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Sunday 31 March 2013

Easter Fun

Throughout today  we'll be randomly placing gold chests in the protected area around spawn and each chest will contain a 'prize' for the first person to find it, here's the details...

The gold chests will be within the protected area, so within about 200m of the main spawn building.

The gold chests will be locked using Lockette (locked by either by DiggyWig or DigginChickin) with a number underneath the name.

The first player to 'call out' both the name and number on the Lockette sign gets whatever is inside the chest.

Once the name & number has been called, DiggyWig or DigginChickin will tp to you to break the sign so you can claim your loot!

So as an example you find gold chest locked with a sign with this written on it:

 [private]
DiggyWig
 3736475

To claim the chest you need to 'call out' this in chat:    "DiggyWig 3736475"

Prizes will range from cocoa beans and eggs (it is easter after all!) to enchanted armour and red matter!

Their will be a server announcement when new chests have been placed!

Happy Hunting!

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Connection Issue Last Night

As many of you will know the server was unavailable for several hours last night due to a connectivity issue, the server was up but players we're unable to connect.

Connections to the server are now working again and the hosting company is looking into the cause, which appears to be connected to the other shorter network drop-outs we've experienced over the last few days.

Hopefully we won't be having these issues much longer!

EDIT: 11:25 - The hosting company has tweaked some network configurations which will hopefully resolve the issue, however only time will tell, fingers crossed!

Sunday 24 March 2013

PVP Arena

By popular demand we now have a PVP Arena just over the bridge from spawn!

PVP is still disabled everywhere else on the server so those players that are not interested in PVP don't need to worry, nothing changes for you as PVP can only take place within the main floor area of the arena.

I've also put some basic rules up in the arena, the main points being that it is used at a players own risk (we will not replace items lost in the arena) and that players should not interfere with other players battles (if done deliberately this may be considered griefing).

Finally, I have now partly enabled Balkon's Weapon Mod. Although it's throwing & shooting weapons are still disabled (they can bypass region level PVP settings) the following items can now be crafted and used:

Knives, Battleaxes, Halberds & Flails.

Thanks to DigginChickin, braycore & Go_Magic2 for their help in designing and building the arena!

Enjoy!

Saturday 23 March 2013

Changes This Morning


I have made several changes to the server configuration this morning including patching Lockette, below is a list detailing what has changed from a players perspective:

Lockette:

The following chests may now be protected:

Copper, Iron, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Crystal, Alchemical & Energy Condenser.

Teleport Suite:

Teleport timeout increased from 15 to 20 seconds.

New Features:

Pumpkin Scuba - Drowning damage is disabled if the
player wears a pumpkin helmet.

Players cannot be harmed by lightning.

Maximum Players:

The player capacity of the server has been increased from 24 to 26 without impacting performance by tweaking certain processes and reducing memory overheads.

Thursday 21 March 2013

Mumble Voice Server Now Available!


We now have a Mumble voice chat server at the following address:

IP: 178.239.166.19
Port: 64066

At present this server supports a maximum of 30 users.

These details have also been added to the Server Info page!

Enjoy!

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Iron Shovel Bug Fixed!

After an inspired moment and digging around in various mod related files I finally managed to pin down the causes of the Iron Shovel bug!

Fixing it completely involved several configuration changes to two of the mods included with Tekkit, which have now been implemented and tested. The changes do not noticeably affect the functionality of any other items and should not create any additional problems. The nature of the fix means that this problem should not re-occur at all in future.

Enjoy!

Saturday 16 March 2013

Server repaired and back up!

The server is back up and the regenerated chunk is loading fine!

Server Down

The server is currently down, this appears to be due to malicious actions which have caused serious problems with a map chunk and are causing the server to be unstable.

I am working on resolving the problem now but may have to do a partial restore as well as removing the chunk, word data (excluding the chunk causing the issue) and player data (including inventories) should not be affected but it may take 20-30 minutes to get the server back online.

I'll update here as soon as possible, please bear with us!

UPDATE: 22:05 - This is going to take a while longer, progress is slower than I'd hoped, I'll post another update soon.

UPDATE: 22:15 - The chunk has been removed and the server is back up!

New Security Page

I've just added a new page to the site detailing our policy on griefers, what steps players should take to protect themselves and how to report incidents:

http://diggyminecraft.blogspot.co.uk/p/griefing.html

VIP Changes


As the new Member+ rank now gets the items formally restricted to VIP rank I decided to add some new perks to VIP status as follows:

VIPs may request that an Admin 'landscapes' their region using WorldEdit, including flattening areas, basic terrain smoothing, mass tree & plant removal, mass tree replanting, filling of pools, lakes etc  with water or lava and more!

VIPs will also be given a Swiftwolf's Rending Gale & full set of Quantum Armour when they first become a VIP and further free items, such as HV Solar Arrays, every time they renew their VIP status.

Full details of VIP perks can be found here:

http://diggyminecraft.blogspot.co.uk/p/vip-benefits.html

Daily Backup Schedule Change

After looking at our player statistics I've decided to move the daily backup to the quietest time of day, meaning that the daily backup will now take place around 8am to 9am UK time (maybe slightly later at weekends).

This means that fewer players will be online when the server needs to restart and hence minimises the impact of the 2 minute downtime.

Thursday 14 March 2013

CoreProtect 2 Added To Server

I've added the latest version of CoreProtect 2 to the server this morning as the issues I was having with version Coreprotect 1.x clashing with other plugins have been fixed :)

It has increased memory usage per player but this shouldn't be enough to cause noticeable lag, even when the server is full, due to the daily restart & backup clearing the memory every 24 hours.

This will allow Admins & Moderators to better tackle griefers  but I would ask that players continue to 'do their bit' by protecting themselves with Protection Stones and Lockette to help keep incidents to a minimum.

I've also enabled three additional flags for both WorldGuard and Protection Stone regions as follows:

use - Prevents players using doors, levers, buttons etc in your region unless you give them permission.

chest-access - Prevents players opening chests in your region unless you give them permission.

entry - Prevents players from entering your region unless you give them permission.


See the World Commands page for further details of how to use these flags:

http://diggyminecraft.blogspot.co.uk/p/world-commands.html


Wednesday 13 March 2013

Website Updated

I've updated the website to include a new 'Rank Info' section, this gives a brief description of all the ranks available on the Tekkit Classic server and how to attain them, including the new Member+ and Helper ranks.

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Changes To Spawn

The signs at the Player Market & Spawn have been replaced with ComputerCraft screens, not only does it look nicer but it gives me more flexibility with the layout and makes them easier to update :)

They also include some details on the new ranks which are coming very soon!

Sunday 10 March 2013

Scheduled Maintenance & Server Downtime

Woke up this morning to find the server back down again and this update from our hosting company:

23:16 - ... still offline, but Cisco technician is currently looking into the issue onsite.

We are extremely sorry for the downtime that occurred today and we know that it was totally unacceptable for this to happen.

Best Regards,
Nitrous Networks LTD

Whatever the routing issue is seemingly the Cisco technician is still working on it now and around one third of the servers they host are currently down due to the connectivity issue, unfortunately we are in that one third.

I'll keep checking for new information and time-scales and update here, thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: 09:40 - Still waiting to hear from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 10:40 - Still waiting to hear from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 11:40 - Still waiting to hear from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 12:40 - Cisco are still working on the problem and our hosting company have offered a partial refund of the hosting fees as compensation, unfortunately no update on when the servers might be back up though.

UPDATE: 13:40 - Waiting to hear from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 15:00 - Still waiting to hear from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 16:05 - Hosting company hope to have servers back up today but can't specify a time.

UPDATE: 17:00 - Waiting to hear from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 17:30 - Our hosting companies managing director is saying that the servers should be back upin about an hour, fingers crossed!

UPDATE: 18:35 - No sign of the server coming up yet, waiting for an update.

UPDATE: 19:15 - Apparently the issues with the new hardware are now completely resolved and servers have been coming back online one by one over the last 20-25 minutes, we shouldn't have long to wait now. I'll be whitelisting for about 5 minutes just to check a few things.

UPDATE: 20:25 - Looks like our server is going to be one of the last to come back up, they are seemingly being manually connected one by one to check for any issues which is why it's taking so long.

UPDATE: 21:25 - Still waiting, but hopefully not for much longer! The servers that have come back up already seem stable now so looking good.

UPDATE: 21:40 - Server is back up! Whitelist is in place for a few minutes whilst I check things over.

UPDATE: 21:45 - Whitelist removed! The server is coming up now and seems stable.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Scheduled Maintenance & Server Downtime

The server has been down for a few minutes now as part of the scheduled maintenance by our hosting company, hopefully we will be back and running within the next twenty minutes or so. I have turned the whitelist on and stopped the server as it came up and went down a couple of times and I don't want to risk world corruption.

I'll keep you posted!

UPDATE: 17:30 - Upgrades are taking longer than expected, might take another 20 minutes.

UPDATE: 17:55 - Server back up! Looks like the upgrades are complete :)

UPDATE: 18:55 - Server back down :(  No news on how long for yet.

UPDATE: 19:30 - Still waiting to here from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 20:15 - Still waiting to here from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 21:00 - Still waiting to here from the hosting company.

UPDATE: 21:40 - Server is now essentially back up but whitelisted while I check things.

UPDATE: 22:00 - Daily backup performed & seems stable, whitelist removed!

Well that was a pain, everything seems ok now, all I know is that all the MineCraft servers they host (thousands) went down so it was a network wide issue. They've been coming back online one rack at a time and are mostly back up but it will be an hour or two before everything is fully up and running, hopefully their will be no further downtime during that time.


Player Market Now Open!

Over the last week many users have requested some form of player market and so I decided to make building one a priority, it's taken a couple of days to build and test but I'm pleased to announce that the player market is now open!

Key market information:

The market is located outside spawn, opposite the DiggyStore.

The market consists of 18 rentable stalls.

Stall rentals and equipment are provided free of charge.

Each stall consists 3 trade-o-mats linked to personal safes and a sign to be placed above them.

Any player of 'Member' rank or above may request rental of a market stall.

Stall renters are responsible for ensuring they do not trade in banned or restricted items

Stalls will be reclaimed if the renting player does not log in to the server for 7 days.

Stalls will also be reclaimed if a renter is found to have deliberately tricked another player into an unfair trade.

If you want to rent a stall but no admin or mod is online then please send an e-mail to admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk, including your username and a proffered stall number (if applicable).

I think that covers everything, enjoy!

Friday 8 March 2013

Scheduled network maintenance

I just received this notification from our hosting company regarding the network upgrades and some scheduled maintenance taking place tomorrow:

Hello everyone,

Just a quick note to let you all know that starting at around 4:30PM tomorrow (09/03/2013) we will be conducting some network maintenance so you may experience downtime of up to 5 minutes and the maintenance should be complete by 5:30PM.

During the maintenance period tomorrow we will be doing the following:-
+ Installing new 48 port gigabit switches into all 3 of our racks
+ Installing another uplink to all 3 racks to double our uplink capacity from 1Gbps to 2Gbps for each rack
+ Configuring some new security settings to aid stability in the occurrence of a denial of service attack

After all these upgrades are complete we should have a much more stable network with a lot less downtime because of disruptions from DoS / DDoS attacks.

We would just like to thank each and every one of you for staying patient whilst we've been planning and rolling out these upgrades.

Kind Regards,
Nitrous Networks Ltd.

Thursday 7 March 2013

Network Upgrades

Our hosting company is carrying out further network upgrades over the next couple of days so we may experience random disconnects and short drop-outs during this time, please bear with us, it will be worth it in the long-run as the upgrades are aimed at greater stability, resilience and preventing DDoS attacks.

I'll post an update once the work is complete.

Thanks!

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Do Not Craft Iron Shovels

Unfortunately the server has developed the 'iron shovel gzip' bug that plagues many Tekkit servers, what this means is that if you craft or pick up an iron shovel your player data will become corrupt, you will be instantly disconnected with a 'gzip' error and unable to reconnect.

Once you have this issue the only way for you to get back on the server is for your player data to be deleted, this means you will also loose any items in your inventory at the time.

If this happens to you and you are unable to get a message to an Admin or Moderator in game via another player then please e-mail us at admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk so we can get you back in the game asap.

There is currently no official or unofficial fix for this bug, plus the item cannot be removed from the game or banned in a way that prevents this issue as even attempting to craft an iron shovel causes the problem whether the crafting is completed successfully or not.

I will be investigating further and hopefully a fix or workaround will be found, until then please remember not to attempt to craft this item.

Philosophers Stone

Having received several polite requests from regular players to reconsider our policy regarding the Philosophers Stone and after some consideration and testing we have decided to give all players the ability to craft this item, however no rank will have the ability to hold it or use the right click functionality due to it's ability to be used for serious griefing.

Please note that because you cannot hold it you may have difficulty picking it up when dropped if you have empty slots in your hotbar.

Enjoy!

Sunday 3 March 2013

New Plugin - Experience for killing mobs

One of our plugins disables experience drops as an anti-lag measure, but whilst this helps server performance it does make experience much more difficult to obtain as killing mobs no longer gives experience.

Over the last two days several players have requested alternative means of gaining experience and I'm pleased to announce that after some testing we have now installed the SmartExp plugin.

The plugin is configured to give experience directly to the player when they kill a hostile mob, notifying them of the amount of experience awarded and their progress towards the next level.

Please note that this plugin will only award experience when a hostile mob is killed, no experience is awarded for killing animals (including aggressive wolves) or villagers.

Enjoy!

Daily Backup Downtime

We have decided to schedule a daily downtime to take a full backup and run some tests to check for issues, this downtime will usually last no more than 10 minutes.

This will take place between 19:00 and 19:30 with a warning being given in world at least five minutes before the server goes down.

Saturday 2 March 2013

Server back up and running

All the upgrades have been performed and the server is back up and running, though they will be running tests which may affect performance for a short while longer.

Thanks for your patience.

Firewall upgrade in progress

Our hosting company is currently performing the firewall upgrade and has decided to replace some other equipment at the same time to prevent further downtime later, I've been told this could take up to an hour.

It will all be worth it in the long run as these upgrades are aimed making their network more resilient to attacks such as DDoS and other network related issues, so please bear with us.

Downtime - New Firewall

Our hosting company is installing new firewall equipment between now and around 5 pm, the server will likely go down for around 10 minutes and their may be intermittent connection issues between these times.

It seems we chose a bad day to open the server!

On a positive note this should help prevent DDoS attacks against their servers in future.

Quick Update

Just a quick update to say that we have done some retesting and discovered that three player profiles were still corrupt, they have now been reset so if you were having issues logging back in this should now be resolved.

Sorry again for these unforeseen teething problems but we are now confident that everyone's issues are resolved and new players are successfully joining the server.

PayCraft Packages Removed

We have removed all PayCraft packages and repaired the corrupted user entries, for now their is no starter kit but we will give a sword, pickaxe & some food to new players manually for now. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

 To clarify, you will now be moved to the 'Member' rank as soon as you join the server.

PayCraft Bug

It seems some changes were made to the PayCraft website today that are causing issues with the starter kit, we are having to remove it so please bear with us! Talk about bad timing :(

White-list removed!

The white-list has finally been removed, the server is now open publicly... see you there :)

Launching in 30 minutes!

Launch day is here, the white-list will be removed in 30 minutes!

Once you have logged in to the server you will need to visit our PayCraft shop...

http://diggyminecraft.paycraft.co/

...and purchase a free 'Starter Kit', this will give you some free items as well as promote you to a 'Member' and give you the ability to place and break blocks.

As it's our launch day we have added a special version of the starter pack which includes a full set of iron tools (you would usually get stone ones), extra food and extra torches! This 'Launch Edition' pack will only be available until 4 pm today so get it whilst you can!