[sek929]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Yep. iOmega? Purply?

Nope, it was a LaCie.



Either it was flaky, or my iMac's USB ports were flaky because it didn't like to be recognized half the time. Also, since it was running MacOS 9, the entire machine would lock up while it was burning, ahhhh the days of no true multitasking.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

It was SCSI, JVC brand and disks were $15 bucks a piece I believe. I can't believe I remember that.

[sek929]

Oh another thought:

We should try and be somewhat close to an NPC village. Trading with the various kinds of testificates could be very helpful for getting rare items, like emeralds.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

On hard zombies can break wooden doors.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by cycl0pse 

Finally, please let me know if the server is less glitchy since I did the Java change. It's using a lot less resources now, so it should be better, but I'd like some feedback before we go too far. If for whatever reason this server box doesn't have the horsepower (entirely possible, but I am optimistic) I have a backup plan (but will need a week or so to implement).

Mining is greatly improved from last night, it can now keep up with a Diamond pick in smooth stone. I still get and odd split second delay when taking falling damage, but fighting mobs is fairly smooth too.

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV

On hard zombies can break wooden doors.

I'm OK with that, but only after we have a 'safe house' setup. Or, preferably, a 'safe town'. I'd also ramp it up slowly... go from easy, to normal, to hard over a few days/week/whatever. I just know how good we all are and don't want it to be a cake-walk. easy=boring.

Originally Posted by sek929

Mining is greatly improved from last night, it can now keep up with a Diamond pick in smooth stone. I still get and odd split second delay when taking falling damage, but fighting mobs is fairly smooth too.

that sounds promising. Sadly, I won't get to the house until after 10 this evening (EST) but feel free to test as much as you want. Also, e-mail received. I'll store it until we have the real map in place.

Blaze, since you have op capabilities, feel free op anyone for testing. No sense getting irritated in a world that will go away in a few days. Better to test the box as much as possible.

[sek929]

I'm going to be fairly busy until Saturday evening anyways. But I'll make some time to check in tomorrow night for a few.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

The vanilla server is at 1.5.1 now. I have done much beyond logging in.

Also added jawbone to the FTB whitelist

[cycl0pse]

OK, quick update.
1- new map. I like it so far. 'nuff said
2- goodies left near spawn. have fun
3- any player files sent to me are loaded.
4- feedback welcome. let me know if lag is an issue.

[cycl0pse]

Blaze and Sek, player files have been placed on the new map.

[The Final Dakar]

Beetle Juice - A Minecraft Roller Coaster - YouTube

[andi*pandi]

See, that's planning. Wow!

[cycl0pse]

dear lord
even if they did some cut edits (and quite frankly I'm not going to look hard enough to find out) that is an impressive video!

[cycl0pse]

Alrighty then, last server update from me for a while. The short version: it's as good as I can make it and is open for business.

After a rather sleepless night (lord I hate being sick... but hate it when the family is sick at the same time even more) gave me plenty of time to read up on running an efficient server and research the limits of my hardware rig. First, two quick points about FTB (aka DireWolf20) servers:
1- they eat CPU, but are rather forgiving on memory and HD space
2- all the mods wreck havoc on Java and benefit from tweaking

On the outside, point 1 is not happy news. The server is only using two single core 2ghz processors, 4 gig memory, and a RAID array. Then I did some research and found that folks were using similar to support 20+ simultaneous connections without issue, so I decided to look further. After much geek research (I'll spare you all the boring details, but lets just say some forums are nice, others ... not so much) I stumbled upon folks much more knowledgeable than I when it comes to Java. Several command line switches implemented, and suddenly processor time is down from 40% at idle to ... about 3%.

For anyone curious you can see the command line here:

 

java -server -Xmx2176M -XXermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseNUMA -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=50 -XX:+UseAdaptiveGCBoundary -XX:-UseGCOverheadLimit -XX:+UseBiasedLocking -XX:SurvivorRatio=8 -XX:TargetSurvivorRatio=90 -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=15 -XX:UseSSE=3 -XX:+UseLargePages -XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods -XX:+UseStringCache -XX:+UseCompressedStrings -XX:+UseCompressedOops -XX:+OptimizeStringConcat -XX:+AggressiveOpts -jar [server .jar file location]

Unfortunately that wasn't the cure to all the problems. It turns out there is some issues with the Chickenchunks MOD that causes a memory leak when unpopulated worlds unload. Since FTB uses MODs that create lots of worlds, such as Mystcraft, I'll have to watch the server carefully for potential crashes once we get going. They should have the issue resolved in the next FTB update.

So what does all this mean? Well, short of network lag or unexpected difficulties, the server is open for business. Feel free to head on in, look around, and build a hut in the convenient village near spawn (lucked out there) until we can map out a cool opening city. I placed some goodie chests at spawn and threw a cobble wall around the village so it should be fairly safe for starting out. I'll update the goodie chests if I see a need, but I really want to see how far we go working as a team. Other things of note:

Server Seed: "The Princess Bride 42"
Difficulty: currently easy
modpack: DireWolf20 v 5.2.0

cycl0pse

[andi*pandi]

do we have to tweak our java as well, or just you on the server side?

[cycl0pse]

server side only. client side does things differently, so if it works good in Single Player, you're good to go.

[andi*pandi]

Might have some time late tonight to check it out.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Oh as an FYI last time I checked spawn protect prevented non OPs from opening chests. That's why there are two food chests outside the spawn castle on the vanilla server. (the first being a joke)

An idea for mystcraft. Only generate random ages till we get a stable one then stop. Then we can collect most of the symbols and build stable ages. Otherwise everyone will each generate half a dozen useless ages. Then we can create special purpose ages if we want like one dedicated to strip mining.

It should be possible to schedule proactive reboots of the server. It only takes a few seconds.

[cycl0pse]

spawn protect is set to 1 so the chests should work. if not, I move them.

I'm all for a coordinated approach to Mystcraft. Blaze, willing to be the server "Atrus"?

[BLAZE_MkIV]

I don't know I think me puzzle making days are over. I have yest to go make sure the puzzles on the vanilla server survived the updates.

[andi*pandi]

I never did get to do my hedge maze.

[sek929]

I'm going to leave Mystcraft in more competent hands than mine, unless help is needed farming pages.

Going to sign in now and see what's what, hope to see you guys there!

[cycl0pse]

http://cycl0pse.dyndns.org/map.html

pretty? no. hard to find a generator that maps the new terrain correctly, but it's a start.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

I fully automated the tree farm. I added a chunk loaded because it can't handle stopping mid run. Just pull from the chest.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV 

I fully automated the tree farm. I added a chunk loaded because it can't handle stopping mid run. Just pull from the chest.

Just logged in an it's stopped. I know only enough about turtles to not touch them.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Somehow it lost all its settings. I think it stopped because of a lack of fuel. It eats wood now if its hungry. I may have forgotten to label it. Retyped in all the code. Maybe I should make a floppy disk drive.

[cycl0pse]

will stopping/starting the server cause issues?

because, well, I've been doing that nightly to backup and run the map render...

[BLAZE_MkIV]

If it happens during a cycle yes. Hmm. Making it recover from where it stopped is very hard. Not impossible just hard.

[sek929]

Two thoughts.

The roof looks amazing in the warehouse and blaze's tweak of our sorting system today is a thing of beauty.

[cycl0pse]

glad u like the roof And thanks for the suggestions/help Blaze: definitely looks better with the lower beam.

So, now that we have a warehouse, what's the next 'important' structure we'll need? The rouged-in towers aren't really critical this early on. What do we need?

(and for now it looks like the village is going to stay. we're really settled in, aren't we? )

[BLAZE_MkIV]

The tree turtle is back on manual.

Originally Posted by sek929 

blaze's tweak of our sorting system today is a thing of beauty.

The router overflow detection system came from someone watching CoeStar's live stream. The ore processing block is all mine. I'll add resin processing to it eventually.

Is there an aesthetic for the towers yet? I want to get the thaumcraft stuff moved.

[cycl0pse]

If you want to move the thaum, then I can move on getting the towers built.

The theme for the tower is, "somewhat diabolically evil, with a strong leaning toward "what the heck is that doing here?" Was going to use wood
(probably oak) for the interior floors, with a center staircase in the towers. If that messes up layout potential, the second stair option is a "spiral up the side". Both are cool with me.

Andi, I love some of the decorating you do. If I rough in the basic towers, can you give them a bit of flair?

Blaze, where do you want to move the thaum stuff to? dungeon/basement or upper floor?

sek, how hard is it going to be to automate baking basalt? It's not worth automating the brick making, but if I have a bunch of ready stone I can get the rough tower up pretty quick...

[andi*pandi]

Love to help!

blaze, I saw you used cut marble on the portal bridge... so I can assume diamond saws work the same? Woo.

[sek929]

I've still got plenty to do in the warehouse/workshop, and the most pressing issue is having a system to cook massive amounts of Basalt to keep you stocked for those towers. I don't want it pouring into Blaze's current processing system because I think it would gum up the works, so next time we start quarrying Basalt I'm going to need to shuffle it to more dedicated machines. Right now we have a ton of Basalt Cobble to cook, so I'm just going to do it manually.

I think the only other thing we should worry about working on at the moment is more town layout of where the roads and buildings are going to go. That way if anyone gets some downtime and wants to build a little house of their own or a town cookie shop we'll know where to put it.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

The gem saws work just fine on anything but diamond blocks and silicon boules. There should be one in one of the workshops. We have plenty of gems though.

For the thaumcraft stuff there's 2 workbenches 1x1 and 2x2 that need to be by the cauldron which will end up 3x3. I'll need space for 30 or so jars within 12 blocks of the workbenches. So by that math I don't think it matters what stairs you do unless you make stairs like I did in vanilla. Wizards are always in the upper levels of the tower. The basement is for the adventurers.

There's plenty of pneumatic pipe and extra paint. Add a slot in the sorter and redirect all the basalt cobble to a dedicated processing system. Unfortunately I think only the IC2 furnace is fast enough to keep up with a quarry (and needs 30eu/t) and my jam proof system can only queue a chest full.

If you attach a bunch of vanilla furnaces to the system the router will fill them (or use the ones there filled with dirt as a connecting buss.) You just have to preload them with a few pieces and make sure the top doesn't empty. That's half the work.

I've done it in single player but someone else may want to play with them. Steve's Carts make excellent tree farms if you fuel them with charcoal instead of solar. It needs some space though. I was thinking of a large tree farm for charcoal to generate EU instead of solar. BTW Steve's Carts also contains steerable carts.

Other building needs: coke and steel production.

[sek929]

Maybe the Railworks building can be across the street from the Warehouse.

Just took a short lunch break and whipped this up for now.



Three furnaces with a hopper on top each (more hoppers can be added) dumping cooked Basalt into the barrels below. If you want to get fancy and automate it with the Quarry system Blaze go for it, but this should be pretty good for now.

[cycl0pse]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV 

Other building needs: coke and steel production.

Do you want me to replicate the 'steel works' I built on tekkit for this, or go with a more streamlined facility? I personally liked the steel mill look, but it does take a bit of time.

About the city: I'll have an image done later today of roughly where the roads should go. We're making them sand for now, but I'm open to designs for permanent roads (road 3 wide, with buildings setback at least 1 block from the road).
Since the idea is to "start old" and expand out "newer" I'm going to use the existing village as the 'old' part of town and expand ... north? ... towards the savanna plains. Leave space across the street from the warehouse for the eventual factory building (thinking red brick with big smoke stacks will look good) but for the rest, once the roads are in, have fun. The start of town will be fairly grid like, but as we expand we can get more 'urban sprawl' going...

Or we can just say 'chaos theory' and go crazy (I prefer a bit of a plan myself)

cycl0pse

[sek929]

@Andi...

I saw that you had a carpenter in your little shack in the NPC village, I had also built one when you mentioned you would need it and it is currently hooked up to power and water in the warehouse. I dunno if you had plans to use your own carpenter ( you also need a squeezer for seed oil which I built and hooked up) but feel free to make use of the factory, or if you want to use the machines within your own building I can make the needed components to feed you power and liquid wherever you want.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Assuming of course that you want to become the Florastar of the server. I don't want you to think we're pressuring you.

From what I've seen multiple carpenters is not a bad thing.

[andi*pandi]

If there's one in the factory, I will definitely make use of it, and the squeezer. Dealing with power sans powerflower is not my forte. Although I think with Sjin's videos I could muddle through, it's nice having some steps already in place.

If all the machines outgrow the factory, or maybe I build Mrs Pandi's Honey Shoppe, I'll ask for help with the power. Solar vs peat recommendations etc.

[sek929]

The machines may need to be split up into more specialized buildings eventually, but power will never be an issue, even if you strike out across the map we can set you up with the main power teleported to you. Unless of course you want to make it on your own burning peat and such, which is also just fine.

I remember a bit back when transitioning to Tekkit Andi mentioned crafting wasn't her favorite part of Minecraft, which is understandable, so I'm just trying to do the annoying work for others so they can focus on what they find fun within our server. Bees are actually one of the more complicated parts of FTB, so I would understand fully if noone ends up using them seriously.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

If there's one in the factory, I will definitely make use of it, and the squeezer. Dealing with power sans powerflower is not my forte. Although I think with Sjin's videos I could muddle through, it's nice having some steps already in place.

If all the machines outgrow the factory, or maybe I build Mrs Pandi's Honey Shoppe, I'll ask for help with the power. Solar vs peat recommendations etc.

Once you get to the point you can open a honey shop we could probably switch you over to honey power.

[andi*pandi]

Honey Powarz!!!!

Sounds like the bastard love child of Austin Powers.

Not sure if I'll stick with the bees, but it's a place to start.

[cycl0pse]

Here's a simple rough-in for basic roads. Anyone see any issues beyond adjusting some terrain as needed?

[sek929]

We going to encapsulated the NPC VIllage or bulldoze it down?

[cycl0pse]

encapsulate. it's part of the 'old' city.
(the npc village has grown on me, what can I say)

[cycl0pse]

Server restarted so I could modify java settings. Performed a backup and updated the map in the process.
Found how to update the map without a server restart, so I'll do that from now on. Eventually I'll get the data map working for the pink area.

Right now the server idles between 20-30% or so, so life is good. How many chunk loaders do we have running?

cycl0pse

[BLAZE_MkIV]

There should be 2, for getting lava from the nether. Also a quarry acts like a chunk loader now too is its still set up.

[sek929]

Well I spent a decent amount of time re-organizing the barrels, trying to keep like materials next to eachother and such. I also added barrels (not hooked up yet) to reflect the final design of the storage area. Any empty barrels should remain not hooked to the system until a time when we need them.

I also added dirt to the sorter along with cobble to be destroyed, I figure we can keep the gravel since it can be easily transmuted into clay.

Now that the old basement ladder is more or less sealed off, I added a new access ladder. I also moved the sorting machine input dealy back several blocks to make room for the main factory door. I plonked down an Iron chest for tools only (as the sign says) and dropped my ender pouch in there in case someone wants to use and I'm not online later.

New business: I want to zone my personal house, and I'll use the rough outline Cyclopse posted. I'll also be stealing an Emerald to make a power armor table, because I am sick of not being able to fly. Of course this will take a back seat to the constant refinements of the warehouse and any other projects (railcraft station next?)

[cycl0pse]

unless anyone objects, let's grid out a space for the rail station but otherwise let that sit for awhile: we're not going to need it for a bit.

and to everyone: use the rough guide as just that... a rough guide. Keep the old part of the city more or less a grid and anything newer can be an urban sprawl. So if you want a newer looking house, head out a bit into the grasslands and have fun... or be a bit more old fashioned and stick around local. by 'old fashioned' I mean post-beam or brick constructions.