[BLAZE_MkIV]

The arena force field is all wired up and charged so its just lacking some aesthetic touches. Word or warning, don't attack the forcefield.

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV 

Bad news, the hydra is dead. Good news, I recorded Andi's mighty battle were she slew the foul beast. Not sure how to share it ATM though.

I'm glad I updated my armor for the camera then.

youtube? dropbox?

[cycl0pse]

So I found another dark tower... and ....

Still no boss. More toys, but no boss. @#!$%!@$#%!@#

When do we want to let the Whither beat up on us? I have to get me some armor and such ...

[sek929]

I am taking Friday off so Thursday night would be good for me.

Any chance on getting Bibliocraft added in? Also, I've been watching Dire's new SMP videos and Tinker's Construct looks super cool.

[cycl0pse]

Well, both those look interesting, that's for sure. Do we know if Direwolf is going to add either/both in a future update?

Soapbox time:
I really don't mind the idea of adding mods to the server, but there are drawbacks. First, it becomes harder to maintain the server (not that it's a big deal, really, but there is a lot more down-time). Second it becomes harder to maintain clients. You'll have to maintain your patches client side at the same version as the server. So, sever update, client update. Finally, stability may take a hit. Some toys just don't play nice together.

All that said, I'd like a discussion from the regulars. You can bet your @$$ that if we start adding mods, I'm updating Twilight Forest to the latest release. But it does ramp up the complexity. Let's talk about it, shall we?

cycl0pse

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I am taking Friday off so Thursday night would be good for me.

I could do thursday night. Andi?

And we'll need a heavy if it goes bad. so, Blase, can you play bodyguard?

[BLAZE_MkIV]

I'm available. My ssp steam boiler should b e at full heat tonight. Boy does it take allot of charcoal to heat he big ones up.

[andi*pandi]

possibly tomorrow night, but late-ish, 10?

[sek929]

Originally Posted by cycl0pse 

Well, both those look interesting, that's for sure. Do we know if Direwolf is going to add either/both in a future update?

That would be ideal, but any future update is likely hinging on RedPower being updated for 1.5...which apparently it will never be.... No RedPower means our sorting system will be entirely broken, and losing red alloy wires and having to wire everything with redstone dust again sounds.....horrifying.

Tinker's Construct is more of a "hey that looks cool" but it involves new ores and whatnot so I doubt it would be worth the effort. I might just start a single player forge world to play around with it and get it out of my system. Any other mods being added is entirely up to our gracious admin. I have no idea what adding in individual mods consists of, and we aren't exactly playing constantly, so we can just stick with whatever update schedule the Direwolf pack is on.

Past the wither fight I'm going to play around with Applied Energistics, I know Blaze already has a system at his base, but I'd like to tinker on my own, possible in a new base in a far off land. Luckily I know an energy tesseract frequency with a giant over-abundance of power.

[cycl0pse]

I can handle 10ish. Can't promise a marathon-length session, but at least an hour or two.

Sek (and all): Give me a wish-list of modpacks you'd like to try out. I'm not against experimenting a bit and getting away from the Direwolf20 pack. We have a small enough player base that messing around a bit shouldn't be a huge deal.

[cycl0pse]

Question for those that browse the forums more than I:

So it looks like RedPower 2 is either a) defunct and not admitting it, b) about to become defunct and doesn't know it, or c) is not going to be 'fully baked' for 1.5 anytime soon... let's not even discuss 1.6. All of these options mean that Redpower as we know it is going to dramatically change. Odds are good that it will go extinct and other mods will replace, or it's possible it will 'evolve' into separate mods with separate functions. Is my assessment of this on-target?

Let's assume that it is. Is it time for us to look toward the future a bit? The vanilla server was much more frequently used, back in the day, and I suspect we all got somewhat bored with it while Mojang got their update on. Next, we had tekkit-land, and it was also fairly active because we all loved the new toys... until yet again stagnation set in and we wanted more toys. So now we have DW20 and it's a lot less frequented than either two before... and we're staring at either a major change due to Redpower OR a lot of stagnation... again, due to Redpower.

Let me throw a long-term idea out there. If Blaze is willing, and we can figure out the tech involved (shouldn't be hard, but I'm leaving it open to discussion at this point) what do people think about taking the original vanilla map and updating it with our own choice of MODS on the new server? Specifically, we'd want only 1.5 mods that are currently updating (so we don't get screwed when 1.6 comes around) and we'd want to be somewhat selective... to many mods makes things mighty unstable. (by example, I love the books from Mystcraft, but the world building is mighty unstable. Twilight Forest might be a resource hog, but it's updated regularly, stable, and fun.)

If we pursue this line of thought, we can keep the existing servers up and running until the new server is stable. That gives us time to test new mods and debate what we want to include until it's stable. At that point, I simply dump more resources into the new server and nerf the existing DW20 server... and eventually turn it off if we like the new one.

I open the floor for debate and thoughts from others. What say the hive-mind?

cycl0se

[sek929]

I would rather suffer the loss of a mod that is not going to be updated and move forward with what is being updated. As complicated as it seems, an Applied Energistics system alongside our barrel setup in indeed possible, and quite a bit more robust in many regards. As for the Vanilla world wouldn't we need to seek out new chunks in order to make use of the new stuff anyways? Is there any way to do a retro-worldgen? One massive plus, for me at least, of the DW20 pack is all the new biomes and from what I'm seeing on his youtube there are a hell of a lot more to come. While I do have an affinity for the old lands (even the world previous to our current vanilla land) it seems we'd have to start new areas to take advantage of the mods we'd want, which sort of defeats the purpose of revisiting the old gal.

[sek929]

Also, I cannot get the Filler to work on anything other than "clear" mode. Flatten, fill, walls, etc... simply don't work. The landmarks are placed first, then the filler, then the pattern, the light turns green, power is applied and it shuts of immediately. I have tried everything and I have no idea why it isn't working.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

There is a bug with flowers and other semi-solid stuff that's fixed in the 1.5 build of buildcraft.

At this point the only world I don't want to reset is the vanilla one. (I can't speak for Andi) The loss of redpower is gonna hurt though. All the "replacement" mods are still in their first release and made by modders who have other mods too so they'll end up in the same situation as Eloram, just with work spread across 6 mods instead of 1.

For vanilla the horses and quartz will require new chunk generation to collect but the world isn't so heavily explored that generating new chunks is hard. The world gen portion of tinkers construct (it is separate) however looks more universal like thaumcraft.

[cycl0pse]

Regarding world key generation:
I know the key for the DW20 world... have some fun... start a new DW20 SSP world and use this keygen:
The Princess Bride 42

It should look familiar. Obviously, adding new biomes and mods may change it somewhat, and the ores would generate differently, but otherwise it's pretty basic.

As for the 'old gal' and needing new chunks... with the Mystcraft books and portal technology, it no longer requires a km of rail line ... in the nether, no less... to connect distant lands. Imagine a book hub in the nether like we have in DW20 with books at the village, the dome, my distant lands, etc etc. We could explore to load new chunks and setup a new area out in the hinder-lands while still being able to go to Andi's cookie shop after work.

Sure, the map would get huge, but I've got plenty of server space that lag shouldn't be an issue.


All the above said, I'd still be OK with a fresh start... again. But, as a group, we seem to thrive on individual homesteads. If we did a reboot, I'd propose one giant building (and by giant, I mean most of a chunk... going down to nearly bedrock as needed and to sky to expand) to use as a group repository for the mass storage/sorting system (and power generator) with each of us staking claim to our own corner of the world. That way we can build to our heart's content and surprise each other with our creations but still have shared resources.

Both ideas have merit to me, that's for sure.

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV 

At this point the only world I don't want to reset is the vanilla one.

quick clarification... when you say reset the world, does that mean you don't like the idea of taking a copy to my server, leaving your copy up and running as-is, and applying mods to the copy on my server? Or does it simply mean you want to use a copy of that world for anything other than the vanilla server?

I'm OK with either, just wanted clarification.

cycl0pse

(edited for clarification... really got to proof read more)

[sek929]

I can only imagine, given what I've been reading, that the Ultimate FTB, DireWolf, and Mindcrack modpacks are going to be updated for 1.5 fairly soon without Redpower. I'm fine sticking with the Direwolf pack and riding it out a bit. At some point Redpower 3 will either be ready or any number of other mods will overlap to include most of its functionality. There may be some messes to clean up on our own server, but I see the central town being used less and less as we all develop our own extensive bases (I'm just starting my own, 21km from the village, and leaving out any Redpower-based items).

Of course I'm not opposed to anything really, starting over does have its merit, but letting the Direwolf pack take care of all the issues certainly seems easier then having Cyclopse troubleshoot slamming a bunch of mods together. It would be neat to add a few mods to the vanilla server (minmap, mystcraft, etc...) and play around there again, but since tekkit there are some things I simply cannot live without, and now with FTB I can't live without a whole new heap of stuff. Redpower is something that will sting, but I'll have other toys to keep me occupied.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Reset is delete and start again from scratch. Like when we started the current vanilla server.

[cycl0pse]

Well, killing wither's last night was entertaining. Anyone grab any screen shots, as I completely forgot.

I am going to eliminate the glow stones in the arena and raise the roof grid up so we can put spawners there. For some reason the idea of it raining zombies makes me chuckle.

I may also wire the floor lights so we can turn them on and off. Blaze, if I raised the floor, would the force field kill the blocks?

[andi*pandi]

it happened too fast for screenshots!

[BLAZE_MkIV]

I'd have to raise the force field. Otherwise the withers would destroy the floor. No the force field isn't set to destroy blocks. I can make it. And yes that is a horrible destructive griefing weapon.

Also PvP is enabled so withers aren't the only thing you can fight. Thunderdome! I don't think two players in power suits would be an interesting fight though.

[cycl0pse]

I was thinking of laying down a layer of dirt so if we have spawners in the rafters, when the forcefield comes on it doesn't just kill them all.

For a whither fight, the dirt can get destroyed for all I care.

Hmmm.... Thunderdome, eh? Might make an amusing youtube series...

[sek929]

So twice now a Lapotronic Charge pad has simply vanished when I placed it down. I ran a glass fibre cable under the floor and placed the pad directly on it. Wiki says it can handle MFSU output and I am only connecting it directly to a MV Array.

I'd try again, but making one requires so many damn resources.

[andi*pandi]

I made a thunderdome out of glass once, which is not very practical... unless there's a forcefield.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

The one in the village is connected to an MFSU. That was before the update. I'll cheat one in and test it. Maybe putting it down on a block and then add the wire.

It depends on what your fighting. Glass doesn't work so well with Creepers and Withers.

[andi*pandi]

Re new worlds etc:

I have not felt very invested in creating big things in this world, both due to time and just overwhelmingness. I love exploring the new biomes and finding out new things... but there's a sense that anything in the direwolf world is temporary, fleeting. I'd hate to put a whole lot of effort into something and then have the world be abandoned.

I am a slower builder than you all though. I would lose nothing in this world if redpower changed.

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

Re new worlds etc:

I have not felt very invested in creating big things in this world, both due to time and just overwhelmingness. I love exploring the new biomes and finding out new things... but there's a sense that anything in the direwolf world is temporary, fleeting. I'd hate to put a whole lot of effort into something and then have the world be abandoned.

(bold emphasis mine)

Your post really got me pondering, Andi. Specifically your comment about the temporary/fleeting feeling the world has. As much as I hate admitting it, the server does have more of an 'apartment' feel than a 'house' feel, and I think I know why. We basically added this mod because many of us got 'bored' with the tekkit mod. Tekkit is lots of fun, but it does have quite a bit of end-game items (most of EC2 was end-game, as is uu-matter) that make it perform more like creative mode than survival mode. Add in a nano-suit and you might as well be in creative mode. So we got bored, and tried Direwolf20.

And what did we learn? Well, DW20 added a ton of whiz-bang mods, neat-o toys, and a ton of complexity but it really didn't 'fix' the issue we had with Tekkit. It's not challenging in the same way the vanilla server is. As an example, Blaze built his dome in vanilla. It's a wonder of the known world and awe inspiring. In Tekkit, I built a sphere up in the sky... and with all the toys (EC2, flying ring, etc etc) it just didn't feel like a major accomplishment. In DW20, EVERYTHING I build has that 'ho-hum' feel to it... and I'm not sure what to do about it. The world is beautiful (love the biomes) and some mods have reached 'can't live without' status (Buildcraft, IC2, twilight forest, railcraft) but the rest?
It's too much, in a lot of ways. I'm more proud of my half-finished boat in vanilla than anything I've made in DW20.

So how do we bring back the fun 'hey look what I did' vibe and loose the 'fleeting' feeling?
I need to do more pondering.

[sek929]

I think either way boredum is going to set in. In Vanilla boredum set in with the limited blocks. Making grandiose structures requires a saintly amount of patience...which I do not have. I think the best sweet spot we've gotten to is the current server, IMO. We've automated the annoying bits without removing to much of the gathering process.

Since Tekkit I've been more interested in setting up awesome automated systems than trying to build anything awe-inspiring (who is going to top Blaze's Vanilla Dome anyways?). I think our shared sorting system is freaking awesome, and I love the look of the warehouse too. Applied Energistics is even better, able to network with all other mods (IC2, BC, etc) and automate just about anything you could imagine. At least in the FTB server we can't just snap our fingers and get unlimited resources. Everytime I want glass I have to make it, I had to mine glowstone manually the other day too. I think the lack of interest is mostly the busy lives of the server's denizens more so than anything wrong with the particular modpack we are playing in.

That said I am down for whatever, and at the very least I'd like the Direwolf map if the server were to be ever taken down, I plan on continuing to follow Direwolf and his crew and my secret base is continuing to take shape (just added a Thaumcraft area, and planning to make my own EU with excess fuel from the bees). If you decide to start a vanilla world and piecemeal mods, that's cool. If you just start a Vanilla world straight up, I'll be there. Minecraft comes in waves for me, but no other game has held my overall interest for this long, save for Halo 2.

[cycl0pse]

Let's be clear on one point. I have no intention of scrapping the current DW20 map and server at any point in time. I might decide to put up a second one for us to tinker with, but the server can handle two instances of minecraft. If at a later date we decide we'd like to do something else, I'll just drop resources on the DW20 server and kill the map... but it's not going anywhere.

[cycl0pse]

speaking of servers....
if anyone was trying to get on, a power outage bounced the server. it's back online now.
(note to self: get the UPS for the server soon)

[sek929]

Well the base is taking shape, and my AE Network is finally up to snuff (sorta) to handle some serious influx of items, so I set up a 64x64 Quarry last night and went to bed. There are one or two issues with my automated ore processing, but for now it works fine. Now for some pics...


The first Quarry I set up in the Mining Age. Thanks to no caves the mobs took full advantage of my artificial darkness. I went from 5-40 xp levels killing mobs here.


Main lobby of the base, largely unused besides the chunkloader.


Basic Machine setup and AE devices. Haven't quite figured out the auto-crafting yet, but I have a crap ton of storage space (8x16k Storage cells).


The inner works. ME devices are a snap to configure once you know what you need. Very space-saving as well.


Obligatory Thaumcraft area


The latest addition. I turned all the Distilled hives on and even with my new HP boiler I have a very small abundance of refined fuel. Railcraft Turbine provides EU, I siphon MJ from the village Boiler.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Watch out for the crystal clusters they are what caused the no-mobs problem earlier.

[cycl0pse]

question about that boiler... how many engines are you able to power with it? Or are you just feeding the turbine?

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Vanilla server is updated to 1.6.1. Redstone stuff may be broken. Let the search for horses begin.

[andi*pandi]

Whoohoo, now my weekend is planned! Oh wait, silly 4th of july vacation trip. :/

Tonight!

[sek929]

Originally Posted by cycl0pse 

question about that boiler... how many engines are you able to power with it? Or are you just feeding the turbine?

I didn't do any math for this setup, a total-winging-it sort of situation. The Turbine produces 200EU/t (100%) and whether or not I have any excess steam is beyond me. I use the MJ produced by the Village Boiler via tesseract because, let's face it, that power system is a million percent overkill.

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV 

Vanilla server is updated to 1.6.1. Redstone stuff may be broken. Let the search for horses begin.

Do we still have a map of the vanilla server out there?

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I didn't do any math for this setup, a total-winging-it sort of situation. The Turbine produces 200EU/t (100%) and whether or not I have any excess steam is beyond me. I use the MJ produced by the Village Boiler via tesseract because, let's face it, that power system is a million percent overkill.

Makes sense. I was wondering because my setup uses a slightly larger boiler, but was running a turbine @ 25% and a rock crusher to get all the crushed obsidian and obsidian dust for the rail line. Wasn't sure if I could down-scale or not.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

You were using the bad pipe, you need 3 of the liquiducts at both ends I think. Not in the middle though.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

So after a nice 7000m journey I found a plains biome with 20 or more horses. Only 1 donkey though. Now to see about cutting a tunnel through the nether to get them back to known terrain.

[cycl0pse]

Server Maintenance Notice!

To whom it may concern,
Well, looks like the server's going to be down for maintenance sometime this week or weekend. When I purchased the box, it came with two hard drives. One of them is starting to throw reliability errors. Rather than wait for inevitable fail, I'm going to bring the box down and swap both drives out for new ones. Unfortunately, I can't do this without bringing the whole thing down.

So while I get the supplies ready, consider this your advanced notice. In the meantime, don't be shy about logging in and playing. I'll post here once it's down for surgery and post again when it's back online. In a perfect world, I'll do it mid-week. In a not-so-perfect world, this weekend.

Need an opinion (paging Blaze and all other techies): 6 drive RAID 5, or maintain the existing two RAID setup (Mirrored OS and RAID 5 data)? The two RAID setup keeps the data bus separate (sorta) but the 6 Drive RAID 5 would maximize storage space. Throw into the mix that I'm going to split the web server to a separate box here in the near future.

cycl0pse

[P]

Not knowing anything about your setup, I would say RAID 5 all the way. It's very hard to saturate a SATA bus with only spinning disks.

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by P 

Not knowing anything about your setup, I would say RAID 5 all the way. It's very hard to saturate a SATA bus with only spinning disks.

Just for clarification, the current setup is:
two 146 15K SAS drives mirrored (primary OS drive)
four 320 7.5K SATA drives in a RAID5 array (data)

The options are to either simply swap the two 146GB drives for 320B drives (mirrored) and keep the four drive RAID5 as-is, or to dump the whole thing and setup a six drive RAID5.

Total drive space now is 146+ 960 = 1106GB

Option A gives 320 + 960 = 1280GB
Option B is 1600GB

This does run more than the Minecraft server, but right now the dynamic mapping in Minecraft is the biggest resource hog.

cycl0pse

[P]

If that is your setup, why will the system be down? You should be able to just replace the troublesome drive with a working one and rebuild that RAID 1.

[cycl0pse]

Cost. I don't have any spare 146GB SAS drives, but I have a plethora of 320GB SATA drives. Really don't want to drop $120 per drive on the 146SAS replacements when I have quite a few 320s on hand. I suppose I could just pull the 146 and replace it with a 320, but I don't think the PERC 5 controller can rebuild the SAS/SATA mismatch.

[P]

Assuming it boots fine from the RAID 5 and you have space enough to backup and rebuild the whole thing, just drop all of it in one RAID 5.

[sek929]

Soooo.... long story.

Whilst decorating my base one late night I stupidly grew two Silverwood trees which I intended to serve only as decoration. Slowly I realized that I had just overwritten the Aura my base had naturally from a nearby node (about 400) and now my base was more or less split in half by two tiny nodes (80 and 90). So with a heavy heart I signed off to deal with it later.

First step was to build up one of the tiny nodes into a large enough pure node to gobble up the nearby smaller node. I wasn't really clear on the process of merging two nodes and ended up with one pure node at 250 and the other back at 80. I scoured far away lands for silverwood saplings for the revised first step, planting new saplings spaced apart to force the nodes together and merge them. After a while I retuned to the image above, my base was literally infested with Wisps, it took me about a half hour to kill more of the close ones.

Then I figured while going through this that I might as well try out the node-moving Crystal Core, which requires another Nether Star. I killed Wither Skellys for about 2 hours and only got one, which was disheartening, so I decided to simply grow a few more saplings and move the node that way. On my travels I came across my third(!) portal gun and was able to uncraft it for the Nether Star.


FInally got the main pure node close enough for it to gobble up the tiny 80vis mistake node.


Crystal Core activated and dragging my node to its new resting place.

[cycl0pse]

i like the trees. Gives the island some character. No idea about the nodes and such... haven't really gotten into Thaumcraft much.

[andi*pandi]

It looks nifty is all I can say.

updated vanilla to the new launcher... which promptly updated me to 1.6.2 instead of 1.6.1. doh!

[BLAZE_MkIV]

I'll be home tommarrow to update the server. The server is updated. The new launcher should let you pick your version.