Anarchic Frontiers Minecraft Server

I am testing new (old) server software and new mods

the current version of spigot seems very laggy.. i have noticed it as im sure others have

it just sometimes hangs for a couple seconds, far more often than the old version did, unfortunately the old version has a problem where it crashes when mojang's servers communicate with it apparently.. so we can't go back because mojang has been pinging servers now? i don't really know why the change..


anyway i am testing the regular unoptimized bukkit server again, but to go back to it i have to come up with other solutions for some of the things spigot does, like orebfuscation, and some optimizations and spawn limits

so i am tested out a set of mods to handle these things. the monster spawning may even be better this way, one of the mods i am testing attempts to spawn monsters in areas where your more likely to actually interact with them, or otherwise leave them out, so you shouldn't notice a huge difference but there will be fewer monsters to handle for the server so it should allow us higher limits for things like animals, villagers, and spawner mobs

the no ai on spawner mobs will also be changed back to normal so the grinders which use water elevators will work again


i am still testing and configuring but if it works out i will probably be switching

other quirky behavior like dismounting off the side of the bridge, items getting warped through walls, MAY also be fixed with any luck

an update on upcoming changes:

the optimization mods seem to work fine well in place of spigot

i have a few fun improvements coming out, i will leave most of them a surpirse

i am making alot of changes to mob spawns and will probably remove 1/5th xp rate

spawners will be capped to a limit (all mobs will)

but the spawner should also spawn mobs in areas your more likely to interact with them (instead of deep underground or on heights were no one is nearby or out of range)

so im hoping i can have the server track fewer mobs but have it seem more active and consistently populated for players

the mod i was going to use to optimize spawning didn't work, it just plain doesn't work.. tons of things never even spawn, its insanely overcomplex and doesn't work..

so i am writing my own, i made a quick tweak version which works pretty decently, but i am going to write a bit more robust of a version with selective despawning of worthless mobs. i should be done soon

there is still other testing of some features/improvements to do

including more security for horses and horse ownership transfer like i have with wolves/cats

as well as a couple of surprise mods i want to polish up a bit


im working on it pretty heavily lately though so im hoping to be done in a few days or so

What i would like is to actually SEE animal spawns we care about like Ocelots (for different colored cats) and wolves int he wild still have never seen these.  MOre horses, still never seen an all black horse,

This actually should be drastically improved by the changes i just made

people running spawners, and tons of monsters in stupid places will eventually be less likely and less common freeing up the mob counts and making it more likely for wolves, ocelots, and maybe even wither skeletons to spawn (i haven't seen any yet but there is no reason i know of why they shouldn't be able to spawn, just rare)

many of the changes i was testing didn't work out

the original spawn limiter/despawner mod i was testing didn't work out, it just sucks..

so i drastically altered another more simplified spawn limiter to do all of the additional things i wanted it to do, it seems to be working great

the positioning bug fixes i tested didn't work. the optimization changes i was going to use on vanilla bukkit also didn't work correctly.. they were not very beneficial and they broke orebfuscation

the orefuscation at the mod level also doesn't work right with extra hard mode explosions and physics... so it just is a no go..

so i am sticking with spigot, it really does have alot of great features i am just annoyed by the occasional lag spike.. i am hoping that the mob changes fixes it, or they fix it in a newer version

I still have some surprise changes and other improvements coming out, including the horse changes, and the minecart dismount change which i am apparently going to have to code myself

my surprise changes are pretty close to being ready but this whole connection issue im having is making it difficult to finish and test it

also im not sure i want to release a new feature in the middle of connection problems..

Still working on my multiserver setup and upgrade

a couple of the main plugins i relied on never updated, including the python scripting library ive been using

so i have had to rewrite all smaller custom tweaks (and couple major ones) in java instead

this is taking more time than i thought, but they are vital for the new setup, including a new /beamup command i am setting up

it will let you beam back up to the ship (and then back to the space station), which is especially important on voluntaryist expeditions which doesn't even have return portals

Made massive progress this weekend

Voluntaryist Expedition server is current updated to the new setup

but the new lobby still needs some tweaks and quests added to be able to reach it

so its currently unavailable.. but all of my mods were converted into the new setup for the new versions now

MAJOR progress, very few tweaks and additions to make beforei ts all ready

basically the remaining changes are:
add quests to be able to reach each of the different servers
add quests to return to the spaceport
add protection to lobby so newbs can't easily grief it (doing my own super lightweight mod for this instead of a bigger bloatier mod, won't take long)
fix a bug with galactic chat
possibly port the vampire configs into a shared database so they work on all survival servers

last but not least, update AF to 1.7.x (1.7.2 - 1.7.10)
all of the mods for this have been tested and seem to be working fine
all of the configs are ready too

just need the lobby setup and global chat to be ready
so close..

there will probably be a handful of quirks and tweaks i will need to continue making after it all goes live, but its almost ready to at least be up and online with the new version and the whole new setup and all of the new mods!

will probably finish it over the next couple nights

I am starting the survey mission worlds after next weekend

won't be able to put much time into it this week because of work, but after that i should have time to finish setting it all up, its server is mostly setup and configured but i don't want to launch it before i get bogged down with work so it will have to wait till next week

my 1.8 setup is pretty much ready

it will include a vanilla 1.8 survey world with ZERO MODS, but /beamup and global chat will still work through the proxy, and 1.8 client support for all of the 1.7.10 worlds, it won't support all of the 1.8 features, but youll be able to play on it with 1.8 client. some of the 1.8 blocks will probably be added although i haven't tested that yet

but i don't want to put it all online yet because 1.8 doesn't have optifine support yet

i need optifine apparently, 1.8 client has worse framerates than ever for me, I'm probably not in the same boat either, so I am just not wanting to upgrade to 1.8 support until it is available.

Also upcoming, vampire wood damage will be a multiplier (probably 3x, going to play with it a bit later), it won't be instant 1 shot kill anymore, that wasn't intended, im not sure when it started doing that but it didn't originally. i may also add some monster truces with undead monsters, zombies and skeletons at the most, maybe just zombies

heads seem to work pretty much right in 1.8 again

the first time i loaded them again they were still weird but over the session they all ended up looking right again, im not sure if its the server updating/caching the graphics, or the client, but regardless it seems 1.8 sorts out most of the head issues

in 1.8 the vampire mod will do 3x more damage from wooden items than normal to vampires, all wooden items will work, but wooden swords are better, and enchanted wooden swords are best. currently (on live server) they do a hardcoded damage value regardless, which is kind of lame, and op, so i disabled alot of the wooden items for now on the live server, once we goto 1.8 though it will be this 3x change

monster xp nerf is being reduced because 1.8 has slower leveling again anyway, now the rate nerf on anarchic frontiers will be 80% of normal (currently it is 60%, some time back it was 20%)

xp rate is different on 1.8 vanilla, so it will end up taking 16 xp pots instead of 9 to reach level 30

1.8 repairing is drastically changed i have a tweak which lets you repair even old items that are repaired multiple times, and now it works on pretty much every item in 1.8 instead of in 1.7 where the default rates were so insanely expensive on some items it was impossible to make them cheap enough to repair

mods are coming along, several are already updated (including vampires) a handful still to go (like shopkeepers)
and still need to do alot of testing, several are totally new versions from new authors because the old ones disappeared its been so long since they had to update

All of the most important 1.8 mods seem to be working at first glance

I am also adding a few new recipes to access some of the new blocks on our old maps
might also make use of some of the new vars and commands available

i am going to do a bit more testing, but i will very likely update to 1.8 in the next couple days

1.8 blockers:
Combat Tag doesn't work at all, need to either manually patch it, or wait for someone else to..
Teleporting via plugins is bugged, it effects chairs/portaling/beamup/vehicle dismounting.. i put in a bug report to spigot hopefully they can fix it quickly

1.8 nice to haves:
Healthbars no longer works on players, mostly a convenience though
Two of my most useful admin plugins don't work and are unlikely to be updated :(
Prison Pearls look like a big checkered glowing box, but they actually still work, its a graphical issue only

everything else seems ready to go, don't see any other major blockers

planning to make some adjustments soon

* Removing the can't build in midair extra hard mode feature.. just gets in the way and doesn't really add much
* trying to make a way for naturally spawned iron golems to drop iron. might enable it on all golems
* trying to make it so normal villagers offer trades, while 'hired ones' instead keep shop for you
* adding vote perks to other worlds

If golems drop iron then noobs might try to kill our golems in nether

might make golems attack anyone who repeatedly attacks them
or if i can make bumpers protect them

* Setting up astral realms
they will contain memories and dreams!
(old worlds and creative mode)

chat changes upcoming, an improved version of my galactic chat coming soon:
* it will allow unique colors per channel, so if you have multiple channels its much easier to notice whos talking in which
* also it will support custom rank colors for players, which im planning to add
* it supports uuid for ignores too
* another change is that it wont default to galactic anymore, tired of newbs joining it and spamming out cusswords
* by default it will use localchat, unless you join one, you can still manually join Galactic, and you can invite others to channels which they can easily join

It will announce when new players join

you can see who is IN a channel with /info or /channel

and you can private message new people to get to know them and if they seem cool, you can /invite them to channels

Galactic will continue to be moderated by a select group of trusted players

what does custom rank colors for players mean?

just be a fun to have color to make more senior members visually stand out

it will show up in chat and in the tab list

it won't effect privileges on survival worlds, just a vanity perk ;)

a batch of my new changes are almost ready
they all have to be released together so i haven't been able to show anything off yet

but the new chat system is at about 90% (have to make some changes for ranged chat)
the new ranks system is at about 90%
the new voting on any server is about 50%

you'll be able to vote on any world and it will count toward your rank
but some worlds don't have voting rewards on them, AF does

survey and VE probably will get reward options soon too

youll only be able to get a random item reward on one world at a time
but you will always get the votes counted toward your rank regardless of what world your on

Soon i will be removing the recipe to convert between emeralds and xp potions

if you have any emeralds, i suggest you convert them to xp potions as those are likely to be more valuable

emeralds are going to be used for villager trading and villager trading will be enabled soon

will you still be able to convert XP into emeralds?

no they are both being removed

although villagers have a recipe to BUY xp potions for emeralds, but they are going to be more expensive than just crafting them over now, so craft them over

but right clicking an enchanting table with a glass bottle will still convert it to an xp bottle, right?

wait so will my current xp bottle be usable with villagers?

if I convert to emeralds now an emerald is an emerald right

only exchanges to and from emerald to/from xp pots is going away

you can still make XP pots from enchanting table

villagers trade emeralds

btw the reason im adding villagers back is multiple

1. they need to trade to breed now
2. i want to bring back iron spawners
3. the new map will only be able to get certain items from trading
4. they adjusted the limits and recipes over some versions to make the imbalance not a big deal
5. its a fun mechanic to find and build up your merchants

Can we still hire them to run our shops?

you can still breed villagers by feeding them carrots, bread or potatoes

one of the great things about survey worlds is it gives me a place to test new adjustments and mods without impacting peoples long term plans

with this new survey world i intend to replace most of the extra hard mode features with my own implementations, some are similar, some will be alot different

im in the process of doing it now and it will be a gradual transition as i get each feature replaced

there are likely to be issues during the process and some things will need to be adjusted, don't panic, i am paying close attention to how the changes impact the enjoyment and challenge of the world

i am thinking of disabling galactic chat

there will still be local chat, private chat, and channel chat, but you will have to join and invite people to channels

there won't be 1 default global channel that everyone is automatically joined into

this recent .. completely disgusting drama .. is really not something i want to help facilitate, it has been very public, very ugly, and very disappointing, even i have made my opinion clear publicly..

and now i am thinking having 1 'common's channel is a bad idea, everyone can still make private channels with /join and invite people with /invite

i tried to turn it on but it didn't work right, i think it is because everyone already has their user settings set to use it

im going to test it out proper (it worked before i couldve sworn) and if the drama doesn't die down, if certain people dont' stop constantly telling each person who joins how they egged someone with inaccurate lies instead of the truth then he will have to do it in private tells and in private channels instead of in the galactic chat channel

that goes for anyone else who wants to continue rumor mongering behind peoples backs
this has been really upsetting to witness..

I think we need galactic chat otherwise I can not talk to people on other maps.

so everyone would be forced to be on one map
I do not want to go backwards because someone is running their mouth.  That's wrong.  Then we all suffer?  That is not voluntary. :)  I did not agree to another person screwing up my chat.

i agree with savanah

we've been through this before when global was turned off back on V3

it isolated everybody and im blaming that as a big reason why v3 got so dead towards the end of that map right before AF came out

would be a colossal mistake to make a drastic change in the community's communication the day after an incident

thanks for trying to find a solution, but i dont think this one is the right call

or do you think stricter chat moderating would fix this problem

It wouldn't make us all need to be on the same map, the channel system would still be in place, there just wouldn't be a default one everyone auto joins

you would just make your own and invite people, you can even invite EVERYONE to a new channel, but instead of it being a 'server' channel, it would just be a channel you made

all of the channels work across worlds

I think this is a terribly bad idea.

Think about the new players (such as me) that connect for the first time, ask around for some directions and get radio silencie as there are no default channel. Even with a detailed tutorial and explanation, it seems pretty counterintuitive and inconvenient.

What about when you have some general question, like "Who wants to buy a horse" or "Ey where is X city". Having to /msg every connected player is cumbersome and annoying.

Best case scenario, we create a "General" group and every time we connect we need to type /join General. It's unnecesary and the problem will remain the same.

I think it's a bad idea to damage a system we use 100% of the time ir order to avoid a specific problem that exceptionally arises. We have a saying for that in spanish: To kill a fly with cannon fire.

A simple /ignore command, or a /silence voting system can easily solve the issue in a more convenient way.

Well said Dresdom, he gives the point of view of a new player, and we want to keep attracting new players.  Thank you for your input.

Dresdom, I like the idea of a /silence command. 

For example, If 4 people use the command within 20 seconds, the 'offender' is muted for one minute, and escalates time each subsequent /silence.

Not sure how hard that would be to code, but it's a heck of an idea.  But, with all systems, there is always potential for abuse as well.

yea i changed my mind again, the drama seems to have cooled off now anyway

the main reason i didn't do it, and haven't done it in the past is definitely because of the new player issue you mentioned, i have also considered it, guess it is just too impractical

i might be able to do a /silence type of thing, i already have an anti spam setup that blocks people if they are spamming, i can probably weigh in a silence mechanic from other players

I am formulating a few plans to hopefully increase the activity and ease for new players soon
+
for one i am planning on replacing prison pearl still with my warding idea i had, where you would basically put an enchantment on a player head of someone you have killed and it would repel them from an area by putting a negative effect on them when they go in that area

basically it would allow you to effectively deny them from an area, but not entire worlds

so the idea is to give less power to pearl holders but still enough so that they can protect themselves

it is my hope it will give some newer players who don't always understand the way we do things here a chance to play and learn or at least give them more of a fighting chance if they don't learn ;)

thanks to all of the feedback i am also planning on adding more easy content for players who enjoy that, the next survey world will be relatively simple and vanillaish in difficulty.

I am also thinking i will have new players start ON new survey worlds, as if our expedition has arrived and discovered them already on the planet. this might be less confusing for new players as they will now instead start planetside in a place they can simply run off and start playing on

Are heads gonna be 100% chance of drops? Or will you do it like you hold a specific item it will go away when used but that makes it 100% chance of head. Is the range gonna be adjustable or will we need a crap ton of heads?

im probably going to adjust the head drop rate higher a bit, but not 100%, and no special items to get heads

and the range will be adjustable a bit, you will be able to apply more potion to it to increase the radius and effect

the maximum radius will cover most of a city like orange

i think i am also going to make it wear off over time, but you will be able to tell the potency from the particle effects on the head

If it wears off over time do we need to re-enchant it or add the potion as you said?
Or will we need an all new head?

I agree you have great ideas, and of course igloo poses an excellent question, how long will we have to ability to repel a bad player from our cities and lands.

Also when you catch a player and kill them will they automatically go to the ship, because it might take more than one kill to get one head.  Some players have multiple properties to protect as well, so this could get interesting.  When a player gets killed it could be a small free for all for everyone to get a head to ban them from their cities.  ahhah

Yay... more stuff to pay for
It wearing off may suck if we had to get a new head

when they die they respawn like normal at their bed if it exists or in space otherwise, with a 1 minute protection like they already do.

when the spell wears off you just reapply more potion (harming potion), ill probably make a max charge last a month

most griefers don't come back after the first couple days anyway, and i don't want to constantly be running position checking code against tons of old heads

Yea, okay that seems pretty good. Maybe we can trade heads for alot of harming? I'm gonna stock up on those anyway.

you should get that pearl replacement mod going, intangir

Hey intangir; like the shopkeeper system, could we use villagers to make quests? It would be nice to have adventure quests in survival to keep players busy and enjoy the server more. It could be like a shop system where players pay to start a quest and earn a reward, or it could be free.

i don't have any great way to allow players to set up quests if thats what you mean


BTW guys the new head hexing/warding thing is partly done, but i still have to put some more work in on it before its ready. in the mean time at least we haven't just been pearling away new players and the server has been more active. don't forget to protect your builds (at least your chests) with citadel and perhaps also bumpers for important spots/animals

Atleast greifers have been able to run wild

thanks for the support and patience and as usual completely objective and constructive feedback

oh wait.. great, thanks for none of that, thanks for once again blowing shit out of proportion

Take your time it's less fun without griefers. Commander you must not know how annoying it is to code.

hehe yeah dude I know I complain sometimes but I love the work ya do you make the best server hands down its ok if your busy most of us know the important stuff will be done when ya got the chance even those of us that complain really appreciate everything ya do thx for all the hard work man love the server and will always be thankful for all the hard work you do so we can have fun :P

Soon i am going to be explicitly adding a new rule against using multiple unpaid accounts (freely usable hacked accounts found online) to grief the server.. it is bullshit, has no realistic parallel (which the server is intended to roughly model) and is basically taking advantage of hacked accounts to attack the server, which is already against the rules.

SOMEONE.. has now logged in from 4 different accounts and used 3 of them to grief the server..

i have no idea what the hell they were thinking but this is unacceptable so i banned the IP

if SOMEONE can no longer connect on his main, well thats just too bad, i guess you should've considered the consequences of being a huge jackass to people who trust you. ass

If said SOMEONE tries to use another proxy to connect on yet ANOTHER name i will permanently ban all of your names

my advice is to throw that list of compromised accounts into the recycling bin and empty it before you get yourself perma banned

i swear i did not even log on but that one time to get the dangergamer perled how did they use my ip i swear i didnt do it i just dont even know anymore how did they use my ip i wish that i never found that same list that that ass used

still going to convert AF and Astral tomorrow probably