[Server] Just Test Tribute

[maikerumine]

I like this rule:

If using a hacked client, do NOT use it offensively or an a manner that harms other players. That includes mining a large area close to occupied locations.

[rnd]

1.i propose:

have several moderators with spy mod so they can do screenshot evidence and ability to remove interact from offender. Lag didnt want to do that and look what happened.

You can disable /privs command so that cheater cant see who moderators are.

basically: clock and dagger operation

2. "If using a hacked client, do NOT use it offensively " heh like they will follow any stupid rules.. its a challenge to them to mess stuff up ;) not follow rules

[maikerumine]

Rnd i like those suggestions.

FYI No reset tonight, I will be occupied.

[Fixerol]

So I propose allowing "cheating" with the exception of huge land grabs less than 500 meters from spawn. After 500 meters away, then you can build your cheated mega bases.

I don't like this idea, I still think you need to catch them from time to time, maybe you need actual moderators who can spectate (via spectator mod by jp) and look into people chests to see hackers (there should be priv for that).
I think minetest needs better anticheater protection, est31 halted his work on noclip in cpp for some time unfortunately.
Maybe there should be joint force to develop a general anticheat lua mod that detects basic stuff (noclip, fly and abnormal block count). Apart from that only moderators can catch worst offenders I guess.

I.P. Switching

manual ban for worst offenders

Teleporting

default anticheat

No-clipping

there is some mod for that iirc

Flying

default anticheat

And long reach attack with auto eat.

default anticheat, but will not help against autoeat

[GoldFireUn]

Here's what I have to add. From the server description on the master server list:

No admin, Just nostalga

IMO, what this really says to people browsing the server list is: "Hack Me!"

[Fixerol]

Any glimpses from debug.txt about how they got so much stuff?

[rnd]

this is hilarious, either minetest player:getpos() is bugged or xD

[Wuzzy]

The Flower Revolution has been successful! :D
The Farm of Sharing (about X=110, Z=10) now has all 6 flower species available for everyone to farm.


Now some of you will ask how I managed to collect those flowers since rnd and a few other players seemingly had all flowers in possession and don't just give them away or sell them.

The Flower and Dye Monopolies
When I joined the server, it quickly became clear that it is very hard to get any flower whatsoever.

Most other players got their flowers from rnd, apparently, but they too did not want to share or sell them. They told me they have vowed to rnd to never share, spread or sell the flowers. So it seems rnd was very serious about avoiding at all costs. I tried to negotiate with rnd.

Dyes were very expensive. When I asked for a green dye, rnd offered me one dye per 5 gold (!) and got down to 3.5 gold (!) after negotiating. This was both way too expensive IMO and so I declined.

The Flower Revolution
The idea
So I had the idea to make a “revolution”. :D
I am actually not strongly interested in flowers or dyes, I did this mostly for the challenge. Using my wits to slowly accumulate all flower species so rnd and other players can't keep them all for themselves.

By making sure everyone can get flowers and thus breaking the dye monopoly. A large part of the “revolution” was in secret, and now I want to disclose on how I and other people did it.

Finding holes in the system
I tried my best to find weak spots in the system. First I tried the obvious step to just grab all flowers everywhere but I never succeeded because they were protected. Then I tried to negotiate and buy them but nobody offered me flowers.
Around rnd's and Zorg's property (which are close to spawn) (also justtest's property at the snow machine) I searched for potential pieces of unprotected land. No chance. My second idea is to search for unproteced air or water NEAR the grass where flowers might spawn, in hope a flower spawns on the unprotected land if “someone” places some dirt nearby. This was of course risky since everyone could also take away the dirt.

I also noticed that right at spawn, near the snow vending machine, land near the flowers was also unproteced so my plan was to place dirt nearby and pray that nobody takes away the dirt before the next flower spawns. This plan, however failed since abba became admin and protected pretty much everything in spawn, including the area near the snow machine.

The water at the crosshair used to be unprotected.

Another hole in the system was between the “PUBLIC ATM” (iron, copper and coal deposit) (and other properties of sorcerykid) and Zorg's/rnd's properties. Some land was unprotected here so I could have placed some dirt here and wait for flowers to spawn. This plan, however, never worked. This zone was too crowded and the risk was high that I would just lose my dirt; eventually sorcerykid protected most of the land.
Here are the interesting areas:


Note: The latter one would not have worked anyway since the “protection hole” was too far from the grass. All I could do is to wait and hope that Zorg will one day complete the missing dirt. This still did not happen. (Yes, it was me who dug away the blocks missing in the screenshot, but I quickly placed them back into the right spots after I took the screenshot. This was just for demonstration.)

The most promising hole in the system was right at the entrance of what is now the Dye Shop. Back then, there was only water and a strange cactus fence, but a colum of about 4×1 blocks very close to dirt with grass was unproteced; here placing some dirt would look very unsuspicious because it was directly next to the existing dirt. I just had to hope nobody else figured it out. This was the original plan.

The Dye Shop and the first flower
Then, however, rnd and others build the Dye Shop.
This was a REALLY lucky coincidence as it quickly became clear they were building grass right on the critical unproteced blocks. First I was like “Oh shit! They figured out what I am about to do and now they are destroying all possibilities to let flowers spawn.”. Well, probably not. :D

I watched almost the entire process of building the Dye Shop and waited for slip-ups. Early on, I had a brief chance to grab a rose first because it was DIRECTLY placed on the unprotected land, but I tried hard to avoid that rnd and Zorg notice me grabbing it. Sadly, I didn't do anything because I didn't want to get caught. They were just too close for my taste. Later, rnd took away the rose and replaced it with some steps. Oops, chance was gone!
But later rnd thankfully placed a blue geranium in the critical unprotected land again.
And so I grabbed my first flower (Blue Geranium) while rnd and some other people built the Dye Shop near spawn.
You don't believe how exciting getting this first flower was!

Here's the spot which was unprotected and rnd and Zorg apparently had no idea for quite some time (it is protected now):

In the screenshot, the pointed dirt and flower and all the other grass blocks in viewing direction were unprotected. I just waited for the right moment and grabbed a blue geranium. Note that I grabbed it BEFORE it looked like this (it didnt have so many flowers), I had to do it while the shop was still under construction.

Secret flower
I kept possession of the blue geranium secret at first; I did not want to open the flower section until I had enough flowers to theoretically craft all dyes. This was because I still planned to negotiate with rnd and other players, but this has failed. I even offered a nyan cat to rnd but that didn't help.
Guess rnd was very serious about trying to stop flowers spreading on “uncontrolled” land. ;-)

Intelligence, and two more flowers
For getting more flowers, I asked in private MANY players and I looked around everywhere in the main city. I wrote down notes on which players owned which flowers and where and looked for good places to secrtely place some dirt in hope to make a flower spawn.
In finding players, I was unsuccessful at first as players either did not have flowers, did not have them anymore or did not want to give them away because of a promise to rnd.

Then I noticed that sorcerykid suddenly had flowers on her property. It turned out she got them from rnd and promised to only use them as street decoration. She also told she makes sure the flowers are always far enough to not spread on other properties. Well, this seems clever, but I still thought this was a great fate since this means flowers will slowly appear all around the city. I just had to wait for sorcerykid to make one small mistake to grab another flower from accidentally unprotected land. This was, however, never neccessary.

One of the first street decorations of sorcerykid was this one:

I couldn't believe my eyes as she placed the flowers very close to two surrounding properties. The house at the front belongs to HalXXXX (4-digit number I can't remember), the wall to the right belongs to Adelia (or whatever).
I planned to contact the property owners to notify them they have a chance to get a tulip or rose simply by rebuilding their property. but they were never around when I were. Much, much later I noticed that the small hole in the background was actually unprotected, so I could have even placed dirt and grass here and hope for the best. None of this had been done, but this is one of the other possible plans in my mind.
I think I have met sorcerykid right when she was finished building this. Had I a diamond sword carrying around at this moment, I might even have attacked her to steal the flowers from the bones. This was far away from spawn, after all with no city block nearby. Or maybe I would not have had the guts, this was risky as such an attack would surely end all my chances in getting flowers by negotiating.

Eventually I found a player who just handed me these two flowers over.
Shortly after, I have opened the flower section in the Farm of Sharing and the 3 flowers + coal were already enough to craft all dyes.

A Nyan Cat for a flower!
I also posted a reward, offering a nyan cat to everyone who can hand me over any of the missing flowers.
I was very lucky easlier in finding a nyan cat with 15 (!) nyan cat rainbows deep underground, you can find it in the “Post your Nyancats!” thread.

After the 2nd day after posting the reward, sasha2 handed me over a yellow dandelion but declined to take the reward. Sahsa2 was very clever as sasha2 placed dirt with grass very close to Fixer's property who had a yellow dandelion at a very good spot. So all sasha2 had to do was waiting. And it worked.

The secret flower farm
The final flowers, tulip and viola were easier than you will guess: Sasha2 has found the flower farm maikerumine was alluding to in this post: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15334&start=25#p230048

It's basically another public flower farm, but far away from the city. I won't disclose the location, just put some effort into it if you want to find it.

First sasha2 thought the farm was “broken” as flowers seemingly never spread but when I came there I was able to pick up a tulip and viola. Turns out the secret flower farm had all 6 flower species all along! Murphy's Law …
(Fun fact: I have actually read the aforementioned post but I probably did not really understand it. I thought flowers just spawned randomly on stone or whatever, and that rnd was just the fastest player to grab them all.)
All I had to do is to extend the flower section a bit, plant the missing flowers, multiplying them and saving a few flowers as “backup” in case something goes seriously wrong.

Conclusion
And that's how I and some other players managed to liberate all 6 flower species and finish the flower section. :-)

Whew, getting these 6 flower species was quite an adventure! :D

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much I enjoyed hunting down the six flower species. :-)
And let 1000 flowers bloom! :-)

[rnd]

get a life :P

[sorcerykid]

fyi: rnd never gave me any flowers, nor did i submit any vows to rnd.

[Wuzzy]

Wait, what? I am sure I have that chat different in memory. Weird.
Notice that this is sorcerykid's first post here, so I am first a bit skeptical about sorcerykid's idendity, to be honest.

[twoelk]

That's what Just Test was and is all about in my opinion:
figuring out how to get everything allthough the resources are so limited.

I must add here though, by sticking as much to the few rules there are as possible. For me the anarchy that some assumed to be part of the server plan never appealed to me. They never understood that by limiting the rules and making the game difficult and harsh it was not intended to make the game brutal. Indeed, great things where and are established when players work together. The UnterNull server was an interesting experiment of total anarchy. In the beginning it even lacked any protection system. In my opinion it pretty much failed to keep up an interesting game for me on the long run.

... but anybody else's mileage may vary

so hurray for the liberation of the flowers - or at least the breaking of a felt monopol

[sorcerykid]

I am pleased to announce that the city-wide roadway network is now completed. I chose to adopt a street grid on 50m and 100m intervals due to its navigational simplicity and efficiency (the entire grid, however, is offset 25m north to avoid pre-existing properties, the sole exception being the east axis road). Rails have been installed along the perimeter road and the north axis road with minecart stations on the north, south, east, and west axis roads.

Streetscaping and signage is currently underway. Per request of Fixer, twoelk, AspireMint, et al, I will do my best accommodate boat travel around spawn town. With this in mind, bridges are being constructed on the west end and the north end. A canal is planned along the east end. The south end will probably incorporate a series of drawbridges and ladders.

Suffice it to say, this project was a huge undertaking. I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone that helped make it possible. Thanks to twoelk, SerVesta, and Hal7948 for their willingness to partially or completely relocate from the planned right of way. Thanks to jtee, maikerumine, and 843jdc for adding connector roads and/or rails to their respective rural properties. And thanks to AspireMint, Fixer, and Zorg for donating spare materials needed for construction and maintenance.

I will post a map depicting the entire roadway network soon. Cheers!

[maikerumine]

I am pleased to announce that the city-wide roadway network is now completed. I chose to adopt a street grid on 50m and 100m intervals due to its navigational simplicity and efficiency (the entire grid, however, is offset 25m north to avoid pre-existing properties, the sole exception being the east axis road). Rails have been installed along the perimeter road and the north axis road with minecart stations on the north, south, east, and west axis roads.

Streetscaping and signage is currently underway. Per request of Fixer, twoelk, AspireMint, et al, I will do my best accommodate boat travel around spawn town. With this in mind, bridges are being constructed on the west end and the north end. A canal is planned along the east end. The south end will probably incorporate a series of drawbridges and ladders.

Suffice it to say, this project was a huge undertaking. I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone that helped make it possible. Thanks to twoelk, SerVesta, and Hal7948 for their willingness to partially or completely relocate from the planned right of way. Thanks to jtee, maikerumine, and 843jdc for adding connector roads and/or rails to their respective rural properties. And thanks to AspireMint, Fixer, and Zorg for donating spare materials needed for construction and maintenance.

I will post a map depicting the entire roadway network soon. Cheers!

Mega shoutout to all who helped sorcerykid on the huge project! I couldn't wait so I post map here!

[paramat]

maikerumine you make good videos.

[garywhite]

1.i propose:

have several moderators with spy mod so they can do screenshot evidence and ability to remove interact from offender. Lag didnt want to do that and look what happened.

You can disable /privs command so that cheater cant see who moderators are.

basically: clock and dagger operation

2. "If using a hacked client, do NOT use it offensively " heh like they will follow any stupid rules.. its a challenge to them to mess stuff up ;) not follow rules

I agree with rnd. Why should anyone be allowed to cheat if the rules specifically say "No cheating"? It makes it highly unfair to everyone else that they can get a bunch of stuff and make a load of money selling it back to everyone (or, in the case of the original JT, blowing up spawn and taking over all the land in it i.e. CleanerPro)

I propose the same thing, except having said moderators monitor any player who is accused of cheating. I have seen this stuff on several occasions (myself being an admin on another server before) so I know how it is with certain types of players.

[maikerumine]

maikerumine you make good videos.

Thanks mate!

[maikerumine]

Just a reminder that tonight's reset is postponed to tomorrow night. Jave fun!

[GoldFireUn]

Subject: Crime
Crime: Griefing
Culprit: Guest0
Victim: Safarie

Additional Note: Guest0 might also be TinyDancer. I've heard a number of complaints about this player in RL.

Note on Images: The house was originally made out of cobble. The grief mainly consists of dug/placed blocks and walls torn down. The place has since been protected by 843jdc to prevent further damage.

[Fixerol]

return_of_flipper - noclip + fast + (possible teleport), observed myself + warnings.
vote command is useless, voted 0.

Roberson5435 - constant spam with text "Wuzzy" (needs mute I guess)

[Wuzzy]

I have a few suggestions to make about telling newcomers what exactly is going on with the server restart, the so-called “player reset”, and so on. Because I think it's worded in a way which is confusing or even misleading.

First, the time:
It seems the server does not actually shutdown on 19:00 EST but 19:00 EDT because of Daylight Savings Time.
If it were 19:00 EST, I would expect a shutdown on 0:00 UTC (5 hours later), but based on my observation it actually shuts down on 23:00 UTC (4 hours later, which is UTC-4 or EDT).

To make things simple, just say the server shuts down daily at 23:00 UTC and let's just forget about EST, EDT, and so on altogether. Please use UTC for both forum post and server announcement.

Second thing:
I would suggest to add more restart warnings:
At 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes before restart.

Giving the warning only at 5 minutes may be critically to short, especially if the player's “home” is very far from spawn. Many players already write their own warnings in chat, so it makes sense to automate this.

Also, make it so that they appear in red in chat2 (no need to flood the chat, however) at 10 minutes and below. AFAIK this can be done by starting the message with “!”. The other messages can just use the normal chat, without any coloring.

Third thing:
“Player files are deleted.”
“Server is reset.”
“Players are reset.”
etc.

This is all rather vague. Especially “Player files are deleted.” sounds very scary, it is even a bit misleading. The newbie might ask, what exactly does it mean when a player file is deleted? Do I have to start over daily? Will I lose my protected areas? Will I lose everything? Will I lose my account and password? These were the questions I asked myself on my first day. Apparently, the answer is always “No.”.

I would reword everything in a way which leaves no doubt open and tells all the players need to know. Avoid technical descriptions, just tell players what is relevant to them.

Here are suggested texts:

The server will be restarted daily at 23:00 UTC.

After a restart, the player inventories are emptied and reset to the starter items, players are returned to the spawn point and they are fully healed.

To avoid losing your items, put them into chests before the server restarts.

This sounds a lot LESS scary than “Player files are deleted.”.

[maikerumine]

No reset tonight also. Spread sa word.

[AndDT]

mod request: chatplus (it has /ignore command), which could be very useful right now :)

[Fixerol]

are you using this playerplus mod? https://github.com/tenplus1/playerplus (it should not suffocate when standing near fences).

[Wuzzy]

I have just posted a PR on said playerplus mod to improve the suffocation criteria, as suffocation is kinda broken. Basically I use the same criteria as in real_suffocation as those criteria work reliably, based on my experience so far. So if you insist to keep using playerplus, playerplus should at least fix the broken suffocation.

Note the difference between real_suffocation and playerplus: Real_suffocation reduces breath and causes drowning damage, playerplus causes direct damage, plus it is a collection of other small gameplay changes.

PS: Snow vending machine needs fixing. ;-)

PPS: Crafting suggestion: orange dye + sand → desert sand

[rnd]

[Wuzzy]

Sad news, the Cobble Crusher is currently out of order indefinitely. The Cobble Crusher was a building with 2 crushing furnaces which could be operated by anyone. This only worked because crushing furnaces ignored protection; thus the crushing furnaces could be operated by anyone. Basically, this building used a bug in a creative way. :-)

While the bug is interesting that is allows for places like this, it makes it hard to operate your own private crushing furnaces unless you lock and hide them away deep in your private area.
Normal furnaces already recognize protection, so it is just consequential to force it for crushing furnaces as well.

But this also means the Cobble Crusher is now rather pointless. Does anyone have an idea on how to make it work again? I guess this would require a change in the protector mod or somehow, but I have no real good idea.
I fear I have to demolish, close or repurpose this building should no good solution come along.

And lastly, I have one question: Which version of the vendor mod is this server using? If you are using a customized version, can I have the source code, please?

Thanks for increasing the stack size of gold ingots.

[edub]

Michael Lorenger,
Can I have my interact privs back?

Thanks,
Edub

[burli]

Try to connect to this server, but got this error message

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

2016-08-31 22:15:40: ACTION[Main]: Client: Contacting remote server "http://lorenger.org/minetest/esmjt/"
2016-08-31 22:15:53: WARNING[Main]: Irrlicht: PNG warning: Incorrect bKGD chunk length
minetest: /build/minetest-aG4gRy/minetest-201608152330/src/nodedef.cpp:608: void ContentFeatures::updateTextures(ITextureSource*, IShaderSource*, irr::scene::ISceneManager*, irr::scene::IMeshManipulator*, IGameDef*, const TextureSettings&): Zusicherung »liquid_type == LIQUID_SOURCE« nicht erfüllt.


[maikerumine]

UPDATES:
@burli try it again, i believe it is fixed now.

@edub nope.

@Wuzzy C-furnace is not fixed yet, players can still remove items it seems but not place them. The vendor mod is the same one in old just test and on esm: https://github.com/AndrejIT/vendor If this doesn't work I may repost it, I made a goldblock vendor also and it seems to have vanished from my github.
Desert-sand is craftable as requested too. :)

@rnd cactus dig up is fixed.