VIP Limit Reached!

The VIP limit for this quarter has now been reached!

Thanks to the generous donations of our players 100% of our hosting fees up to 16th July 2013 have now been raised, a big thank you to everyone who has donated in the past few weeks, whether it was a VIP donation or a smaller amount it is very much appreciated!

To confirm, the donation links links will be put back onto the site on or around 16th July 2013, when we will start accepting donations for the following quarter.

Thanks again!

May Challenge - Castles

We've seen a few castles that people have already started and they are looking very impressive so far!

I thought I'd better post some more details on how and when they will be judged...

Judging will take place on Saturday 1st June, sometime in the afternoon, the July challenge will be announced shortly afterwards.

Entries will be judged by DiggyWig, DigginChickin and 3-6 other random players chosen on the day, judges will need skype (sound not necessary) so we can discuss choices outside of the game.

Each judge will make a first and second choice, being selected as a judges first choice will get you 10 points, second choice will get you 5 points, all your points will then be added up to get your basic score.

As well as the basic score bonus points will be awarded for:

Best moat (water or lava) - 10 bonus points

Best garden / courtyard - 10 bonus points

Best castle name - 10 bonus points

Most unique build - 10 bonus points

Most interesting use of materials - 10 bonus points

For the bonus points each judge will get to cast a single vote for each category, the castle with the most votes in each category will get the points, or they will be split in the case of a draw.

Once all the votes are in, I will add up everyones points and post the first and second place entries on here, the winners name will also be displayed on one of the boards at spawn and images of the builds will be posted here and on the Technic Forums!

The winning entries will also be offered a choice of prizes!

To enter you need to send the name/s of the player/s entering the castle, the name you have given your castle and coordinates the judges should teleport to when judging it. This information can be sent either by skype (DiggyWig or DigginChickin) or e-mail (admin@diggyminecraft.co.uk) but must be received by midnight on Friday 31st May for your entry to be included.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

Item Limits Reinstated

As some of you know we have always had limits on the number of certain items that players can place as an anti grief / lag measure, but before the switch to the new hosting company we lifted some of those limits to see if players use the items sensibly. 

The problems which led to the switch-over made it difficult to assess whether the items were being used in a way which would cause problems so we decided to carry on with the trial on the new server, leaving only the following limits in place as they were on the old server:

Doors (all types), Trapdoors, Pistons (all types), Timer & Sequencer

However after two weeks and with the enhanced logging our new host provides it has become clear that the limits are necessary, over the past week we have had 2-3 crashes per day that would not have occurred had the limits still been in place.

We have therefore brought back the limits for:

Energy Collectors (all types), Antimatter Relays (all types), Condensers, Solar Panels & Arrays (All Types)

However the limits for some items have been doubled:

Antimatter Relay (Mk3):     Old Limit - 32, New Limit - 64
Energy Collector (Mk3):     Old Limit - 64, New Limit - 128
Condenser:                       Old Limit - 32, New Limit - 64
Solar Array (HV):               Old Limit - 64, New Limit - 128

Players who have already placed items in excess of these limits will be allowed to keep them as long as they are not causing issues, however they will not be able to place more of any given item until they remove enough to bring them back below the limit, for example if you have 128 placed and the limit is 64 you would need to remove 65 before you could place 1 and removing all 128 would allow you to place 64.

Probationary Helpers

We currently have three probationary helpers:

blad2003
yuolyuol
GethGerlan

In a few days we'll be deciding which of these should be made full Helpers and which should be demoted back to Member+ for now, so I'd ask that if anyone has feedback they'd like to give on any of these helpers, positive or negative they e-mail or message me on skype. We will also be taking other factors into account but your feedback matters!

Any Helper that is demoted will be able to have another go at becoming a full Helper in the future and shouldn't take it personally, we want to keep the number of helpers at any given time small and make sure that most of the community is happy with our choices!

Banned Items Revised

I have managed to get anti-dupe measures working for two banned items:

RM Furnace & Klein Star (all variants)

These items have now been removed from the banned item list, however they are restricted to Member+ rank or above as attempting to dupe with them could cause a lot of console and log spam.

Enjoy!

I've also re-added Dispensers to the banned item list, I thought they were fixed by a patch but seemingly not, we've had a few crashes in the past few days due to the old redstone + dispenser Tekkit bug :(

PVP Village Now Open!

Some of you wondered why I placed an npc village at spawn and put it in a glass box, well now you know...

I've modified the village and set PVP to allow, giving players a more open space to fight rather than just being restricted to the PVP Arena, and unlike the PVP Arena there are no rules, anything goes!

Enjoy!