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Topics - Oplegoman

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1
Server Announcements / Sentinel is now on 1.19!
« on: July 21, 2022, 07:24:11 PM »
Sentinelcraft has finally been updated to 1.19!


Dear Sentinel community,

It's exciting to note that this server update brings a few simple changes, as well as a few things we're keeping the same. In essence, the server has officially been updated to Minecraft 1.19: The Wilds Update!


There's a Minecraft 1.19??


Before we get to the topic of a server update, if you aren't aware of what the new Minecraft 1.19 update entails, it brings forth the edition of a collection of new mobs, blocks, and items. Most notably, the Warden finally makes its way to the game after a long wait! Joining it are tadpoles, allays, and frogs.

Though shulkers make it extra convenient to carry around large quantities of items about your person, a Boat with Chest has been added too; its application is self-explanatory.
Updates get people exploring, and what better than to explore the new Ancient Cities? This structure will generate within the deep dark biome, along with your favorite new juggernaut mob.


What to expect?

Changes brought to the server include:

- Origin's world border will be increasing by 1000 blocks; more area to develop your settlements in Origin and get started in Sentinel SMP!
- (Although not a change) Horizon and Kattalox world borders will remain the same.
- The terrain of Alpha will be reset; we will also be giving the new Alpha a beautiful custom terrain for you all to pillage once again!

This concludes what the 1.19 update brings for Sentinel. As always, questions and queries are welcome so don't hesitate to ask staff about your doubts! We thank you for your patience during the process of updating the server and the time taken to do so. If issues in the form of bugs appear, report them here:

http://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?board=235.0

For an optimal experience, we recommend you join with a 1.19 version.

And like always, we hope you enjoy this update!


--Sentinel Staff
(Thanks Thorn for writing the post)

2
Origin / Simplified Origin Committee
« on: July 09, 2022, 05:22:23 PM »
Simplified Origin Committee

With the Origin committee being a fresh idea and an attempt at something new, it was bound to have issues and pitfalls which would only become apparent once it was implemented and engaged with by the community. So far, we have been looking over how the committee has been doing and reviewed some public opinions. We have made observations, as well as identified some of the main problems. These are:

1. Little direction to help the committee with implementation or visions; there is the portial of feeling lost with what to do and being overwhelmed.
2. Too much writing for the committee which may cause too much of a time commitment, which in turn impacts the fun of the committee system.
3. The approval process and the belief that the committee holds no power.

We aim to streamline the process for the committee to something which is more enjoyable, while still retaining the community voice which makes this process so different and special. We aim to help ease any of the issues we have identified above with the following changes. We have identified two different camps into which proposals for change can fall:
   
1. Simple changes which require Senior Admin implmentation.
2. Community, in-game projects.

Simple changes which require Senior Admin implmentation

These changes could be changes to game rules, world borders, mob spawning rates or any other reasonable game mode change which does not affect the feel of playing a vanilla game mode. Examples of this could be the following;

Example 1: A change to a specific aspect of the game; this could be turning off or reducing Enderman griefing, world border or other misc. changes around mob drops could also be considered (again, this is for you to decide what is important in terms of game mode). Such changes, which are well received by the community and have reason to be implemented, we aim to give a story element which builds the lore of the world; this could be through a type of community cost (resources required to perform Enderman research). Once the goal has been met, the change will promptly be implemented.
This aims to bring in a feeling of decisions having consequences either positive or negative and not something which is just done for the sake of it being done.

Example 2: A change to the origin rules; this refers to an addition, amendment, or removal of an Origin rule (but not a server-wide rule). This could be around Origin PvP, Origin Travel, any Community led repercussions for specific actions or lack of actions (such as not filling creeper holes, using other farms without permission, etc). If the community shows support for these changes, any change will be added within the Origin rule forum post.

Example 3: Any addition to origin such as a job board, managed shops or shopping area, price setting for specific items, or making an embargo list of players who are not allowed to engage with community projects due to their anti-social actions. This requires no input or permission to implement by anyone but in the case of potentially unfair action, this would be the only case in which Senior Admins would intervene.

Community In-Game Projects

These are projects which could encompass the nether highway project, the building of the townhall, the creation and management of a shopping district, any public community run farms, or any infrastructure which connects to spawn such as canals or railways.

Main Change: These projects, once approved, will have oversight by a named red admin or moderator (a specific member could be requested during the proposal) along with a committee member. This should reduce the writing substantially and means work gets started quickly. These players should run the project as equal partnership, they will manage the project between them as they see fit, apart from some specific things which would require community involvement through a vote:

1. Specific designs and/or themes to be voted on by the community - majority wins the vote and should be implemented.
2. Any decision which could impact many community players - majority wins the vote

Any of the running, collection or specifics of the project are to be managed by the named staff member and the committee member. Important aspects include the creation and managing of their own forum post to keep the community updated on their progress, needs for resources, volunteer help, and approved designs, etc.

With these large projects, any dispute should be handled with the named staff member and committee member; if there is no resolution, this should be brought to senior admins to resolve. We hope this will not happen as we want to try and keep any executive action to a minimum and allow ourselves to engage as normal members of Origin.

The Current Committee can now enact their projects for the spawn area and the nether highway right away and the only addition to these projects is they need to have a named staff member to manage it, the committee can ask for a specific moderator or admin for their projects.

We hope these changes will be seen in a positive light and should allow the Origin Committee to make positive change and reinvigorate engagement with the freedom Origin provides.



- Sentinel Staff

3
Origin / Current Origin Committee Members
« on: June 16, 2022, 04:07:10 PM »
Current Origin Committee Members
Updated June 16, 2022





Player:
Francias (First term)
Joined Committee at:
June 16, 2022
Current term ends at:
August 16, 2022
Manifesto Pledges:
Foundation work for future members of the Committee;
Find solutions for newer players of Origin;
Road networks in overworld and end.
Player:
Arianity (First term)
Joined Committee at:
June 16, 2022
Current term ends at:
August 16, 2022
Manifesto Pledges:
Area for voicing complaints, suggestions, or ideas;
Trading center for players;
Road network in overworld and nether;
Public farms, builds and commodities near spawn.
Player:
ThyCoolio (First term)
Joined Committee at:
June 16, 2022
Current term ends at:
August 16, 2022
Manifesto Pledges:
Ensure the committee has no say over settlement leaders.


Player:
quazymoodo (First term)
Joined Committee at:
June 16, 2022
Current term ends at:
August 16, 2022
Manifesto Pledges:
Organize and establish a spawn shopping district, committee house, and a memorial egg square;
Establish a fair and honest foundation for all and continue the Grand Railway Project;
Constitute a ban on Baked_Tater.
Player:
Eagler1997 (First term)
Joined Committee at:
June 16, 2022
Current term ends at:
August 16, 2022
Manifesto Pledges:
Expand trade routes/roads to small settlements;
Nether hub;
Promote farm and shop districts projects;
Have a giant castle and town hall at spawn.


Former Origin Committee Members
None yet!  8)

4
Origin / Origin Proposal Template
« on: June 16, 2022, 03:35:52 PM »
Origin Proposal Template

The Origin Proposal template allows members of the Origin player base to propose the creation, amendment or removal of laws or make amendments to the Origin Charter. You can click here to view the current Origin Charter.

As mentioned in prior posts, all members of Origin have the opportunity to alter the landscape of the Origin law. Everyone that plays in Origin may submit new proposals to vote on, as well as vote on any proposal put up by anyone else. All proposals by anyone must follow the correct proposal format listed below. Proposals not following the correct format will not be considered.

Here is the current format for new proposals:

Name of Proposal:

Member(s) of the community who support the proposal:

A short description of the proposal (including the following):
    1. Who does it aim to benefit?
    2. What are the specific changes you want?
    3. Does this affect anyone in a negative way, if so are their anyways to mitigate this?

Reason for the proposal:

Additional Information:

In addition to this application, a poll must be created with the options to be in favor/or against your proposal only. This allows the community to provide their input on it. Proposals that receive ⅔ of the popular vote will then be sent to the Presiding Council for ascention. Proposed Amendments to the Origin Charter that receive 70% of the popular vote will be sent to the Presiding Council for ascention.

5
Origin / The First Origin Election!
« on: June 13, 2022, 06:07:36 PM »
Origin Committee Application

The time has come to elect new members in the Origin Committee. With this being the first election, all 5 seats are currently vacant. In order to run for a position on the Origin Committee, you need to meet the following requirements:

   - Must be proactive in applying for yourself; no nominations for the Committee will be accepted.
   - Must have no recent punishments/issues
   - Must be in good standing with the community
   - Must maintain communication with both other Origin Committee Members and when required the Presiding Council.
   - Only one member from each Settlement can run for election. A settlement is defined by any area/group of players consisting of 3 or more.

Applications will be open for 48 hours. Following that period, everyone will have the opportunity to vote for their top 3 choices. The top 5 players with the most votes will be appointed to the Origin Committee.

Expectations for members of the Origin Committee can be found in the Origin Charter which can be seen here.

If you wish to apply for a spot on the Origin Committee, please use the following format and reply below. If you fail to use this format, your application will not be considered.

Name:

Settlement (if applicable):

Why should you be elected as a member of the Origin Committee?

What is one change you'd like to see enacted as part of the Origin Committee?

Additional Information:

(Thanks Ev for writing the post!)

6
Origin / The Origin Charter
« on: June 12, 2022, 07:20:06 PM »
The Origin Charter



Regulations

The Origin Charter is the basis for the rule of law: by the community; for the community; across the world of Origin. The Charter outlines the rights and responsibilities afforded to the players and the Presiding Council. An important note is that the Origin players and the Server Staff are completely different, they have different tasks and responsibilities. Server Staff are to enforce server rules only, and not those made by the players of Origin.

The Origin Charter:

  • How Origin will work:
    • From now on, Origin will be a true democracy rather than a republic of voted committee members.
    • Any player in Origin will be allowed to put forth proposals for everyone to vote on.
    • All proposals will be treated fairly, no matter who puts forth the proposals.

  • To formally introduce a bill to the players for a vote;

  • The process of consideration for any proposal;
    • Proposals will be posted on the forums, with a poll.
    • The voting will close after four days since the initial posting of the proposal.
    • If the proposal fails to gain a majority of 2/3rd, it will be rejected. If the proposal passes, it will be put to the Presiding Council for assent to Origin Law.
    • The process of Charter Amendments will follow the same process outlined above, with the key difference of requiring 70% of the votes to pass.

  • The Presiding Council will serve as a safeguard to ensure the Origin player base is acting within the Origin Charter as well as within the Server Rules. The Presiding Council is vested with emergency powers and has the ability to overturn any decision made by the players or any groups with a required explanation.

  • The requirements and rights of the members of the Presiding Council;
    • Members of the Presiding Council are Admin+
    • They may vote during proposals, as well as put forth new proposals.

    Note from Staff

    Staff felt that these changes to the Origin Charter were needed. We were trying something with the last design that was pretty radical and it simply didn't work out; it happens. So, we are going with a solution we feel like will be more suited to the world and player base. Hope to see everyone making real changes to the server in the coming days and weeks!

    -- Sentinel Staff

7
Origin / The Town Hall
« on: June 11, 2022, 02:05:25 PM »
Origin is starting to get organized!


With the people of Origin beginning to form larger groups, there are some things everyone wants to do or change, but have no real way to do so.
To help remedy this and to introduce some community interaction, we are implementing an Origin Town Hall!

Storytime

     Ever since the landing of the Sentinels on Origin, the world has been plagued with troubles of being a frontier world. The landing site has been left bare or with mismatching structures, those first explorers looking further out to create their settlements in their own vision. Many advancements have been made from the explorers but progress has been slow due to the lack of magic that the Sentinels have been used to on the worlds of Horizon and Kattalox. To combat this issue, Sentinels have been banding together to build extensive buildings and infrastructure. The bands of Sentinels built on locations of power. Not magical power, as they had in the past, but on political power and the power of bountiful resources. The bands of players are gossling for influence over world projects around the spawn region and points of interest. Tensions were rising, and something needed to be done for the good of all.

     The Origin Preservation Project has started the process of protecting these areas of great importance for all players. The Sentinels know that this small project will not last. In an aim to build a world government and to ease tensions over these areas, the true Sentinels have decided to develop a Origin Town Hall, where the many may govern for the benefit of all. In this unified world, the Sentinel's Town Hall provided the opportunity for true, wide-reaching change. The Sentinel's decided to establish a building where this government would be housed, and where a new elected board of representatives from the major sources of power could gather. 'After these matters are completed', they thought, '...we must discuss our first true problem. The loss of a precious egg'

The Town Hall Project

This will set the basis for the development of a government (to be named by the players) which will be allowed various rights which include but are not limited to:
  • Being able to create, amend, or remove edicts subject to a referendum.
  • Create smaller bodies to handle law and order of Origin Governments edicts.
    • For example: The creation and maintenance of a regulated police force.
  • Mandate unified designs for roads, canals and nether highways that connect to the Town Hall.
  • Once established, further governance could take place and be proposed by the Origin community to be voted upon.

Before we get to this point, there is much work to do and many milestones for the community to meet before a prospective Town Hall Government can be created. These steps are outlined as followed:
  • 1. Draft an Origin Charter: A document which outlines the rights of the town hall.
  • 2. The election of the first Origin Committee of players.
  • 3. The planning, creation, and building of the physical town hall within the spawn region.
  • 4. Ratification of the Origin Charter by the Origin community and by the elected Origin Committee.

The Origin Charter

The creation and development of the Origin Charter is underway, but not ready to be released. This will set up the rights which the Town Hall will possess. The main points of the Charter are listed here:
  • The Origin committee will be made up of 5 members elected by the Origin community in a general election.
  • Current SentinelCraft Staff that are Admin+ will not be allowed to serve as a Town Hall member, due to conflicts of interest with them being on the presiding council. There will be a maximum of two staff members on the Origin Committee at all times.
  • There will be a presiding council consisting of Admin+ members to act in the capacity of an oversight board and the court of appeals if grievances are made against the Origin Committee.
    • The presiding council will most likely intervene when bounties start becoming bullying, or when server rules regarding maturity or other rules are going to be broken.
  • Sets up the process in which new edicts can be added to the Origin rules. This includes the timeframe for a vote, percentages of votes required for approval, and modification or removal of current rules/edicts.
  • Votes to impose sanctions on individuals within the Origin community based upon negative actions, including punishments if sanctions are violated by the player. Unjust punishments will be overturned by the presiding council.

The First Election

This will be the first election for positions of the Origin Committee. In order to run for a seat on the Origin committee, the following requirements must be met:
  • Members need to put themselves forward for the committee, there will be no nominations for others to be on the committee.
  • Members are in good standing within the community - No recent punishments or issues
The election will be run by the presiding council, and all answers will be kept confidential. All voters will rank all candidates from 1 to (number of candidates). The top 5 candidates with the most points will be elected to the council. All players that play on Origin are eligible to vote.

Building of the Town Hall at Spawn

This will be under the purview of the new committee to elect builders to this project and gather/buy building materials from settlements or players. The town hall as a minimum will require:
  • Town Hall committee chambers for discussions and storing of confidential books.
  • Presiding council chambers and court for oversight and appeals when required.
  • Voting hall with voting booths and voting information.
  • Town hall with information about the origin charter and the town hall edicts.

Ratification

This is a process which allows the Origin Committee to amend the charter to make the rules more inline with their wants and expectations. Once these changes have been made, they will be put to a vote in which over 70% of the community needs to vote yes to the changes for them to be accepted.

Once the changes have been passed through the vote by the community, the final step is the ratification of the amended charter by the presiding council ensuring it is within the server rules and fair to all players before its ascension to Origin Law.

Voting will be through discord reactions, as to make it easier for people with limited time to vote and for people to see the votes for and votes against a particular proposal. Additional rules around voting will come out with the election post in the near future.

- Sentinel Staff

(Thank you Moog for formatting the post!)

8
Server Announcements / Introducing: Origin
« on: May 31, 2022, 12:27:52 PM »
Sentinel has found new lands!


Sentinel will soon have a new server to explore. This server will have many changes and many of which could take you by surprise if you have not played vanilla Minecraft for a long time.

Release: 4pm 6pm GMT - Friday 3rd of June!

Storytime

Mankind is too eager to profit at the expense of others. The Ancient Sentinels saw it and it cost them their beloved lands of Pern. Ever since the rise of the Sentinels from the rubble of the old world, they seemed to guide survivors to a new life and show them that they must change their way of life; from one which was pillaging and depleting resources of their natural world.

The chosen few True Sentinels brought order to the new world, with many advancements from the discovery of new metals to understanding and breaking through the first bedrock layer. The True Sentinels have worked tirelessly over the last 3 centuries not being truly satisfied with their advancements and always moving on to the next research project.

With all the improvements they have made to the world for all who joined, a part of them longed for the simplicity which was afforded to them during the era of Pern. They always had a project which was always on the back foot, a project to take themselves back to a simpler time. Their search started long before the Era of Pern and has lasted many millennia; that search has come to an end. Sentinels found a new land on the very limits of the travel-able Sentinelverse and seem to be much older than any worlds the Sentinels have set foot on before.

Given the world is so far away, it is just within the protective field irradiated from the floating Fedgardia, the magic at these distances will be so weak that common magic harnessed by Sentinels daily will not be usable. The total lack of magic among the community will likely prompt a different way of living and one likely not for the faint-hearted.

The Sentinels have embarked on a ship to reach this new world, which they have named Origin, taking sentinels back to the days before magic and technological advancement.

Key Information

1: The server will have only the basic plugins required for it to work within the Sentinel network for chat, player management, and logging.
2: This world will be open to all Senior Members and above and there will be an application process for members who wish to join this world.
3: Frequently used commands will not be accessible, this includes but is not limited to:
    - ./home
    - ./teleport
    - ./fly
    - ./chest
    - ./warp
    - ./craft and all other variations from furnace to stonecutter
    -  Any custom commands, including /naughty or /nice
    -  No disguises.
4: Any quality-of-life plugins such as GriefPrevention, LWC, McMMO, Elevators, and Auction will not be installed.
5: This is a community world, any hoarding of items for the sake of it, will potentially have their items confiscated. This would apply to elytra's in the first instance, this will be monitored periodically.
6: This world will not have a currency through any plugin, so /balance will not be a thing.
7: There is no PvP protection, but Sentinel rules along with the PvP rules will still apply.
8: Sole-generated structures such as the stronghold and the main end island are not claimable as a base or have other players passage impeded.
    Any large change without prior consultation with the community will likely lead to a rollback and sanctions.
    - Once players are established, server-wide improvement projects on areas of importance can start to take place.
9: Dynmap will not be implemented.
10: World Border will be initially set at 5,000 blocks, any increase to this will be small.
11: On the technical end of the server, this will be kept as closely in line with vanilla as possible.
12: As this is a new game mode for sentinel, report any issues or bugs at the earliest opportunity.

Our Reasons

Minecraft version 1.18 brought some of the largest changes to Minecraft from a technical standpoint. Having world build height increase in both directions and a whole new world generation led to larger world files which meant larger changes on the back end of Sentinel. When we updated to 1.18, you may have noticed that the Pern world was no longer reachable, this was due to many factors but mainly that the world could not undergo a 1.17 to 1.18 upgrade as this meant the world going from 90GB to the region of 150GB. To put that into perspective, that would be the same size as both Horizon and Kattalox put together!
We have upcoming plans on how we are going to commemorate Pern and give it a long-lasting place within the community, even if we cannot explore it in-game anymore. We shall expand on this in an upcoming forum post, dedicated to Pern and our work. Given that Pern will not be returning, and we have a mostly configured server that we have not been using, we have decided to repurpose this world for a new game mode. This will be in stark contrast to Plugin Survival (claims, money, teleports, etc), Towny, and Skyblock. We hope this different style is something that can entice people back to the server.

- Sentinel Staff

9
Server Announcements / Sentinel is now on 1.18!
« on: January 02, 2022, 01:06:07 PM »
Sentinelcraft has updated to 1.18!

Dear Sentinelcraft community,

Now that we are into 2022 and looking forward to what this year holds for us all. We have happy to announce that we have updated to 1.18: Caves & Cliffs - Part 2! This means you can now join using 1.18 in your launcher, play and explore ungenerated horizon and kattalox terrain or even explore under your current builds for new resources and caves!

What to expect?

- All servers run using 1.18.
- If you have issues with joining with 1.18 (outdated hardware), fear not! We are now using ViaBackwards. This means you can join the server using 1.16.5 and upwards, although you may not see the new textures you will still be able to play the game and stick with the community!
- Updated plugins! Less outdated things, less bugs!
- Alpha worlds will be reset and returned back to vanilla generation for a time. Time to explore the truely unique and world generation of 1.18!
- Due to the massive changes in world generation, Pern is having to be left behind.
- New Voting Shop!

If any issues arise, please make a bug report here: Bungee bug report board.

Technical changes
- Server has updated from Java 16 to Java 17. Could cause some strange behaviour from some plugins.
- World borders for Horizon and Kattalox will not be increased due to all chunks now having twice as much in them (world now going down to -64). This would bloat world size to well over 100GB which is already too big for a minecraft world.
- World will now go from -64 to 320 in all exisiting chunks, meaning new terrain will be generated below the world in Alpha, Horizon and Kattalox
- Majority of plugins have updated to 1.18 while a few have yet to update, this may cause some unexpected bugs in game.



-- Sentinelcraft Staff

10
Guides / Plan - In-depth Player Statistics.
« on: December 04, 2021, 09:15:34 PM »
Introducing: In-depth Player Statistics!




We have implemented new in-depth player statistics with a standalone website. This will allow you to track multiple things about your activity on the server and give you a greater understanding of how you play!


Key Information:

  • You can only see the statistics about yourself and not other players.
  • To see your statistics you have to link your username and website login together.
  • Statistics only started when it was all implemented on the 15th of November, 2021, any statistics older than that cannot be implemented.
  • Network Overview is not available to anymore below Admin due to the sensitive nature of some of the statistics held. This is used to see the trajectory of the server and player retention.

Getting started:

In-game, run the command /plan register .  *You have to at least be a member to register.

This will give you a link to click on. Depending on your browser it may say the connection is unsafe, but we are hosting the website on the same dedicated server as the server and not trying to steal your data, it is safe to proceed.

After this point, it should give you a webpage which looks like the following:



Use the same username as you do in the server and make up a password, preferably one different from ones used on other sites. Once you have provided this information, it should now give you the following popup on the page:



Copy the first command it gives you, and run it in-game and you should get the following message in-game:



You have now successfully linked your in-game account to the Statistics website!

*If, you ever forget your password to your statistic account, we staff do not have access to that. You, the player must reset it following these steps:
Login to the minecraft server as you normally would. Once online and connected, you'll need to run the /plan unregister command.
It will ask you to confirm you wish to unregister your linked accounts. Click the green arrow to confirm. Once unregistered, follow to previous steps to reregister, using the same name as your in-game account

Viewing your statistics:

There are two ways in which you can view your statistics either through the in-game command or through the website:

In-game:

You can view basic statistics in-game using /plan ingame , it shall look like the following.



On the website:

To view more in-depth statistics about yourself, you can using /plan player ingame. It should give you a link to follow the statistics website. Use the username and password you entered earlier to link your account to login.

Once you have logged in you should see a page that would look something like this



There is a lot of information displayed on this page, take your time with reading this page. On the left hand side, there are further pages to dive deeper into your statistics.

Sessions
This tab allows you to search through and see which days you have been online and for how long you have been online!

PvP & PvE 
This tab allows you to see information about your player deaths and player kills, also gives in-depth information.



Server Overview
This tab allows you to see information about which servers you have played on the most and even for how long!



Plugins
Under this tab there is a lot of data for each of the servers! A lot of this data is personal and specific and why there is no screenshot of this. Take your time to look through this as it does make for some really interesting reading!

11
Server Announcements / Changes to Towny Taxes
« on: September 29, 2021, 08:55:40 PM »
Towny Economy Reforms
Dear SentinelCraft community!

We have not forgotten about towny and have spent some time looking at other ways in which we can improve the towny gameplay and make it different from it just being survival with friends. In our previous reforms, we looked at making town and nation upkeep more dynamic than the default linear system. We feel like this change went well and added a new dynamic towny.
We understand that that change was rather small, and we hope that the following set of changes will cover more, compared to before.
Tax Changes

At the moment many towns have set their plot taxes for their residents to zero. While this is great for the residents, this is unfortunately not really how towns or cities work. By doing this, we are removing a massive feature of what the towny plugin can offer us. With this update, we encourages town owners to set taxes for the use of the plots. The changes we have decided to implement are the following;

1 - Increased plot upkeep from $2 to $5.
2 - Set a minimum tax to be a town to be $20 per resident per day.
3 - Added further levels on the multiplier to currently cap out at 58 residents with a 3.0 multiplier, increased from 42 and the 2.2 multipliers.

These changes will result in doubling or even tripling the upkeep of a town, hitting Gotham the hardest. The reason for these changes are to get towns to use the tax system with residents. Moreover, towns to have to think about their next expansion, recruitment and overall claimed area. Tax changes that are going to be handed down to the player are;

1 - A minimum tax of $20 a day per player, but a recommended tax of $25 or more is a good starting point for towns, towns should look at setting their taxes to help manage their town upkeep. This is up to the mayor' decision.
2 - Recommended/default plot taxes for new towns:
      o   Default tax - $25
      o   Shop Plots - $50
      o   Embassy Plots - $100
      o   Normal Plots - $20

These values should be treated as a starting point for how towns manage their funds. This is a way for town members to contribute to it automatically. It is to be expected that these values are likely to be increased in towns.

Examples!


You will have 7 days to look over these changes to see the implications for your town and pull together a taxation policy if your town wishes. These changes are none negotiable


Outposts

To help give back to towns instead of just adding more negatives, we have decided to give towns outposts. These outposts can act as an extension to the original town away from the actual town. As we are wanting to use this feature, blatant plot bridges to claim other areas will be dealt with. Blatant in this case is where towns have claimed areas outside of their vicinity. Towns should use outposts going forward for these. Any plot bridges will be dealt with, and is up to Senior Staff judgement. We have highlighted some towns "guilty" of this and we shall be discussing it with them.

Key aspects for outposts are the following stats;
1 - The minimum distance from other towns is 10 plots
2 - The minimum distance from your town is 5 plots
3 - The maximum distance from your town plots is 50 plots
4 - Towns with 10 residents can have 1 outpost
5 - Towns with 28 residents can have 2 outposts
6 - Towns with 50+ residents can have 3 outposts
7 - The cost to make an outpost is $25,000

To allow outposts to something which could be worthwhile, we have changed the number of town blocks you get from each citizen from 16 to 18. This means that you will be able to claim 2 more plots per active resident. Be careful if your town shrinks, you do not want to be hit with the overclaimed upkeep!

TLDR;
1 - Strong Recommendation for setting up taxes for plot owners.
2 - Plots that towns have overclaimed have an upkeep of $10.
3 - Further expanded the scale for the multipliers to 58 residents capping out at a 3.0 multiplier.
4 - Allowing towns to have an outpost away from the main town.
5 - Plots a town gets for each resident changed from 16 to 18.
6 - You will have 7 days after this post before the tax changes get implemented



12
Bungee Update / Server Downtime
« on: July 28, 2021, 01:25:27 PM »
Is it really a server transfer if things does not go majorly wrong?

I'm here to give you a timeline on things that occurred two nights ago, causing the server to be down for this long extended period. After I explained what happened, I will give some information about how the staff team will proceed from here.

Two nights ago, on the evening of the release of bungee, I had the wonderful idea to get dynmap running, which was the easy past and for a time it was working.
To ensure that space on the server is used effectively. I wanted to save the map on a different drive on the dedicated server on which we have the whole network on. This would have meant bringing back dynmap for all servers in a realistic timeframe. Progress on setting up the infrastructure for this was slow going and I was having to learn a lot through online guides and handbooks. I am not a computer systems admin, so have little knowledge of this. If you want to understand some of the information I was looking at lookup mysql and some of the guides there.

The issue occurred while trying to run a particular command, which Linux users will know probably well enough to understand the next bit. I tried to run this command:

chown -R mysql.mysql /backup/dynmap

But I accidentally ended up running the following command:

chown -R mysql.mysql / backup/dynmap

For most people, these look identical and you may expect them to run the same, but those of you who know Linux will see the major mistake I made. Chown as a command changes permissions for particular files, it allows programs to use them or bans them from using them. The -R does this recursively through all subfolders and files. By having space after / it caused the command to run in the root of the server, changing all access to the whole server.
The damage was already done, it's not reversible. I tried as I might to look up a solution for this, but all places said one thing and one thing only to truly fix it: "The damage is far too great, you need to reinstall the dedicated server". This is what we have to do, I have opened a ticket with the host to resolve this matter and take backups of all the servers to hold on a different drive, this also includes our databases, which we have around 25 of them and each having multiple tables within them, when compressed this is 140GB.

I am hopeful the damage is limited to the backend console, which just needs setting up again and all server containers and databases to be set up again and it should all work as it did before; all player data should be safe, including worlds and everything up till the crash. The downside of this, the server is going to be down for maybe up to a day or two for us to get access to it again (host is slow and it could be hours before we get access again) and be able to reconfigure everything we need to and ensure its done right.

Now the good news, the host got back to us!

As of right now, the progress that needs to be made today are the following;
- Transferring the worlds over again (during the day of transfer this took 60% of our time)
- Databases will need to be reinitialised (this means no data has been lost....or so we think!)

This has been a highly stressful time for us all and I do ask you to show patience with it, we have all seen how good bungee can be and it can be better once configured correctly on all fronts!

13
Bungee Update / Official Bungee Transfer Announcement!
« on: July 07, 2021, 12:17:35 PM »
Official Bungee Transfer Announcement


We believe we are ready to announce a transfer day to move from our current setup to that of a Minecraft network! We have put a lot of effort behind the scenes over the last few months to get to where we are.

We have decided that the 26th of July will be the day we do the transfer!

So everyone has up to the 25th of July to complete the listing of their homes, it has been detailed in this post here (http://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?topic=10387.0). If you do not complete it before then, unfortunatly we will not be able to help you getting back to your home locations on bungee, we have a lot of post-launch stuff we need to still figure out and fix.

As for the transfer, it will take considerable time to be able to transfer so many different things and make final touches such as ensuring the majority of warps are in place for everyone, making sure custom commands are working as intended and most importantly all the worlds are transferred correctly. You need to be patient with us. We hope to limit downtime to only a day, but it could run over to a second one if we run into issues. If this may be the case we will communicate this with you. Once we have finished our transfer we will announce a time which the server will be open to the public and you can enjoy the launch of the Sentinel Network!

Leading up to the transfer
In the weeks we will be releasing guides we have put together on bungee for many of the different things that have changed, we hope this will help ease everyone transitions onto bungee. We shall try and squeeze in a development diary or two to update you on aspects of the project we have been working on.

As for just before the transfer, we will need everyone to do the following as a precaution, this is because we want to ensure all your items are safe, and that your transfer is smooth.

  • Place all items in chests and place them in the world
  • Remove any listing you may have in the auction house
  • Remove anything you may have from your enderchest
  • (Donators) Remove anything you have in /chest and place it in a chest in the world

If you have not done this, you run the risk of losing your items held in these places, this is down to the nature of transferring 200,000 player data files which are in so many different states, it could potentially go wrong or not work.

Things that will change after transfer

There is a multitude of things to get used to after the transfer. We do hope these are not big issues for us, and we will grow to live with the quirks like we currently do on Sentinel. If you believe there is an issue you think is a bug we definitely would like you to report to us under the following post board and detailing the problem as much as possible so we can investigate it promptly.
Some of the things that are going to change for the better or for worse (totally up to you to decide):

  • /back will not work as you would want and we have detailed this in a previous Development Diary. We will be giving each player an extra home to help combat this.
  • Towny chat and its features will be gone, you will have to use /clan. This means on transfer you will not be able to chat with your townies until you make a /clan chat for them.
  • Maps are likely to be broken for the coming weeks while we work through the massive backlog of maps, please give us time when sorting maps, we want to be able to do it right. More information to come soon.
  • Parkour is going to be reset of everyone, this is due to a permission issue with changing permission flags, it's not possible to fix at this time.
  • General bugs that will need to be reported.

We hope you are as excited as we are about this! We are working very hard to make sure it goes ahead for us all with as few problems as possible and looking forward to playing on bungee!

        -SentinelCraft Staff

14
Bungee Update / Development Diary #6 - General Update and Maps!
« on: July 01, 2021, 12:21:39 PM »
Development diary #6 - Overall Plan - General Update and Maps!

What we have gotten finished!

Good news! Now that more of us are free to put time into the server and the bungee update, we have made great progress. We have gotten to a point in which we have ensured all plugins work well together. Allow us to break it down to things we have gotten working and believe are complete for you;

  • All the chats are working as intended, we have the following channels all set up after a lot of bug-fixing!
    • Global
    • Local
    • World
    • Helpop
    • Senior Member
    • Party
    • Clan
  • Private messaging works across all servers, if you play with sound you get a "ping" noise to inform you got a message!
  • If you @ a player they will get a "ping" in-game and this could be useful, but be warned if it's abused it shall be quickly removed.
  • During recent server downtime we copied over Fedgardia to Bungee and are going through the process of setting up all the protections to ensure it's ready for people to spawn in for the first time there!
  • Fedgardia's render distance is set to 16! We want people to receive the WOW factor when they first enter the server.
  • We have set up the login security for the server! This is fully working and we have enabled some features that we have not used in the past such as being able to reconnect without having to enter a password. This works by creating sessions based upon your IP, so no one else will be able to log in as you! Helps if you keep getting disconnected for silly reasons.
  • We got a bunch of other commands to work as we would like, and we are adding, even more, commands to this list slowly!
  • We are fixing a ton of permissions and we are getting closer and closer to the end of this process.
  • We got our auction plugin finally finished and ready to work! We have a guide coming on how it all works! Thank Thorn and Joelle for putting in the time to write it for us all!
  • LWC works as we would want it across the servers it's enabled on.
  • We got LogBlock working and we are now tracking many more block changes across all the servers it's required on.
  • We can track playtime in a better way, we have /cplaytime and /playtime.
  • Jail is now new and improved! If you go AFK your jail time will stop going down, if you log out your jail time will stop! You gotta serve all your time in jail!
  • Moderators, for now, have use of /cuff, stops you in your tracks and only allows you to use /msg to talk to them.
  • NPCs have been placed at spawn (thanks B!).
  • Holograms have been placed at spawn.
  • We are updating guides for Bungee around all aspects, we do hope you look forward to reading them.


Maps

As we have now gone through all the good things and the major progress we have made, we need to discuss a big issue which we have put major thought into. Personally, I have lost sleep over it, and that's a very big issue with custom player maps.

Currently, the issue we have is that maps will not transfer across to bungee in any worthwhile way. I have spent hours and hours looking for any information which could allow us to import all the maps correctly and this has not been possible. We are facing the following problems;


  • Maps are saved as individual files within the world folder. The data in this folder contains its map location, the scale of the map, its locked state, dimension and colours. This causes the following issues;
    • They are individual files, which would make it impossible to quickly transfer maps between servers as we currently do. The map number in one server could be another map but in a different server, and so, it would show a different image.
    • Maps have locational data in them, with moving worlds onto different servers as we have done with a bungee (A.K.A making sentinel a network) the maps will be unable to reference the map locations in flat, therefore breaking all the maps.
  • There is little to no information about transferring maps between worlds folders, never mind in the way we would want to transfer maps from a server environment that has been set up with multiverse to that of what we have for bungee. Unfortunately, I am not that knowledgeable on Minecraft NBT tags to be able to spend the 10s of hours required to even attempt to try something that could potentially fail.
  • Even if we did transfer them we would still have issues creating new maps and getting them on all the different worlds/servers for people to use them.

We have tried to think of many different solutions on how we could potentially save maps and shall detail some of the ideas we thought about and decided against them for one reason or another;

  • Having a flat world on each server just for transferring maps to ensure that we have a copy on each server to bring custom maps to people.
    We thought this world would be only accessible to staff to get copies of the maps for people. We decided against doing this as it would require installing multiverse on all servers creating a larger overhead and complexity. This would mean creating an additional 4 worlds across the required servers, which is would be difficult to maintain and impractical for us.
  • The potential of sectioning off a large section of Horizon and Kattalox off to be able to place maps. This was more promising but we are not wanting to in a sense trash large sections of the world for this, it is not vanilla play and will be very odd seeing this in the work. This does also add the extra concern of expensive blocks used in maps being transferred into survival.
  • Placing the maps outside of the world border, we decided against this due to us extending our world borders, so this one does not make much sense for us either as a long term plan.

We have looked and thought about even more different solutions we could potentially have, and in general, they did range from absurd to totally impractical for a long-term plan, and we could go around in circles with different approaches and plans. We do just need one plan that works for us.

We do in fact have a long term plan for what we would like to do for maps, and this encompasses past maps as well as future maps people create.


  • We plan on placing maps on the top of the nether roof in both Horizon and Kattalox, and in the void for Fedgardia, as these are areas that are inaccessible for everyone. We will set up Worldguard permissions for specific players in this region, it will not damage or take up space in the overworld which other ideas would have and allows maps to be better protected. Players will still create the original maps in flat before we paste them on top of the nether roof.
  • In each location we will have a specific maps storage building that holds copies of each map to allow admin+ to be able to give maps if they are either lost by the original owner. We will have to refine our idea on how we are going to name maps and ensure there is enough space for them. This is to also ensure maps do not go missing and are easily retrievable for you.
  • To save space, maps will be stacked if they are not extremely tall 3d maps, this means it will take up a smaller footprint on the server and gives us a lot of space to be able to paste current maps and future maps.

Potential issues;

  • There is one significant downside to this which we have considered but deemed it a necessary one, is that maps cannot be greater than 128 blocks high. This does mean 3d maps are likely to be untransferable unless they are squashed to within the 128 block limit. We are disappointed that it has come to this, but we have to think about what is best for the community as a whole and consider the impact on all aspects of the server.
  • No matter the approach we take, if you hold a map in your hand or any inventory and move to a different server, for example going from horizon to Kattalox, the map item will break. This is not a fixable thing and we will have to learn to live with it.
  • All maps of your local terrain or builds (A.K.A maps not made in flat) will need to be recreated by yourself again, unfortunately, we will not be able to help with this with us being busy with other aspects of bungee.

Maps is one of the most annoying parts of the transfer and we understand it will be upsetting many players. All the current maps having to be recreated will be a massive undertaking for the staff team. We hope you will work with us on this issue to ensure we get it to a point we are all happy with.


Minecraft 1.17

Mojang in this version has changed a lot for server owners which has annoyed plugin developers and the developers of PaperMC, which the server runs on. The main change which Mojang thought would be best to increase the Java version dependency required to run a Minecraft server from Java 8 to Java 16, we have told it would only be Java 11 until recently. In general, I can imagine if you check your computer you are likely to have an install for Java 8, this has been the long-standing version of java since 2014 with support ending in 2030.

Java 16 is a frustrating version of Java to be on as it's not even a long term supported (LTS) version, support not lasting all that long, its likely that in the year we will have to go to Java 17 to ensure that we are on an LTS version of Java.

This has implications for our server. Given we run on Java 8 and updating java needs to be treated carefully as we can, we will not be able to update to 1.17 before we move to bungee. As we don't want to run the risk, that after updating the server will not start due to missing libraries or dependencies in java. In simple terms, this is like going from a PlayStation 1 and upgrading to a PlayStation 3, 4 or 5 and expecting your original game to work as it's on the same name console, it's true that some games would work but also true that some games would not, this is the same concept for the server.

The good news is that Bungee has been developed on Java 11 until we were informed about the Java 16 dependency, and upgraded to that and with minor changes, it seems that bungee is stable using java 16 and with a little poking our plugins will work as we would like. We also expect 1.17 to be a month or two away ensuring all plugins work for java 16 and are stable for an update.



- Sentinel Staff

15
Bungee Update / Development diary #3 - Updates - 7 servers, 7 times the work!
« on: April 16, 2021, 07:02:44 PM »
Development diary #3 - Updates - 7 servers, 7 times the work!

There has been a flurry of progress on configuring Bungee; while they may seem minor, these changes bring us many steps closer to a finished product. This development diary does not have a particular topic which shall be covered, but will aim to cover a few smaller updates that we hope you can get excited about!

Skyblock

We have said we would be bringing Skyblock back to Sentinel and have said as such a few times in the previous development diaries, but we never gave any details on this. We have taken a good look at Skyblock, and we aim to make it its own robust and complete game mode, improving upon Sentinel's last iteration of Skyblock.

  • As Skyblock has its own server, we can afford to give it much more attention than before, and we have decided to provide 3 different game modes to start with. These will be:
    • Skyblock - The regular experience on a little floating island.
    • Caveblock - Is the void of regular Skyblock rather bland to you? Why not start in a world trapped in stone and nothing but stone?
    • Boxed - A game mode where you are boxed into a tiny space that only expands by completing advancements.
  • With how these game modes have been set up, each of the game modes are run independently and therefore can have an island for each of the different game modes. This means no shared inventory, balance, etc between game modes.
  • Since we will have multiple game modes, the Skyblock server is getting its own lobby!
  • Challenges will be reintroduced, and we are lucky that charactername111 and a few others are taking the time to check to ensure it's balanced and progress is rewarded. This has the potential for us to introduce custom challenges alongside the original ones!
  • With this, we do have the potential of introducing further game modes or addons from the BentoBox add-on list, but this is only likely if Skyblock becomes popular for many players.
  • With the whole set of plugins and addons getting regular updates, it's more stable than ever!
  • This has meant redoing the whole set of configurations from scratch.

Now some of the bad news:

Since we are bringing back Skyblock, along with other game modes, with an updated challenges list, this does mean that Skyblock will be starting afresh for all players. We have put considerable thought into this decision and our decision process is outlined as the following:

  • It is not as simple to just transfer the Skyblock map, we can't just drop it in the folder and have it work because it is accompanied by outdated configuration files and databases which would take a considerable time to port over and, with us being a small team, this is not feasible.
  • It would be unfair for some people to have developed islands and be able to redo challenges again due to plugin updates. We want a level playing field for everyone.
  • By not transferring anything over from the old Skyblock files, we also eliminate transferring any corruption which caused the Skyblock to crash in the first place.

Server Chat

After previous feedback and with everyone being so supportive, we have made some changes to what chats are going to be available on the server. We believe this to be the final iteration which the chat will go through and will stay this way.

  • Implementation of a world chat, which would allow players to talk within the particular server they are on. This is taking the prefix [W] and will be in old yellow and can be seen as its replacement.
  • The following chat features are fully working across the network and will be a big improvement over some previous plugins:
    • Person to person mail has greatly improved and allows a person to send a much longer message to a person, and even be allowed to forward the mail to others! It is like a full-on email system. It will take some getting used to, but we think it's a big improvement over our current mailing setup!
    • Direct messages will work across all servers, the other player must be online, just like we currently have.
    • Local chat will tell you if there is no one around you to chat to!
    • We have made aliases for all chats otherwise it would have been: /ch send <channel> <message>.
  • There is a party system in which you can talk with anyone within your party. This party system is dynamic and upon leaving the game you would be removed from the party and would have to rejoin. This can be used for dynamic or small group projects where a persistent chat would not be needed and if local would give away secret information or not be suitable as party members are spread across multiple servers.
  • There is now a clan system. We like to think of this as the new town chat. It is very much like the party chat system, other than the fact this chat would be persistent and you would remain in the chat upon leaving and joining again. It may not be as well integrated as towny chat currently, but we needed it to be across Bungee!

Other Changes

  • AFK works across servers and displays on tab correctly.
  • Broadcast messages work across the network.
  • Server restarts have been scheduled for every 6 hours, at the moment they all restart at the same time.
  • Many warps have been placed, warp signs will all need replacing upon world transfer.
  • NPC's have been transported over.
  • Banning and muting players works across the network.
  • Other general QoL staff commands have been implemented and improved.
  • Power levels show under the players' name if McMMO is on that server.
  • Shop signs work in Fedgardia and Horizon; we still have to update item.db across all servers. This shall be easier once Essentials plugin updates.
  • McMMO Monday custom script is now installed.
  • Minepack's /chest now works across the network.
  • Holograms have been transferred to Fedgardia and Horizon, all over 300 of them.
  • Updated so many plugins across all 7 servers, with more to be updated shortly. This should fix some bugs we are encountering.


- Sentinel Staff

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