Well I did say I might do this, and you’ve forced my hand! Back story!
*woobly dissolve effect*
About “some time ago” I decided I quite liked the game of Minecraft. It’s good fun, building stuff and putting it to the test. I then decided that multi-player was fun, but that Minecraft could be so much better withthe removal of ‘Griefers’, people who intentionally destroy things.
With this in mind I turned my thoughts to a forum I frequent, Brass Goggles. It is a favourite of mine as it is full of polite and well mannered people, who resolve their arguments through honest discussion. It’s amazing, to say the least. I thought that it might just be possible to find people on this forum who would want to play Minecraft with me! Two or three people maybe, who could join in and we could build some of those ‘Epic level’ structures you see Notch occasionally post about.
So I started a general interest thread, and after a while realised there would be enough people to make it worth my while, so set about setting one up.
*woobly dissolve effect*
That’s that done. Now onto the actual writing bit.
I started off doing a little bit of looking around, seeing how I could go about this. Seeing as this was only about 3-4 months ago I was already starting to get into computers in a more technical way and was planning how much it would take to set up a server of my own to run (literally a box in my house that I would host from). It takes a lot. Yes it’s possible, but I didn’t have the income to set it up at the start. Instead I looked at 3rd party hosting.
I’ll admit at this point I was naive and I found one company via facebook and went with it. It was a silly thing to do, as three weeks later I had been charged but not received any server space. I opened several ‘Tickets’ with them and got nothing, eventually opening a paypal dispute and getting my money back that way.
Shortly after (after doing some real research) I found ServerCraft1. I found their prices reasonable and set up a Tier 2 server (1-8 people). At this point I had very little idea how it all worked so I basically blundered through the setup and build a MINE!
Yes, all that time and energy, and I built a mine. But that’s okay, because within moments another player (who later became an Administrator as well... did I spoil the ending?) logged on, and together we built a mine that reached down to bedrock layer and back again. A gigantic staircase three wide, four high and one hundred and fifty deep! Using the stone we built our crude shelters, and then the same player went and built a wall surrounding the entire area we dubbed the Settlement. Our first home in Minecraft. It was fantastic.
Over the next few days more people logged on. The first player, GG, went to build himself a Mountain Manor... a HUGE work that he built entirely by hand, and to this day is one of the biggest single person structures built.
Other people built things like a large Dock area, a telescope, the start of an Airship Mooring point, and Airship to match... it snowballed very quickly.
Soon we had structures going up left right and center, a communal mine that we placed all our excess materials in was developed and put to good use... Things were going well.
Suddenly, more people wanted to join! I was, I’ll be honest, a little confused. Why were people signing up to the Forum JUST to play on my server?
Then I realised, up to that point the rules had been very lax and yet (here’s the key point) Nothing Had Gone Wrong! If you don't play Minecraft you might not get the enormity, but I wasn’t watching every move everyone made, and yet nobody was blowing stuff up! The server worked, and was played by genuinely nice people! It was amazing.
After this point new members joined quite quickly, even people from the Forum I had watched and respected for a long time. It went well. There was lag issues, the server wasn’t powerful enough to cope, but we managed.
It was around this point I discovered Mods. Up to now I’d modded minecraft on my own. I’d either downloaded and installed them, or simply written a few using a handy piece of software. I thought that for a mod to work it HAD to be on the client (the part of the program on your computer). Then I discovered Bukkit. This was a revolutionary (for me) bit of kit, that allowed ANY Bukkit mods to be installed on the server! It was really amazing, and I spent hours pouring over their archives to find mods that would make my server awesome! I found things I didn’t even think were possible, and grabbed all I could! At one point my server was running around 15 mods, some big like the Stargate Mod and other small like the Torch Missile Mod (lets you throw torches at walls).
Then the server had problems. It began to crash a lot, and data was being lost. This wasn’t good. I spent hours pouring over server logs, checking code in the various mods and testing endlessly... Eventually, and after a brief conversation with ServerCraft, I realized it was because too many mods were working at once, and it couldn’t cope. From that point on I was limited to WorldEdit, CraftBook and a few other more minor ones2. This was a blow, but we managed somehow!
There was, however, a problem. It was bound to happen, and it eventually did. There were disagreements.
Up until now there had been only a few minor “I wanted that bit of land” and “Oh I’m sorry, just knock that down then and I’ll build over here.” moments. It wasn’t any single person’s fault, but when two people clash sometimes they just rebound over and over, until eventually things are said and done that shouldn’t be.
This is what happened. One of the people involved happened to be my brother, and you better believe I was Furious at him for it. Not all of it was his fault, but a great deal he could have avoided if he’d been a bit more careful, or nicer. Still it was time to step in and be an Administrator (capital A for important things). This was a bit of an odd moment for me. I was actually quite worried that either I’d be too hard enough on everyone and it would happen again, or worse I would be too hard and mess things up. To this day I still don’t know how well I did.
There were a few other problems, on player blew the equivalent of the Grand Canyon in the floor (I’m really not joking, it was enormous) and I was angry for a while, but after a few rule changes and a quite word here and there it’s now an in-joke that we have a resident demolitions expert! Seriously if you’re reading this you know who you are and put that damned TnT down this instant! Yes, I can see you hiding it behind your back, put it Down! No don’t put a lever on top of it...
Anyway, the server had hit a rough patch. There were now more people on that I had ever thought could be the case, twenty registered players! That was a lot! It had reached the point where everyone could get along on their own, and it needed a few rules and guides to make sure that people could say “you can’t do that, because this says so” rather than “you can’t do that because I say so”. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one that stops a lot of arguments. A lot of the rules were decided by committee anyway.
After a little bit (abut a week) it smoothed out, and the server returned to a happy flow. Since then we haven’t had a single problem of that nature. Nobody has fallen out, nobody has broken a rule (in a serious way...) and everything worked out well.
Rapture. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but when one person suggested it it meant a community project.
We decided to build Rapture based on the city from BioShock. Now we knew we were never going to get a scale or even lookalike version, so instead went for the ‘feel’ of the city, and worked from there up. It took about a month, and God help us would have taken a lot longer if we hadn’t set a deadline. The end result is some thousand blocks in each direction (except up) and completely submerged. It’s awesome. Seriously, I can’t describe how amazing it was to see a city we’d all worked so hard on just vanish underwater, and now when I fly over it I can still see parts of it there! It’s fantastic!
This was the moment I realised we now had a community, not just a group of players. We’d all banded together and (bar a few minor annoyances of “I’m still building here!”) built something amazing! There was no way we could have done it on our own, it was too big, but together we had an Epic Build.
Then came the website. I already owned the DorksandDorkettes domain space with a few sites on it, so I expanded it to house a minecraft site as well. I added lists of commands, the rules, player lists, links to various bits and over the weeks I added tutorials, build pages and now just started adding competitions!
There was so much stuff! It took hours a day to get it all there, and I still spend at least an hour every evening going over everything, making sure it all works and updating what needs to be updated.
This was the moment I realised just how much effort it took to run a server this big (and 20 people IS big for me!). For a while I was constantly exhausted whenever I started, I began to lose motivation to actually do anything, and I hadn’t built a thing for weeks!
Then I was given two blessings.
The first was the players. They were fantastic, friendly and active and dear Lord did they build. In one evening a pair of them built a new warehouse... it was twenty times the size of the old, categorized and impenetrable. I was awestruck. It was shortly after that (and the submarines, and the bridges, and the docks, and those damned HUGE ships... the resort, the designer houses... the list really does go on and on... I can’t list everything here) that I realised I was having fun just being online, looking at other people’s buildings and talking to everyone. This helped bring back my enthusiasm for Minecraft and that’s currently where I’m at now.
Throughout this journey I’ve learnt a lot. I’ve learnt how to set up and run a Servercraft Minecraft server. That’s rather specific knowledge I’ll admit, but I’ve also learnt how to help people, how to resolve arguments and ease tensions in what, I hope anyway, is a reasonable manner. I’ve learnt my own limits and what annoys me, and learnt to control that anger when it does pop up and treat myself just like any other player as well when I’m Administrating things3.
The most important thing I’ve learnt though? Work. Work work work work work. It’s always there, it always needs doing and it never sleeps. When you think it’s done, it isn’t... you’ve just missed something that still needs doing.
I learnt how much it takes to run a server. Updating the website, keeping up to date on the forum, thinking of new things to add, making sure everyone was getting along and having a presence in all of this takes its toll. Even now whilst I type this I have the Server Monitor screen open and I can see that there are a couple of people online building something. If something were to go wrong, I’m already watching so I’ll know right away and be able to fix it.
Sometimes I think “why am I doing this? Is this actually fun, because that’s why I started this!” but I realise that yes... it is fun. Odd as it sounds, it is fun. Keeping everything running, seeing people enjoy it and seeing it all work as I’d hoped it would isn’t just fun, it’s amazing!
Sometimes I do get tired of it and take a break, but forcing myself to go back and just do it has been a great help. I think that just by setting this up and running it I’ve changed, not dramatically of course, but I think I’ve found a new side to ‘work’ that is enjoyable... the end result. I’d never appreciated it as much before this server, and I have all the wonderful people of Brass Goggles to thank for it!
I think that’s about it for now, I'll probably get round to that ACII review I’ve been promising, but then again I might go off on a complete tangent and talk about Mods and their place in games (3 guesses which I chose!)...
Have you set up a server? Or a club, or game or anything like that? How did it go? What were your experiences? Did you have troubles?
Failing that are you a gamer? What are your experiences of servers from your point of view? I’d like to hear all of this! Well, I’ll see you all later.
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
1I don’t normally like plugs, but at this point I feel I should say that ServerCraft have been brilliant. They get back to me within 24 hours, they’re polite and helpful, have offered tips here and there and recently upgraded their file-transfer system to allow complete control over everything. They are fantastic and if you are setting up a server yourself I highly recommend them.
2We did have a REALLY great mod at one point called MoveCraft, that allowed us to build ships, boats and anything else we could think of (including drills) and have them move around! Unfortunately this was partly to blame for all the crashes, as it used a LOT of memory a lot of the time.
3This may seem like an odd concept, but think of it logically... I have two persona's when I play. One is Player Longeye... he builds things and engages in banter with people. The other is Administrator Longeye. He moderates things and hands out punishments, fixing things where he can. What if Player Longeye’s house is blown up? Player Longeye wants to go blow up that guys house, but Administrator Longeye knows he can’t do that. That’s the idea behind the Administrating myself, as it were.
*woobly dissolve effect*
About “some time ago” I decided I quite liked the game of Minecraft. It’s good fun, building stuff and putting it to the test. I then decided that multi-player was fun, but that Minecraft could be so much better withthe removal of ‘Griefers’, people who intentionally destroy things.
With this in mind I turned my thoughts to a forum I frequent, Brass Goggles. It is a favourite of mine as it is full of polite and well mannered people, who resolve their arguments through honest discussion. It’s amazing, to say the least. I thought that it might just be possible to find people on this forum who would want to play Minecraft with me! Two or three people maybe, who could join in and we could build some of those ‘Epic level’ structures you see Notch occasionally post about.
So I started a general interest thread, and after a while realised there would be enough people to make it worth my while, so set about setting one up.
*woobly dissolve effect*
That’s that done. Now onto the actual writing bit.
I started off doing a little bit of looking around, seeing how I could go about this. Seeing as this was only about 3-4 months ago I was already starting to get into computers in a more technical way and was planning how much it would take to set up a server of my own to run (literally a box in my house that I would host from). It takes a lot. Yes it’s possible, but I didn’t have the income to set it up at the start. Instead I looked at 3rd party hosting.
I’ll admit at this point I was naive and I found one company via facebook and went with it. It was a silly thing to do, as three weeks later I had been charged but not received any server space. I opened several ‘Tickets’ with them and got nothing, eventually opening a paypal dispute and getting my money back that way.
Shortly after (after doing some real research) I found ServerCraft1. I found their prices reasonable and set up a Tier 2 server (1-8 people). At this point I had very little idea how it all worked so I basically blundered through the setup and build a MINE!
Yes, all that time and energy, and I built a mine. But that’s okay, because within moments another player (who later became an Administrator as well... did I spoil the ending?) logged on, and together we built a mine that reached down to bedrock layer and back again. A gigantic staircase three wide, four high and one hundred and fifty deep! Using the stone we built our crude shelters, and then the same player went and built a wall surrounding the entire area we dubbed the Settlement. Our first home in Minecraft. It was fantastic.
Over the next few days more people logged on. The first player, GG, went to build himself a Mountain Manor... a HUGE work that he built entirely by hand, and to this day is one of the biggest single person structures built.
Other people built things like a large Dock area, a telescope, the start of an Airship Mooring point, and Airship to match... it snowballed very quickly.
Soon we had structures going up left right and center, a communal mine that we placed all our excess materials in was developed and put to good use... Things were going well.
Suddenly, more people wanted to join! I was, I’ll be honest, a little confused. Why were people signing up to the Forum JUST to play on my server?
Then I realised, up to that point the rules had been very lax and yet (here’s the key point) Nothing Had Gone Wrong! If you don't play Minecraft you might not get the enormity, but I wasn’t watching every move everyone made, and yet nobody was blowing stuff up! The server worked, and was played by genuinely nice people! It was amazing.
After this point new members joined quite quickly, even people from the Forum I had watched and respected for a long time. It went well. There was lag issues, the server wasn’t powerful enough to cope, but we managed.
It was around this point I discovered Mods. Up to now I’d modded minecraft on my own. I’d either downloaded and installed them, or simply written a few using a handy piece of software. I thought that for a mod to work it HAD to be on the client (the part of the program on your computer). Then I discovered Bukkit. This was a revolutionary (for me) bit of kit, that allowed ANY Bukkit mods to be installed on the server! It was really amazing, and I spent hours pouring over their archives to find mods that would make my server awesome! I found things I didn’t even think were possible, and grabbed all I could! At one point my server was running around 15 mods, some big like the Stargate Mod and other small like the Torch Missile Mod (lets you throw torches at walls).
Then the server had problems. It began to crash a lot, and data was being lost. This wasn’t good. I spent hours pouring over server logs, checking code in the various mods and testing endlessly... Eventually, and after a brief conversation with ServerCraft, I realized it was because too many mods were working at once, and it couldn’t cope. From that point on I was limited to WorldEdit, CraftBook and a few other more minor ones2. This was a blow, but we managed somehow!
There was, however, a problem. It was bound to happen, and it eventually did. There were disagreements.
Up until now there had been only a few minor “I wanted that bit of land” and “Oh I’m sorry, just knock that down then and I’ll build over here.” moments. It wasn’t any single person’s fault, but when two people clash sometimes they just rebound over and over, until eventually things are said and done that shouldn’t be.
This is what happened. One of the people involved happened to be my brother, and you better believe I was Furious at him for it. Not all of it was his fault, but a great deal he could have avoided if he’d been a bit more careful, or nicer. Still it was time to step in and be an Administrator (capital A for important things). This was a bit of an odd moment for me. I was actually quite worried that either I’d be too hard enough on everyone and it would happen again, or worse I would be too hard and mess things up. To this day I still don’t know how well I did.
There were a few other problems, on player blew the equivalent of the Grand Canyon in the floor (I’m really not joking, it was enormous) and I was angry for a while, but after a few rule changes and a quite word here and there it’s now an in-joke that we have a resident demolitions expert! Seriously if you’re reading this you know who you are and put that damned TnT down this instant! Yes, I can see you hiding it behind your back, put it Down! No don’t put a lever on top of it...
Anyway, the server had hit a rough patch. There were now more people on that I had ever thought could be the case, twenty registered players! That was a lot! It had reached the point where everyone could get along on their own, and it needed a few rules and guides to make sure that people could say “you can’t do that, because this says so” rather than “you can’t do that because I say so”. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one that stops a lot of arguments. A lot of the rules were decided by committee anyway.
After a little bit (abut a week) it smoothed out, and the server returned to a happy flow. Since then we haven’t had a single problem of that nature. Nobody has fallen out, nobody has broken a rule (in a serious way...) and everything worked out well.
Rapture. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but when one person suggested it it meant a community project.
We decided to build Rapture based on the city from BioShock. Now we knew we were never going to get a scale or even lookalike version, so instead went for the ‘feel’ of the city, and worked from there up. It took about a month, and God help us would have taken a lot longer if we hadn’t set a deadline. The end result is some thousand blocks in each direction (except up) and completely submerged. It’s awesome. Seriously, I can’t describe how amazing it was to see a city we’d all worked so hard on just vanish underwater, and now when I fly over it I can still see parts of it there! It’s fantastic!
This was the moment I realised we now had a community, not just a group of players. We’d all banded together and (bar a few minor annoyances of “I’m still building here!”) built something amazing! There was no way we could have done it on our own, it was too big, but together we had an Epic Build.
Then came the website. I already owned the DorksandDorkettes domain space with a few sites on it, so I expanded it to house a minecraft site as well. I added lists of commands, the rules, player lists, links to various bits and over the weeks I added tutorials, build pages and now just started adding competitions!
There was so much stuff! It took hours a day to get it all there, and I still spend at least an hour every evening going over everything, making sure it all works and updating what needs to be updated.
This was the moment I realised just how much effort it took to run a server this big (and 20 people IS big for me!). For a while I was constantly exhausted whenever I started, I began to lose motivation to actually do anything, and I hadn’t built a thing for weeks!
Then I was given two blessings.
The first was the players. They were fantastic, friendly and active and dear Lord did they build. In one evening a pair of them built a new warehouse... it was twenty times the size of the old, categorized and impenetrable. I was awestruck. It was shortly after that (and the submarines, and the bridges, and the docks, and those damned HUGE ships... the resort, the designer houses... the list really does go on and on... I can’t list everything here) that I realised I was having fun just being online, looking at other people’s buildings and talking to everyone. This helped bring back my enthusiasm for Minecraft and that’s currently where I’m at now.
Throughout this journey I’ve learnt a lot. I’ve learnt how to set up and run a Servercraft Minecraft server. That’s rather specific knowledge I’ll admit, but I’ve also learnt how to help people, how to resolve arguments and ease tensions in what, I hope anyway, is a reasonable manner. I’ve learnt my own limits and what annoys me, and learnt to control that anger when it does pop up and treat myself just like any other player as well when I’m Administrating things3.
The most important thing I’ve learnt though? Work. Work work work work work. It’s always there, it always needs doing and it never sleeps. When you think it’s done, it isn’t... you’ve just missed something that still needs doing.
I learnt how much it takes to run a server. Updating the website, keeping up to date on the forum, thinking of new things to add, making sure everyone was getting along and having a presence in all of this takes its toll. Even now whilst I type this I have the Server Monitor screen open and I can see that there are a couple of people online building something. If something were to go wrong, I’m already watching so I’ll know right away and be able to fix it.
Sometimes I think “why am I doing this? Is this actually fun, because that’s why I started this!” but I realise that yes... it is fun. Odd as it sounds, it is fun. Keeping everything running, seeing people enjoy it and seeing it all work as I’d hoped it would isn’t just fun, it’s amazing!
Sometimes I do get tired of it and take a break, but forcing myself to go back and just do it has been a great help. I think that just by setting this up and running it I’ve changed, not dramatically of course, but I think I’ve found a new side to ‘work’ that is enjoyable... the end result. I’d never appreciated it as much before this server, and I have all the wonderful people of Brass Goggles to thank for it!
I think that’s about it for now, I'll probably get round to that ACII review I’ve been promising, but then again I might go off on a complete tangent and talk about Mods and their place in games (3 guesses which I chose!)...
Have you set up a server? Or a club, or game or anything like that? How did it go? What were your experiences? Did you have troubles?
Failing that are you a gamer? What are your experiences of servers from your point of view? I’d like to hear all of this! Well, I’ll see you all later.
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
1I don’t normally like plugs, but at this point I feel I should say that ServerCraft have been brilliant. They get back to me within 24 hours, they’re polite and helpful, have offered tips here and there and recently upgraded their file-transfer system to allow complete control over everything. They are fantastic and if you are setting up a server yourself I highly recommend them.
2We did have a REALLY great mod at one point called MoveCraft, that allowed us to build ships, boats and anything else we could think of (including drills) and have them move around! Unfortunately this was partly to blame for all the crashes, as it used a LOT of memory a lot of the time.
3This may seem like an odd concept, but think of it logically... I have two persona's when I play. One is Player Longeye... he builds things and engages in banter with people. The other is Administrator Longeye. He moderates things and hands out punishments, fixing things where he can. What if Player Longeye’s house is blown up? Player Longeye wants to go blow up that guys house, but Administrator Longeye knows he can’t do that. That’s the idea behind the Administrating myself, as it were.
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