Anyone interested in coming back?

It's been a long time, friends.

I've spent the last few years working hard trying to get a few personal things taken care of, and, well, life has changed. I am scheduling deliberate time for myself to relax from the daily grind, and Minecraft has been a great way for me to do that.

I'd like to get TreeCrafters back up and running again. I have some ideas for what to do with it to make it more consistent, and quite a lot better paycheck to cover the server bills, heh. I'm thinking of building some custom mods and resource packs for the server, and adding different worlds so that everyone has something to do.

Just need to know if you'll have me.

If so, post a comment so I can send you the IP. Let's chat and catch up!

I'll be working on a new TreeCrafters official website soon if you guys are cool with it - I left so long ago and you guys kept it running the entire time. I can't just act like I'm gonna barge in and take over again without your blessing!

The great Ano returns! Welcome back, man.
Restart it with my blessing. You were the original Treecrafter, after all.

And feel free to reorganize and rewrite this forum however you want to make it fit what you set up. I left you an administrator all this time so you could do just that if you ever came back.

And I just noticed that this post makes my post count match my troop number from back when I was in Boy Scouts. Triple Nickel!

I've gotta say, this is actually pretty cool. You kept this thing going for so long. You did a great job. Thanks for being solid and thanks for letting me step back in. I'm excited to get to work.

I mentioned it in my message to you, but I'm gonna put it here: We'll be building an epic monument to you on the new server for all the years you kept TreeCrafters going.

I won't be making many changes to these forums for a bit. Right now I just want to chat with people and see where everyone is and what they're interested in doing. I do already have a server up where I've been playing with some building designs and started my first tree (40,000 blocks away from spawn).

Any chance you have any old world backups that I can load up?

Server IP: 185.38.151.165:25595

I'm gonna chalk the 555 up as a sign of good things to come.

I'll see what I can find. I'm sure I have some backups around here somewhere.

This forum post has links to backups from the last maps you were part of. https://treecrafters.forumotion.com/t301p25-server-down-indefinitely#984
I'll check my hard drives for other maps. Many of them will be modded, though, so there's no telling which ones can actually be used.

Here's another forum post with downloads for a later map. This might be the last vanilla one, but I'm not sure. I don't seem to have copies of this one on my HDDs, so I don't have any reference for where it fits in the sequence. https://treecrafters.forumotion.com/t518-old-world-downloads#1940

Yo, would definitely be interested in starting up again. Saw the deviantArt message too. Can't talk all that much now, but definitely interested. That's a current vanilla server then? I'll try hop on at some point.

YES!

Vanilla as in no-mods, but there are some general Bukkit/Spigot plugins that I'm working on.

Let me know when you think you'll log in and I'll jump on, too.

I'm currently talking with a spigot dev about building a series of plugins for us. There will be multiple worlds, including a "Freelander" world (wow, that's a throwback) where you can roam and just play normal survival. All former TreeCrafter members from before today will automatically be given access to that world and a tag in chat to show you're an OG.

Side note: I haven't seen this picture in years. Had to update my avatar to show my hair moved.

I did find one more vanilla backup that's more recent than the world files linked in the announcement I found. It's a full server backup, so you should be able to unzip it and start it up as-is to see what's there. Logs indicate it's Minecraft 1.4.6. I'll edit in a link to this message once I get it ziped and uploaded somewhere. It includes Dynmap, so you can use a loopack IP address with port 8082 in a web browser to see a map of the server.

I just tested out a copy of the backup on my computer to make sure it's still viable. You just need to change the server properties file to disable on-line mode since the player ID system has changed since 1.4.6 days. And use a BAT file (or other appropriate script type) to run craftbukkit.jar. This seems to work for me:

Code:

java -Xmx2048M -Xms2048M -jar craftbukkit.jar
PAUSE

Backup from 6 Jan 2013

In Dynmap, the right side of the screen is a collapsible menu for which world you want to display. Clicking the X at the top to change it to a II will pin the menu open. Dynmap has markers for portals and at least some player homes. "Mainworld" is the latest map and wasn't around for very long, so there's not much development aside from the spawn tree. "World" is the map that I began when I took over. It was used as a freelander area in this iteration of the server as a dual purpose: a separate world where people could roam freely, and a way for people to visit their old trees if they wished. I think it was some kind of change to villages and/or biomes that prompted the creation of the new map. I made the Nether distances equal overworld distances so people's nether bases wouldn't overlap so much. "Skylands" took over the purpose of quick travel with 1 skyland block equal to 10 overworld blocks.

Sweet! That was well after I left, yeah?

About a year. Everything after that was modded.

Estimates are showing a bit over 2 hours to upload. The compressed file is 2.21GB. Dynmap takes a lot of data

Wow. No rush on that. It'll just be cool to upload and let you guys explore again for a little throwback if you want.

I think Blazin and I were the only ones around at that time. Althing showed up after we switched to FTB, and the other two guys still hanging out with us came much later. Unless you can bring in some of the people from old times, the old maps aren't going to provide much benefit.
I'm still Facebook friends with Truffled. I'll let her know Treecrafters is starting up again. She was around for the first map that I ran.

Did you guys stick to the rules after the switch or did it transform into a standard survival map? Curious if there are some old trees I can take screenshots of for the new site.

We went in and out of the Tree Spirit Challenge a couple of times through multiple modpacks. My full backup folder has around 57GB of data in it, and I suspect I may have a few more backups elsewhere from limbo times when I was switching to new computers. We stuck with the challenge as long as we were vanilla, though.

Just finalized a deal with a plugin dev. We'll have our first version of an updated Tree Spirit Challenge plugin within two weeks. Some features:

1. Follows the general Tree Spirit Challenge rules.
2. Players select a sapling before warping into the main survival world.
3. Different saplings have different abilities included (jungle allows vine travel even without roots attached, birch allows short distant flight, oak trees drop more apples, and spruce grow taller, etc...)
4. When a sapling is placed, it immediately grows and the bottom log becomes the heart log (glowstone?)
5. Players will be damaged slowly if they leave the root system or if the roots they are standing on are broken (like by fire).
6. Only the logs and leaves gathered from the host tree or saplings dropped by the host tree will count towards root systems.
7. If the heart log is destroyed, the tree is dead and the player must start over, though they can start near their old tree and cannibalize it if they want.
8. When a sapling is placed, the player automatically gets a short radius of protection from griefers around their tree.

Talking to another plugin dev now about the corruption game mode to allow automatically expanding the corruption and spawning of more mobs.

Don't forget exceptions for portals, public roads, and market areas.
Oh, man. Getting shulker boxes will be so expensive!

Oh yes, can't forget those! There will need to be protected areas that admins set which allow anyone to travel freely.

Do you remember why we removed the Freelander option in the main challenge world?

It was never removed when you were around. I think I removed it after I took over just to have less administration to do. I think I was the only freelander left when you disappeared, anyway. I later re-introduced a version of it with a separate world for it.

Upload is completed. Link is in my post above: https://treecrafters.forumotion.com/t638-anyone-interested-in-coming-back#3047

Prob gonna hop on your server for a bit.

Cool! I'm gonna be hopping on myself.

Guess I missed you by a couple hours. Sorry about that.

Been busy tonight.

First, I got a new domain pointing to the IP. You can now connect to the server at:

MC.TREECRAFTERS.ONLINE

Working on a logo for the site where we'll eventually have a new forum setup, plus some other things (like server applications).

Working on three new house concepts for the spawn forest that will continue to expand out through the entirety of this forest.



Got DynMap up and running.

http://185.38.151.165:8132/?worldname=TreeCrafters&mapname=surface&zoom=6&x=966&y=64&z=-4

Tomorrow I'm back to work so I won't be on again until the evening. It's been fun getting things going again this weekend.

It seems like there's not much point in starting a tree before the plugin is done. The plugin will necessitate abandoning whatever was started before it was installed.

Correct. That's why I'm working on other buildings in the meantime. I did actually start a tree for a few days while I planned, budgeted, and decided if I wanted to do this. Doesn't look great, and it's 40,000 blocks from spawn, but it was fun while I was thinking. I don't think this world will be the survival world, at any rate. Makes more sense for it to be a hub world that has a portal to the survival world.

Unless you want to try and speedrun it and see what you can do in a couple of weeks. That could be fun. I also found an amazing seed of an Amplified island mountain. I was going to open that up as a solo or team build battle using the tree challenge rules.