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Thursday 31 October 2013

Halloween Challenge Map Extended!

After receiving a couple of requests from players who couldn't get on much today I've decided to leave the Halloween challenge Map open another 12 hours, so it now closes 10am (UK time) tomorrow!

Enjoy!

Not Probationary Anymore!

Niki2008 & Lincoln1313 are now full helpers, congratulations!

Halloween Challenge Map Open!

For the rules and more information see yesterday's post, the map will remain open for 13 hours, so until 10pm tonight!

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Halloween Event Tomorrow!

The Halloween Event Starts 9am (UK) Tomorrow!

Halloween Challenge Map: 9am-10pm(ish)

The map is essentially a treasure  hunt, here's what you need to know:

Getting in and out...

The entrance portal is in the Portal Hub at spawn, the exit portal is where you start and takes you to the storage room where a further portal takes you to the end where you can use /home etc to return to the normal world.

What to do first...

When you arrive claim your kit using /kit hallows, this will give you some basic gear and can be claimed every 15 minutes in case (or should that be when?) you die.

Go back through the portal and claim a chest to store your pumpkins in, remember to add any teammates to the lockette sign (max team size 3). Read the important info in the storage room, it will explain everything else you need to know!

The aim...

13 [Kit] signs are hidden around the map, allowing you to claim different numbers of pumpkins at different time intervals, [Buy] signs are also placed around allowing to buy most types of weapons & armour (no RM, DM etc).

Rules...

One chest per team / person only.
PvP is on for parts of the map and in general the map is basically anything goes, feel free to push that other guy off the ledge.

Store as many pumpkins in your chest as you can, Jack-O-Lanterns are very rare but may also be obtained through the day, store these too for even bigger prizes or trade them on the day for Shards!

On 1st November you will be able to trade in your pumpkins for prizes which you can then store back in your chest, then on 2nd November you will be able to collect them using your regular inventory.

Look out for spooky goings on and things changing unexpectedly! 

Trick & Treat: 9am-10pm(ish) at 13 different times of day 2 players will be chosen at random, one will receive a treat and one will suffer a trick... if you have a sense of humour don't miss this!

Placing On Bedrock & Klein Stars

Placing on bedrock should now be working normally and klein stars are now restricted to Member rank instead of Member+ rank!

Enjoy!

Permissions Fixed

At some point last night the permissions plugin stopped working due an entry getting messed up, this is now fixed and your ranks etc are all back to normal!

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Premium Protection Stones

Wondering what to spend all those hard earned (or luckily won) Shards on?

Introducing Protection Stone Plus! 

They work just like the normal diamond ore protection stone, but are the glowing redstone ore block instead and give a massive protection area of 101x101 sky to bedrock, more than twice the surface area of the standard protection stones!

To make them a reasonable challenge to obtain you can only purchase them for Shards, $100,000 to be precise, the placement of them is also restricted to Member+ rank or above, they won't be confiscated from players of lower ranks but they wont be placeable.

The price might seem high but looking at the top balances and transactions over the last few weeks this amount should be easily earned by the time a player reaches Member+ rank, I'm hoping demand for money to buy the stones will also help rebalance the top end of the economy.

This new stone replaces the protection sponge, which has been retired, if you have one placed then your region will remain in place, please contact me if you'd like to trade your sponge for one of the new stones (this can be done without even removing the sponge!).

Halloween Map - Team Info

Some more info regarding teams for the Halloween Challenge Map...

The map is essentially a treasure hunt, with some twists, where players / teams must store what they find in a chest at the world spawn for it to be counted towards prizes. The chests are single vanilla ones and can be locked only on the front, giving a maximum team size of three, team leaders (first name on the main lockette sign) will be responsible for sharing out prizes with teammates and teams may only have a single chest.

Server Crashes

Something in world has been causing crashes over the last 48 hours or so, so far all I know is that the errors generated relate to red alloy wire and a massive spike in memory use when the chunk responsible loads, I'm hoping to pin it down properly soon and either fix the setup causing it or force a regen of the area if I cannot get close enough without causing a crash.

UPDATE: 10:25 - Seems we have a double problem, the server has started trying to allocate more memory than we pay for which is confusing bukkit, our hosting company is looking into it.

UPDATE: 11:20 - The hosting company have fixed the memory allocation issue!

Monday 28 October 2013

Changes Today

Here's a brief summary of the changes this morning;
  1. Marble End has been removed along with all the related config etc.
  2. The Marble End entrance building at spawn has been removed and trees etc planted.
  3. Multiple inventory data has been completely cleared for removed worlds.
The multiple inventory plugin has not been removed, this is required for the halloween world and will be removed next week.

Server Issue & Scheduled Downtime

There was a major issue with the server this morning where some kind of java glitch caused the server to hang just after 9am, this glitch somehow caused some data loss and has meant I've had to roll back some plugin related files.

Specifically region data has been rolled back to 6:30am UK time, so any changes to region protection, including placement of protection stones between 6:30am and when the server hung just after 9am have been lost.

Some other data has also been rolled back but this is nothing that should affect anyone adversely and just means that some plugins are missing log data for that period.

I have now started the removal of Marble End and should be done by 11am, apologies for the delay! 

UPDATE: 10:40 - The worlds have been removed and I've finished cleaning up entries in other plugins relating to Marble End, I just need to do a little testing and make sure there are no errors.

UPDATE: 10:50 - The whitelist is removed, you can connect now! 

Sunday 27 October 2013

Halloween Event!

Don't forget to join us this Halloween (31st October) for a special event including:

Halloween Challenge Map: countless hours of work have gone into this, mainly by staff but with contributions from players of every rank. Prizes will be on offer for all players who take part but there will be a maximum number of players / teams that can participate, more details coming soon!

Trick & Treat: at 13 different times of day 2 players will be chosen at random, one will receive a treat and one will suffer a trick... if you have a sense of humour don't miss this!

More details to come over the next few days, be aware though that some parts of the halloween map are impossible on your own, your best bet is to work in teams of two!

Saturday 26 October 2013

Don't Forget To Open A Ticket!

With all the changes coming over the next few months, particularly to the way the server is staffed it's important that players make use of the /modreq ticket system rather than using /mail or e-mail for in game support issues, otherwise they are likely to take far longer to deal with.

In particular I get have over 50 /mail messages waiting for me every morning, too many to go through in game so I usually download my data file and read them manually from that once per day, obviously this means that you could be waiting a while for a reply depending on when you send it. Also all @diggyminecraft.co.uk e-mail addresses now redirect to me and only me, so again it can take me a while to get through them every day.

Modreq requests can be viewed and dealt with by myself, freaksdesign and a couple of Helpers who can deal with some kinds of issues, all helpers can then update you on who is dealing with your request etc, it's a much easier system for everyone in the long run and if used properly will help us to help you much more efficiently!

Of course /modreq isn't suitable for issues affecting a players ability to connect so in those rare cases or for general feedback, ban appeals etc e-mail is of course still your best option.

Friday 25 October 2013

Downtime To Remove Marble End

There will be a downtime of around 1 hour on Monday morning (approx 9am-10am UK) to backup and remove Marble End, it's been fun over the last few months but the minigames plugin now offers us a much better solution going forward. I can confirm that when the new minigame world is launched I intend to include a Marble End inspired team deathmatch arena, reusing some of the buildings. 

The multiple-inventory plugin will not be removed at the same time, this will instead be removed the following Monday as it is also required for the halloween map, once that is removed and the player data files cleared the klein & quantum discharges will stop.

Thursday 24 October 2013

Casino Odds Improved

I'm still tweaking the slots every now and again to get a good balance on the payouts, the odds have changed quite a bit today with as much as a 20% increase in the chance of the top top 2 prizes.

Enjoy!

Tuesday 22 October 2013

VIP Chalet Changes

A couple of you already noticed but I've made some small changes to the VIP chalets whilst adding this months free items etc, nothing major really...

1) The bed has been replaced by a non-functional one due to a glitch.
2) The colour scheme has changed slightly.
3) The views out of the left hand windows of Chalets 5 & 6 have been improved somewhat.
4) Signs have been added near the portal and in all chalets allowing VIP's to set the time to day.

Enjoy!

Monday 21 October 2013

You've Named Our Currency!

It was very close for a long time with Credits, DiggyDollars & Shards all having a similar share of the vote until the last couple of days, but in the end Shards won with 42% of the vote, DiggyDollars came second with 37% and Credits third with 22%, in fact every single option had at least 11% of the vote!

So... our currency will be known as Shards from now on!

Beyond January

Ok so quite a few players have contacted me about ways to try and keep the server going next year, I was actually surprised just how many!

So, don't give up just yet, maybe something we can all be happy with will be worked out by January.

I can also confirm that there would have been 2 VIP spaces left for this quarter, I'm not going to post the donation links but as two players renewed even after knowing the servers future was uncertain and after receiving a couple of requests I'm willing to email a paypal link to anyone who would still like to be a VIP until the fees are due in January. 

The limit of 12 will be staying so it's first come first served I'm afraid, sorry if you see this message too late! 

You would also be doing me a personal favour as I've ended up covering over £40 of the fees myself (me and Diggin usually contribute £15 each, with the VIP donations covering the remainder). 

As a forewarning if the server does carry on beyond January it's likely that we'll switch to annual billing as this would give us a 20% discount (we currently get 10%) saving about an extra £45 a year, factoring in everything else this would mean that VIP would probably cost £25 for the year, £1 a year more than now but by also increasing the number of VIPs to 16 it would cover the entire years fees. Alternatively I have been looking at trying to reduce memory overhead to reduce the servers requirements from 4GB to 3GB without too many big changes, this would lower costs by a significant amount and would mean that the number of VIPs could remain at 12 (billed annually) and still cover costs. 

Another idea that has been suggested cost wise is that we have simple donations open all year with rewards given, then the remaining costs are divided by 12 near the end of the billing cycle and VIPs pay the difference, i.e. the VIP donation would be £25 a year if no-one made small donations through the year but could be significantly less if a lot of small donations are received, essentially making the VIP system a 'safety buffer' to make sure costs are covered.

One thing that would have to go in order to lower memory use is Marble End (and multiple inventories), it's not the world it's the plugin overheads and maintenance involved, however the minigame plugin we have now is capable of much more than we are using, for example Team Deathmatches & automated Parkour (jumping puzzles), so Marble End could be replaced with a world specifically for games, with certain commands disabled to prevent cheating (/sethome, /heal etc) and containing multiple arenas using various weapons etc as well as spleef. I've got quite a few options to weigh up and test when it comes to optimising and automating maintenance, including testing a new, more lightweight, multiple world plugin which would allow us to keep The Vault & VIP Island for emergencies with considerably less overhead, it does however mean that portals would have to be replaced by a warp type system.

As for the actual running of the server I don't want to say too much at this time, I'm still considering options that have been suggested and offers to take the world over but if it does keep going there will have to be some changes to make it more self-managed as at the moment the maintenance required is a lot for anybody to take on, this is something I've been working on anyway and will continue to do so for the time being.

I know that was long winded but I wanted to put my thoughts out there and give everyone some kind of update, well done if you managed to read the whole thing and please do give any constructive feedback you might have on the situation!

EDIT: 12:15 - The two VIP places are now taken, thanks again!

Sunday 20 October 2013

A Thank You To VIP's

As a little thank you for all your support over the last 9 months all VIP players can now use the following commands:

/heal
/feed
/repair <hand/all>

I've also added them to the commands page.

Enjoy!

EDIT: And no you can't use them in Marble End ;)

Saturday 19 October 2013

DDoS Attack / Internet Issues

Our hosting companies data centre is experiencing a massive DDoS attack which is being investigated now, hopefully they will manage to resolve this very soon, I'll update here as I know more.

UPDATE: 18:25 - From our hosting company;
"LINX (London Internet Exchange ) seems to have some routing / network issues. At this point we can't do anything from our side, but wait until this is resolved."

VIP Donations & Sad News

I've decided not to open general donations this quarter.

I apologise for the last minute notice but things have changed drastically in the last 18 hours and the future of DiggyMinecraft has become very uncertain.

Most regular players are aware that I was intending to make DigginChickin an Admin very soon, unfortunately due to personal issues she will no longer be playing Minecraft, so she can concentrate on other things and has asked me to remove all her stuff in world. 

What most of you probably didn't know is that the intention was for her to take over the server for most of next year as my study increases to 60 hours a week and with everything else I just won't have time to run the server.

I'm sad to say it but DiggyMinecraft will therefore be closing in January and may be whitelisted to existing players only before then, I'll be keeping the website and a small whitelisted vanilla server going but for at least next year that's it. 

It's sad but just one of those unexpected things that life has a habit of throwing at us, it's been fun though and hopefully we can all continue to enjoy the last few months and perhaps meet again in new worlds for new adventures.

If anyone would like to continue hosting the map/s beyond January please contact me by e-mail, please be aware though that suitable hosting will cost around £100 a quarter.

If you're an existing VIP that has renewed already I understand that knowing this beforehand may have changed your mind about renewing so if this is the case please contact me and I'll arrange a refund asap.

Friday 18 October 2013

VIP Donations Open Tomorrow!

Just a reminder that VIP donations open to all players tomorrow!

The links will be added to the website between midday and 2 pm, and will be removed as soon as the VIP limit (12) is reached.

If you're an existing VIP that hasn't renewed yet but still intends to then please remember to do it before then to guarantee your place!

VIP Places Remaining: 3 (of 12)

One Day Left To Vote!

There's only one day left to vote in the poll to name our currency!

It's a very close call between the top three choices so every single vote counts, if you haven't voted already or want to change your choice time is running out!

Launcher Working Again

The Technic Launcher is fixed but you might need to delete it and re-download to get it working.

I also managed to get hold of a copy of the old launcher this morning, which was still working, if you'd like a copy in case something like this happens again just drop me an e-mail:

admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk

Thursday 17 October 2013

Launcher Bug

There is a serious bug with an auto-update for the Technic launcher which leaves you unable to run Tekkit Classic, if you are currently logged in I suggest you don't disconnect unless you have to.

If you've already received the update (like me) and have this problem then I'm afraid it's just a case of waiting for a fix, it's also worth mentioning that the bug affects Windows, Mac & Linux.

UPDATE: 21:35 - This bug also seems to affect other mod packs for some, it appears the launcher is trying to connect with Vanilla Minecraft instead of the correct modpack.

UPDATE: 22:20 - Still no fix or work-around, I'll be giving up for the night soon :(

UPDATE: 22:40 - Giving up for the night, hope this is fixed by the morning!

VIP Renewal Reminders Sent

I've just sent out a reminder to all VIP players who have not yet renewed, please remember that general donations open this coming Saturday at around midday (UK time) so you'll need to donate by then if you want to guarantee your place.

If you haven't received the email then please check your spam folder and contact admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk if you need it resent.

Thanks again to all the players who have already donated!

VIP Places Remaining: 4 (of 12)

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Our First Millionaire!

Tatankore is the first player to get the slots jackpot, 
also making him the servers first millionaire!


Congratulations!

Tuesday 15 October 2013

New Help Ticket System

I can't always deal with help requests by e-mail or /mail as quickly as I'd like, and if I'm away or can't login for any reason it can take a while for me to pass on information to Moderators to deal with issues, so I'm introducing an in-game support ticket system!

Bear in mind that this system will take a little getting used to but it is up and running as of now and your issues should be dealt with much faster using this system.

Please note however that to prevent abuse we have limited this system to Member rank or above at least for the time being (this may change in the future), New Builders can still use the /helpop command to request help from an online staff member.

I've added the relevant commands to the website and updated the staff handbooks accordingly, hopefully this will make everyones life on the server a little easier!

New Probationary Helpers!

I'm pleased to announce that we have 2 new probationary Helpers:

lincoln1313 & niki2008

After their two week trial hopefully they'll both become permanent Helpers and at that point another Helper will be promoted to Moderator.

Server Downtime

I'd been having internet issues at home since yesterday afternoon but this seems to be fixed now so the scheduled downtime I posted about yesterday morning will be going ahead very shortly.

Updates etc will be posted here.

UPDATE: 09:40 - Server is now down.
UPDATE: 09:45 - Backup/clone started.
UPDATE: 10:25 - Backup/clone complete, testing changes.
UPDATE: 10:45 - Server will be back up in around 5 minutes.
UPDATE: 10:50 - Whitelist is off, you can log back in now :)

Monday 14 October 2013

Downtime Tomorrow AM

I'm taking the server down for about an hour tomorrow morning (around 9am-10am UK) to take a full backup / clone and test a couple of changes.

Saturday 12 October 2013

What Should We Call Our Currency?

As promised I've made a list of the suggestions and put up a poll on the right of this page, you've got 7 days to decide and can make multiple selections if you can't decide!

Nicknames Now Available For Member+

Nicknames (/nick) are now available for Member+ players or above by popular demand!

It will cost you $2000 in game money each time you use the command so please make sure you're happy with your name before you hit enter, refunds will not be possible.

Players of all rank can use the /realname command to find out a players real name from their nickname.

Enjoy!

Thursday 10 October 2013

VIP Renewal Emails Sent!

The VIP renewal emails have now been sent to all existing VIPs!

If you haven't received the email then please check your spam folder and contact admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk if you need it resent.

Please remember that general donations open on 19th October so to guarantee your place you'll need to donate before then, thanks again for your continued support!

VIP Places Remaining: 4/12

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Almost A Millionaire!

Rensdertje had some luck on the slots today, 
32 Golden Apples & 16 Industrial Diamonds in a single spin! 


And almost became our first millionaire...


...so close!

Monday 7 October 2013

SuperSlot Lucky Winner!

Tatankore sent this screenshot after winning $100,000 on the SuperSlot!


Will you be the first player to win $1,000,000?

Friday 4 October 2013

Hosting Fees & VIP Renewals

The hosting fees for the period October 2013 to January 2014 have now been paid!

VIP renewal emails will be sent out to existing VIP's next week, the minimum donation for the coming quarter will remain at £6, donations for the remaining VIP places will then open on Saturday 19th October at or around Midday (UK time).

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Halloween Map

Just a reminder that if you're working on something for the Halloween Map we need to get them into the map as soon as possible after friday, especially larger builds, smaller stuff  isn't as urgent but please let us know what you're working on so we can keep it in mind whilst building.

Tuesday 1 October 2013

New Player Portal Open!

The Brown player portal has been given to xXman123x and is now open!

The portal is to his X-Mall and is open to all ranks.

CPU Spikes

We're suddenly getting occasional CPU spikes from CoreProtect and I'm unsure why, it doesn't happen on the test server so I'm having trouble pinning down the cause.

If I can't figure it out by next week I'll take the server down for a couple of hours, do a full backup and replace all the plugins, configs etc with copies from the test server to see if that helps, if that doesn't fix it I'll contact our hosting company as it could be related to a management interface update (the interface has a small plugin of it's own to add functionality).