Blacraft Forum

The poll has ended, with 3 voting for and 0 against the ice roads at y = 110.

I have moved Spawntown's portal so it's now in the top of the mining central, and links to a portal at y = 110 at origin. I have connected the ice road you built up there (Fiah).

I have also moved Kaktolake's portal 10 meters up so it's closer to the horse roads.

I recommend people who want their portals linked to the ice roads to move their portals up there. You can tell me if you want any help. Portals interfering will probably be an issue when trying to move them, to avoid that, it might help to move your portal up higher in the overworld, at least temporarily until more portals have been moved to the higher altitude in the nether.

Battle 10: The Blue Front (Lotzubutt, Darvince and Fiahstorm) attacked Zone 21, defended by Red Front (Blanoxium, Mudkipz and Ventus). Red Front successfully defended the zone.

Intro book completed and the two remaining floors decorated just a bit. The server should now be ready for new players to join.

If I'm changing how far away chunks are loaded around players I'm just moving the problem into another zone, that wouldn't be a good solution to the problem. Increasing it increases lag, reducing it reduces how far we can see, we don't really want either, even though ofc it's possible that 10 isn't the ideal setting. Considering it affects the game constantly for everyone I also think that's a bit invasive in order to fix one factory.

Tl;dr I don't think changing the view distance would be a good solution, but thanks for the idea.

Ok, Kip, Fiah, Yqt (or anyone else), can we agree to move the ice roads to y = 110 (foot level)?

That sounds like another good idea, I could make a Reddit account for it.

Anyway, the intro center is now in a state where I'd say all we need to get finished is the intro book before it can be used. However, the ground level floor is empty and the floor just below also is, it'd be nice if we could put something into them, so ideas are very welcome. We can always decorate them with random pots and maybe even a random grassy area with small flowers surrounded by some building material in the floor below. Carpets are another thing I might add to some areas of the floors, the top floors could probably use a few of those too.
It also has a rail station now along line 1 and 2. I hope to add the rail lines to Dynmap as well, maybe tomorrow.

Another thing that'd be nice before we start recruiting is to get the borders on Dynmap. If you don't have time to make a script for that I could also just sketch something very rough that outlines all our regions on Dynmap, with a blue border maybe, and then put a sign saying players can freely settle outside that border.

Here are screenshots from the intro center's unused floors:

Yes, it has been under DDoS attack.

http://www.arvixe.com/alerts?key=62298-1300

I'll try to build the info center soon, near the town center in Spawntown.

I don't really agree with the idea of having a small region around spawn though, that area could quickly get very messy and not fit with the surrounding areas. Also I don't think people find such areas very interesting if they're joining the server, they know it's just a place everyone can mess up after all. But since we have to whitelist them in the first place, we might be able to meet them in-game when we do that, otherwise, the info center should tell people the rules on where they can build so that they can find unclaimed land themselves.

It would be very helpful to new players to have all the regions show up on Dynmap, so if you can make a script that lets us move them on there with the Inkscape method, that'd be nice.

I have a eff 5 unb 3 book if you want a permanent pickaxe (at least until 1. that takes 33 levels to repair if you name it first and then combine it with an unenchanted pickaxe whenever it is close to running out of durability.

Edit: If anyone really likes knockback 2, here...

It's more fun to play when there are more people playing, but adding people we don't know also carries a risk of griefing, cheating and stealing and while we do take regular backups and keep complete logs of pretty much all interactions, having to deal with such issues often would be a strain.

Do you people think it would be a good idea to advertise for the server, for example on the Minecraft forums?

If so, what do you think would be worth highlighting about the server to people who might consider joining?

Advertising about the many communist elements means we might attract communist people who share views with some of us and could be great contributors, but could also attract anti-communists who might try to ruin the server due to their opposition to communism.

At the same time the server is intended to allow people to play capitalist or just isolated if they prefer.

I'm open to giving it a try but I think the biggest problem would be that a thread we made would get buried quickly if we don't have some good points to put up. It's not a very active server so unless we all post updates about what we work on every once in a while in the thread on the MC forum, the thread will just die. If we coordinate and use it kind of like the Blacraft thread on US Forum, I think we could attract quite a few new members.

If it turns out that opening the server up a lot puts a strain on our resources, we could close recruitment.

New members would obviously require guiding from experienced members to find areas to build in and such, but we could also build an information center that introduces the server to people, and make it the default spawn.

I think it could be a good idea to try, now that I also have vacation until around April 21 so I have time to introduce the server and keep track of stuff atm, but as said it'd probably require a coordinated effort by us to keep a thread on the MC forum alive.

Putting up some videos on YouTube showing tours and what we've built could also help, but what I've put up hasn't generated any interest yet, so it'd probably need to be put on the MC forums to actually attract people.

The poll has been moved to Blacraft Voting Center and I've transfered my, Blotz', Kipz' and smjjames' votes. Idk who the last one who voted for option 1 is, but make sure to vote in the voting center. I'll close the poll in this topic.

The poll in the voting center will close on April 11.

I'll run this poll in the voting center for a week from (if I remember it) tomorrow, so remember to revote, I'll transfer Blotz' move vote and Kip's and smjjames' make hub votes.

Did some science at the factory:

The water takes approx 20 seconds from flow start to reach the end of the farm by the hoppers.

I have let mobs spawn in the farm four times, and then recorded the mobs fall and graphed the number of mobs fallen at intervals of 1 second, and summed them to get cumulative graphs.

I also summed the number of mobs fallen in all four cases to the bottom graph.

Based on this it should be possible to determine the ideal time that the flow should be running, if we know the mob spawn rate. Determining that would be tricky though, because you can't watch much of the spawning area at the same time, and it also depends on how many mobs there already are. But it appears that the water certainly shouldn't run for more than 80 seconds, and certainly not for less than 20 seconds, and that the proper amount of time would probably be between 40 and 70 seconds.

I guess setting the flush time to 50 seconds at 5 minute intervals should be a reasonable start. If the water takes 20s to reach the end, that should grab the mobs up to 70 seconds on the graphs.
As for how to set up a 5 minute hopper timer, Idk yet

This was the April fools for Blacraft that I bothered to make. :b

The factory is fully functional now!

Kaktolake Monster Factory currently has a spawning area of 9,000 m². (Each floor is 30 m x 50 m)
Spawntown Monster Factory had an estimated spawning area of roughly 6,000 m². (Each floor is 22 m x 17 m I think)

The factory is still manual though (there's a button for turning water on/off), and the windows aren't covered yet, so spawning rate is probably a bit lower than Spawntown's. But the fact that you can flush it should hopefully make it much more productive when I add a clock to flush periodically.
Also the drop isn't deep enough to kill armored mobs, and spiders tend to crawl on the windows.

The area is very long for piston strangulation. Adding flowing water near the bottom platform diverting them into a 2x2 area with piston strangulation at the bottom might be a good idea.

I might just make the area a bit deeper with a backdoor to kill off surviving mobs. As long as you don't stand down there, I don't think the spiders will crawl on the walls. Sandstone could make that impossible, but the windows look nice imo.

So many options kol.

The iron foundry has produced about 1100 iron while I worked on the factory today, kol. Nice.

Water works in the nether now correct?
But yes, in the nether lava flows fast so you probably can't just use the method I suggested. I do that in underground lava rivers in the overworld.

If you want to hollow out the obsidian pillars, I'm ok with it.

I think it would be better to just gather some lava in the nether or deep underground and make obsidian from that. If you pour water over lava and dig in from the sides you can get most of the obsidian relatively fast and safely. Could that work instead?

I hope people will judge from whether they think the area would be a good place for battles, and not from whether it's very close to their own regions. Getting there by nether wouldn't take long in any case.

Horse road to mesas has reached the mesas. Here's a video of the road and the "opening ceremony" with Matty and Yqt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-pwrUgbzHo&index=21&list=PLDD704680B5A2D3CA

Good points Kip. I agree. Overall I don't think it's a big problem with the scarsity of stained clay, but I think it might also be better to put the alternative battleground in another area, that's also more accessible.

Some alternative ideas for areas could be these, which have relatively varied terrain, mountains, forests and plains.

1:


2:

I removed the rule saying that you have to be on a team to be able to place the flag of the team. I had forgotten about this rule during our last battle, and imo it doesn't really seem to help make the BG more fun, it just means another rule you have to remember. I think we're better off without it, but if anyone think we should keep the rule, they can say so.

Also changed the DeathChests option in the poll to "Vote yes here if you want items/xp to drop on death" because we abandoned DeathChests.

Ok, Fiah proposed a concept on the Ubox forums, I suggest we keep the discussion here. His post:

concept for a mesaground (half completed)

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So a battleground in the mesas? Hm

Personally, I don't like the idea of turning an already rare biome into a place where you destroy the terrain. However, it might make some sense to turn exactly such an area into a place where you fight for terrain, because the terrain has value. Even though stained clay is already common enough that you can't really call it rare I guess.

However, I think it might be better to only battle for a smaller part of that mesa subcontinent, like maybe zone 1-37.

Also, remember how many times we've had to delay battles for the BG because people took long to get there. It might be a bigger issue there. Although since a second BG might be more of an "elite place" without ristrictions, the regular players may be more inclined to go there while less regular players might prefer the current BG, so they might know the nether infrastructure and how to get there fast better.

i don't think they're too regulated. it's nice right now

an anarchy zone would be cool though

An anarchy battle zone? Do you mean just one region where you're allowed to kill each other inside it and build stuff however you want?
I like the idea, and added it as an option to the poll, and reset the votes. If people show interest, we can add another region for this.

I think a region like this should be far away from spawn, so people don't venture into it accidentally. It could be called something like "The Wilderness".

Battle 7: The Lenin Front (Fiah, Bla) in Zone 39 warded off an attack from The Blue Front (Blotz, Mudkipz, Thomas) in Zone 35.

Battle 8: The Lenin Front (Fiah, Bla) counterattacked against Zone 35 from Zone 28, and conquered the zone from The Blue Front (Blotz, Mudkipz, Thomas).
Since this was the base zone of The Blue Front, The Lenin Front gains all the current zones of The Blue Front.

Battle 9: The Red Front (Bla, Mudkipz, Ventus) attacked and conquered Zone 29 from The Lenin Front (Fiah, Blotz, Thomas).
Since this was the base zone of The Lenin Front, The Red Front gains all the zones in the Battleground.

And I/Bla decides to give most of the zones of the former Lenin Front to The Blue Front. (I hope Naru and Mudkipz are ok with that)

Here's an album with maps showing what happened today:
http://imgdiode.com/XXKT8A,lV9gR2,z3CcMq,Wyv7bA,60I0W7,ZgZkFt,tFlYhT

As a result, the new BG map looks like this.

Intrada.

The opposite of the Internyet.

Blotz please post if you agree with Fiah and possibly discuss more accurate times so we can announce the battles as early as possible.