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06Apr

Happy Anniversary SAMC!

Posted in Holidays, Servers, Some Awesome | Leave a comment

6 Years! Wow we are old.

It has been quite the ride since we first opened the server back in 2013. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs over the years, but we couldn’t be happier with where we are today. Some of you have been here since the beginning (like our very first player and beloved admin Sarah “Akumo” Penney) and some of you have only been here a few months, but we wouldn’t have an anniversary at all if it wasn’t for the amazing support we get from you guys year after year. So thank you all for another trip around the sun for SAMC!

Every year we put up a throwback map and this year is no different (well maybe a tad different). It will be running on Spigot 1.13.2 so it’s also a nice little pre-test for moving Main onto the latest version too. We’ve taken down the Rush Map for a couple days but it will be back up (and at snapshot 19w14b) after the stream on Monday night.

Since the traditional six year gift is something made of iron, we’ve made it so that when you type /kit annie into chat, you will spawn your very own Iron Golem. This Kitz has a cooldown of 100 minutes, so feel free to use it more than once.  There’s also another new Kitz in the Serverus Shack, a one-time use providing you with a free $6000 SAMCoin, as our way of saying thanks for so many great years!

Of course, you could just use it to buy more Lucky Blocks in the Kitz a few signs over 😉

Wait! What are Lucky Blocks?

Oh yeah, I am SUPER BEHIND on announcements. Let’s get to those shall we?

Remember this post I made in March? Yeah well we finally got to implementing Lucky Blocks at the end of last month, which was kind of a blessing in disguise really, because we were also able to use them as part of April Fools week, since some of these blocks ain’t so lucky! You can get them occasionally from mining, or for $100 SAMCoin each in the Serverus Shack.

Speaking of blessings in disguise, since it is in fact April Fool’s week, we’ve turned on our perennial joke plugin, iDisguise! Turn yourself into any mob (except the ender dragon) and annoy or terrify your fellow player! To use it, type /d in the chat, followed by the mob you want to disguise yourself as. So if you wanted to be a blaze, type /d blaze into the chat. There should be a success message pop up when you’ve done it correctly, though you will not be able to see yourself as the mob. Everyone else will though 🙂

We’ll keep these on for the next couple of weeks since I’ve been slow to alert everyone to their presence. Watch out for some of those Lucky Block surprises though! Some will kill you, which is why we also have KeepInventory on for the time being too (only in the overworld of course as per usual).

Anniversary Map

Every year during our anniversary we would put up the first backup map we ever had, taken just a few days after we launched the server to the public back in April of 2013. This year I found one that is a backup of a few months later (more of you were on by this time). This is a chip off of Main, our very first world (and one that is raring up to make its comeback soon) and the previous home of the LeMorris Family when we played offline before all this.

The Anniversary Map will be where Tonya and I will be streaming during Minecraft Monday so if you’d like to join us over there, you can get to it by using six.smaws.me as the server address.

Buy Fly Time with SAMCoin

A month or so ago I talked about adding /fly to the Command Zone, but it ended up being more practical (and easier for people who didn’t have access to the Command Zone) to just add a plugin where you could instead buy blocks of flying time directly with your SAMCoin balance. To take advantage of this April offer, just user /flymenu in the chat.

You can choose between a 3 hour block for $500 or an 8 hour block for $1000. These are “real time” hours meaning that if you leave the game, the clock is still ticking, so pick wisely.

We’re doing some other interesting things with flying options right now as well that the Secret Beta folks are testing out for us, so look for more great stuff ahead!

Quick Notes

Here are a few small things that you might want to know, or you might not care at all about. That’s why they’re at the end of the article!

  • Redstone Block Sale Sign in the Serverus Shack works again
  • Get Fire & Ice Bows using the special kitz in the Serverus Shack
  • Points are in for Patreon Patrons over at SomeAwesome.com
  • We’ll be doing a stability update for Spigot and AWS tonight in the wee hours
  • Loot boxes are on the way for Awesome Tier patrons!

12Mar

Quick March Update – OK, You Guys Win

Posted in Servers, Some Awesome | Leave a comment

ANNOUNCEMENTS YAY!

So all the points are in over at SomeAwesome.com for this month’s patrons, and I’ve gotta say, they’re really starting to accumulate for some of you. Like getting closer to 6 digits than 5.

I’ve held out for as long as I can on this, and you guys have nagged me forever about it anyway. Plus, I’m looking to breathe some life back into the review site, so I made it a point to at least make this concession on my own terms.

? OK, Deep Breath ?

Starting next Monday, the Command Zone welcomes /fly to its repertoire.

BUT IT WON’T BE CHEAP

Currently, the most expensive thing in the Command Zone is /superpickaxe, which is 2000 points for one day (and honestly I think there’s a bug I have to fix where it chops off 3 hours because of GMT vs EDT, I can take a look at the log and refund you hours) but that is now supplanted by /fly which will cost you 3000 points for the day (I promise to have that bug fixed by then ?).

Secret Beta testers are getting something…similar. Let’s just go with that for now. To be fair it isn’t very secretive so you’ll see it soon enough.

COMMAND OF THE WEEK

Is /home, but better. It’s unlimited /home.

What does that mean? Well when you use /sethome, you can add a name to the home after the command, e.g. “/sethome serverus” and then later find another place and use “/sethome family” instead. Then to move between them you would type “/home serverus” or “/home family“. Create as many of these as you like until this COTW is up. If it’s popular enough I’ll add it to the Command Zone (seriously, please go spend your points ?).

SmoothSleep is off now so prepare your evenings accordingly.

/hat is still on because /hat is always on.

BUILD WARS SPONSORED POST

You can find it here.

If you participated in the first part of the Build Wars challenge, then your creation is up to bat. Feel free to share your photo or the whole album, just be sure that all “Likes” (we technically count all FB reactions) are on the original photo inside the original album post.

Because it is a Sponsored Post, it will make its way via the social graph aka the Zucc Matrix of Doom and throw itself at the mercy of the open public (I narrowed the demographic down to only people who like Minecraft). I wish you well in your pleasing of the gods.

We will be putting a poll in the Facebook group shortly for the second round of Build Wars Part V with the same old question about what weekend works best for most folks. May the odds be ever in your favor.

I’m using way too many movie quotes here. Let’s move on.

WELCOME TO THE TEAM, BLACKBIRD_CLOUD!

SAMC veteran Blackbird_Cloud has accepted our offer to become our newest admin! Jen Madsen Seelaus is coming up on her 4 year badge with this group and makes up 50% of one of our most adorable server couples. She lives on the Mushroom Island we zoom away from at the end of every stream, and this week she’s getting her feet wet with all of our obscure and probably outdated process documents, so be nice you miscreants!

She’s also done a spectacular job on our St. Patrick’s Day holiday area that will be open starting Friday, March 15th, and lasting probably throughout the week? I don’t know we haven’t figured out the whole timetable yet.

Welcome Blackbird_Cloud to the team! ❤❤❤

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

Did I mention it’s been a Hell of a week? We’ll have more for you real soon!

~Serverus

 

28Feb

On The March

Posted in Holidays | 1 Comment

Hello and welcome to another episode of Serverus Catches Us All Up At The Last Moment, now on NBC Thursdays directly following Two and a Half Men

It’s been a month, but a short one, and in some ways that is good for us, and in others…not so much.

I feel like I complain about every month at the end of every month. Pretty soon I will be shooing whippersnappers off my lawn. Anyway, let’s get to the stuff.

Build Wars 5 Continued

I admit, I messed up on the messaging for Build Wars 5, therefore we ended up having a lot of people who forgot about it after the poll, so we’re going to have another one this month, for anyone who didn’t participate in the first one. Same prizes will be available for this one as well. I’ll be putting up a poll this weekend to ask for best availability again.

Also it’s a great excuse for me to use this map again. Hey it’s my first challenge map give me a break ?

But hark! you say…what about the one we just had?!? No worries young Spartan, for your creations will be added to an album and thus made into a Sponsored Post on Facebook, where the public will judge ye. That happens this weekend as well.

To remind everyone how that works, it’s pretty simple.

MOST LIKES: $30 Amazon Gift Card
2ND MOST LIKES: 30,000 points on SomeAwesome.com
3RD MOST LIKES: 30 Levels of XP on AquaNu

RUSH MAP UPDATES!

We’re on 19w09a now. That’s the update. More pillaging villaging killaging things in this one. Also it seems a little more stable than the last and if I believe what my trick knee is telling me, that means a pre-release is right around the corner!

Trash Can. Remember, a trash can…

And also remember that today is the last day you can change your Patreon pledge, which will be processed tomorrow. Secret Beta folks should have received their items in their backpacks, if you can’t find yours please let me know, some of you guys have messy backpacks, I did what I could ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We are still working towards moving away from Patreon, and will have more news on that this month. All current patrons will be able to retain their tiers moving from one platform to the other so no worries about that.

COMMAND OF THE WEEK

SmoothSleep is on if you haven’t noticed already (it’s kind of hard not to) and Marriage Master is ending today, so get those smooches in while you can. There are new Kitz in the Serverus Shack as well.

  • Powaz Kitz: Increases your strength for 24 hours
  • Featherz Kitz: Adds slow falling + no fall damage to you for 24 hours
  • Affleck: I’m not going to explain this one

All $500 SAMCoin apiece with a short cooldown, as per usual.

March is typically notorious for special plugins so you are sure to expect some unorthodox weeks ahead ?

Upcoming Events

Yes there are more events than even Build Wars 5 Part 2: Electric Boogaloo lined up for March. The area around CT will be home to our Pot O Gold Hunt, featuring a special chest that disappears and reappears each time it is found by a lucky player, each time with different loot!

During the entire month of March, the Lottery will run twice a day, so you can get double lucky!

And with any luck, we’ll finally get 1.14 and Spigot will update quickly!

Any questions, you know where to find me.
~Serverus 

23Feb

Build Wars 5 is Today

Posted in Competitions, Game Nights | 1 Comment

Though we didn’t get a lot of signups for today (and you can still sign up for Monday if you want) Build Wars is still on, starting at 3pm EST. We’ll see you then!

(if you’re reading this and it’s Monday, then tonight we start at 9:30pm EST)

Wait! What is Build Wars?

I know, I haven’t had much opportunity to explain this to the folks who are new to this, luckily the premise is pretty simple:

Everyone who participates gets assigned an area (this time it is 64×64 blocks) in which they will build their entry. Typically there is a theme to each build, and this time is no different.

Inside of each participant’s area, they are given Creative, which also means they can fly. Just be careful that you aren’t too high up in the air and leave the area, or you could end up like me…

Of course, even if you die, there’s no real consequence, other than having to rearrange your items again, but you know, every second counts.

Players are given 2 hours to complete their build. During this two hours, players must build as much of their concept out as they can. Once the time is up, players are kicked for a short time while we remove build permissions from all the areas. Then the players are allowed to come back on to take pictures of their build to submit for voting. You can take multiple pictures and pick one later, but all pictures must be in the Default texture pack with no shaders. We don’t want to give an edge to players with faster rigs that can render prettier graphics 😉

The Voting Phase

Once we have both days completed for the event, we will give a few days for everyone to get their pictures in order, and then we will post all of the images online for the public to vote on. Whoever gets the most likes on their picture of their build, wins first place, which is a $30 Amazon Gift Card.

Second place gets 30,000 points on SomeAwesome.com (or just 30,000 SAMCoin if you are going to just transfer it over anyway, but let me know if that is the case) and third place gets 30 Levels of XP on the server.

Everyone who competes will receive 5,000 SAMCoin after the event is done for them on whichever day they picked.

I Feel Like I’m Missing Something…

You are! We haven’t told you what the theme is going to be yet. While we had considered snowmen, it’s kind of old hat at this point (see what I did there?) and I thought about a Valentine’s Day type of deal, but not everyone is into V-Day, so I met in the middle.

So yes, while the theme of the event is indeed about love, it’s more about the dark, obsessive side of love…namely, what are you obsessed about?

Do you own everything Harry Potter? Do you have the hots for Bruce Willis maybe? Why stop there, put both your obsessions together in one crazy shrine. Yippee Ki-Yay Hermione, that’s what I’m talking about.

Build a shrine to everything you obsess over, but remember, balance is key. Add too many pop culture references, and no one will understand what you’re going for. A solid mash-up is clever, so let your imagination run wild.

Oh Hey BTW the Rush Map is down

Yes that’s right, while we run the Build Wars event, we’ve taken the Rush Map offline, but after the competition is finished on Monday night, we’ll put it back up, with the new 19w08b snapshot ready for you to test your pillage-defenses.

Build Wars starts at 3pm EST today and runs until roughly 5pm (of course we wait a bit for stragglers so 2 hours from whatever time we start). We’ll see you there!

BUILD WARS SERVER ADDRESS: bw.smaws.me

 

09Feb

Patreon, Rush Maps & Build Wars OH MY! – February Week One Update

Posted in Servers, Some Awesome | 1 Comment

OK lots to talk about this week so let’s just jump into it!

So far, for us, 2019 is shaping up to be better than AT LEAST the last quarter of 2018. So that’s a good thing. Not a terribly high bar to break I know, but it’s something.

There’s a lot lined up for February and as per usual, not much of it is going to plan just yet but we’re trying to wrangle it in, so my personal apologies for delays on information. There’s just a whole bunch of stuff to go over so here we go.

RUSH MAP! RUSH MAP! RUSH MAP!

You’re supposed to say the above just like the Rock Facts intro from Sifl & Olly. If you don’t know who Sifl & Olly is, please educate yourself now.

The image up there is from February 2014. Five flippin’ years ago we did the Rush Map, and I’m not sure if we’ve done one since then. I am old, and therefore can’t remember good.

But the Rush Map is back, and you can get to our current snapshot by updating your launcher to use the snapshot we’re using (19w06 at the moment) and use rush.smaws.me as the server address.

First you must enable snapshots (1) on the launcher options, then add a new profile (2) with the snapshot. Then save it, go back to the News tab and select the profile (3) and once it is selected, hit PLAY (4). It takes a while to download the snapshot so you should go eat a sandwich or something.

The Rush Map parameters are simple. This is a completely Vanilla server (and due to that you will get lots of lag until we can get a stable Spigot snapshot build). Gather what you can from here, and once we update AquaNu to 1.14, you will be able to transfer all of your inventory over from the Rush Map.

Difficulty is on hard, Keep Inventory is not on, and there are lots of glitches. Unfortunately, I can’t do much to help you with those.

Once we have a stable legit non-snapshot 1.14 Spigot build ready, we will put the Rush Map on hardcore, with Keep Inventory on. Once you die, you can let me know and I will transfer the stuff in your inventory over to AquaNu.

Pretty simple right? I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s something we haven’t done for a while so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Last years’ Valentines Day holiday area

Valentine’s Day

It’s coming soon, and we will have a very special day for it!

Expect a player-featured area this year, with fun prizes to boot as always! There will be some server magic happening as well, so if you’re ready to get ultra-cheesy (like we do) then be assured that we’ve got the cheese in…very big wheels, or something. That analogy got away from me. Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Patreon. It Sucks.

I spent a lot of last week wrestling with Patreon’s latest idiotic fail. They couldn’t process payments properly and that is literally their whole shtick. I’ve been seeing big names everywhere drop the platform entirely, and I think it’s time for us to do the same.

There’s a lot of good reasons to move it away from it now, including but certainly not limited to:

  • Constant processing / payout problems
  • Support is practically non-existent
  • Exorbitant fees (12% is pretty high for a company that only does this one thing)
  • Plug-n-play functionality is less flexible than if we just ran it through our site
  • Just one more thing for people to have to remember

We’re not planning on dropping it right away obviously. I’m aiming at April being the last month, and then we’ll onboard you guys to the new thing, whatever that is, but I can assure you it will be more intuitive and less janky than Patreon.

People on certain tiers will be able to keep those tiers, so no worries about that, but everyone will have to re-enter their payment info again, which I know is annoying, so I’m working on some sort of bonus thingamabob for that.

1.13.2 Update Sunday, February 10th

Tomorrow we will be updating the server and all its plugins to the 1.13.2 stable version of Spigot. From what I understand, this is a safe upgrade for world issues, but I’ll be making a backup just in case.

With this update, I am hoping to rectify some plugin issues that have been hindering the Secret Beta program, so if you’re waiting for your loot box and beta info (for Awesome Tier patrons), we’re hoping to get those out to you once this update is complete.

Facebook Group is going to “Secret” privacy status

I’ve thought about this one a lot, and one of the reasons behind my thinking here is that I am quite happy with the caliber and disposition of the player base we currently have. Opening this group up to the public, by way of allowing it to be publicly visible via search on Facebook, has rarely resulted in a member who stands up the quality of our existing crew.

And yet, I have to get SomeAwesome.com on the radar, by making it as publicly accessible as possible, so this solution is a “best of both worlds” scenario for us.

Starting on 2/13, the group will go to Secret privacy level, however if you are currently in the group, you will still be able to invite people to it. This ensures, when the publicity firestorm (I hope) eventually hits for the main site, that our little neck of the woods doesn’t get overrun with trolls and griefers. We will see I suppose.

In other words, the growth of the group is controlled by you fine folks! And honestly I am happy knowing that.

One Nunu-on-a-Stick Left!

We’ll be ordering more flash drives soon, but in case you want to get in before the next batch, here’s your last chance to grab it!

Build Wars 5 Registration

Here’s a form for signup, please pick a day to participate. This will have its own article soon but best to get your signups done early so we know how many plots to make.

[wpforms id=”2442″ title=”false” description=”false”]

More Info to Come!

We have more to talk about this month, including more on the Valentine’s Day area, Build Wars article, and upcoming Command Zone additions, but for now, I think that’s the important stuff so I’ll leave you with all this!

As always, you got questions, we’ve got answers. Or at least more questions. Who can know really?!? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks,
~Serverus

 

27Jan

January 2019 Roundup

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hey everyone! WordPress has this new drop cap thing so I’m totally abusing it, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. It’s almost the end of the month and so it is time to discuss what we built and how we built it.

Steam Run

We had an amazing Steam Run at the beginning of January, we certainly overdid it a little bit! With a 200×200 area filled to the teeth with diamond blocks, hoppers, droppers and of course, Floor Cake™, we ushered folks through a veritable smorgasbord of loot, including 115 steam keys, split between two nights. Click the button below to see a recap of the event.

Upcoming Game Nights

Since we had a good experience with splitting our Steam Run event into two parts, we will be doing the same for other game nights and competitions going forward, unless otherwise noted. This will allow as many people as possible to attend the event.

As before, Awesome Tier members will be able to participate in both days of the event, since one of their perks is guaranteed game night entry.

For February, we will be bringing back the Build Wars challenge. This time you will be tasked with building the biggest and best snowman that you can. Prizes will include a $30 Amazon gift card, SAMCoin, and more!

Build Wars 5: A New Beginning

The Banner Saga

Have you seen our fancy new banner? Well it gets even better, as we’re letting YOU take control of the MOTD! Just go to http://smaws.me/motd and if you have access to Mineconnect on SomeAwesome.com, you can spend 2000 points for a guaranteed 24 hours of your personal custom message. Just keep in mind that I know how you guys think so I DID put tracking in there that tells me who changed it, so no funny business!

1.14 Preparation

We all know it’s coming, so now is a good time as any to remind people how we do transitions to new versions of the game.

It’s worth noting that we won’t be moving over to 1.14 the day that it releases, for a couple of reasons: Day-One versions of Minecraft are always notoriously buggy. Spigot will need to catch up, this will take a few days at least. Other plugins we use will also need to update  Luckily all of these things shouldn’t take nearly as long as they did with 1.13, which was a huge change from 1.12, so even though we will have to wait just a little longer, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Once we are ready to update, we will clone the server, at which point I will ask everyone to play on the cloned server for a bit and make sure their stuff is in order. We will give everyone a week to get on and check their stuff. Once this week is up, if you haven’t been able to get on, we’re sorry but we will have to proceed anyway (you should be fine though).

We’re really looking forward to pandas!

Region Commands

Have you ever found a nice plot of land to claim but can’t remember if you’re in another person’s property? Just use /region info and find out who owns the spot you’re standing on, and additional info on that region. Never go uninformed again!

But the really great thing (for us admins anyway) is that now you can add your own members to your owned claims. That’s right, just use the following command to add as many members as you want without the help of an admin. Worldguard is helpful again YAAAAAAAY!

/region addmember <your region name> <player name>

And yes, just in case someone has overstayed their welcome, you have the removemember version as well… 

New Nunu News

We’ve ordered more flash drives for Nunu so if you missed the first round, click the button below and grab yours now! 

Patreon Updates

Just a friendly reminder that Patreon will be charged here on the 1st of February, so if you need to hop off for a month, or you want to upgrade your tier, then it needs to be done by the 31st.

In case you forgot, here’s the current list of rewards for being on each tier:

If you’ve been looking to upgrade to the Awesome Tier, now’s the time to do so, we’ve just opened up 4 more spots by popular demand, so hurry while you can because it’s first come, first served!

Standard Tier

Silver Tier

  • Our undying gratitude
  • Monthly Newsletter
  • 300 points on SomeAwesome.com
  • Your player head will be on the wall in our Patreon Room
  • Full Backpack Rows
  • Access to Command Zone
  • 1500 additional points on SomeAwesome.com
  • Access to the Patreon-only Discord Channel

Gold Tier

Awesome Tier

  • 2500 Additional Points on SomeAwesome.com
  • Exempt from AFK Kick
  • Permanent /repair (including /repair all)
  • Monthly Loot Box
  • 5000 additional points on SomeAwesome.com
  • Access to the Secret Beta program
  • Guaranteed Game Night Entry

If you have any questions, as per usual you know where to find us, thanks again and we’ll see you on the stream tomorrow!