Creating a Minecraft Family Server

Well, since the ToJ server is hosted at my house, yes, I am the one who manages it, and I am very familiar with port forwarding, and the like (hosting multiple websites, games, "other" services..)

All routers are different though, and the screen shot you posted did not look familiar to me.. I have a Netgear 4500, and its as simple as tell it what ports, and which internal IP address to forward them to, and it handles the rest..
 
blsimpson said:
If you have client mods installed you should be able to connect to a server that doesn't have them and play, you just wont have access to those mods while playing on the server.
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I wasn't able to do this until recently when I got another family member interested in Minecraft. For the record, any client mods you have will show up in Multiplayer. But, as you said, they just won't be able to use them. Instead, if you try to use them, the connection will crash. (The family member had a different mod than what the server had and they lost connection.) That doesn't mean Minecraft will crash. I thought it might be a good idea to post this as an FYI.
 
After watching some YouTube Minecraft playthroughs, I got an idea for some things:

First off, I made a video some time ago after my frustration with port forwarding and it suddenly occurred to me to post it here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg8ZbCPdhjM
It's strictly informative and I made sure not to reveal any personal data. It is Minecraft centric. But, it's got basic tips for setting up any kind of game servers.

Second, do you know if there are any good ticket systems for a Minecraft server? As I was watching the Minecraft playthroughs, I suddenly realized that people were paging the admin for one thing or another and I figured that there's gotta be a better way to keep track of those requests. Mind you, I don't know if I'd ever use it. But, if big businesses can have it and you can make a mod for just about everything, then why not?
 
Awesome. It may help someone :)

And are you asking for like a help desk plugin inside MC? I haven't heard of one, but that doesn't mean is one.. We don't use anything like that here, we just ask people to post issues in the forums. Its easier for every one to look at, if they may be having the same issues..
 
There's something I've been toying with for a while. I know it's possible to disable the Nether and "The End" on a server. Reason being the Nether is a lot like hell and "The End"'s purpose is for fighting the dragon, something I don't know if my nieces would want to do. However, it occurred to me that there might be elements only available in either of these other dimensions. So, I got the idea of having a chest hidden in a dungeon or a stronghold, they'd have to fight zombies or skeletons to get through, and the reward would be tons of Nether and "The End" items. I'm just trying to figure out what all the elements were in those dimensions. Here's what I got so far:
Glowstone
certain mushroom species
killing certain bosses and collect items they drop

By the way, before I forget, this is what I meant by a ticket system (in case someone else might be interested):
https://forums.bukkit.org/threads/admn-modtrs-v2-1-moderator-ticket-request-system-1240.11652/
 
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Glowstone - we all love it, used for light and for brewing.
Quartz - make various quartz blocks, and used in some crafting
Netherrack, Netherbrick, Nether Fence, etc... aside from Netherrack being the only block that burns forever, it's all what you can build from it.
mushrooms can be found in the normal world (red and brown)
Ghast tears are used in brewing.
Blaze rods are used for making a brewing stand and making magma cream (for fire resistance).
The End doesn't give anything special except dragon eggs, which don't do anything. End Stone is there, but there's nothing special about it.
 
Josh2415 said:
Glowstone - we all love it, used for light and for brewing.
Quartz - make various quartz blocks, and used in some crafting
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I was wondering about that. I was looking for a flooring material that looked solid and nice at the same time and, even though there's a marble mod out there, quarts was the only thing that could change with the texture pack.
Josh2415 said:
Netherrack, Netherbrick, Nether Fence, etc... aside from Netherrack being the only block that burns forever, it's all what you can build from it.
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I can see using the Netherrack to create a temple like atmosphere due to it burning indefinitely. Otherwise, I get a gothic vibe from it.
Josh2415 said:
mushrooms can be found in the normal world (red and brown)
Ghast tears are used in brewing.
Blaze rods are used for making a brewing stand and making magma cream (for fire resistance).
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Thanks for that. As for this:
Josh2415 said:
The End doesn't give anything special except dragon eggs, which don't do anything. End Stone is there, but there's nothing special about it.
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Taking a step outside of Vanilla, there is the Dragon Mount mod that makes use of the dragon egg. You can create 5 different dragons this way. As for End Stone, it's got a stronger blast resistance to that of stone. Otherwise, ya. I don't even think it looks that nice compared to stone.
 
Anybody here watch Drunk Minecraft? It's hosted my Markiplier and it's 3 guys who get drunk and make idiots of themselves while playing Minecraft. The server they play on is owned by a player named Zombiemold. He is able to do a lot of things in the server that I've been trying to research how to do: spawning items in mid air (blocks, bad mobs), spawning clumps of blocks (he can created "balls" of TNT consisting of 32 blocks), generating and regenerating levels/worlds with a live server. I can understand if some of these things will require a powerful computer. I figured that some of the commands were part of a mod similar to the Single Player Commands Mod. But, I can't find anything. As for it being part of a package, that, at least, means a mod has to be downloaded. The most I can figure out is that it has to do with Vox Populi.
 
Multiverse, a mod we use, can regenerate and/or load worlds on the fly. I reset the Frontier that way.
 
Strictly speaking vanilla minecraft, the Nether also has Netherwart and Soul Sand. The first is used in brewing (as the basis for all other potions), and the second is used to grow Netherwart. If you intend to allow any brewing, you will need these items (in addition to the blaze rod used to create the brewing stand). Also, if you want to allow the creation of beacons, you will need a Nether Star, which is dropped by the Wither Boss, which requires farming Wither Skeletons for their heads.... it might be more "family-friendly" to just load in a nether star as a rare piece of loot in "seeded" dungeons.

If you throw mods into the mix, you'll need a lot of Nether/End materials for things like Soul Shards (which now require End Stone and Netherrack) and Blast Furnaces (Netherbrick, Soul Sand, and Blaze Powder for Magma Creams). There are also several uses for Nether Stars in Thaumcraft, Xeno's Reqliquary, and Gravity/Portal gun mods, but nothing really game-breaking.
 
JGouldie said:
If you intend to allow any brewing, you will need these items...
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Something suddenly occurred to me: How do we clarify what of the special abilities are okay, as far as Christian values go, to use in game? Brewing, or alchemy, is used to be able to create potions. Those posions, basically, give the user limited time abilities that they would not normally have. Obviously games like Mario allow the user to attain power-ups that give them special abilities for a short period of time or, if they're lucky and don't get hurt, to the end of the level. As well as if you play an FPS, you can come across health packs and other such things to replenish your health, ammo, and anything else that can run low. But, the fact that the potions in Minecraft are contained in bottles does give the impression that you are making magic potions. Also, after seeing gameplay where individuals have swords that glow, I researched and found that you can enchant your tools and weapons if you setup a book, a special table, and some bookshelves in a specific way. Obviously, that has more of a "magic" context to it than anything else.

Now, I don't think I'll have a problem with my sister if I use any of this on my server because her nieces watch MLP-FiM. But, it does bring up an intersting conversation about when are power-ups just power-ups vs magic?
 
Using Mods in Craftbukkit

After a lot of troubleshooting and headaches, I discovered something: not all the mods that work with Minecraft with forge will work with Craftbukkit. I'm sure a number of admins on this sight already knew this. Although, the subject never really came up. So, I'm putting it out in the open.

The easiest way I can see to figure out what mods will work with Craftbukkit is start your server with the mods in the mod folder then, when it's all booted up, try moving the files. Server 08 will move all the movable files and then ask you about the files it can't move.
 
A server that allows for Forge and Bukkit to work together

blsimpson said:
If you are using bukkit as your server, you should head here to look for mods. These ones are guaranteed to work with it.. ;)

http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/
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I did find quite a few nice pluggins that can be used to make ones Bukkit server more homely. However, I am having trouble finding pluggins that add new mobs like Mo Creatures does. On that note, I left a message on the Mo Creatures post in regards to getting it to work with Bukkit. As a result, another user pointed me towards a server that allows Forge and Bukkit to work together: MCPC+. Just Google that and it should be the top 4 or 5 results.

I tried it out by loading it with the Mo Creatures mod and the Lightning Sword pluggin. I had various wildlife traversing my world and I was able to give myself the lightning sword and used it and my server never crashed.

After that, I just loaded up all the mods and pluggins from my other server setups I was practicing with. I did have some ID conflicts to deal with (31990 to 31999 which were Greg's Lighting and Pet Bat). But, I solved that by going through the log files and deleting the appropriate config files between my server and client, letting them rebuild the config files, until I was able to log in to the server via the client. That told me that Minecraft had all the IDs properly sorted out.

I have found something else called BukkitForge. However, it is only up to 1.5.2 at the moment. Whereas MCPC+ works at 1.6.2. But, considering that it's been kept up to 1.5.2, it may just be a matter of them getting all the kinks out.
 
I've been messing with my Minecraft server for several months now. I'm aware of all the different server variations depending on how you want to run your server. However, I got to thinking about another topic: What OS do you recommend for running Minecraft? Obviously, the client needs to be run on a system most compatible with the top-of-the-line video cards available. However, the server just needs efficient management of the RAM. I know how to utilize JAVA heap:

Code: 
-Xms
Initial and minimum java heap size
Code: 
-Xmx
Maximum java heap
Code: 
256m
256 megabytes
Code: 
2G
2 gigabytes
Code: 
java -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -jar mcpc.jar
PAUSE
The layout of my .bat file.

So, comparing Linux with Windows, what is everyone's opinion about which operating system is more friendly insofar as memory management for Minecraft is concerned?
 
IF you are running just Vanilla, with a few mods, then Windows is good. If you get into anything beyond that, specifically a FTB server, or another server that is heavily modded, then processing power and memory come into play.

I've been running the ToJ server on a Windows server for a couple years now with no issues. I just recently added a FTB server, and it is very CPU taxing, but uses almost no memory (highest I have seen it go is 178Megs, even though it has a full 2Gigs to use..). CPU on the other hand, always spikes to 85 - 90 % when its running..
 
I found out my nieces haven't gotten the full version of Minecraft. But, my sister's family came for a visit this weekend and I was able to setup a makeshift Minecraft session that we could all play on. I think I've peaked their interest enough for them to want to buy it. However, the main hindrance for them is the price, of which they will have to buy it for themselves.

In the meantime, I showed their father the different dimensions in Minecraft. The End wasn't a big deal. Just an island in the middle of nowhere where you have to fight a dragon. As for the Nether, I couldn't describe it as anything other than Hell. But, he commented that it looked more like a volcano dimension (with an emphasis on that) with weird creatures. So, if you're trying to figure out how to describe the Nether, just say that it's Minecraft's inner core and it has nothing to do with Hell. As for the weird creatures that are there, they're no more weird than the creatures on the surface.
 
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