Recommendations for Mystcraft

[Blazstyn]

Hey everyone,

Starting sometime this week my team and I will be delivering a new server build to our players.
Something that continues to be a point of confrontation is 'how do we handle Mystcraft?'.
Do you run Mystcraft? If so, how do you manage storage space and/or performance?

Some things that I've read about or seen suggested are:

• Communal 'Shard World' in a Mystcraft age, with access to a selection of predetermined ages as well as Overworld linking books, with the option to create a weekly 'new age' and keep it in a collection of three 'new ages'. No book crafting. This idea I like the most, but there is no way to deny that it ruins the discovery aspect of Mystcraft pages and Descriptive Book creation.
• Limit Mystcraft Descriptive Books to Administrators only. Those with appropriate permissions can over-ride any plugin-induced bans and create books for players of the server to visit. This idea no one really likes. Our server attempts to operates it staff team as if they were regular users with certain additional responsibilities, and so I don't want to make it seem like we have given our staff magic abilities above everyone else.
• Mystcraft free-for-all with periodic world deletion. Players can go about creating as many books as they want, but their connecting ages will be deleted after an amount of time. I'm not fond of this - I haven't tested Mystcraft but I imagine having it generating new ages (even when not doing it all the time) will impact the server performance pretty substantially. There's no way to limit players, and some can be very selfish and just keep generating new worlds over and over.
• Disable Mystcraft. Awkward, I know.

As far as I know, there's no plugins to manage Mystcraft. And yes, I know it was rebuilt pretty considerably to help multiplayer performance, but I still, just through testing it, see that the discovery element of it is very appealing to players who have access to the required materials. I am very, very worried about unleashing Mystcraft on our server with no restrictions, as we'll be taking the server 'open' soon and accepting new players to it.
Server stats:
Intel E3-1230 @ 3.3GHz
8.00GB DDR3 RAM
WinServer 2008r2
Average players online 6-13, will change
Thanks for your help! Let me know if this thread is in the wrong section.

 

[Эрик]

I go with the community option though I don't create a 'weekly age'. I do allow players to acquire their own descriptive book and I will write in the symbols for them so they can have their own personal age (although symbols like dense ores or eternal day I won't allow). However, it's for a price, as they need to give me 100 tungsten ores from redpower. They're rare to being with and with custom ore generation I increased their rarity by 50%. Granted, maybe this won't work for me in the long run and we'll get too many ages, but so far (2 months now) nobody has collected 100 yet

 

[darkinnit]

Mystcraft is great for making a server more interesting, but the main problem with Mystcraft in a multiplayer environment is that generating chunks causes lag (from all the disk writing). So allowing players to just create ages as they see fit will cause issues for almost any server. Cave worlds in particular seem to cause more problems when they're first generated.

What we've done is create a few themed ages:
Mining World: no caves (no air interrupting the ores), flat boring world for quarries so the overworld isn't ravaged. I haven't used dense ores as I think an entire mining dimension is enough as it is.
Skylands: pretty but dangerous (if you fall into the void you don't get anything back)
Cave World: for the dwarf miner/builders who like huge caverns
Mega-build age: Single Biome Mooshroom Island age, no mobs here, so people can build mega structures that don't have to be littered with torches to keep creepers away - the down side is no terrain variety.

I'm against personal ages as it leads to isolation of everyone off in their own little world, getting almost back to single player.

I also highly recommend turning off instability, or at very least just the decay instability, as the block updates involved with decay will also cause lots of disk access and lag.

I do allow link books, it completely reduces "nether portal littering" and people getting confused with nether portals linking to the wrong ones.

Finally, as much as I'd like to allow people to have link modifiers, for renaming their books and making them interlinking, I think the "follow" and "disarm" features are a little inappropriate, so unfortunately I don't allow link modifiers (they're also only a debug block anyway).

 

[Blazstyn]

Thanks very much for your replies! Both are interesting ways to deal with the situation but I have to say that the 'themed ages' is definitely appealing, perhaps more so than the 'rich people's club' style of the 100-tungsten per book rule.

Both add a lot of dimension and challenge to the server. I hope to pre-render the worlds as much as possible, perhaps encouraging my playerbase to head over to our bukkit server for a few days while the maps are rendered out by the majority of the CPU.

 

[Strubinator]

This is what I plan to do.
Make mystcraft book creation for admins only.
Add a few public ages for all to use, some for mining, exploration, etc.
For a few premium users, admins can custom design books for those players, with a limit on the amount per player created, and remove most banned items from those ages(The ones banned for griefing, bypassing worldguard, etc), for a fee. The player can let anyone they want access those private ages, but they have control on who they let in, via warded doors and keys. This lets groups of people have private ages, while limiting it to the people who support the server. This way, the whole server isn't split up between ages, and we dont waste resources creating thousands of ages. Ill probably include incentives to stay on the main world as well, like cities and a whole train network.

Im still worried about the whole server split up in private ages, I might just go with the public ones only.

 

[Blazstyn]

The 'premium user ages' seems very elitist, don't you think? I try to avoid stuff that puts players with money over players who play. Unless you meant using in-game items for money, but your use of the word 'premium' suggests that you probably didn't.

I'm still liking the public ages option. A way to make it more interesting is to generate three public worlds with specific pages, and then also allow one or two 'random ages' which will be refreshed every so often.

 

[Эрик]

One other thing I should mention, is that in private ages, I won't allow any ores to generate (except those pesky thaumcraft ones since I can't control those) and this is the case in most of the communal ages as well although for instance in the last age to make, swamplands I plan on having an abundance of coal there. However, no other ores. The reason I do this is so that sure you can go exploring in other worlds or your own personal one, however, for any materials you're forced to be in the overworld.

 

[Blazstyn]

One other thing I should mention, is that in private ages, I won't allow any ores to generate. The reason I do this is so that sure you can go exploring in other worlds or your own personal one, however, for any materials you're forced to be in the overworld.

Interesting! We've got our Overworld set up so it is used primarily for building - players are encouraged to go to the Twilight Forest for mining and fighting.

 

[Strubinator]

Well they would be able to let whoever they want in, but its just a way to control the number of ages created. I need incentives for players to donate to the server, the owner cant pay the whole $250 out of pocket. Premium users dont have an advantages over other players, they just have a few "perks". Mystcraft ages, custom title, a few more commands, a couple convenient kits, those sort of things. I have seen servers that let donors have /i and /give commands, and they have been absolutely terrible.
I do agree though, "premium users" sounds elitist. They wouldnt even be called that, it was just an example. Its really just a donor perk, and all players have access to these worlds.

You could do something based on playtime. Players who have logged a certain amount of hours will be able to make books. Makes sure that books are made by the people who want to stay, and not the players that come on for a few hours, and leave.

Another option, ages can only be created by a group of people, say 5. Prevents ages created for only one person, and guarantees that the ages will be shared by a group of people.

One other thing I should mention, is that in private ages, I won't allow any ores to generate (except those pesky thaumcraft ones since I can't control those) and this is the case in most of the communal ages as well although for instance in the last age to make, swamplands I plan on having an abundance of coal there. However, no other ores. The reason I do this is so that sure you can go exploring in other worlds or your own personal one, however, for any materials you're forced to be in the overworld.

Im not sure you can control ore gen, I think the ore symbols are modifiers, and let you change say, all the stone, or tendrils, or whatever to that type of ore. I wouldnt recommend quarrys in the main world, that could get fugly pretty quick. A dedicated public mining age sounds reasonable.

 

[Blazstyn]

Great points! Your server bills are $250?? That's crazy. Big playerbase?

I will look into logging time. It is an option now thanks to MCPC+.

 

[Strubinator]

Great points! Your server bills are $250?? That's crazy. Big playerbase?

I will look into logging time. It is an option now thanks to MCPC+.

Playerbase isnt as large as I would like it to be, maybe 25 or so players on the main group of servers. About 8 of the servers are connected by bungeeCord under one IP, but in reality, its just two servers. The others are just small, minigame type servers, but we decided to use separate jars instead of relying on multiverse.

Our predecessor had a bill of $600 a month, and 10k total registered users, and was #1 on gtop100 for a while, but when most of the players left, there were no new donations so it just flopped. People tend to donate because they like a server, not because they want the perks. I have seen some servers with no perks and plenty of supporters, and some with awesome perks and no supporters.

I myself am still trying to decide what to do about mystcraft though. Im leaning torwards some sort of clans plugin, and each clan gets one age, and donors get one age of their own, with several public ages. Perks, not advantages

 

[Blazstyn]

Perks, not advantages

Exactly as it should be!

Thanks for your response. Hopefully there's a good medium between performance and accessibility.

 

[Эрик]

Im not sure you can control ore gen, I think the ore symbols are modifiers, and let you change say, all the stone, or tendrils, or whatever to that type of ore. I wouldnt recommend quarrys in the main world, that could get fugly pretty quick. A dedicated public mining age sounds reasonable.

It's quite possible to control the ore gen, with COG. :>

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...ore-generation-updated-jan-5th/#entry13594412

 

[Strubinator]

Im planning on banning several items, mainly for being able to bypass worldguard and pvp, such as wand of excavation, mining laser, arcane bore, those sort of things.
If bPerms supports permissions in mystcraft ages, I would like to lift the ban of these items on the private ages, because they are well....private.
If the entrance is properly guarded by arcane blocks and doors(Or worldguard entry flags), then the private ages can be accessible by whoever the owner or clan decides to allow, so there is no real risk of griefing, and no need for most banned items and blocks.
I would recommend disabling a few symbols though.
All the ore modifiers. Someone could make a world entirely out of diamond ore, if they were lucky enough to find the page. Kinda upsets balance.
Lava, oil modifiers. Making an ocean entirely out of lava to use in thermal generators or oil upsets balance too.
Dense ores. Kinda self explanatory.
If you dont want people using them for endless solar power, you could disable permanent day if you wanted to, but I wont.

I wouldnt really recommend letting players make their own books, since you would have no way of controlling it, and your hard drive and CPU could asplode

In my old tekkit server I kinda went ban happy, most of EE2 was banned.(It was pretty op and destructive anyway), but thankfully, FTB doesnt have a whole lot that needs to be banned.

 

[UgLounge]

How do you go about creating Public Ages only? As in how are they initially created?

 

[darkinnit]

As OP, use creative mode to get the "Notebook (Creative)" from the Mystcraft tab on the creative inventory. Write the ages using the Writing desk and Book binder. If you don't know how to do that, watch Direwolf20's mod spotlight

Make all the public ages you want and then also create linking books to each age. Store the descriptive books away somewhere private and place all the linking books somewhere public (in crystal portals if desired).

In the mystcraft_config.txt config file, set:
b.options.crafting.binder.enabled=false
b.options.crafting.desk.enabled=false
b.options.crafting.enableAgebook=false
to prevent players from making further ages.

You may also want to set:
b.options.crafting.enableLinkModifier=false
to prevent players griefing each other with the "disarm" feature (disarm removes players' inventory when they use a link book that has the disarm setting)

 

[Strubinator]

I think the book binder is what actually makes the linking books, so if you wanted to allow private ages, but still have some control on the quantity, you could have players give you their notebook with the symbols they want in it.

 

[darkinnit]

One thing to watch out for is that even if you disable Age Books and the Book Binder, but don't disable the writing desk, players can still create ages using the writing desk. If they place a normal vanilla book in the left slot of the writing desk (and provide ink and paper in the other slots), they can write and create ages even though Age books are disabled.

To prevent this, disable the writing desk as above.