While we are waiting

While we are waiting for the 1.0.0 bukkit build to come out I decided to share another client side plugin I found. It is called Optifine and it provides many speedups for minecraft, as well as provides native support for HD texture packs, no need for mod-loader. I was able to install in on my linux machine and it made many things faster. One of the main things I noticed was that lighting was updated much faster. Before when the time of day suddenly switched I would see the changes propagate out from where I was, even though the entire world changed. Now when the time of day changes the light changes are instant, very cool. If speed is a problem or you just want to see what happens when you can render more, then check out optifine.
- Asher

1.0.0 Bukkit server

The new 1.0.0 bukkit server has not yet been released. As a result I have not swapped the newly generated world into the main world. Once the new bukkit server is released, the other admins and I will start moving the overworld creations into the new world. After we are finished with that, the new plugins will begin to be added to the server, tuning the creative server into a survival server. But don't worry you will still be able to create things quite easily because you will be able to purchase blocks using the economy system. I am looking forward to how this turns out.
- Admin Asher

Spout

With the recent unknown server crash (which is running again). I would like to share with you one of the most amazing plugins that I have found so far. Though I have not tested it very much myself I hope that this plugin is able to be directly incorporated into minecraft itself once modding becomes standard. It is called Spout, with its partner client side plugin Spoutcraft. Spout allows you to mod even more about your server. The things it lets you mod are now increased to things that are rendered by the client computer. These things include item images, item names, menus, and more. It is quite an ingenious plugin and I hope to relay more information about how it works soon. The end result is that players who play on demeter who have the spoutcraft mod on the client will probably be able to do more things more easily then those who don't.
- Admin Asher

Server Crash

The server seems to have crashed, I am unsure what caused this and I will attempt to fix it when I return to the hardware in a couple hours. I will be focusing some more time on the server in the coming days.

Upgrading to 1.0

Our minecraft server runs off of the bukkit server software to implement mods. This usually means that the server upgrades are delayed. However, I have decided to begin testing out an unstable build of the bukkit minecraft server anyways. We will be starting with a mostly clean slate plugin wise. For the first few weeks world edit will still be available to everyone, the reason for this is so that people can move their cool things into a new 1.0 generated world. This coincides nicely with thanks giving break. If you are off campus and trying to access the server you can VPN into campus to access the server. I will also be adding a hamachi client eventually.

Upgrades to Non-Beta

The non-beta version of minecraft is coming out very soon (next weekend). Which means that we will be generating a new world soon. The old world will be saved and archived in but for all intensive purposes the world will be unaccessible. So we will be moving all the 'cool things' to the new generated world. This will hopefully happen weekend after next (26th and 27th) it all depends on weather bukkit releases a new version or not. After that there will be many changes to the underlying system of the server. The world will switch over to an economy server, it will still be easy to obtain items but you will not be able to [/i] them to yourself all the time unless is is freebee Friday. You will also be able to get items from killing mobs based on specific jobs that will be posted. The last thing is that sortals will for the most part be going away. You will be able to teleport via the chat to any recognized city. More information about this will come soon.
- Admin Asher