Minecraft 1.13 Update News

[Zedwick]

Mojang released Minecraft 1.13 yesterday, and I know many of you are super excited about getting your feet wet with the update. So let me tell you where we are with both Zurvival and LVS getting the update.

LVS

LVS, also known as Latest Version Server, will be updated first! The update process is going to be much longer than previous updates, as the world format has changed and our old world will need to be upgraded. This process, based on simplistic calculations after a few test runs, will take 12 hours. As I will need to be about once it has completed to bring it back online, I have decided to schedule beginning the update process tomorrow morning, which will hopefully get it back online during peak hours tomorrow evening.

I have spent hours updating the commands which power LVS and keep it safe from wannabe griefers. I have 161 custom command functions with 108,855 commands. These have not yet been optimised for 1.13, but they have been updated to be mostly functional. I'll continue working on these of the next few days, weeks and months to get the most out of the new 1.13 commands.

Zurvival

Zurvival has been around for over 6 years, with many plugins which are almost just as old. With 1.13, many of them just won't make the cut as they are and won't be receiving updates as the original developer has left the scene. I have spent quite a few hours updating some of these plugins myself. Most notably I have the region posts plugin 100% updated to a 1.13 pre-release, and our claims plugin is in the process of being updated and will provide protection for the new blocks (all those buttons!). I've already cut a few legacy plugins which we don't need, and a few others may not make the initial jump to 1.13 but will hopefully return at a later date. Spigot itself will likely not be available for 1.13 for another week. No ETA on when the update will come to Zurvival, but I'll be checking for spigot's 1.13 release and monitoring its stability. Like LVS, the world will need to be upgraded, which will take a similar number of hours.

ZestyLand

Wait, what? Another server?? Our worlds are old, and whilst we will get the new content by regenerating our old un-lived in oceans, it's gonna be a while before they're thriving with ocean life. I'd like to announce ZestyLand, which will be running a fresh world generated in 1.13! This server will be exclusively available to Zesty Subscribers. The world itself is only temporary; I expect to support this server for about a month, at-least. Hopefully this will give you Zesties a chance to explore the new content together. ^_^

Server is now up! Read more here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2920

ZestyGames

Many of our minigames will be remaining on previous versions of Minecraft server-side, but will still be accessible to play in 1.13.

[Zedwick]

The LVS world is now in the process of being upgraded to 1.13!

It has a total of 7,588,637 chunks, and is estimated to be completed at about 11PM BST, 20th July.
This estimate may not be accurate, so please be patient!

[Zedwick]

LVS has been updated to Minecraft 1.13!

A changelog will be up soon for me to boast about all the effort I put into it, but for now I'll leave you with a mildly interesting piece of information. LVS' world file in 1.12.2 was 35GB, after upgrading it to the new 1.13 format it is now 38GB!

[Zedwick]

A few changes to the plans for Zz have come from LVS' courageous bug-testing in 1.13! Unfortunately, the world upgrade is not without issue and has caused massive loss of data. Therefore, Zurvival will not be updating to 1.13. Zurvival will instead update to a future 1.13.x version, once Mojang has fixed the issues with the world upgrade process.

Kind of a waste of my rush to complete the plugins we rely on for Zurvival, but I can tell you that I have completed the 1.13 update for our most prominent claims and region posts; Other plugins will be updated much more easily, so given the extra time I do not foresee much loss in functionality. And hey, maybe while I'm updating them I'll even fix some of the long-standing issues as reported.

[Zedwick]

I have decided to open yet another temporary 1.13 server, but this time for all players of Zedwork to enjoy.

This server will, however, be running some of the updated plugins Zurvival relies on in the hopes we can catch all the bugs before they go live over there once Zurvival is ready to update. With that in mind, this server is temporary; you may lose items in your inventory, chests or even entire builds from this world. The world may be wiped at a later date for testing purposes or as necessary. Perhaps more importantly too, this server is PVP-enabled, griefing and raiding is allowed. I do not intend for this server to become an anarchy server. Stay nice, out there. There will be land claims available for protecting your builds, however if anyone can work out a way to break through those claims then that is perfectly allowed. (But please tell me how you did it so I can fix it).

The TestyMcPocketFace will go live later today, and will have land claims and region posts available from the start. Other functionality will be introduced as available at a later date, including the "Pocket" features of our PocketUHC, to enable you to get started quicker and recover from any loss more easily.

[Zedwick]

Minecraft 1.13.1 is out, and appears to have the fixes we need. I don't intend to repeat the mistake of rushing into this update again, so will be testing the upgrade process thoroughly (especially including the affected areas as reported from LVS' first update attempt). We will not update to 1.13.1 within the next few days at-least.

In related news, I've been working on the chunk deletion script to allow for regenerating ocean biomes. It's going very well; It can read the blocks in each chunk, the biomes for those blocks and even what kind of structures and where they are in each chunk. Using this information I aim to use the biome data combined with the structure data to decide if each block could be a "natural" block (block types which are placed on world generation), if not then it will assume it would be player-placed and NOT include that chunk for deletion. This may not be entirely accurate, for example some players may terraform land with natural blocks or build using natural materials (stone castle?), but I hope with a few extra rules (like no chunks which have non-empty chests, even if they could have been placed with a natural structure, will be deleted) the risks will be mitigated to only risk losing some relatively low-value builds. Another concern are natural structures which have been heavily modified but not necessarily built in with unnatural blocks, like ocean monuments which have simply been drained of water or demolish completely to make way for farms. For this particular example I aim to check for water at expected sea level across all ocean biomes to check it hasn't been intentionally drained.

If you have any other examples of modified natural structures which may not be covered by simply checking for likely player-placed (unnatural) blocks, please let me know! I'm sure there are other edge cases I've not considered yet.

[tim]

Hey zed have u considered torches ,furnace's ,cobble , spawners ,mossy cobble and other junk like lets say a chests with a stack of cobble and some wheat that might be left. I did some heavy strip mining under the ocean at a lot of spots under water and it would be sad if these places not get reset as their is no value in keeping them.

[Zedwick]

Hey zed have u considered torches ,furnace's ,cobble , spawners ,mossy cobble and other junk like lets say a chests with a stack of cobble and some wheat that might be left. I did some heavy strip mining under the ocean at a lot of spots under water and it would be sad if these places not get reset as their is no value in keeping them.

I figure I could add some lower limits for number of unnatural blocks to be counted, for example cobblestone in lower quantities (<10) would likely not be part of a build made out of cobblestone (but of course if it is part of a larger build with a variety of blocks, those other block types will likely mark the chunk as player-modified) and so could be removed. Torches could probably be ignored as player-placed bocks, though they are an indicator of player activity they are likely to only be included in a build alongside other player-placed blocks.

I'd not given a lot of thought to spawners. I had thought other player-placed blocks would be a good indication, but as the mobs are usually moved from the spawner out of the chunk the majority of the player-placed blocks may not be in the same chunk as the spawner. One easy check may be to look for water in the spawn area around the spawner. With that all said, I may choose not to regenerate any chunks with a spawner in them anyway.

A list of "junk" items inside chests to be ignored could be an option. I had been thinking that chests would be a good indicator of a player build in an area, even if that build used natural block types, so I would be hesitant to target what I perceive to be junk-chests for deletion. Furnaces would be the same.

[HonorableGaming]

hi zed. maybe adding Redstone dust to the list might help, I know some of my contraptions are just Redstone dust and I just Doug out the area that I needed instead of placing blocks down. just an idea i am sure you already thought of that.

[Zedwick]

hi zed. maybe adding Redstone dust to the list might help, I know some of my contraptions are just Redstone dust and I just Doug out the area that I needed instead of placing blocks down. just an idea i am sure you already thought of that.

My approach is to create a list of natural blocks, rather than a list of blocks I expect player's to have placed, so any unusual or non-natural block like redstone dust (excluding the structures they naturally generate in, which I think may just be jungle temples) will not be on my list of natural blocks and will be counted as a player-placed block.