More Map Updates

There are several new things about the map.
The map now has working Day / Night capabilites
You can now search for signs and jump to them
Coordinates are saved in the URL so refresh will refresh you into the same spot
Compass Now faces the correct direction relative to in-game maps
Signs now render on the map image
Stairs are not black anymore (mostly)

This weekend will hopefully be a big weekend for changes.With the help of Andrew and Kevin I plan to make alot of changes.
We will upgrade to the most recent version of bukkit
Write a plugin (or more) for our server
Add Sortal Warp zone (end points) to the world map
Get the purchasing of abilities working form the website
And Clean up the currently abandoned mega-projects so they look good

Rendering The Map

While tweaking the map rendering program (or something), the program decided to not render any more. I am claiming it is not my fault but it might be. Anyways, you may have to deal with some outdated maps for the next few days until I fix the problem.
- Admin Asher

Day/Night Complete

The day and night maps have been completed and uploaded as the new maps however I have noticed that the stairs in the maps will always come up black and the pistons will not show up at all. I will continue to try to fix this. I believe that the pistons just don't have any skin which makes them render clear (but it should make them purple). As for the stairs I have no idea and believe this to be an actual bug with the rendering program. All in all I think the map looks better.
Happy Crafting
-Admin Asher

Day and Night maps

A new project on the dev server is day and night version of the world map. Some of you (kroden3d) have been asking about a top down view of the map. Currently the program that is being used to render the map is not able to do such a thing, however it is able to render daytime and nighttime versions of the map. So I decide to test this out. The current map is neither daytime nor nighttime but a generic global light called normal. With the creation of day and night on the map you will now see shadows of objects left on the map. Hopefully this will help with the depth perception when viewing the world. At the time of writing the old map is still up for everyone to enjoy until Day and Night come over from the dev server.

I am trying my hardest to keep the server running with new things to do. All I ask in return is that you play and participate. "Demeters Wrath" is coming, when all players will loose their abilities and have to start from scratch to gain their powers back. The first step is making an account on the forum. Happy Crafting!
-Admin Asher

Quick Information About Our server size

Our current map size (including the nether) is 190Mb
Our current version controlled backup is 2.8 Gb
We are not even coming close to reaching the capacity of the hard drive so don't worry about exploring more (not an open invitation to intentionally triple the size of the map). We will be eating another server (or two) soon and that will increase the map size substantially. If anybody would like a copy of the map (or the version repo) for backup they can get one. At this point in time the map backup files will be unencrypted but when the map grows in size the backups will be AES encrypted.

The lag from a few days ago that caused pistons to disappear and then reappear appears to have been fixed. Don't worry about.

Flying will also soon be enabled on the server so feel free to mod your clients to allow you to fly

Server Specs

The server we are running is a 4gb 2core 3.1GHz computer, from hardware alone the maximum number of supported players is 30 (at one time) however there is something else that is called the Internet. This is currently our limiting factor. The up speed that the server is currently running at is 1Mbs (which is pathetic). Soon I will move the server on campus and when I do there will probably be some changes. First off the server address will no longer be demeter.tetrakai.com, that will now only get you the forum and map. The Game server will most likely be server.demeter.tetrakai.com:80. Because all ports other then port 80 will be blocked from outside connections when entering the campus network. On campus the connection speed should be somewhere around 7 up and 7 down which will allow us to run at a maximum of 21 users. When the server information changes I will let everyone know but for now things will stay the same.
Happy crafting
- Admin Asher

Version 1.7.3

Bukkit has released version 1.7.3 of the minecraft server. This build will be uploaded to the server soon. Apparently there is a huge memory leak problem that was fixed with the new version. So it will definitely be used. There may be some plugins that break with this update so I will be doing some testing first.