Here's harpereaves in one of the official construction hats that one of our other players made for everyone. You can also see the ridiculosity of the skytable and the pumpkinfloor.

Adam said I could mention that this is all being done in survival mode - that's one of the side effects of everyone using survival mode, including OPs and admins and such.

--Cassian

You may remember how the spawn island looked when you first logged in. For those who've not joined, it looked like the nice picture on the homepage - basically a sweet house, thoughtfully designed by not-me, with a little farm at the front.

We built it and placed it at a time when we had no real knowledge of spawn point mechanics in multi-player worlds. We've since found out that the house is partially inside the 20x20 square in which new players may spawn, and for some reason when someone dies and their bed has been destroyed they always show up in the same place.

The house is positioned in such a way that when someone respawns on the spawn island they're sort of around the back of the house. It feels kind of messy and clumsy.

Additionally, we have found through survey feedback that there's a need for in-game tutorialness on how to use AutismChat. People being able to test it out in-game is a great way to learn, so we decided that the lovely house on the spawn island should be replaced with a building containing an AutismChat tutorial and quiz. New players will spawn in it and be walked through all the commands and what they do and why, before being tested on a few of the basics.

In order to get an idea of the position of the spawn square I'm basically defacing the spawn island. It's temporary, I swear! But it is taking me a few days so far.

This is the skytable, which is a platform exactly 20x20 in the sky that exactly covers the spawn square. It was an experiment to see if new players and existing ones spawned in the highest point made after the creation of the world in the spawn square. (We found that new players spawn on top of the skytable, but after that they all spawn in the exact same place down on the ground. Odd times.)

And this is what's going on down on the ground. It's the spawn square, soon to be completely covered in jack o' lanterns. It gives me an idea of where we'll need to be building, and it flattens out the spawn square, since when we created the world some of it was actually in the ocean.

I'm imagining what with this and the AutismChat updates that Adam's planning we won't be whitelisting many new players for at least a few days - we don't want to submit you to the chaos. But you should apply anyway so we can whitelist you ASAP.

--Cassian

Following some feedback from a survey we've sent round recently, we've sorted out some meeting times for players in various timezones. They're listed on the Joining page for now, until I find a better place.

Sunday evenings

Slot 1
CST/CDT (US): 12pm
EST/EDT (US): 1pm
GMT (UK): 6pm

Slot 2
CST/CDT (US): 5pm
EST/EDT (US): 6pm
GMT (UK): 11pm

Adam got this from the server host:

So basically, add 185.38.148.17:25581 to your list of servers in your Minecraft client, call it Bee 2, and at some point in the few days after 30th May we'll flip from one to the other - at which point you can delete the old one from your server list.

--Cassian

*Edit: The host keep postponing this date whenever we reach the deadline. When the IP address finally changes, I'll just do a blog post.

--Adam

The server has been running out of RAM even with no players online and all the installed plugins are somewhat essential so I've upgraded the hosting plan from 512Mb RAM to 1024Mb RAM - that should give us some more space to work with. I've increased the number of player slots from 6 to 8. It could probably go higher (the host says 16) but until some issues with AutismChat are sorted out, I'm not sure I'd want to be on a server with more than 8 people, and the server is first and foremost for me to play on, so there!

In other news: A userguide for the current version of AutismChat has been written at long last. There's a link to it on the "AutismChat" page.

I'm currently working on some big changes to AutismChat. Global chat will be removed and leaderless parties will be implemented. The fine details haven't quite been hammered out yet.

--Adam

First of all, I've been trying to make a nice big map wall in the spawn island house. It's going well so far; I am not working really hard on getting it finished, so if you're an explorer feel free to ask me (Lottiotta) for copies of maps (you might need to bring blank maps), and ask which co-ordinates you'll need to stand at to make new ones that fit the grid.

Second, we're thinking of improving the spawn island. All the AutismChat documentation is available here on the site, but a few of us think it would be better if there was some in-game tutorial, since some people learn better that way. Plus the spawn house worked well when we needed a base close to spawn, but if the spawn island is going to have an AutismChat tutorial building there may not be room for the spawn house - it overlaps the spawn area.

--Cassian

Adam has managed to find the source of the unnerving lack of monsters at night time, and has fixed it! (It was view-distance; it was 7 and now it's 8.)

That means that peril is increased by 5000% and is back to your usual familiar comforting death-inducing vanilla night-time experience.

Continue about your business.

(But, like, take torches with you.)

--Cassian