Open server, 6/29/2015

Note: Written before update 1.1.0 when the direction of the sunrise/set was fixed. North here is now west.

A fairly low key evening was had tonight, with a concentration on finishing up builds people had started earlier.

5 and Swarm finished the minigame arena they’ve been working on.

you'll pay full price for your seat BUT YOU'LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEDGE!
you’ll pay full price for your seat BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEDGE!
Step right up and take a shot.
Step right up and take a shot.

There is spleef, archery, King of the hill, fishing and parkour to compete in. May the best person win!

One of these things is not like the others...
One of these things is not like the others…

Henry10030 meanwhile finished up his base and topped it off with a giant statue of themselves. Obviously so we don’t forget what they look like, lol.

Hachi's
Hachi’s (question mark?)

Hachi has been working on… well, I still haven’t figured out what this is supposed to be. I just know that it is awesome.

and it looks like a clock from the top!
and it looks like a clock from the top!

To the south, Double Positive worked on several mob grinders of various sizes/mobs farms. Hence “SPAWNER LAND” written large friendly quartz letters.

A day view of Spawaner Land.
A day view of Spawaner Land.

We are still plagued with connection issues around 7:30 pm evey server run. I’ve tried prioritizing udp requests, periodically dumping the phone cache , closing all background app, etc and nothing really seems to help. Fortunately it seems to only be a thing in the earlier parts of the evening. More incentive to make this a Proper Server, though I did have a conversation with Hachi today weighing the pros an cons of running an Android mobile emulator (more stable, working mobs, not glitchy gameplay / max 5 players, lag) vs pocketmine (more people on at once, better computer resource management, no lag, php programmable / mobs and game behavior glitchy as all get out). All of that are problems for Future ARBT to tackle at some later point; Present ARBT needs to log off and get some sleep!

Not one, not two, not four, but THREE evening runs!

It has been a busy few days on the server between Saturday night and the usual Monday run. After a long busy Saturday I decided after I came home that I was going to put my feet up and play MCPE and I might as well do it with extra company, so I put the call out on the subreddit and even put a little announcement in /r/MCPE since it was a special irregular run. Had so many folk show up and hang and start building things that I decided I’d run Sunday night too. And of course, Monday night, because Monday Night. All three nights were great, despite periodic connection problems and spontaneous game crashes… people had a good time tho.

We have two new players late of Worst Sever Ever – Hachi and FatalDeath (or VitalLife depending on their level of humorous nihilism) We’ve also seen quite a bit of Henry10030 and DoublePositive, and of course 576875 and Swarm. At one point during Monday’s Survival/anything goes run (between game crashes) I managed to get the group pic in the last post. You know what I’m going to post it again because it was awesome.

<3
<3

We hit a server milestone on Monday! A good portion of that night’s game was at full five player + host capacity. That was certainly a thing! Never had that many on at once before.

the server... is full...
the server… is full… [/strongbad]
The 4 Guardians accidentally acquired names in an offhand comment to Hachi. They are now Icky, Stinky, Yucky and Clyde. As to which one is which… does it really matter? lol.

New Things built:
Swarmhut added an advertisement board during Monday’s run, having a forgotten I was intending to wipe and restore after the game. (Oops.) I liked the idea so much I put it back in after I restored the game, and also started to revamp the Pillar of Rules at spawn. I think it’s going to be more of a Fence of Rules eventually.

but was Kilroy here?
but was Kilroy here?

Hachi built an awesome house near Mt. Severmore!

Remains awesome despite me forgetting to turn off the GUI.
Remains awesome despite me forgetting to turn off the GUI.

I love the white umbrella/canopy above it – reminds me of something out of the Super Mario Mushroom Kingdom.

Meanwhile FatalDeath is working on a colossus standing across the road near spawn. So far they’ve gotten the skeleton completed but that by itself looks cool:

Fatal's Colossal Skeleton.
Fatal’s Colossal Skeleton.

 

Meanwhile, Swarmhut and 576875 are working on a minigame tournament space. Parkour! Fishing! Spleef! Chills! Thrills! You’ll pay for a whole seat but you’ll only need the edge! 

um, picture when they get further along.

Some of us wanted to go down to the basement of 5’s fishing house after the group picture to clobber zombies. There was a disorganized effort to reset spawns by sleeping, during which I tossed a bed out on one of the patios to sleep outside.

It's really hard to sleep with a creepy dog staring at you.
It’s really hard to sleep with a creepy dog staring at you.

After zombie clobbering fun was had, the last two hours of Monday’s game we decided it was all rules off. The free-for-all that resulted was epic, and the area around spawn just became this mess of creeper craters and forts:

creepercraters

swarmhouse

swarmhouse2

Thank goodness for backups and restores. 😉 Even my PvP-disliking self got in on the fun in the last 45 minutes, which is where I found out that I’m a much better long range shot than short range shot. Which is to say both are terrible but I hit things/people more often at ridiculously long distances.

Things are certainly livening up on my little server, that’s for sure. There’s something a little humbling about reading a “hey, anyone know any good servers?” and seeing my name come up in recommendations immediately after Worst Server Ever. That’s a certainly a compliment! Couldn’t do this without my gang – there’s still some debate on whether they’re the ARBFans or the ARBiTors of Justice – They’re really the reason my little one-woman world has become such an awesome place to hang out and play.

Thanks, y’all. 🙂