Yeah, as Dave said, we'll be migrating the existing map, as of midday monday, to the new server. You just put in the new address, which will be revealed soon, and you're back in the world just as it was and can continue. We'd kinda been holding off for a couple reasons - 1, we were testing out the capabilities of the server to a degree, 2 - we wanted to see how the server handled patches/updates, and 3 - due to the nature of the server, moving the map file from noax's box to the new server would take at least a day, during which both servers would be down. Since Notch forced that happenstance upon us anyway, we decided to pull the trigger on it now, while the downtime was already a given
Yes, we'll be using some mods going forward, especially administration and security mods to squash this griefer problem before it blooms out of control. I've already got it set up so that we should all have build/dig access, but anybody who comes on new from this point forward (or who I didn't recognize the username of) will only be able to look but not interact, at least until an admin promotes them.
I've also gone ahead and activated two other mods on the server - minecart mania and magic carpet.
Minecart Mania makes boosters more reliable - no longer do you have to rely on friction-glitches, rather you just build a section of track across a gold block and any minecart moving over it will immediately accelerate to 100%. There are other tricks too, but you'll have to look them up in minepedia.
Magic Carpet is... well, it's not quite a poor-man's "fly mode," it's more like a self-adjusting scaffold. turned on and off by typing /mc, magic carpet builds a 5x5 flat grid of glass in any empty space immediately under you, and destroys/builds itself as you move. IE, you could walk off a cliff and a moving platform of glass will keep you at the same altitude. Jumping will raise the scaffold, looking straight down while moving will lower it. This will make it so building on the outside of tall structures is much easier, as will be getting a bird's eye view. But be careful... you CAN lag off the edge of the scaffold if you aren't careful.
Once we get the thing up, established and stable, I'll fiddle around with it a little and figure out some kits and or /give permissions. Meanwhile, I'm 99% certain the vast majority of us stocked up on contraband/memory hacked items and hid them away in chests somewhere, so that should tide you over until we get the item spawning straightened out
For a complete list of available mods on the server,
click here.
It should be noted that this solution will always mean some down time every patch day - the guys at multiplay have to get and process the new server software, AND wait for the new version of hMod to support it (hMod is manditory for all multiplay.co.uk servers). However, I don't think this will be much of an inconvenience, as the benefits of the mods outweighs the down side of the downtime, and frankly, every patch seems to need a day or two to shake out the bugs anyway before things work right again. And it's a huge load off any of our admin's plates, because the guys at multiplay are basically already paid to maintain and update all these umpteen quadrillion mods for us.
