State of Development 10/26/14

Discussion in 'Empire News' started by Aikar, Oct 26, 2014.

  1. Hey everyone. Been a while since I did one of these. Figured I'd give a more public post on where things are.

    First off, a tip if you didn't already know, but I commonly post mini status updates about what I'm working on on my profile! http://u.emc.gs/Aikar

    But for a more formal run-down.

    As you know, we relaunched a great new tutorial. This was a major step in improving the quality of the Empire as it greatly helps improve the quality of our newer players. One complaint we received a lot was about the newer players, being super lazy, not learning anything, and just overall bad apples. Sure those people all quit, but they caused their damage before leaving.

    Our goal now is to reduce/remove any of that harm they cause where we can. The new tutorial is now sitting at about a 30% loss of new players, compared to the previous 7%~.

    Now before, we were pushing to get that number lower, but it being at 30% is really not as big of a deal to us now.

    Advertising is drastically cut down to the Microsoft thing, so we don't have to look at things as "wasted money". This gives us a chance to not worry about 'loss of a potential player' when it comes to "they probably were not a good player any ways if they couldn't bother to finish the tutorial."

    Tightening up on the new players will give us a more quality set of new players, something many have asked us to do.

    Then we also put an end to caps lock. No more caps spam on EMC will drastically cut down the always following "no caps" messages.

    More work on improving the quality of EMC for existing players to come!

    -----------
    Then as everyone knows, we had some recent server issues with our host. It's mostly resolved (still something broken but I've worked around it for now), but this ate up A LOT of my time and was pretty stressful.

    Thankfully we recently made updates that helped me get us back up and running quickly. Now EMC is even more redundant and ready to take on issues.

    Then finally finishing a "what we did", We recently launched an update to our Bungee Cord software, which is what us and every other big server network uses to have a single join address, giving some fancy improvements to the server such as dynamic MOTD's and tab-list messages.

    This update was also critical to our ability to be redundant and got us back up and running during the network issues. Soon I will complete the last leg of redundancy and then we'll be pretty sturdy.
    I learned a few new tricks this week, so any future issues should not be a problem.

    =========================
    What's on the plate for now: Name Change Support

    Mojang recently announced that Name changes are just around the corner. We've been doing updates here and there to support it, but were actually not ready yet...

    We have UUID's stored for every player, but Shops and Residences still use names.

    I'm in the middle of finishing updating Shops to not use names (and for you techies, actually not even going to use UUID's! We have our own "Empire ID" pure unsigned integer key for every player that we will use instead of UUID's for Shops and Residences, as its quicker to look an entry up by the primary key than the UUID)

    I'm hoping to get that out this week (As well as a fix for notify messages for 16 char long names)

    Then shortly after that, Residences, and then we will be fully ready to support name changes.

    And throwing in some bug fixes here and there too!

    ===========================
    Next after that.... Games Server!

    The build team has worked hard on a games server for a while, but there are a few final touches and tieing together needed from me. Once I get these items off my plate, I will then jump in and do some rapid development to finish off everything needed to get this Games server launched.

    The Games server is NOT your typical mini game server. It's meant to be like a lot of the events we have today, in a central location, so that being in the wild on a certain SMP doesn't exclude you from events on that server, and also provide some automated games, and ample room to have different "Arenas" for things like Mob Arena.

    In other words, a much richer Event experience on the Empire, with some games to come that can be fully automated.

    ===========================
    Then finally.... It's going to maybe be 1.8, or Dragon Tombs v3.

    I really do not know what's going to happen with 1.8, but if the opportunity presents itself, we might update, or I might postpone it just so we can get more DT progress done.

    Were not in a good position for 1.8, as even if spigot releases 1.8, its 100% unusable for us. I will explore options though.

    That's it for now :)
    sassy2355, hashhog3000, 607 and 12 others like this.
  2. What's on the plate for now: Name Change Support
    Aww yish! Name Change Time!!!
    Okay maybe not; I think I'll keep my name for now, If I would name change, I'd call myself Fidelcastro :p

    Next after that.... Games Server!
    That is AWESOME! Just another server EMC just wiped off the board by introducing this. This will indeed be another reason to stick around the best Minecraft server.
    No excuses left BOYS!


    Then finally.... It's going to maybe be 1.8, or Dragon Tombs v3.
    For this I honestly must vote for 1.8
    -1.8 is a way for us to keep making sure we get new players; non-updated servers are often a reason for new players to leave once they find out. I understand Dragon Tombs is exciting and such, but I just think 1.8/bug fixes should be top priority from you Aikar.

    What about a Dragon Tomb development team?
  3. oooooooooo
  4. Nice!

    any idea about a Halloween promo this year?
  5. DT is finally on the clipboard! :D
  6. "tech" wise we had some bigger plans that likely wont happen due to the issues we ran into last week, but there are some other plans though. There will be a repeat of last years promo at the minimum.
    wkramer79 and cadgamer101 like this.
  7. Nice :) So many words though xDD I cant wait to change my alts user, playaltminecraft. Hopefully then I can prowl around unrecognized ;)
  8. What's on the plate for now: Name Change Support
    I'm excited to finally make the "d" in my name capitalized :p
    But how would we know who is who if someone complete changes their name to something else?

    Next after that.... Games Server!
    Honestly, I was always apposed to this. I never saw adding a games server was a good idea. Emc was not meant to be a mini game BASED server, it was meant to be an economic based server. People will be on the Games Server more than the economy based ones, and I think it'd ruin what Emc has become (Sounds dumb but bear with me). Emc has always been my favorite server, and I liked it as it was. Sure, it's nice to be accustomed to change but I believe adding a Games Server is going a little overboard. I realize we've been having an excessive amounts of leaving players but this isn't a way to keep them here, for long at least. That's just my 2 cents.

    Then finally.... It's going to maybe be 1.8, or Dragon Tombs v3.
    We all have been waiting for DT to come out. But if we've waited this long for it, we can wait some more. I completely agree with Faithcaster on this one. My vote would be to update to 1.8 before DT is released. Many players, including myself, like to look for updated servers. Players do this to keep them interested in the game, if a server takes it's time with updating I think it'd lose a lot of players.

    Now before anyone gets all defensive, I am in no way talking bad about Emc. This place is my 2nd home and I would never talk bad about it. These are just my opinions :p
  9. Can't wait to see this come into place. You should really do a massive update then go on vacation down south haha. Nice work though.
  10. I vote for 1.8. DT is only of interested to a section of the playerbase. 1.8 is overdue.
  11. About 1.8: Remember this is not fully in my control. The legal issues in MC has made 1.8 a hard target.

    About games: again this is NOT a minigames server. It's more so moving things like Mob Arena, KOTH, Creeper Capture, Fire Floor etc into a single place with varying styles and room for more games.

    Our events are a huge part of EMC, so this is meant to spruce them up a bit (different Arenas etc)
  12. So far beside last week, still doing a great job.
  13. Great job Aikar! Keep up the awesome work as always, and continue to be one of the best Developers that I know :)
    highlancer54 likes this.
  14. I really hoped Mojang would cancel the name changes... :\
    highlancer54 likes this.
  15. so wait wll some of them be like running non-stop, as in you can go with set amount of friends or others and play a set game? or will it be where you have to wait for the event tp start at set time?
  16. Ideally we will have a set of automated games.

    I know the build team has done some things with Command Blocks, I just haven't had time to get on there and check out exactly what all they did. So we might have a few things.
  17. Also since the 1.8 is out of your control you should atleast work on the Dragon Tombs, I think there are several players waiting for that.
  18. When the Empire ID detects a name change, will you have the website synced to change our names on here too?

    Only things I see that need changed, might be:

    Locked Signs
    Access Everyone Signs (maybe just signs in general since they all store data?)

    Block ownership in the wild ...so if a block is placed by someone in the wild, it will change to that person's name..

    Square Log - would need to have a log say 'This person changed their name from 'name' to 'name2' on 'date' ..or something... so if all the logs are now on the new name - and something arises as an issue with the old name, it's there.

    Residence perms

    Residence ownership

    /p and /v update (I don't know if they're perm stored... so I'm not sure if they'd still show the old names as well as the new)

    supporter-ship and residence protection transfer ... not sure if these are stored separately or not... but wouldn't want someone's supporter-ship to end, or be forcefully prolonged because it sees it as a separate person but then 'transfers' it.

    Head names - would heads automatically updated?

    (and then the website names, too)

    edit: nvm 2 of them... just read what you put :p
    607 likes this.
  19. Sigh I knew I was forgetting things.

    Heads already should store by UUID, but names on signs will be impossible to auto update.

    I'll see about doing perms on residences too, but first priority is taking care of ownership things.

    /p oldname would not work once a user changes name, will need /p newname.

    However, we can store old name and make it work too, and show a persons old name on /p with the new name.

    Website won't be hard to update, just got to issue a rename command during the rename process, and yes it is logged.

    We already support renames on the Square/Database level, so users can't "get away" from their record.

    Now I've migrated website to the same datacenter, renaming a forum account is simple.

    Most things on the Empire use numerical ids, so just got to change the name in 1 place for forums.

    Block logs in wild would not be possible to update either, but we dont blindly act on those logs being triggered, and i doubt a person will report themselves for griefing, and we can easily see owner of block matches name of the new breaker.

    Lock signs will likely be the main issue that wont be fixable. We can't "convert" every lock sign as we dont have them stored in an accessible way, nor would we want to go loading random chunks throughout the Frontier.

    We will have to just assist people who lose access to their chest or come up with some "If your old name matches" style.
    607 likes this.
  20. could newer locked and access signs placed be able to be stored as the empire id? but just visually display your name... so when you try to, say open a chest - it will check the hidden id, and still let you open the chest - but just visually won't update?