Hey guys,
MCFun Central has gone through a lot of changes tonight.
Tonight, we switched our plugin API from Bukkit to Spigot. The reason for switching was that back in September, Bukkit, Spigot, and Cauldron went down due to money riots and stuff like that. Eventually, Spigot and Cauldron went back up, but Bukkit never did. This means that no new plugins and updates were released since September because none of the staff was on to check the plugins for bugs.
The other reason was that, since MCFun Central was a little unstable and big, if we wanted to change even the slightest thing with a plugin and that plugin didn't offer the option to reload its config separately, we would have to do a manual restart of the server, which took about 1 minute. It was very inconvenient. Since Spigot is designed to help reduce lag and server performance, I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of these features and put them onto MCFun Central. And some more good news was that since Spigot is basically just an improved Bukkit, most plugins transfer right over from Bukkit to Spigot!
However, upon switching to Spigot, I immediately noticed some problems. The first problem was that our NPC plugin, Citizens, was broken. After doing some research, I found out that since Spigot supports both 1.7 and 1.8 (I'll get to that later), and the latest version of Citizens was not supported with 1.8, it didn't know what to do and broke. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it. We will just have to hope for some kind of update to Citizens or an alternative to come as a direct Spigot resource. Sorry about this. Temporarily, we will use heads to visualize our staff members at /warp staff, and if you previously had an NPC on your server, you will have to use /head as a replacement for your NPC.
The other problem that I ran into was that HoloAPI, our newly-installed hologram management plugins, was not working in a very weird way. When you typed /plugins, nothing seemed wrong. The plugin was shown in green. However, all of the existing holograms on the server were gone. When I tried to recreate them, the commands worked, up until the creation of the hologram. It would just do nothing.
I was getting some strange errors related to the plugin in my console, event though none appeared in-game, so I tried the Spigot forums. Conveniently, I got multiple replies within 2 minutes of my question. What I found out was that HoloAPI had not yet been updated to support 1.8, just like Citizens, but instead of literally breaking, it kind of broke itself in a weird way that took some time to notice.
Fortunately, I also found out from the Spigot forums that there was an alternative to HoloAPI called HolographicDisplays. I installed it and found out that I actually kind of like it more than HoloAPI.
Long story short, we now have Holograms again, and a new hologram plugin.
Now, on to the KitPvP updates. What happened with KitPvP? If you go on the red map and look really closely, you'll notice how obvious it is: fall damage is now disabled in KitPvP. That means that instead of falling into a pool of water, you can just jump down from the spawn and not take fall damage. However, you still take damage from anything else.
At first, I set it so that instead of water, there was a certain area that you could fall in and not take fall damage. But then I realized that there was no harm in disabling fall damage for the whole KitPvP red map, so that's what I did. You'll notice that if you go on top of a tree or something and jump off, you will not take fall damage. I will post a tutorial on how I did this this weekend on my channel, TechieGaming, as well as a full review of Spigot and a comparison of Spigot vs. Bukkit.
Since MCFun Central is a big server, I probably didn't catch some bugs with Spigot that exist. If you find ANY abnormalities when playing on the server that you didn't experience before today, please report them immediately to us. You can report to us directly on Twitter @MCFunCentral, post a comment on this blog, or email us at mcfuncentral@gmail.com.
That was a long post. We hope you enjoy these changes!
UPDATE 11/20/14: I have been made aware of a few bugs involving 1.8:
1) The info book in /kit starter shows *Invalid Book Tag* but shows the book like normal on 1.7.9/1.7.10
2) Holograms don't show in 1.8, but if you look closely enough, you can see the holograms 100 blocks up inside some invincible horses (that's actually true)
Let us know if you find any more bugs!
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Holograms, 1.8 News, and New Staff Board!
Hey guys,
A lot of things have happened on MCFun Central since my last post, which was pretty recent. However, they do not need a lot of explaining, so this is going to be a fairly short blog post.
First off, we now have holograms in the spawn! It's not a big change, but it's still pretty noticeable.
If you paid close attention to the spawn before Sunday night, you probably noticed that there were signs on the ground indicating the minigames. These holograms replace those signs, and they look a lot cooler!
On to the second news: a new /warp staff! Our newly promoted admin, Allison (yoshisrawesome) pointed out that we needed a new warp staff. The current one at the time was much like the old spawn (which you can see by typing /warp oldspawn): just a quartz box. Since we made the new spawn back in March with the intention of making it intriguing and not just a lame quartz box, we decided to do the same with the new /warp staff. Check it out:
All of this was Allison's idea, including the design for the build. She built literally everything you see here (except the dome, that was done by WorldEdit and me (we make a good team)). We don't plan on changing this anytime soon.
There's one last thing that has been brought to my attention that I wanted to talk about: MCFun Central and 1.8.
As you may notice, MCFun Central still runs the 1.7.9/1.7.10 Bukkit jar. If you know your APIs, you'll know why MCFun Central isn't on 1.8 at the mention of "Bukkit." In case you don't know, let me talk a little about it.
If you've been playing Minecraft recently, you probably know about the sort-of riots at Bukkit (and Spigot, since Spigot is a variation of Bukkit). The developers at Bukkit and Spigot were working for free and thought it was a volunteer job, and they found out a few weeks ago that actually Mojang was paying some developers to make plugins, so really, money was flying. This resulted in almost everyone quitting plugin development at Bukkit and Spigot and therefore, nobody was there to update and test the API for 1.8. Since MCFun Central is entirely dependent on Bukkit, I don't want to risk breaking or losing all of our plugins by switching to another API. Therefore, MCFun Central is stuck on 1.7.9/1.7.10 until either Bukkit developers start developing again, or once the new Sponge API comes out. The reason I am waiting for the Sponge API to come out is because they mentioned in their forums that the API will be able to run previous Bukkit plugins, so the plugins we already have won't break. By the looks of the homepage and the forums, it looks like the Sponge API will be released in the near future. That being said, it shouldn't be too long before MCFun Central is updated to 1.8 with a new API!
A lot of things have happened. Come and check them out now!
A lot of things have happened on MCFun Central since my last post, which was pretty recent. However, they do not need a lot of explaining, so this is going to be a fairly short blog post.
First off, we now have holograms in the spawn! It's not a big change, but it's still pretty noticeable.
If you paid close attention to the spawn before Sunday night, you probably noticed that there were signs on the ground indicating the minigames. These holograms replace those signs, and they look a lot cooler!
On to the second news: a new /warp staff! Our newly promoted admin, Allison (yoshisrawesome) pointed out that we needed a new warp staff. The current one at the time was much like the old spawn (which you can see by typing /warp oldspawn): just a quartz box. Since we made the new spawn back in March with the intention of making it intriguing and not just a lame quartz box, we decided to do the same with the new /warp staff. Check it out:
All of this was Allison's idea, including the design for the build. She built literally everything you see here (except the dome, that was done by WorldEdit and me (we make a good team)). We don't plan on changing this anytime soon.
There's one last thing that has been brought to my attention that I wanted to talk about: MCFun Central and 1.8.
As you may notice, MCFun Central still runs the 1.7.9/1.7.10 Bukkit jar. If you know your APIs, you'll know why MCFun Central isn't on 1.8 at the mention of "Bukkit." In case you don't know, let me talk a little about it.
If you've been playing Minecraft recently, you probably know about the sort-of riots at Bukkit (and Spigot, since Spigot is a variation of Bukkit). The developers at Bukkit and Spigot were working for free and thought it was a volunteer job, and they found out a few weeks ago that actually Mojang was paying some developers to make plugins, so really, money was flying. This resulted in almost everyone quitting plugin development at Bukkit and Spigot and therefore, nobody was there to update and test the API for 1.8. Since MCFun Central is entirely dependent on Bukkit, I don't want to risk breaking or losing all of our plugins by switching to another API. Therefore, MCFun Central is stuck on 1.7.9/1.7.10 until either Bukkit developers start developing again, or once the new Sponge API comes out. The reason I am waiting for the Sponge API to come out is because they mentioned in their forums that the API will be able to run previous Bukkit plugins, so the plugins we already have won't break. By the looks of the homepage and the forums, it looks like the Sponge API will be released in the near future. That being said, it shouldn't be too long before MCFun Central is updated to 1.8 with a new API!
A lot of things have happened. Come and check them out now!
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Minigame Update + Halloween + MCFun Building Plaza Update
Hey Guys,
It's Matt, the owner of MCFun Central.
Many things have happened since October 12th.
First off, Happy November! I swear 2013 was just a few months ago. I can't believe how much has changed!
Let's start with the minigame update. If you go on MCFun Central right now and walk to some of the minigame portals, you might see some signs that say that the minigame is going to be removed soon. Those minigames are currently Redstone Rebelling, Jailbreak, and Build It! The reason for these removals is because either the minigames have no way of working, or are just a bad idea. Let's take Jailbreak for example. In case you don't know, Jailbreak is basically a game where you are in a prison and you have to avoid all the various monsters and find the escape door. That sounds pretty fun, right? Well it is... the first time you play it. I build Jailbreak with a little bit of redstone and a minigame plugin, so that means the position of the door never changes, so once you know where the door is, the whole game just becomes a race to get to the door and avoid the monsters, since you know where the door is. It's not fun. The only good thing about Jailbreak is how well the prison was built. It was built in December by Xander, Xenlow, Calvin, and probably some other people that I forgot (I didn't make a credit list in the castle, sorry). I might keep the world somewhere in my local filesystem because of how well the castle was built, but other than that, there's no reason to keep Jailbreak in MCFun Central, because it is simply a bad game.
Let's move on to Build It! Built It! was added to MCFun Central because we thought that since people loved the game Build It!, if we added it to the server, more people would enjoy the server because it has at least one super-popular game. Unfortunately, the plugin that we have for Built It! isn't very good for these reasons: every time the server restarted or reloaded something, the plugin would also reset most of itself. That means that it would keep all the words that I had stored in it, but it would remove all of the maps. That means I would have to go to the arena and manually recreate it. Since MCFun Central restarted a lot back then as it was in beta and we were implementing new things, that wasn't very helpful. Eventually I just gave up, and now the admin commands for the new update on the plugin is very confusing and I don't have time to learn it, and neither do I want to put in some time to learn it. Creating maps used to be very simple (after you built it). All you had to do was stand on one corner, type /bmt pos1, stand in another corner, type /bmt pos2, and then /bmt create <arena name>. Now the plugin owner has removed those commands, and I don't want to spend a bunch of time on a plugin that breaks every time I restart the server. Today, restarting isn't a problem for MCFun Central, but we still have to do it sometimes.
Now, let's talk about Redstone Rebelling. Redstone Rebelling has always kind of been a favored game of mine. It was a great concept. It would be set in a big castle, but in the small corridors of the castle. Each new door that you pass would signal a new level. To open each door, you would have to go through a series of puzzles that are very risky and that require a lot of thinking. If you die just once, you're out of the game. In the first level, you had to guess which lever to flick so that the door would open. In the second level, there were some opening and closing doors, and you had to walk through the right one. In the third level, there are password hints on the walls, and you have to find out what the password is (it's really complicated, but it doesn't make sense anymore). Then, in the last level, a random player would be teleported to a control room. You had to go through a series of puzzles to open various doors for the other player(s). You can either lead them into the right door (which you don't know either) or you can lead them into a trap. The first person to go through the right door and reach the end of the level wins $500, and the person in the control room wins $250 for opening the right door. So what's the problem with Redstone Rebelling? There are a couple of major problems. The first one was the same problem that we ran into with Jailbreak. It was a great game at first, but after you knew the door and the puzzles and the patterns in the control room, it just became a pointless race to see who would finish the game first, which made it really bad. The second problem made the game unplayable. Redstone Rebelling was built with redstone, but it also was built on the Minigames plugin, which doesn't allow people to teleport. This means that nobody would be able to teleport into the control room to open the doors for everyone else. Also, even if it had worked, the random teleportation was off of a pressure plate, so if nobody stuck together, more people would be teleported to the control room. I know there's some way to get around that with 1.7 commands, but Bukkit didn't allow 1.7 commands until the release build, which didn't come until around June, and by that time, I was already trying to make it playable. Unfortunately, that's not possible. The code inside of the Minigames plugin does not allow for a change in permissions while playing a game. So that means it's not in the config, meaning that nobody can ever teleport in-game while using the Minigames plugin. Removing the game as a minigame from the minigames plugin would result in complicated redstone that would be unnecessary and too much hard work for a game that isn't fun after the first or second time you play it.
This was a long post so far, but there's more!
Whether you went trick-or-treating last night or not, Halloween was last night! Unfortunately, where I live, the weather decided to become really mean. Snow and ice was blowing in everyone's faces and I couldn't show off my amazing Doppler Effect costume because I had to bundle up with a winter jacket. I hated that. But I'm sure all your Halloweens' were amazing, whether you decided to go trick-or-treating, or whether you decided to stay at home and do nothing. If you've been on MCFun Central lately, you've probably noticed that it was decorated for Halloween! This was great, but the decorations are going to be taken down tomorrow, so come on MCFun Central now to see the decorations for the last time!
I also have some news on MCFun Building Plaza. After the unnecessary reset, Orion decided to whitelist the server to bring it back up to where it was. That means make a new spawn and remake some of the houses. It will be off of whitelist soon, but for now, the server is whitelisted.
Ok, I'm getting bored of typing, and you're probably getting bored of reading, so I'm going to stop here. k bye
It's Matt, the owner of MCFun Central.
Many things have happened since October 12th.
First off, Happy November! I swear 2013 was just a few months ago. I can't believe how much has changed!
Let's start with the minigame update. If you go on MCFun Central right now and walk to some of the minigame portals, you might see some signs that say that the minigame is going to be removed soon. Those minigames are currently Redstone Rebelling, Jailbreak, and Build It! The reason for these removals is because either the minigames have no way of working, or are just a bad idea. Let's take Jailbreak for example. In case you don't know, Jailbreak is basically a game where you are in a prison and you have to avoid all the various monsters and find the escape door. That sounds pretty fun, right? Well it is... the first time you play it. I build Jailbreak with a little bit of redstone and a minigame plugin, so that means the position of the door never changes, so once you know where the door is, the whole game just becomes a race to get to the door and avoid the monsters, since you know where the door is. It's not fun. The only good thing about Jailbreak is how well the prison was built. It was built in December by Xander, Xenlow, Calvin, and probably some other people that I forgot (I didn't make a credit list in the castle, sorry). I might keep the world somewhere in my local filesystem because of how well the castle was built, but other than that, there's no reason to keep Jailbreak in MCFun Central, because it is simply a bad game.
Let's move on to Build It! Built It! was added to MCFun Central because we thought that since people loved the game Build It!, if we added it to the server, more people would enjoy the server because it has at least one super-popular game. Unfortunately, the plugin that we have for Built It! isn't very good for these reasons: every time the server restarted or reloaded something, the plugin would also reset most of itself. That means that it would keep all the words that I had stored in it, but it would remove all of the maps. That means I would have to go to the arena and manually recreate it. Since MCFun Central restarted a lot back then as it was in beta and we were implementing new things, that wasn't very helpful. Eventually I just gave up, and now the admin commands for the new update on the plugin is very confusing and I don't have time to learn it, and neither do I want to put in some time to learn it. Creating maps used to be very simple (after you built it). All you had to do was stand on one corner, type /bmt pos1, stand in another corner, type /bmt pos2, and then /bmt create <arena name>. Now the plugin owner has removed those commands, and I don't want to spend a bunch of time on a plugin that breaks every time I restart the server. Today, restarting isn't a problem for MCFun Central, but we still have to do it sometimes.
Now, let's talk about Redstone Rebelling. Redstone Rebelling has always kind of been a favored game of mine. It was a great concept. It would be set in a big castle, but in the small corridors of the castle. Each new door that you pass would signal a new level. To open each door, you would have to go through a series of puzzles that are very risky and that require a lot of thinking. If you die just once, you're out of the game. In the first level, you had to guess which lever to flick so that the door would open. In the second level, there were some opening and closing doors, and you had to walk through the right one. In the third level, there are password hints on the walls, and you have to find out what the password is (it's really complicated, but it doesn't make sense anymore). Then, in the last level, a random player would be teleported to a control room. You had to go through a series of puzzles to open various doors for the other player(s). You can either lead them into the right door (which you don't know either) or you can lead them into a trap. The first person to go through the right door and reach the end of the level wins $500, and the person in the control room wins $250 for opening the right door. So what's the problem with Redstone Rebelling? There are a couple of major problems. The first one was the same problem that we ran into with Jailbreak. It was a great game at first, but after you knew the door and the puzzles and the patterns in the control room, it just became a pointless race to see who would finish the game first, which made it really bad. The second problem made the game unplayable. Redstone Rebelling was built with redstone, but it also was built on the Minigames plugin, which doesn't allow people to teleport. This means that nobody would be able to teleport into the control room to open the doors for everyone else. Also, even if it had worked, the random teleportation was off of a pressure plate, so if nobody stuck together, more people would be teleported to the control room. I know there's some way to get around that with 1.7 commands, but Bukkit didn't allow 1.7 commands until the release build, which didn't come until around June, and by that time, I was already trying to make it playable. Unfortunately, that's not possible. The code inside of the Minigames plugin does not allow for a change in permissions while playing a game. So that means it's not in the config, meaning that nobody can ever teleport in-game while using the Minigames plugin. Removing the game as a minigame from the minigames plugin would result in complicated redstone that would be unnecessary and too much hard work for a game that isn't fun after the first or second time you play it.
This was a long post so far, but there's more!
Whether you went trick-or-treating last night or not, Halloween was last night! Unfortunately, where I live, the weather decided to become really mean. Snow and ice was blowing in everyone's faces and I couldn't show off my amazing Doppler Effect costume because I had to bundle up with a winter jacket. I hated that. But I'm sure all your Halloweens' were amazing, whether you decided to go trick-or-treating, or whether you decided to stay at home and do nothing. If you've been on MCFun Central lately, you've probably noticed that it was decorated for Halloween! This was great, but the decorations are going to be taken down tomorrow, so come on MCFun Central now to see the decorations for the last time!
I also have some news on MCFun Building Plaza. After the unnecessary reset, Orion decided to whitelist the server to bring it back up to where it was. That means make a new spawn and remake some of the houses. It will be off of whitelist soon, but for now, the server is whitelisted.
Ok, I'm getting bored of typing, and you're probably getting bored of reading, so I'm going to stop here. k bye
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