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Zedling Council Meeting 2019-07-27

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Attendance

Council Members Present

  • Zedwick
  • LadyBountiful
  • SneakySkeleton
  • Dax23333
  • Forseth
  • Spectatre (scribe)
  • ABParadigm (host)
  • Zero0hm
  • Dave5400
  • AlyCatMeow

Apologies

  • Aravero [Bulk Apology in effect until August 24th]
  • Memery

No Apologies

  • KhasOrn
  • Soviet_Pingu (Removed from council)

Visitors

  • Timoteeyy
  • Centurions_War
  • Sweetevil39


ABP hosted us in the Fish Basement, once again complete with his long-suffering horse Randy, who remains unamused by being unceremoniously dumped with the fishes several months ago, having been unceremoniously left in a swamp weeks previous to that. He (ABP, not the horse) was after a scribe, and having seen the topics everyone else was far too sensible to volunteer. After requesting the meeting be stalled so I could get a snack, he (again, not the horse) invited everyone to complain about the weather. Council obliged, in spades.

Topics

Hello, is it 1.14 you're looking for?


This coulda been a horror show, but luckily there had been lots of lovely forum discussion prior to the meeting on the state of 1.14 (clicky). There have been a few additional 1.14 releases, but two large bugs still remain, refusing to be squished under the boot of assiduous programming. They are - villagers disappearing, and chunks being permanently overwritten. Mojang has marked both as 'very important', but have also advised there will be no further updates on 1.14.

Villagers disappearing seems to happen on the regular on LVS anyway (It's almost like villagers don't like being cramped into tiny rooms and be forced to breed in quasi-eugenical programs, you monsters) (or maybe it's a serial killer?) (it's probably just a bug). The chunk one (oo, bug details) is a lot more concerning. They could get displaced or permanently overwritten. Best case, it doesn't affect us at all; worst case, chunks in developed areas get overwritten, builds are wrecked, stuff is lots.

Most of the feeling on the forum thread was that an update was necessary, Latest Version Server (Just Kidding!) having less of a ring to it. Rolling back the server if the update failed (as we did with 1.13) was an option, but obviously rollbacks would mean progress would be lost. There were lots of questions to Zed on how an update would go, whether a rollback could happen and how.

-While it is theoretically possible to retrieve 'obliterated' chunks from a pre-update backup, it would not be simple, would need special tools created and have limited scope of feasibility, so zed couldn't commit to it happening
-There's no automatic way to check what chunks (if any) get borked - it would be down to players noticing
-The smallest area that could feasibly be rolled back in the event of a chunksplosion would be 1024x1024, which obviously covers a whole lot more area than most builds.
-at the 1.13 update, zed checked the chunks around spawn and they were fine; it tended to be the chunks closer to newly-generated areas that were destroyed, prompting the rollback.
-That rollback went back 3 days to remedy the issue, and was met with much humbug by the players who lost the progress they made in those early 1.13 days.

A VOTE was taken: Do we update (and roll back, if needs be), or not update in the hopes Mojan fix the bug in 1.15? This vote was opened to non-council members, and was unanimously FOR updating.

Discussion was also had on how far the rollback period should be - if problems are discovered a few days after the update, do we revert entirely to a backup? How about a week? A month? How severe would the damage need to be to necessitate a full rollback? How severe would it need to be to warrant a partial 1024x1024 rollback (given this would remove the progress in that entire area)?

Zed suggested that in lieu of a vote on times, we just 'openly bicker' on it for a while, as that would allow him to get a view on what our reasonings were. Not ones to miss an invitation to ramble at one another, we took to the task.

Concerns were raised on behalf of players who log in less frequently. What if they don't get to their house for a while, and then notice the damage? Again it was reiterated that rollbacks of specific chunks (say, someone's house) would not be possible without rolling a 1000 blocks around it also. Suggestions were raised for a thread warning players of the update, when it does come, so they can be aware of the potential chunk-break issue and prepare how they can. Another was a post-update thread where those who do notice chunk-breaks can report them, so Zed gets a feel for how immediate and severe the issue is. Aly raised the point that we are a community server, so can all do our best to look over as many builds as possible to notice what damage we can in good time.

Zed processed this all and decided that there would be no set window for rollbacks - he will decide based on the severity of the problems, as they come up. The longer the time between the update and the problem, the less likely the reversion (so as to not lose out on progress). Cross your fingers, lads, looks like we're 1.14 bound.

And with that surprisingly peaceful tackling of that topic, ABP and Dax rushed us briskly on to that old chestnut-

Ocean Regeneration, episode 27: This water is so last year


Council: So, Zed, how's that regen script going? (A script to turn old chunks into 1.13 chunks, so we get more 1.13 content in our seas)
Zed: It's in progress, but still not a usable state.
Council: Can the people of LVS assist at all in getting it up and running?
Zed: Nope.
Council: Oh. :( We like to be helpful when we're not bugging you about things for the nth time
Zed: ...well, don't need help yet, but when he announces on forums it's ready for alpha release he could use some nice guinea pigs to take it onto their single player worlds for testing before siccing it on LVS

Suggestion then came out for an area of land that regenerates, sort of like the End, so that people can get to new-chunk materials. It would require a new script, extending reboot times and also taking zedly time away from his work on the main ocean regen script. Also, if a player happened to be in the 'regeneration area' during a reboot, it could generate blocks where the player is, killing them through suffocation on relog.

(But wait, could that happen to end explorers as well? Apparently, it's totally possible! But then again, if you log off in the end, aren't online for 30 days, and then that chunk happens to get regenerated in a way that and End City happens to generate where you are, and that End City, having generated where you are, generates in a way that surrounds you and your blocky lungs with End Stone, such that you die when you do return from your lovely vacation, welp, sucks to be you! That's just some Final Destination Rube-Goldberg mischief that's the universe telling you we weren't meant to fly in an otherworldly dimension. That's Zhicago.)

Forseth wondered the possibility of whether the server could detect if a player logged in inside a block, and teleport them somewhere safely - may make regen safer, though wouldn't help players if they logged in to regenerated ocean, or lava. Sneaky wondered at the chances this eventuality would happen much at all if this hypothetical area would only be in an unbuilt-zone. This suggestion was lost in the council hubub who were still on the murder-tangeant, suggesting progressively more inventive ways we could kill a player who unwittingly ventured into an area until it was deemed we'd exceeded council's practicable attention span. To sum up, lots of the council would like the regeneration script to happen, and zed is still working on it.

Dax was then on hand to bring us back to serious, sensible council business.

Should we have a rubber duck at Spawn that assist us with problems?

(...what?)
Yes! So say the council. People will tell the duck their problems and the duck will patiently listen. Dax thinks it will bring the server together. There was a vote on the colour - most people voted yellow, except the Zriends who voted blue and LadyB who had a tentative vote on white, depending on the breed of rubber duck.

Dax is going to build the duck. Hooray? Hooray.

Zednouncements

Casual Buildathon - TOMORROW, Sunday 28th, 4pm-9pm BST.

That was it from Zed! Possibly because the meeting, while very amicable and reasonably quick-moving, had long since descended into weirdness and Randy the Horse was getting tired of our company (you'd be a recluse too if you'd been left in a basement for months at a time, eh?)

Nominations/Next Meeting

Timoteeyy got voted back on to the council and agreed to host the next meeting. See you all in two weeks!

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