After staying up late to do some final hardware and software installation, the server is back up and running. Downtime is to be expected while I install other software components on the server, but otherwise all the core software is working as it should.

The server now uses a RAID 1 array using two Seagate Constellation ST2000NC000 enterprise-grade (high reliability) hard drives. This cost me about $320 but the price was well worth it, considering how much troubles a head crash has brought me.

I never thought I’d need to beg people for money for server hardware, but because my primary OS hard drive for my server is now dead, I seriously need money in order to get a new one for the server. The OS drive didn’t contain any Minecraft server data, luckily, but I have no other drive that will hold the primary operating system and the Minecraft files at the same time without causing both system and Minecraft server performance to suffer.

If you’re willing enough to help me out, please click “Like NGminecraft?” up on the top bar of this webpage and click the PayPal Donate link. Any amount money is appreciated but a new 2 terabyte hard drive is going to cost me at least $100, and that’s for a low-speed hard drive. As for trying to get data recovered, it’s going to cost at least another $100 just to get the drive evaluated for data salvage; that doesn’t even come close to what it’ll cost to get the data back.

NGminecraft has been running pretty much out of my own pocket for longer than a year, and I aim to keep it running for many days to come, but today, I need your help more than ever.

~Jason, the owner of the NGminecraft server.

I was doing a battery backup runtime test, and the server ran for about 35 minutes but shut down abruptly (it’s supposed to shut down properly, as if you went and hit “shut down” from the Start menu), but no. It simply powered down. Turning the server back on brought me to a frozen BIOS screen and a hard drive making some beeping sounds and not spinning up.

Turns out it was the primary server operating system drive. Files were lost that were stored on this drive but at least the Minecraft files (and my home PC backups) are intact.

I’m currently trying to find a way to get back up ASAP but at this point things are bleak.

Today I had some significant surgery to remove 4 wisdom teeth, the lower two requiring significant.. trauma to remove. This has left me in no condition to perform any Minecraft updates (besides, Bukkit and SimpleServer aren’t updated yet). I’m not going to go into the gory details (mind the pun) but I will say that I should be somewhat functional starting tomorrow, providing that my jaw isn’t completely killing me at that point.

Classes are over for me so that gives me time to continue working on the survival port. Auto approval for Guests doesn’t work (still) and the rules aren’t revised yet.

However, I have implemented, on request of another in-game admin, a “personal warp” system. Use the /pw command to use this. All it really does is remap commands to Essentials’ /ehome, /esethome, and /edelhome commands, but this setup allow for faster command typing, and also to have a /home that requires no additional parameters to run.

If I’m able, I will start writing an “NGminecraft Handbook” outlining various commands and features that I’ve built into the server. This will be accompanied with a “Moderator and Administrator’s Handbook” outlining what can and cannot be done with such as ranking, as some are not fully aware of the way that rankings are set up, etc.

I’ve been working on a second Minecraft server – one that’s a pure survival server and with a fresh map!

The survival server differs from the main server in several other ways:

• The spawn village and much of the area around it is a no-build zone. You will see a message in chat if you are in the area, and when you go past the boundaries of it.
• Players that want to teleport to another player must send a request using /visit <player> or /tpa <player>.
• Those at Builder++ rank cannot use /creative.
• The player must read and accept the server rules before joining the server.The server rules for the survival server will be more specific and are currently being refined.

I’ve also put in mcMMO to enhance gameplay when it comes to mining, hunting, digging, fishing… the list goes on! You can find out more about the perks in mcMMO by using /mmowiki Abilities in-game.

This port also has Dynmap, accessible at http://maps.ngminecraft.com:8080. However, you cannot use /map in-game and click the link that it generates as Minecraft does not recognize URLs with a port in them. The map is being rendered in a VERY high resolution, much higher than the standard high-res setting of Dynmap. It’s quite beautiful to look at

I’m working out a few issues with entity protection, and the auto-approval system for new players. I was hoping to get it out this week but school and illness (bronchitis again, no surprises there) have prevented me from doing so.

For now, here’s a bunch of screenshots.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 10 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.