Communal mystcraft, or: how to solve a crisis on infinite worlds?

[Yorae]

So, I'm running a small private server, starting with the release of RP2 and we've been discussing the mystcraft situation. We're not too keen on everyone and their dog creating fistfuls of mystcraft worlds, due to the loads of additional resources they would take up. This is especially the case with players creating loads of new random worlds to fill up their notebooks and those playing smash-and-grab on dense ores worlds, resulting in lots of unstable worlds being created, decaying, and then just sitting there being useless and taking up resources.
I don't want to remove all of the awesomeness that mystcraft brings, of course, but I also don't want hundreds of random unused ages floating around for no good reason, especially since there is no in-game method to 'delete' a world.

Any advice on how to handle the situation?

We've considered giving all players creative-mode notebooks, giving them all the symbols to write with, which would solve the first problem, at the expense of feeling like it's just skipping a lot of content.

For the latter 'smash-and-grab' problem, I've thought about just using admin commands to make a stable dense ores world and hand out linkbooks to new players to access it. Unfortunately, it doesn't really feel like there's a good way to gate this content, so I'm afraid it might be too much of a head-start, so-to-speak, though I may be worried about nothing.

Maybe I should make a spawn house for folks entering the server the first time with some Trade-o-mats in it to trade certain items for notebooks / linkbooks? If so, what should I require in trade for them?

Or am I just totally wrong about these ages taking up loads of resources, and I should stop worrying so much?
I'd love to hear everyone else's opinions / solutions to this circumstance.

 

[Bluehorazon]

They are not that bad, but it could still be a problem. Also if you have tons of these worlds players barely meat each other.

My suggestion would be to disable the ability to craft Agebooks (the option is the first in the config under "general"). Then create a hub with a link-modifier and a Desk and create ages on demand. This way the admin has full control over the amount of ages. Since he can cheat in age-books and write them on the desk with certain symbols. Players could still create linking-books to go to certain ages or travel inside one age.

 

[Vegoraptor]

First, they only take resources if chunks are loaded in them, either by a Chunkloader or a player, second, you might want to use one of these:

1 2 3 4

You might be especially interested in 4, it disables the recipie, meaning they can only be cheated in by you or moderators so you can control the circulating ages.
Furthermore, age corruption can easily be disabled.

 

[warfighter67]

Also, I wouldn't recommend using too dense of ores for an age for mining, as it would make the game much too easy. The motivation for building such complex machines is to have automatic access to anything and be filthy rich using one's own complex machines. However, if there's the ability to just pop down a quarry in a super dense ores age and get infinite resources after the first mine, it'd be kind of pointless.

Just a suggestion. I'm not trying to tell you how to run your server.

 

[Yorae]

Considering maybe allow it to work as default, but periodically delete all mystcraft ages from the server, with a provision for flagging certain ages to be kept? Maybe that would keep the age explosion relatively small.

I'd just need to write a script to do the removing and have players submit requests for the ones they'd like to keep. The problem I forsee is that it's not immediately obvious how to connect a mystcraft age's name with the directory that it resides in on the filesystem. Anyone know how to do that?

 

[Vegoraptor]

By default, the books are numbered, the respecting folders in the world save are too.

 

[Yorae]

By default, the books are numbered, the respecting folders in the world save are too.

I was just thinking that the user, after having renamed their book to "Joe's Age" or what-have-you, may not remember the age number that was initially assigned to it, but ask for "Joe's Age" to be persisted.

 

[warfighter67]

I was just thinking that the user, after having renamed their book to "Joe's Age" or what-have-you, may not remember the age number that was initially assigned to it, but ask for "Joe's Age" to be persisted.

You have to use an NTB editor to check the age number on the book manually, I believe.

 

[Yorae]

You have to use an NTB editor to check the age number on the book manually, I believe.

Ah, darn. Was hoping that renamed descriptive books would store their data with the age, rather than the item. Means I can't really automate the process of saying "don't delete world X during age purge" and will have to manually check their inventory from their player.dat file with the descriptive book in it. Oh well, whatever works.

 

[warfighter67]

Ah, darn. Was hoping that renamed descriptive books would store their data with the age, rather than the item. Means I can't really automate the process of saying "don't delete world X during age purge" and will have to manually check their inventory from their player.dat file with the descriptive book in it. Oh well, whatever works.

I personally like this idea a lot more:

They are not that bad, but it could still be a problem. Also if you have tons of these worlds players barely meat each other.

My suggestion would be to disable the ability to craft Agebooks (the option is the first in the config under "general"). Then create a hub with a link-modifier and a Desk and create ages on demand. This way the admin has full control over the amount of ages. Since he can cheat in age-books and write them on the desk with certain symbols. Players could still create linking-books to go to certain ages or travel inside one age.

As he said, it would only allow staff to create ages, and players could simply ask staff about having one created.

 

[Vauthil]

Ah, darn. Was hoping that renamed descriptive books would store their data with the age, rather than the item. Means I can't really automate the process of saying "don't delete world X during age purge" and will have to manually check their inventory from their player.dat file with the descriptive book in it. Oh well, whatever works.

The number displays when you put the book inside a Link Modifier for editing, actually, so you can figure this out if necessary.

 

[louiskw]

The current way SMP mystcraft is unusable on any server with over 20 players.

Within a week we had 200 ages created lagging the server to a world somewhere near the planet of IO.Exception.
And what could we do? We had new users coming in who wanted ages of their own, and users that found it unfair if we no longer allowed any new books to be created. Also we couldn't know who had created which age, and therefore manually limit the ages per person.

So now minemod.org is no longer running the Mystcraft mod on any of it's servers. Even the official UE ones.

 

[b0h]

Just limit to one dimension for each player, created with a creative book.
Keep the overworld clear or create a common shared machine room for any new player.
Something like Forgecraft of the ol'days.

 

[louiskw]

Just limit to one dimension for each player, created with a creative book.
Keep the overworld clear or create a common shared machine room for any new player.
Something like Forgecraft of the ol'days.

Not possible on large servers.

 

[b0h]

Just don't be a large server. Limit subscription, or if you want to have more players, just make a second server.

 

[DrCeph]

Just don't be a large server. Limit subscription, or if you want to have more players, just make a second server.

The 'one age per user' I think is a fair method, especially so if you have a requirement that a user needs to have been on the server for a few weeks first - might help give a feel of progression. If you combine it with some sort of sensible limits on chunk loaders and a schedule of resets to unload unused chunks it should be manageable. The downside is it would require some work on the server admins behalf: a necessary evil without the admin extensions that bukkit provided.

If you cannot do this due to numbers on your server than you might need to disable mystcraft due to over-allocation of your hardware resources to also handle multiple dimensions.

 

[b0h]

You might also want to remove dimensions that haven't been used for a set time, if it's possible. This should keep the number of dimensions fairly controlled.

 

[louiskw]

I think there just needs to be more config added for server owners.
'MaxAges' would be a nice one. Setting the ages allowed per person

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Disabling the crafting recipe, and setting up a trade-o-mat in spawn to sell descriptive books is probably the best way to control age generation.

A communal nexus and writing bench is also something to enforce- allowing people to share ages instead of everyone having 20 personal ones each.

Also the mystcraft config allows you to turn off certain symbols and instability. (which will reduce lag a lot).


Chickenbone's chunkloaders are also recommended- you can set the max chunks per player and per age. (keeping ages open all the time puts a massive strain on your systems)
They also have other neat features as well.

 

[Oodain]

we will be running a central nexus with a new age every week, if the age is stable then it may become one of the 5 week ages, this means a month after the initial week.
should such an age show itself to be used enough by the players then it could be added on a permanent basis.
every time the time period is up said age will be deleted.

personal ages are all well and good, i simply dont want to find a way to manage how many ages are owned by whom, the only method i can think of is to keep an eye on the amount of worlds and their names, plus the users associated with them and it would be a huge job should the player count rise(it doesnt need to go far before becoming a hassle)
the alternative would be to award players with a descriptive book under one of the special circumstances in one of our adventure areas (protected pvp areas with something akin to mini adventures, in the future larger projects may happen)
one of them uses the time of day and a sacrifice system to reveal a hidden boss and reward, xp just wouldnt cut it since it would mean having solved the clues and or tested thousands of "keys"

ideally one could make a small event of opening a new public age and it could create a sense of community around it.