the donor servers before committing to the larger (but ultimately cheaper) one time donation.

--------------

This thread is closed.
New thread here:
https://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?2462-Server-hardware-stuff