Non-technical considerations for running a BTW SMP server?

[Minecraftgeek70]

I'm pretty much a noob around these here parts. Have messed around with BTW for a while now but more often than not I was just an anonymous lurker on the forums. BTW is , I have to admit the only reason I still play Minecraft these days.

Anyway , to the point! I'm an absentee landlord on a 30(ish) slot MC server hosted by a "cheap yet reputable" server hoster. my Players are trusted, whitelisted and happy in their little community and I leave them to it. I pop on occasionally to tweak things, set up new/updated plugins etc and that's about it.

Then BTW became SMP and I "moderately" pleased. I didn't want to disturb the status quo on my existing server but I wanted to dabble in BTW SMP. so at the weekend I bit the bullet and purchased a second similar spec server hosting and set up the latest BTW SMP server.

Well.. It works kinda (exhibit A)




Buit I have to admit ..I'm not sure what I want to do! I mean, I'm used to running a bukkit server with all the gamut of protection plugins. Worldguard, LWC, Logblock, PermissionsEx yadda yadda yadda... suddenly I find myself with a BTW server world and no protections what so ever. This is fine, I'll just have to whitelist keep an eye on potential trouble makers.

But I don't know what to do. Normally when I start a server my process is build a cool spawn town/city with all "mod cons" , set the spawnpoint to my spawn tower etc, cuboid protect the whole shebang, set up whitelist and then finally open server to players.

Obviously I COULD still build a cool spawn city.. but I know from BITTER experience there's some players out there who just take perverse joy at being destructive (hence my swiss army knife of protection/anti griefing plugins)

I'm not one for so called Anarchy servers, and I don't much like PVP either truth be told. Minecraft is different things to different people. To some it's a combat game, to others a building game and to others it allows them to solve puzzles etc created by others.

IMHO BTW makes minecraft a builder/puzzle game. you build what you want, you solve the puzzles of sorting x from Y and grinding Z, adding it to Q, smelting R and outputting A all the while keeping track of the labyrinthine routes your Axles, redstone etc all take.

so my question is.. how do you guys "start"? I mean.. my server is playable right now. but when you join there's nothing.. nada.. not even a dirt shack at spawn XD. Do you build a spawn area but recognise it's "probably" going to end up trashed and griefed to oblivion and back? I "COULD" go full anarchy.. but the whole point of me setting up a BTW SMP server is to play BTW SMP! I don't relish the idea of having two servers set up and me playing on neither of them XD

and I guess.. my second question is. How do you find resource usage? I have two identicle servers hosted by the same company. Both 2048MB ram & 30GB HDD with 2 CPU cores. My Bukkit one (with many add ons) runs 30 players easy enough.. currently my BTW one I've limited to 10 (at the moment) as I don't want to stress it out TOO MUCH. I understand all the entities etc in BTW do put more strain on a server.

I have also heard there's issues with elevators kicking players for flying.. but enabling flight on a server also allows people with flight mods to "cheat".

I guess what I want is all the fun of BTW with all the tight control I have on my Bukkit server XD Not asking for much.. am I? :D hahaha

TL;DR "What do you guys do when you start a BTW server?"

[FaceFoiled]

Well, for me it would not be much different actually. The first time I started a server, I build the spawn as well to the disappointment of some. When i last restarted the map, we all came together and build the spawn. Everybody had little projects in a central place which came together nicely.

We have not reset the map for BTW, so the main chunk is already there, but the idea would be the same. Setup a place you want to build for yourself, and when you have time and resources, start working together on a central spawn. The fun of that, is that everybody is involved and you work with others. This will also tend to get people to come back to the spawn, and not just "spawn" there and get away for good. :p

Now though, with the existing world I am revisiting old projects and updating them. Skycity will soon be Skycity - BTW style. =)

[SterlingRed]

I'll address flying first. FC is fixing it, so with that in mind, do not enable flying and just warn your users about platforms until the fix is in place. Knowing FC, you probably won't even be that far in the tech tree by the time it's fixed.

I have hosted a bukkit server before with the army of admin tools and protections. I'm now trying out a btw anarchy server so griefing isn't a concern.

My best advise for a friendly server is to make frequent back ups and manage the white list close. When any griefing occurs, roll back the server to the last back up and use the server logs to figure out or at least narrow down who did it. Then ban the offender. It might be a bit of a battle art the start but I think that eventually you will get a good group of trusted players.

As far as the start, I'd let the server evolve as it goes rather than plan the whole thing out from the start. But that's just me.

[FlowerChild]

Honestly, in your shoes I'd take one for the team in terms of griefing.

I think griefers will generally go for the first available target on a server. If they spawn next to a base, that will likely be what they go after.

As an admin, you have the greatest ability to deal with that out of your player base, thus if it is your base getting griefed, that's actually the best possible outcome out of a host of shitty ones.

[TheAnarchitect]

Either that or find a friend who loves designing traps, and give them the job of building said griefer-attractors.

Actually, now that I think about it having a server where someone with admin-creative powers goes around building trapped temples for other players to raid sounds awesome.

[FaceFoiled]

The griefer I had on Edolas a few days ago, was not a griefer in the terms off "logs in, gets a pick axe, destroys things". But more in the line off: "Has a hacked/modded client, infinite items/actions, flies around at super speed blowing super charged creeper holes". You can't do much against that, apart from backups and whitelisting.

Screening everybody you whitelist like the Spanish inquisition could help. :P

[lifeiwater]

Like you, I've run a bukkit server for quite a while. I ran a bukkit server for about 18 months before discovering SSP BTW. Now that BTW is out for SMP, I've had to jump into vanilla minecraft server hosting, and I will tell you, it sucks. Don't get me wrong tho, I love my servers denizens, but keeping the peace without logblock/coreprotect and LWC is a nightmare within itself.

If your running anarchy servers then everything fine, because generally stealing and griefing is expected, but on a friendly server, there are always bad apples. I went from a non-whitelist, to a whitelist due to the griefing alone, and even now, with a small user count ( about 5-20 logged in at all times ), we still have people stealing. Just yesterday I lost all my valuables. Sifting through dat files staring at item ID's to see who has who's items is annoying and for the most part, guesswork.

A whitelist is the best you can do for now, and frequent world backups (every 30-60 minutes if you have HD space). Have people store valuables in enderchests. Other then that there's not much you can do.

My honest recommendations is learn some java coding and start creating simple protection plugins until the ModAPI is out.

[Minecraftgeek70]

My honest recommendations is learn some java coding and start creating simple protection plugins until the ModAPI is out.

XD that made me smile. Thanks for the advice. Am already pretty well versed in Java (and C++, C#, Pascal/Delphi, etc etc) but I'll probably wait for the ModAPI to come out as I'm terribly lazy. I program day in day out for my fat cat bosses and apart for my occasional Android Apps I don't do much in the way of personal programming. Have been coding professionally now for 22 years.. unofficially I wrote my 1st crude game in 1980 XD a stunning "tour de force" text only "cannon" game where you cunningly typed in an angle, direction and power and tried to hit a hidden target from the "You were 4 meters to the left and 1 meter behind" messages XD

Sadly my game programming skills never progressed much past that XD lol

But thanks for the advice.. I'm implementing a backup on my server as you suggested. Alas the Mrs (strange woman that she is) doesn't see the fascination with BTW / Minecraft and has been forcing me against my will to be sociable with her friends of late XD hehe.. she obviously doesn't appreciate the specialist needs of your average geek XD

[schubeast]

SterlingRed mentioned server logs. What do you reccommend to use to use for a BTW SMP server? I am currently running a private sever and would appreciate your reccommendation on what to use for that...

[Benanov]

You could always start your own server mod, or try to merge in any plugins if the source is available.

If you end up going the latter route, look at BWR's build system. You don't need to keep the "renewables" theme or any of the java code (you can if you want, of course; the mod is open source) - I'm pointing this out because the makefile and associated installation process is tailor-made for automated builds.