Hooray! We finally hit 70% uptime! Remeber when I got back and the server was down for four weeks? Well, three weeks later, we're back up to 70! yeah!

Vittescape will be down for a while again - I'll be installing the permissions plugin, and perhaps the worldedit one.

Vittescape'll be down for a few hours - installing new computer peripherals and desk stuff and such.

Passwords, Backups, and Maps

Hey guess what? Vittescape is now encoded with a password plugin! This one so far appears to be much simpler and more user friendly than xauth, so I'm hoping it turns out well. Hopefully, this will prevent accounts from being borrowed/stolen. Also, it means that I can officially turn online mode off, allowing everybody to join again! I've also instituted a backup plugin. It creates a backup of the server every six hours, and saves backups up to a week prior to the latest one. Also, I've configured Dynmap to use a lower resolution map, hopefully reducing lag on the server. Though it isn't as super amazing looking as the hi-res that was previously active, it does still look nice, and functions exactly the same. I've also upped the time it takes to update the map, so here's hoping that'll also reduce lag. Thank you to all those without premium accounts for waiting those long five days while you couldn't join. I look forward to seeing you all again.

I'm pretty sure that the way Dynmap is configured at the moment is causing unnecessary lag, so I'm going to configure it for a bit today.

Lag for the next couple days

There is a TON of lag. It will be here for the next day or two, because I  need to prerender the entire map, and that's a lot of data that has to be processed by a single core cpu! Anyways, I'm hoping it doesn't take more than a couple days. The main area loaded in about an hour, but it's tracing the path we took all the way to Mayor City, so that could take some time. Once that's done it will start a render of the map on the two other templates of surface and cave. After that I'd like to do the same for the nether and the end. Hopefully those two will take considerably less time, being that they are much smaller. Anyways, if three or more people are on at the same time the render will pause, hopefully relinquishing the bandwidth. Anyways, I don't plan to be online much today due to a shelf that I'm going to be cutting out. The map is really awesome, and if you haven't already, I'd advise you to check it out sometime by clicking the map icon on the right side of  the Vittescape website/blog.

Decided 6 was too small, bumped it up to 8. 10 makes 441 chunks load, 8 makes 289 load, where as 6 made 169. 8 is about in the middle, and I'm hoping it runs noticeably smoother than 10. Should reduce connectivity lag and framerate lag.

There is now a real time map available! click the map icon on the right.

In an effort to reduce connectivity lag, I have changed the view distance in the server properties from 10 to 6. This does looks rather crappy in game, but I'm going to test if out for a bit and see if people notice a decrease in lag. This pic is what a view distance of 6 looks like. I may turn it up to 8 if this gets really horrible.

Online Mode

I apologize to all the players that do not own a Minecraft account, but due to accounts being stolen I've had no choice but to enable online mode in the Vittescape server properties. This will make the server check to make sure the player has logged in with their Minecraft username and password. It will prevent free accounts and hacked accounts from being able to join. I'm sorry to make such an elitist move, but the griefing has gone far enough. I hope you understand that I do this in an attempt to make Vittescape a safer, more welcoming place. -Thal

I am rearranging computer appliances in my room, so the Server will be down for a little while today. I doubt it would be longer than two hours, but we'll see.

Server has gone to 24/7. We'll see how it goes.