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Hey guys! During the November 16th Citizen's Gathering, we talked some about the future of the Minecraft server, and I would like to continue that conversation here on the forums. The server has been inactive for a long time, is now several versions out of date, and it has been hard to find the time to put into doing more with it. On the other hand, the server goes back a long time, and some people have spent a lot of time and effort  building really amazing things in that world, particularly @BraveSirRobin and @trader.

Since that meeting, trader has generously pledged a monthly contribution in support of the Minecraft server, meaning that thanks to him, closing the server is no longer on the table. However, we now have the question of how we can make the server more interesting and active, preferably in a way that doesn't require much in the way of administrative work. Some ideas were discussed during the meeting, but I would like to hear more thoughts and ideas on how we can go about this.

Meeting Action Items:
1.1) Wintermoot will discuss additional help with @Chanku
1.2) We will discuss the possibility of having a world reset, including a poll option, with the goal of having this completed by the November 30th meeting soon
1.3) We will consider Minecraft-specific events
1.4) We will consider, pending decisions on the status of the server, adopting a goal of making the MC server less generic so that we can leverage as a recruitment avenue

If the world were ever reset or shut down, I think it would be absolutely necessary that a publicly available world backup/download be made available so that the years of work on it aren't lost to history.

One thing to note is that multiplayer 1.14 is not as stable as 1.13 which is not as stable as 1.12. And that is not even considering the recent 1.15 release. This is mostly true for larger-scale redstone projects and farms, of which there is a somewhat significant amount on the server. So there is this tradeoff between cool new things and the longer-term projects of the server.

As an alternative, I'm wondering if we can move the origin to another winter area generated with a newer version of Minecraft...that way new people would have easier access to newer blocks, and we wouldn't necessarily have to do away with everything that's been made.

Sometime this month I would like to make another attempt to update to 1.14. There's been a few minor versions released since I tried, so it might be more stable.

But even if those things work out, that just gets us up to speed. We still need to think of ways to make the server more active.

As an alternative, I'm wondering if we can move the origin to another winter area generated with a newer version of Minecraft...that way new people would have easier access to newer blocks, and we wouldn't necessarily have to do away with everything that's been made.

Sometime this month I would like to make another attempt to update to 1.14. There's been a few minor versions released since I tried, so it might be more stable.

But even if those things work out, that just gets us up to speed. We still need to think of ways to make the server more active.

Hmm, considering that we have Essentials... one possible way we can have a soft reboot of this type is to make use of /warp so that either we /setwarp at the new point, or /setworldspawn on the new point and /setwarp on the old spawn. The distance could even be potentially inaccessible (i.e. millions of blocks away) if people want it to be that way but the two areas could still be connected in the same world.

Stability is a big issue though and any update would break things and, given the types of things server regulars like(d) to build, likely make constructing certain things more difficult and worsen server performance as well. (There's a reason why SciCraft stays on 1.12 after all...) But an updated server would certainly draw greater interest.

(1) If we do a reset definitely want the world download I've put way too much time in there to not want one

(2) Yes setwarp would be good, and if possible we should allow multiple warp homes or multiple /warp ____ commands.  That could serve to alleviate some pressure a bit.  Also if you want more newly spawned chunks I've got some decent 1.8/1.10 coords for winter biome like our spawn on the map lying around on a sticky note somewhere, and one of them might be bigger than our current winter spawn zone iirc...

(3) Yeah stability in the newer versions is definitely far from optimal, mostly because it doesn't seem like they've done a good job keeping multiplayer optimal on PC, which is unfortunate because its the best platform.  And ditto SciCraft knows what they're doing.

@taulover: That sounds like a good idea...we can change the spawn to a new point, then have a warps that go between the two spawn points. I'll try to look into the update issue further, but from what you and BSR are saying it's an issue of whether we'll stay at 1.13 for the foreseeable future. There aren't going to be any more updates to 1.14, and if it sounds like 1.15 is going to be worse.

@BraveSirRobin: I would love any help you can provide there. The area around spawn was generated on 1.7, so you have to go a long way to even get to the blocks generated in 1.8 like diorite. It doesn't look like there's been a huge amount of new blocks released since 1.10, so that should be fine.

I have a 1.13 area around my fish shop that is fairly close to a winter biome. From a selfish standpoint, I'd love to have new spawn near my second base. Or if you need someone to go walk a few thousand blocks I'm down for that.

@taulover: That sounds like a good idea...we can change the spawn to a new point, then have a warps that go between the two spawn points. I'll try to look into the update issue further, but from what you and BSR are saying it's an issue of whether we'll stay at 1.13 for the foreseeable future. There aren't going to be any more updates to 1.14, and if it sounds like 1.15 is going to be worse.

Actually, 1.15 is likely to be better than 1.14 performance-wise. In particular I recall that the large lag involved with switching dimensions has been fixed. It's a bit early to say for sure though, especially since Spigot has been released yet. Wait never mind, Spigot has been released and things look good (compared to 1.14 at least, which had particularly bad performance relative to recent versions). We would still need to wait to be sure, and also for the plugins to get updated though.

In terms of "cool things" honey blocks are just super neat and exciting so it would likely bee a good idea to do the update to 1.15 when possible.

@BraveSirRobin: I would love any help you can provide there. The area around spawn was generated on 1.7, so you have to go a long way to even get to the blocks generated in 1.8 like diorite. It doesn't look like there's been a huge amount of new blocks released since 1.10, so that should be fine.

I mean, that really depends on what you mean by "a long way," all things considered the 1.8 generated world is actually quite close. (Like, we could very easily make the new spawn literally a x=1,000,000 lol which case a few hundred or even thousand blocks would be nothing.)

If we're going to move the location, might as well have an actually up-to-date, empty spot with no old-generated terrain all around? As admin I assume you have the real seed and world info, you could plop the info into Amidst or similar and find what looks like a nice starting area.

(2) Yes setwarp would be good, and if possible we should allow multiple warp homes or multiple /warp ____ commands.  That could serve to alleviate some pressure a bit.

Hmm I don't know about multiple warp points, but I think if we do this it would be very good to be able to set at least up to 2 homes. People already have homes relatively far away from spawn, so this would allow people to set both their old home and a home around the new area.

I have a 1.13 area around my fish shop that is fairly close to a winter biome. From a selfish standpoint, I'd love to have new spawn near my second base. Or if you need someone to go walk a few thousand blocks I'm down for that.

If you and @BraveSirRobin and anyone else that has some area ideas will send me some coords, I'll try to take a look at them this weekend...maybe others can take a look at them too and give their thoughts.

Actually, 1.15 is likely to be better than 1.14 performance-wise. In particular I recall that the large lag involved with switching dimensions has been fixed. It's a bit early to say for sure though, especially since Spigot has been released yet. Wait never mind, Spigot has been released and things look good (compared to 1.14 at least, which had particularly bad performance relative to recent versions). We would still need to wait to be sure, and also for the plugins to get updated though.

In terms of "cool things" honey blocks are just super neat and exciting so it would likely bee a good idea to do the update to 1.15 when possible.

I mean, that really depends on what you mean by "a long way," all things considered the 1.8 generated world is actually quite close. (Like, we could very easily make the new spawn literally a x=1,000,000 lol which case a few hundred or even thousand blocks would be nothing.)

If we're going to move the location, might as well have an actually up-to-date, empty spot with no old-generated terrain all around? As admin I assume you have the real seed and world info, you could plop the info into Amidst or similar and find what looks like a nice starting area.

Are you suggesting that we wait until 1.15 is developed further?

And you greatly overestimate my admin abilities here.

Especially if we update to 1.15, I think it would definitely be very useful to have brand-new generated terrain as a new starting location. Bee nests are hard enough to find as they already are. The 1.14 additions of bamboo forest and updated taiga would also be nice. (EDIT: how did I forget, villages were also fundamentally changed in 1.14)

If we don't update, the 1.13 oceans are still fundamentally different from the old ones so an updated area would still be good to have.

And you greatly overestimate my admin abilities here.

Interesting. Are you unable to get the real seed of our world?

Interesting. Are you unable to get the real seed of our world?

I'm sure I could, I just don't know anything about Amidst or that end of things. When we created the server I just googled winter starting seeds for the version we were on and went from there. It may also be difficult to do much of anything that involves downloading the world, because our world was over 4GB the last time that I looked.

Interesting. Are you unable to get the real seed of our world?

I'm sure I could, I just don't know anything about Amidst or that end of things. When we created the server I just googled winter starting seeds for the version we were on and went from there. It may also be difficult to do much of anything that involves downloading the world, because our world was over 4GB the last time that I looked.

With something like Amidst, the way it works is you just enter the seed and you get a map of what the world should look like with that seed. So any new terrain should look the way it looks on the map.

If you can get the original seed without downloading the world, then you can use that to explore the ungenerated terrain on our server.

@taulover: Will it work with a seed that started in 1.7 and has had new terrain added with subsequent releases?

It appears that the coordinates I had actually lead to a large iceberg biome. Similar, but not quite the same. I did check around the edges of said biome for snow, but alas, the only snow found was on top of said icebergs. So unless you want an iceberg biome, I'm out of luck. I'll keep heading that direction when I have more than the hour it takes to run around said biome.