So I was writing the second half of the next Inkstain. It was, of course, in a book and quill, and I was spending quite a bit of time writing it and simultaneously doing other real life work (which slowed the process down quite a bit). At some point I noticed that in my chat I had been marked as away, but I didn't really care. Until EMC decided to kick me for being AFK while writing, that is. I lost a massive chunk of my work as a result of the kick, and no longer have the time to redo it all until tomorrow. So yeah, I'm pretty steamed, to be honest. This needs to be fixed so that people don't lose any more work like this, as when I mentioned it ingame one or two others spoke up and said they had had the same experience in the past. That's pretty much it, I think. Of course, one might say that this CAN'T be fixed because then people could just open up a book and quill to avoid the AFK system. The solution to that is, of course, to abolish the AFK system or at least extend it. There are plenty of times when I am kicked despite the fact that there are open slots, which is fairly irritating.
I haven't looked at any of the code regarding book writing, but I would highly suspect that just having a book open is completely client side. Opening it, closing it, signing it, etc may all be server side, but the process of writing it is likely client side. IIRC, this has been an issue that was brought up before, but nothing was done. I suggest that, for anyone writing lengthy books, you exit the book periodically and refresh your AFK status.
Still, I had no idea this would happen, and it's unlikely that every person writing a book is going to realize that they can be kicked while doing that. Quite honestly, the AFK kicking doesn't seem to be doing much good, so I'm all for restricting it to crowded events or servers that are actually full (even if they wouldn't be with the normal, much preferred 60 player limit) rather than kicking people when there are 15/45 people online because it is "peak hours."
While I don't disagree with anything here, jk's got the right of it in that you should hit "done" periodically - though I advise this only to save your work. This time it was EMC's fault, but next time it might be a sudden power outage. Or the network goes down. Or your computer locks up. There are a lot of things that can just randomly go wrong, so any time you're working on a long, involved project, save. Personally, I write everything up in notepad and copy-paste it over to the book, page-by-page, with fixes to formatting and spacing as needed. Not a perfect system (god do I miss Bookz) but it works well. Plus, when I'm done, I have a full notepad save as a master, in case I ever need to reprint something and somehow lose the in-game master copy.
That's quite true. However, if there isn't a power outage, a technical issue, or some other thing that deletes work, even one tiny saved segment, then we might as well prevent EMC from going "Ha ha tr0l0l0ol0lo0lol" and wasting our time. We only have so much time on our hands, so it really gets on my nerves when something that can be prevented essentially steals what little time I have.
Unfortunately, there will never be the case where everyone will be able to know about something before it happens, even with massive announcements. The AFK system kicks (NPI) in at 75% capacity, so no one should ever be kicked when there are less than 33 or 34. At that point the server could easily see 12+ people wanting to get on, and thus the AFK system is actually doing a lot of good. It is better to have more slots open than necessary than to not have enough, even if it means inconveniencing some players who aren't playing at the time (or in this case, something that possibly can't be detected by the server). If the AFK system was mistakenly kicking people more often, it might need to be fixed, but one rare issue isn't really worth bringing the working system down for. If this is fixable, then of course fix it. But if it is an issue with how the client talks to the server, then don't fix it.
its really not possible at all from a technical perspective. Book editing is done purely client side... So there's no way we can even tell you have a book open to begin with. And yes afk kick will only happen with 33+ people on.
I actually found a very quick (and safe) solution to this. Basically, what Kephras said: Save rough drafts into Notepad files with editing as needed, and to actually write your book, go into a creative world and work on it there. As you go down the line in your Notepad file, make each page individually. You can test whether or not your page comes out right by copying the "page" you want in your Notepad file to the book you're writing in (don't forget the ยง symbol in your written books in case you wanna format font styles/colors/etc). Going into EMC to write/publish your book should only really be done as a final draft. It also feels relieving to come back with something to be proud of (and that is massively written) within seconds after logging back into EMC. (It's also how I wrote my Brewing 101 book.) It's better than being a sitting duck waiting for the AFK system to scope you out. I've had that happen to me before, and I can admittedly say that at the time I was just as upset about my loss as you were. But nowadays, because of the technique(s) I developed, I can easily look back on it and laugh it off. Also, I should mention: He's absolutely right. Another thread was mentioned about this very same problem. But, as we all know already, there's nothing that was done because there's not really much that can be done in terms of an automated system, since like Aikar mentioned: Again, best solution is to demo it in a Creative world before bringing it to EMC. Also, not to go too far off-topic, but I demo almost everything I plan to do in Singleplayer Creative anyway before I bring it to the Empire. It's how I remade my home on my res, for instance. And as I mentioned before: So yeah, just take the Written Book to Creative Mode before putting it on the Empire. Best fix, and no one will bug you while you're still writing the book, either: because you'll have a nice, peaceful comfort zone to mess around in while you write said book, adjusted any way you like that suits you.
Close. The "best" solution would be to revert the system to its original state from a year or two ago, but unfortunately the best solution is not always the optimal solution for the community as a whole, yes? I suppose you can't always please everyone, and as long as there is lag, the best solution is not the best solution. Anyhow, I'll test out copying from a document. I tried it before and didn't quite like it because if you try to copy and past too much, nothing happens. I'm on a Mac, so Notepad isn't really an option (I've tried it before, it just won't work). Thanks for the tips, I'll look into transferring from an outside source some more in order to prevent this happening again.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...1-windows-version-1-0-1-minecraft-book-editor https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads You should be able to set up a VirtualBox with Win10 preview for free, then you could use the program above. Other than that, I am not sure if there is other Windows emulation software for Mac, all I know of is Wine for Linux.
An alternate to wordpad or Office Word or similar programs, which I prefer for writing anything in general, is using Google Drive, because it saves on basically every edit automatically and is online so if your computer decides to spontaneously go potato and then hash browns, you'll still have your work. And then you can still copy+paste it into Minecraft. It's the ultimate anti-computer-screw-up way to do it. Or, if you dislike Google Drive, you can always try to write a physical copy. Unless you have a cat that likes playing with paper or chronic misplacement-of-things disorder, you should have that no matter how many power outages you go through. If a server could check if a player is pressing keys while Minecraft is in the foreground, it would be possible to prevent the kick and AFK from players writing books, but I'm not sure if that's even possible.
I used to be against drive for the longest time, but now I use it for all my stuff except Google sheets, I prefer excel still.
