InsaneJ

The most important thing in my opinion is keeping track of the current version that's most popular in the Minecraft modding community. That has been 1.6.4 for a couple of months now. The reason for this is that it will make your mod more compatible with other mods and server plugins. Especially for those of us who run public servers that's essential. Currently TFC is on MC 1.6.2 which doesn't have a working MCPC+ version for it. Well... it runs, but chunk loading is so bad it's practically unplayable. That means that if you want to run a server you will have to rely on a few very basic Forge mods for server management. If you've ever run a proper Bukkit/Spigot server, you'll know this is a huge step backwards. This is a major issue I ran into when setting up the HappyDiggers TFC server which almost made me decide to scrap the entire project. With MCPC+, and thus bukkit, you get access to things like: [*]Block logging and roll back (undo grief); [*]Ban aggregators to keep known griefers out; [*]Jails to give players that misbehave a second chance (the alternative is a ban); [*]Essentials plugins; [*]World guard/edit; [*]Auto announcers; [*]Shops; [*]Plot management like Towny or Factions. MyTown is very basic in comparison; [*]Server side NPCs that don't require players to install anything; [*]Virtual (paid) storage that players can access from anywhere; [*]Multiverse to load different dimensions with different gametypes; [*]Ticket systems for players to request help from staff; [*]Lockette or other plugins to make storage private and prevent theft; [*]Economy plugins; [*]Votifier plugins so players can vote on your server which helps them and the server; [*]Stats; [*]And many, many more. Right now we're muddling through with our server, but there are many issues that could easily be resolved if we were able to run TFC on Minecraft 1.6.4. This is all of course just related to managing a public server. On the gameplay side of things staying current with Minecraft releases gives people more options to experiment. It will also help to make TFC even more popular because more players can use it with their favorite mods. As far as releases go I'd suggest trying to do monthly updates. It doesn't have to be finished in any way, just as long as it doesn't crash. The release notes can show the work-in-progress parts people should be careful with. This will keep people interested and gives them an opportunity to give feedback on the progress being made. This involvement will also help make TFC a better mod since there is wisdom in the masses It will also mean more bug reports. And since most people playing are idiots (sorry) it also means people will complain here and there. But that's where staff members come in. Use them to filter out the crap so you only have to look at the useful feedback. The issue with save breaking updates is tough. If it's just world gen that's changed, that shouldn't be a problem. Players can move their stuff to a newly generated area and benefit from the new world gen. If it really crashes the client, it should be avoided as much as possible. Of course such changes can happen in which case I'd suggest: bite the bullet. Just put the update out there. It's better then stalling the entire project and making everybody wait. From experience I can tell you that waiting is what will make people loose interest. So to sum up my opinion: [*]Try to keep up with major Minecraft versions; [*]Monthly updates; [*]Don't put off save breaking updates.

Two days after the server went public I've done a tour of the server's villages. This is the result: Thanks to all the players who set their town's spawn point so I could get around to all the villages quickly. If you ask me, I think things are looking pretty good already. There's progress from simple hidey holes to bigger villages, cute little houses and large farms. Good job guys So far we've had more then 100 unique players on the server and it seems there's always someone on when I check the server. I'm happy to see people enjoying the server.

At a certain point they need the feathers to progress in the game. During server testing players have been walking around for days (real life, not Minecraft days) without encountering a single chicken, let enough two for breeding. Maybe it has to do with the world seed, maybe it's just TFC. Either way, players were unable to obtain feathers within a reasonable time span. In the end the staff resorted to spawning in feathers in creative mode. That's not something other players can do, so I decided to facilitate them by dropping feathers at dawn. If players are able to obtain chickens in the world, then dropping a few feathers at spawn won't affect them. You can consider it an optional server feature.

So far the server has been well populated. I haven't found a window so far where I could restart the server to apply some minor config changes Tomorrow I'm going to do a little tour of the server and record a YouTube video. I'll try to visit as many towns as I can. Please be sure to set your town's spawn point with /mytown setspawn so I can find your builds.

Glad to hear it To address the feather issue I've setup two droppers at the border of the spawn area near the end of the stairs. They each drop 1 feather at dawn. That should allow people to progress further into the game without players having to wait for staff members to be available to give them feathers.

Sorry about that :B I've added the mytown.cmd.new.dim0 permission to the default group. Could you try again?

It's a programmer issue, not a Java issue. It's because of programmers relying on Java's garbage collection to clear up memory after it's no longer being used by the application. If programmers would clean up after themselves, Java applications would use way less RAM and run a lot better. Garbage collection takes quite a lot of CPU time to do. However clearing stuff after use makes for more complex programming which is why so many Java devs don't do it.It's also one of the reasons why developing for Java is relatively easier then say C++. It's just one of those things you don't really have to worry about (let the program users worry about getting enough RAM/CPU) and instead you can focus on getting the job done easier/faster.Then again, CPU and RAM are relatively cheap. Even a low-end $400 PC has 8GB RAM and a quad-core CPU right nowadays. So it really shouldn't matter that much for most people. It's only an issue for people who can't (or won't) upgrade their old computers. And by old I mean anything older then the core i3/5/7 of which the first came out in November 2008 and with less then 2GB RAM. Even a 6 year old Core2Quad from 2007 will also run Minecraft quite well.

Is there a list of biome IDs for TerraFirmaCraft somewhere? I searched for it in the TFC config files, wiki and forum but couldn't find any. The wiki lists 8 biomes and 3 technical biomes, but not the default IDs they are configured with.

When on the server try doing /forge tps That will show you how long the server needs to calculate one tick, and how many ticks per second it's doing. If the number is 20 then it's all good. If it's lower then the server can't keep up. If you see that message from time to time, that's not a big deal. If you see it all the time then something's wrong. Like Kittychanley said, TFC isn't like regular Minecraft. There is a lot of stuff going on that you don't really see as a player but that the server has to do. A lot more so then with regular Minecraft. If you can't upgrade the amount of RAM for your server (you should), try adding the following to the startup script (if possible): -XX:+AggressiveOpts -XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods

Using TFC-0.77.22 I get the same problem. When I use MCPC+ and Essentials (bukkit plugin), then the spawn point is handled through that and it always works. However MCPC+ for Minecraft 1.6.2 is pretty terrible and not suitable to run a public server on. I don't know of any Forge mod that has the same functionality as the bukkit plugin Essentials. For me ForgeEssentials doesn't work on 1.6.2 and ServerTools can set spawn, you can teleport there using /spawn. But when a player joins the server, he gets teleported to the spawn set by TFC. When that player does /spawn he gets teleported to the desires spawn point. This is perhaps something the author of that mod can look into, but the problem is caused by TFC. If anyone knows any other Forge mod that can handle spawn points on a server please share. As for this TFC issue. Please don't change spawn each time the mod is loaded. Do it once and then leave it alone so we can change it ourselves. Thanks!

aeroc helped me out. The biome ID ranges seem to be: 0-8 16 20-22 30-32