Month: September 2018

Fixing Lag Every Day

Fixing Lag Every Day

Every day we are trying new things to fight the lag and support the size of this community. The amount of people wanting to play is way larger than we ever anticipated, and the inefficiency of 1.13’s code is way worse than we thought.

Every day we are making changes to test solutions and learn more about what’s causing the lag. For example, today I have temporarily disabled natural hostile mob spawning to see how they effect server performance. It appears the server is at 78% load now instead of 92%.

I recommend everyone keep a close eye on the #changelog on Discord (https://alttd.com/discord) to you know what’s changed. I won’t be making announcements for everything.

Replacing Residence with GriefPrevention

Replacing Residence with GriefPrevention

Due to the amount of issues we are having with Residence, we are reverting back to GriefPrevention for land claiming. Residence will remain on the server for a short period of time so that everyone can delete their Residence claims and re-protect their land with GriefPrevention instead.

We’ve changed some settings in GriefPrevention so that players do _not_ earn claim blocks over time by playing. Instead, you must buy claim blocks with /buyclaimblocks. This way, you can buy as many or as little as you need – and are not limited in how much area you can claim.

Please, @everyone, delete your Residence claims and replace them with GriefPrevention when you can. I’d like to delete Residence from the server as soon as possible.

Unexpected 1.13.1 Lag

Unexpected 1.13.1 Lag

There is a lot of unexpected lag on the 1.13.1 server. At this time we are not sure why the server is struggling to run on 1.13.1 when it was running just fine on 1.12.2. It will likely take some time for us to fix. We first need to watch the server’s performance during normal operation carefully, taking reports of RAM utilization, CPU usage, and network bandwidth. At this time I am attempting to figure out how many players the server can handle so that I can set a safe player limit.

Note: until we figure out the source of this lag, we are disabling donor’s ability to join when the server is full. This must be done to prevent the entire server from grinding to a halt and freezing up.

1.13.1 is Finally Here!

1.13.1 is Finally Here!

The time has finally come: our OFFICIAL 1.13.1 server is public! It’s been a tough wait, but we’ve finally made it, and we hit some major milestones along the way.

Over the past couple of months our community has grown tremendously. We have over 1,300 transfer plots claimed, and we pushed the limit of how many players the server can handle! Last month was also an incredible month for donations, and thank to all of your contributions we’ve been able to upgrade our hardware and commission some awesome new plugins.

You can use the same IP as before (play.alttd.com) to connect to the server. Remember: you’ll need a 1.13.1 client to do so! Once you log in, you’ll have a tough decision to make: do you search for a place to live or all the hidden treasure for the 1.13.1 event? The 1.13.1 event ends in two weeks from today, good luck!

Final 1.12.2 Goodbye!

Final 1.12.2 Goodbye!

Thank you all for the great adventures and memories on 1.12.2! We are finally saying goodbye to that old world and moving on to new adventures and new experiences with 1.13.1. Thank you to everyone who came along on the journey! Here’s a final group photo to remember the times.

We peaked at 85 people online during this photo!

24 Hour Notice & The 1.13 Team

24 Hour Notice & The 1.13 Team

The 1.13.1 upgrade is only 24 hours away, so make sure you have all the stuff you want to keep in your transfer plot! In roughly 22 hours I will be closing the current server so that I can install the new one! Also, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has helped with this update. It would not have been possible without the help over the entire staffing team and the community here on Altitude. It would be impossible for me to recognize everyone who has contributed in some way, but here is a lightning round:

Huge thanks to destro174 and Trigary for writing several custom plugins for us and updating many others to 1.13. Thank you to Teriuihi, Doomzerker, mingming419, Sophie37, and MrShack for the hours you all have put into writing configurations for the server, and thank you to chrispinata, AprilMinty, Crythrivor, and Sharidan for allowing us to pick your brains about your thoughts on the configurations.

Thank you to ClayGoddessSari, ScarletCat09, smhanleyx, ThatCatGirl, Jereth_Khan, Lucian_Wolfe, and others already listed for all of your help testing the 1.13.1 server and setting up the 1.13 event.

Thank you to GrownUpDisney, TimyTimyTim, and many other names already listed for all of your help with building our new spawn.

Also, thank you to everyone who have reported many, many bugs that we’ve fixed so that everyone can have a great 1.13 experience.

I am so excited to finally be releasing 1.13 and I hope all of you enjoy the new server as much as I’ve enjoyed working with all of these wonderful people to put it together. I’ll see you all in 24 hours.

Planning for Thursday Release

Planning for Thursday Release

Good morning! After a long, long wait, and many hurtles to overcome, I believe we are finally near ready to release the 1.13.1 server! There are a few things that aren’t ready yet (like creative and MyPet!), and I am sure that once the server goes public there will be lots of new bugs to fix, but we are at a point where the server seems overall pretty stable, and our small beta-testing team is struggling to find any more bugs themselves.

The plan is to release the server around 4PM EDT on Thursday, September 27th. In order to do some final configurations (like copying the transfer world over and setting up automatic reboots), I will be shutting down the main server a few hours early – around 2PM EDT (on Thursday, Sept 27th).

Make sure you have all the stuff you want to keep in your transfer plot before 2PM EDT on Thursday! Once the main server is closed, you will NOT have another chance to put stuff in your plot!

Update: There is a count at https://alttd.com

1.13.1 Server Plugins Almost Done!

1.13.1 Server Plugins Almost Done!

Hey everyone! Over the past couple weeks we’ve been finalizing everything for the new 1.13.1 server. As many of you know, the new player warp plugin is finished (we are making some last-minute minor tweaks), and now the same developer has finished our new playtime-ranking plugin! We are aware of the issues with the current AutoRank plugin, and are very excited to have our own in-house plugin starting with 1.13.1. The new command to check playtime will be **/playtime [name]**, and the leaderboard can now show multiple pages so you can find where you rank on the leaderboard.

We’ve also switched to a Residence for land claiming in 1.13.1 We’ve decided to make this changed because our current plugin, GriefPrevention, is not able to do what we need it to what we need it to anymore, and Residence is a very well-written and well-respected claiming plugin. We are still working in the tutorial for this new plugin.

We have one final plugin to write: an automated script that converts your old claimblocks into money on the server (since Residence uses in-game currency instead). Once this is finished, we expect the server to be ready. I am aiming for a release next week, but this depends on everything going smoothly! I can not wait to finally release our 1.13.1 server – we’ve had a lot of help from a lot of people and I’m excited to show the final result to all of you!

Chest Glitch Update: Affects all chests on borders!

Chest Glitch Update: Affects all chests on borders!

We’ve just been informed that the “chests on chunk borders losing items” bug effects chests that are TOUCHING borders too. We initially thought that the bug only effected double chests that were _crossing_ borders, but this was not correct. The bug could cause any chest, shulker, or other storage block to lose some of it’s contents during 1.13 conversion if it is _touching_ a chunk border.

Staff are already going through the plots and fixing any that are affected by this bug, so if you notice a chest moved on your plot – do not move it back! If you place any additional chests on your plot, please be sure it is not touching a chunk border. Otherwise, no action is needed by you.

Thank you.

Sneak Peak: New 1.13.1 Server Map

Sneak Peak: New 1.13.1 Server Map

Here is a sneak peak of the map for the new 1.13.1 server! The dynmap just finished rendering a few minutes ago. The black areas you see are places that nobody has been to yet. Every month, when the world expands, the new areas will start out black and slowly fill in as players explore them.