Whats up this week?

[xPhoenixXx]

Well for a start, the new update came out.

Before we can even think about updating, we need to do map generation "filling" this will take several days. The reason it takes so long, is, our world is about 70,000 blocks from end to end... but not FULLY generated within those boundaries, which means there are random non-generated chunks. I have set our "fill" level to 100,000 - the reason being the 4 corners of that "70,000" would be outside of our "fill circle" other wise. Imagine a square, then draw a circle that is as wide as 2 sides of the square.. notice the corners are chopped off.

Why do we need to fill out the map? Well as you recall we have maintained the same world over 3 years and about 30 minecraft updates. If you have done much exploring you may have noted a lot of "boundry" generation glitches. (in English you're walking along and there is suddenly a very out of place biome, vertical wall, or square hole next to different level ground, or even water. These stick out like a sore thumb generally, and look quite ugly from an aerial view. Over time many of these have been blended or built into; or simply overlooked and after 30 updates and about 4 world generator changes, there is quite a lot. The main change in the latest minecraft is that they tweaked the generator to reduce the "massive oceans" issue. This is a good thing - especially on the brotherhood planet as it is 90% ocean, with major continents separated by tens of thousands of chunks of water. But on our homeworld where there are 2 major continents /deliberately/ this would mess up quite a lot of things.

Needless to say, main world is being filled /before/ the update and brotherhood is being filled /after/ the update.

Other worlds scheduled for filling are Acadar, and Grimsgate, some are already done such as Proclaris(lava world) (i forget how its spelt) and asteroids. Likely all the worlds will be done at some point.

But some like Grimnir/acadar/brotherhood may be done afterwards to make these worlds "1.7" friendly for any new ores or materials that wont exist in the 1.6 world. (Hello mining and trading with homeworld opportunities)

Anyway -
Next problem we have.. is fully filled out our map file will be pretty big... so we may need to migrate our server and stuff *hint* *hint*

The good news is, you can keep playing it as it "fills out" just means game will be less responsive. Although once completed will be less laggy as you will have less "generation" lag occurring.
The other worlds (running under terrain control and cityworld) will need to be filled before updating.

If for some reason we don't have a (*hint hint*) server to migrate to, I'll move the world to our backup server which has a 500 GB hd.. then move the HD back to the original server.. confusing i know. The backup server is only a dual thread P4 era CPU, while the current server is a more modern I3.

Failing all else I have an ancient XEON - but it has inadequate ram to be up to the task - without disabling all but lockette/worldguard/worldedit. On the upside with a 3way 10k striping raid it would be quite fast, but first crash would potentially loose our entire world, so I am reluctant to use it. Can't add ram to it either - retro ddr 1 reg ecc ram costs more than buying a new server!


Anyway enough of my world integrity OCD'

Other planned features is moving to citizens 2 as it appears we no longer have a choice -
This means sadly - a partial NPC wipe will occur - as not all of our types are directly swapable with citizens 2.
Good news here is tho, citizens 2 supports MOB npcs. If i can get a decent quester plugin, this opens up interesting possibilities quests wise.
Also it appears we can retain the /smart ass comments/, /name/ and /location/ of our npcs but loose other attributes such as types (eg merchants wont work right, questers will break etc)

I expect many if not almost all our plugins will fail under 1.7 as well one way or another. This will not be a quick update.

Luckily the latest minecraft launcher makes it easy to remain on 1.6.x while still be able to play on 1.7 servers as they upgrade. So Awesome! No down time needed for your minecraft snacking.

[空]

Judge Dredd on standby as always.

[grimnir]

yes erm new server et'al.
its kinda in use atm for a client of a job that's mega fubar'd (manufactuer spec monumental screw up - may end up costing me $12K to fix)
and to top off I ordered the wrong 32GB RAM kit for it, which I cant return $485ex worth.

I'll check the specs of my other xeon box here as it may fill the spot for now.
if its all good and I have enough RAM for it, i'll courier it down to you.

[Anon Phoenixx]

No Rush Grim, business comes first as always.

I've got your 500gb in the backup server as i said - and the migration process is essentially the same whatever hardware we run it under.
Install OS -> create dummy server -> FTP old server out -> FTP old server into new drive -> overwrite server properties -> setup any custom scripts and paths -> install drive in fastest hardware on hand -> Profit

That reminds me, check progress on that generate.. it was 0.3% this time yesterday.

[matty]

whitelist server now?

[grimnir]

vanilla MC is online now.

[tangentspy (SaltPepp)]

Is that our fall back server or yours grim? If so can you give me the IP or domain.

[xPhoenixXx]

Status update -
Core area generated, I am now running around to remote locations filling in 1000 block sections. This is preferable to waiting for the other 92% of empty ocean to generate.

Note: due to the process of generation, some wooden buildings built in proximity to lava or fire may have partially or fully burnt down.
(including the paradise island evil wizards tower!) (insert angry face from grim here)

Keep in mind however we have an entire backup of the world on the 2nd server, so a bit of world edit copy/pasting should fix those as we encounter them.

Also no sign of a stable 1.7.2 Bukkit so even after all this trouble we still cant think about updating the main server. Pfft!

At the moment there is a test 1.7 running off the backup server. Its just a muck around server at the moment. If you move from the spawn about 100 blocks you should reach the boundry of the old world generator and cross to the new world generator, there is 4 bedrock posts to mark the boundry. If you are curious what difference the new generator made - consider that the current seed (i always use on fallback) normally gives you the spawn island in the middle of a massive ocean easter island stylez. Outside the old area this is no longer the case, it is more like Florida.. with lots of little Caribbean islands. Go have a look. There is a wood bridge (or was if someone greifed it by the time you read this) that leads to one boundry point where you can see a mapglitch mountain.

[空]

MY MAGE TOWER NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

[grimnir]

theres another copy of it on grimgate from memory

[xPhoenixXx]

Righto -
World Generation is complete.
Oddly enough map integrity is fine, i went to the effort of copying both the original and the backup map to my workstation and doing a full integrity scan of the world... 5 hours later.. hey guess what 0 errors anywhere even tho the world is.. like 15gb now lol oooo kay

*another round of plugin update and troubleshooting it is then..