Counting Aine, that accounts for everyone who's posted more than once in this thread.   That's five of us.  If there's no one else, we'll probably be amply served by enough RAM to handle seven or eight simultaneous sessions.  But the more the merrier!  Anyone else?

Aine Silveria wrote:

Now to just get us to all work together to build a pixel-Ohtori Academy... complete with dueling arena...

I was imagining the upside-down castle and drooling a little.  And mentally building a Botticelli Utena on a seashell.

I know nothing about the technical end of Minecraft servers, though I've experimented a little with mods in SSP.  I doubt our small group needs currency, or mods that drastically change gameplay (unless those mods are awesome), and of course every mod is something we have to worry about with each new patch; on the other hand, I admit it would be nice not to worry about creepers blowing up our monuments, particularly if we're not giving ourselves easy access to items through creative mode or inventory mods.  Mixed feelings.  I'm inclined to leave the decisions about mods to those of you who know what you're talking about and will be doing the work of installing them.

That's fine with me!  Let's hear

Alright, here's some of them.

Essentials is a mod that many of the servers I've been on run. ... now that I think on it, I think most servers run it. Anyway. This particular one allows teleports, such as the ability to warp to friends, warp back to the spawn, set a home without the use of a bed (so if you get lost while caving, you can easily find your way home), setting up warps to particularly cool builds. It allows for the creation of user groups, which gives certain people certain abilities, which could be very good for setting people to what they want to do. It has basic protection against firespread and creepers. It does a lot, and most of it unobtrusively. It has some sort of currency thing included, but I ought to be able to shut it off. Only downside I can see is that setting it up may be slightly difficult. I've not worked with the code for any of these mods before, but I can start mucking about in a baby server on my laptop to see what I can learn.

In the case of an amusing one, Found Diamonds is mainly designed as a tool for public servers to cut down on xray or light packs/hacks, but it has an interesting side bit of code I like... you can configure it so that when anyone is mining and finds diamonds, everyone currently on the server has a chance at getting one of three items set by the admin. The most recent server that had it and had this feature on gave coal, iron ingots & slimeballs. I loved it because I have such a crappy time at finding slime chunks on SMP...

World Edit is another mod I see on just about every server. It's generally used as a tool for admins to fix things or quickly make things. It's like a find & replace tool for Minecraft. I see it could be an interesting way to help people make builds, or easily remove stuff people don't want around anymore. I don't know that I'd have everyone have access to this particular one. It is a popular tool to make servers crash or for general griefing in the wrong hands.

World Guard is another mod I see everywhere. It's a more robust package that allows for the stopping of fire spread, lava fires, creepers, ice build up, leaf decay, and more stuff like that. It also allows for regions to be protected. I personally see nothing wrong with a little creative pranking (some of the stuff I see Guude and Etho and the crew get up to makes me laugh like crazy), but some forms of pranks can be somewhat destructive or mean. This also allows for safe regions from monster spawns or monster damage.

My absolute favorite mod right now is mcMMO. This mod allows for skills to level up. Say you spend a lot of time chopping trees. Eventually, you start getting double drops as a reward, and a special skill to help you chop trees quicker and cleaner. Or you spend a lot of time digging out dirt. You'll eventually start getting things from that dirt, like pieces of glowstone dust, or cocoa beans. Are you a klutz that falls off everything? Well, eventually you'll start taking less damage as you learn to roll. It has a repair function that expands on the basic MC repair and allows you to eventually be able to have a chance to keep those precious enchantments. I just personally really love the functionality and the fun in this one.

Another useful mod is the LWC locking mod. It allows you to protect and lock things instead of places. Doors, buttons, levers, furnaces, all kinds of things. I get that we're a good, honest bunch, but *shrugs* I like having the option to lock my doors, even if I don't actually do it, you know?



There are so many other mods out there. While looking up the pages for these ones, I found mods to allow you to pick up monster spawners with silk touch picks. So many economy mods. PvP arenas, mob arenas, spleef arenas. Town mods. Mods to allow for multiple worlds, like a mining world, a creative map, etc. Mods to create magic. It's interesting the things one can do to MC.

I tend to agree with Ragnarok that Essentials and World Guard seem like very good ideas.  LWC I can take or leave; as long as it's just the bunch of us I don't really care, if the mod doesn't interfere with normal activity.  World Edit, likewise, is fine with me but it's not something I'd expect to use.  But based on these synopses, I like mcMMO and love Found Diamonds.  The latter especially seems like it might give us a sense of shared achievement and collaboration in SMP -- make it feel different from half a dozen people all playing SSP and happening to share a world.

And yes, I admit that I would like to keep my inventory on death. 

I don't have any desire to PVP myself. If other people want it that's perfectly ok, though.

I've only played Minecraft on normal difficulty, aside from short bouts of Creative mode. I don't know how much easier Easy would be nor how much harder Hard is. I do know that falling off a cliff into lava is probably going to kill you in any case, which is normally the sort of thing which gets me.

Found Keep Items as a Bukkit mod. Seems to have the functionality you're looking for (inventory stays in your inventory on death). Let me know what you guys think of that one, and if you want the keep exp. addition.



Main difference between all the levels is monster damage and hunger effects. On easy, if you starve, you'll only go to 5 hearts. Normal takes you to 1/2 a heart. On hard, starving will kill you. Normal damage of a zombie is 2 1/2 hearts. On easy, it's reduced to 1 1/2, hard bumps it to 3 1/2.

I don't much like the idea of hard myself, mainly because I have a tendency to ride the hunger line and starve a lot and don't want to die from it. Also, zombies beating down my doors is something I don't want, though zombies beat on doors in all levels it seems.

This setting is also easily changed, so it would be no trouble at all to set it to any of them and change it later if that level ends up being too difficult or easy.

All of my deaths so far have come either in lava or on the Nether or both, which makes retrieving my items inconvenient or impossible, so items are more important to me.  Experience isn't important to me unless there's also a mod that improves the enchantment system.

I typically die from lava and the Nether, so Easy or Normal is fine. As far as hunger goes we can all help eachother out, so I don't think we will have to worry about that on normal.  Also like keeping inventory upon death.  I'm so juberish about ever actually using any of my diamond crafted armor, tools or weapons for fear of losing them.

satyreyes wrote:

Aine Silveria wrote:

Improves the enchantment system how? Because while I'm looking for mods, I can look for some more.

Oh, it's not a huge deal to me; I don't often feel like I need to enchant stuff.  If I were designing the enchantment system, I would let the player see what they're going to get.  I'm not picky.  I just want to know that I'm not spending 40 experience levels to get Bane of Arthropods IV on my sword.

This.

I hate to interrupt the exciting multiplayer discussion with a question about game mechanics, but: when I watch tutorial videos I sometimes see players plop blocks down in places where I didn't think you could put a block, places where there are no adjacent solid blocks.   What's the trick to doing this?  For example, if I am in a flat desert and I plop down a torch on the ground, how can I now place a block on top of the torch without adding more blocks first?  Is there some key I hold down?

Thank you!    And I am hugely looking forward to playing with everyone!!

Yes, it is something you can do. Just tested it with a torch and some dirt. I don't know about the midair blocks, but putting solid blocks on torches or redstone torches is just a matter of making sure you are aiming on the top of the torch's hitbox before placing your block. It's especially done with redstone torches to allow for vertical wiring.