Server updates

I figured I should make a general thread to update people on when the server is experiencing problems, or when something happens with it. If you are unable to join the server, check here to see if it's offline, or PM "Brendanan" on the minecraft forums (I'll get an email then)

Current status: Offline

July 4th, 5:45am GMT
Server is offline due to machine issues. No estimated time for the server to be back
Server is back online

its down atm

Yep, still down for me as well.

The machine hosting our server seems to have had a hard drive failure (is it just me or does that seem to happen a lot?) shortly before you guys posted. They're working on fixing it and will let us know more as it progresses.

its back up.

Awesome.

Just tried to get on but it times out every time I try. Anyone else getting these problems or is it just me?

Testing now

It's working perfectly for me

Ok, Ill try again when I have some time.

Minecraft has been updated to 1.4.6 and the server has not. Just thought I'd say something.

Whoa, that came out of the blue. I checked yesterday and saw nothing that hinted at an upcoming update.
Oh well, thanks for the notice, sever's been updated. Do you happen to know what the christmas surprise is?

Not sure of any real surprises, but they added some fireworks and enchanting books. It's really just a small update.

Read the minecraft forum for the full list of updates... It's bigger than I expected for a 1.x.6 update.

I know the surprise, but I won't spoil it for you

I got a bit shocked when I saw that list and how big it was. I really want to know the surprise though! Tell me about it in pm please?

The latest snapshot has some very cool things in it: redstone block similar to lapis ones, which will be great for decoration and circuitry; smelting netherrack to make nether bricks, which will finally give us something to do with tons of netherrack and give us an effectively renewable source of netherbrick; hoppers, which will make automated collection from item grinders and the like practical at last; and trapped chests, which while we won't be hooking them up to TNT, still work as chests, and can be placed next to regular chests for more compact storage facilities.

Unfortunately, they also include new Nether Quartz Ore, meaning we need to either dig to new chunks in the nether, reset the nether, or reset the map.

I can't ever get my head around redstone stuff but I have a feeling that the daylight sensor has the potential to do some cool stuff. The hopper seems great and I already expressed my love for the redstone block. I don't get the actual purpose of the chest but it should really help improve storages.

Finding new chunks in the nether isn't terribly hard, and it's not like the nether quartz is awfully useful anyway. Nonetheless, I'm always glad to see new ores.

How big is the nether portion of the server atm? Like, bigness wise

That's very hard to tell. It's a messy place and people went off in all directions to search for glowstone and fortresses. All I can tell for sure is that it's several thousand blocks in at least one direction, and I know where the outline of that area is so I know where to find unexplored territory and how to get there.

I was going to agree with one of spectrum's suggestions, one of which about resetting the nether? I thought It'd be good idea to completely renew it, because as I've been taking it, it seems it's quite big and messy? Which seems to imply that a reset would make it unexplored again, bring new ores back in ect. But then again it's the same seed so the nether would be the same? Which would be good because you could exploit that fact to regather the glowstone ect and furthermore make more use of it as a base?

Sounds a bit like cheating to me, and not worth the effort anyway. We do have a base and a safe tunnel to a fortress with a blaze grinder so resetting wouldn't be very smart.

Cheating how?

Bran2939 wrote:Cheating how?

Theoretically, we'd know where the netherfortresses and such are. Once more, there would be unharvested glowstone formations near wherever our portal opens up into the nether. We could, in effect, harvest the same glowstone formations, mine netherbrick from the same fortresses, twice.

But the map rendering algorithm has undergone at least two revisions since we started. I don't think it WOULD be the same Nether map. We'd have to rebuild our nether-side infrastructure, our base, our safe tunnels, and so forth.

We didn't reset the main map to get emerald ore or witch huts: we can get emeralds from villager trading, and witch huts don't really give us anything we can't get otherwise, either. But Nether Quartz doesn't look like it's gonna have other sources. So it's either explore for newly-generated chunks, or reset the nether, or go without daylight detectors and other new redstone-related gizmos.

No resetting... We keep the world we started on, and that's that. While its a long trip, it's simple, and we can easily generate new chunks in the nether.

The new nether ore seems to be pretty common in new chunks so a little bit of walking to get to new chunks is the only problem. Not really a big enough deal to justify reloading the nether.