Category: Servers

05Apr

7 Years Ago Tomorrow

Posted in AquaNu, Game Nights, Servers, Some Awesome | Leave a comment

Our First Hunger Games

Ho Ho. Hey Hey. It’s Our Anniversa-ray

There are days when it doesn’t seem so long ago, hosting this server out of our house, on a dedicated Linux box in the living room, connected directly to the router so it would get the best connection possible to the outside world. Then the horse update came out and it potatoed that box to high heaven, forcing us to switch over to third-party hosting.

The rest is history.

Tomorrow we celebrate lucky number 7. I’m not sure 2020 is quite up to snuff for that label just yet, but what I think we CAN say we’ve been lucky to have is an excellent community, and we hope to have that for many more years to come. So thank you for that. We know this time is tumultuous for everyone, it’s nice to have fine folks like you all around to weather it with. Alright, let’s get into the nitty gritty.

Patreon Updates

I posted in the Facebook group about this but wanted to extrapolate on it here a bit just so everyone knows what they should expect. Basically, we’ve paused the pledge processing on Patreon for April and May, and will more than likely extend that through the summer months, if current models portend.

Rather than strip people of their perks, we’re doubling down on them, giving /fly to current Awesome Tier patrons, and bumping up all other current patrons to Awesome Tier, which means you will get an April lootbox, 10,000 points on SomeAwesome.com, superpickaxe, infinite fireballs (don’t hold one while you’re opening a chest), no-cost /repair including /repair all, full backpack rows, and some things I’m probably forgetting. I know, it’s too OP. That’s just how we’re rolling for now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On top of that, if you’ve ever been a patron in the past but had to cancel, we’re restoring you at whatever highest tier you had previously. All this will continue for the duration of this…craziness.

In an effort to mitigate the cost a little, I’ll be moving AquaNu over to what’s called a “Spot Request” on Amazon Web services. It allows us to cut costs by bidding on server capacity, which means there is a chance that we’ll occasionally get outbid and AquaNu will temporarily go offline, but I’ve gotten pretty good at balancing uptime against reasonable bid prices on the Rush Map, so it should be infrequent. I hope so anyway, I probably just jinxed myself. Either way we can save like $75 a month doing it so we’re giving it a go.

4/20 Steam Run Guy

We’re overdue for one anyway, but this will take place on Monday, April 20th, during the stream, with another one on Saturday, April 25th at 3pm EST. All players are welcome to both events, no signing up necessary, showing up will do just fine.

As per usual, both runs will be populated with over 60 Steam keys each, inside a play area riddled with goodies. Also a play area riddled with traps, mobs, maybe even an Akumo Maze, who knows? There will be plenty of floor cake to celebrate the anniversary ?

Superpickaxe and Fireballs will not be on that day. You had to know that was coming.

Easter Head Hunt

Celebrate Easter with us since you’re not doing it anywhere else! You are hereby invited to next Sunday, April 12th, at noon EST in the holiday area. We’ll also have one the following night for the Twitch stream. I guarantee you it will be better than Animal Crossing’s Easter Event ?

Quick Notes

  • Rush Map is updated to latest snapshot 20w14a
  • We’ve changed the FB group from Secret to Private
  • Command of the Whatever is /workbench and /enderchest
  • Lucky Blocks will be turned off tonight, so use what you’ve got
  • I farted. Sorry. I had tacos.

 

09Feb

Is this an article?

Posted in Community Builds, Servers | Leave a comment

OK, I think I remember how to do this

I know, it’s been forever. But hey, at least there’s plenty of stuff to talk about. Can you believe that in a couple months it will be our 7th anniversary? I should probably take down the 6th anniversary message on the server login banner. Hoo boy there’s a lot of catching up to do. Let’s get into it.

New Stuff at the Shack

Haven’t changed this up in a while so I’m giving a little love to the shack this week. We’re keeping 4 of the previous options and switching out 6 of them. Here they are:

  • Trenchez: Gives you the Trench Pickaxe, which clears a 3×3 square of (most) blocks. Like the tween cousin of Superpickaxe – $1000 SAMCoin – 24 hour cooldown between purchases
  • Earthz: One of the 4 we left up on the board. Free daily item recycler since they brick themselves so often.
  • Hoez: Gives you a Harvester Hoe. Like an auto-plant scythe. 500 uses – $1000 SAMCoin – 24 hour cooldown between purchases
  • Torchrowz: Another holdover, shoots a torch instead of an arrow, the torch sticks to whatever it hits. Useful for cave reconnaissance – $100 SAMCoin for 10 arrows
  • Clipz: Unbreakable shears with Sharpness 6 – $3000 SAMCoin because they’re basically bling
  • Servbot: If you haven’t gotten one of these yet, now you can buy them from the shack. If you do already have one, don’t try to buy a second one, that won’t work, and will probably take your money anyway – $2000 SAMCoin – One time purchase – Go here for more info on Servbot
  • TPZ: We brought back the Void Bow. Teleport yourself to wherever you shoot – $1000 SAMCoin
  • Catz: Want some cats? Here’s a couple spawn eggs for them. $500 for 2 eggs.
  • Foxes and Pandaz: Last two are holdovers, you can probably guess.

ONE MORE THING – BACK OF THE SHACK

If you go around the other side of the Serverus Shack, we have some chests set up back there. These chests are shops where you can purchase saplings for different types of new special trees. Just plant them in the ground and watch them grow. There are 14 different types, and a couple of them can only be grown on Soul Sand, so keep that in mind. These are $500 SAMCoin apiece and have limited inventory so get them while you can.

Rush Map Updated to 1.16 Snapshot

Sick of bees yet? Well we’re taking the leap to the latest snapshot, which is a pretty beefy update to the Nether. Lots of new blocks, new items, new building items, new biomes, and even a new mob. You will want to make sure that your launcher allows for snapshot installs. This is  checkbox you may need to enable under Installations in your launcher. We will be over here for this week’s episode of Minecraft Monday. You can get there using rush.smaws.me as the server address.

Side note: Spigot doesn’t have a branch for this yet, so we’re using the vanilla snapshot server jar for this, meaning that there is significant chance for lag. We’ve fixed the max player count so we can get more than 10 players on now but it might chug quite a bit if we have too many folks on. Just a heads up.

Rotten Flesh to Leather

I’ve mentioned this on occasion during the streams, but for those of you who do not watch the stream, it may be useful for you to know that you now have a use for that mountain of rotten flesh you’ve kept all these years because you are a hoarder like the rest of us.

Yes…now you can turn that flesh into genuine leather. Sure it might be 9 rotten flesh to one leather, as can be seen in the crafting image above, but what else were you going to do with it? So yeah.

Player Market & Map Gallery

The CMLs have a veritable smorgasbord of maps ready for purchase at the new gallery, located just down the road from the Command Tower, immediately after the Chicken Racetrack, take a right and go through the hill tunnels. Daedalus has asked me to relay the following notes:

  1. Food and drink must stay in the cafe area.
  2. Kaylee the receptionist llama likes a good knock knock joke.
  3. Make sure to check out the bumper boats out back. Extra credit if you can do doughnuts without hitting anything.

KismetFoxfire would like you to know that there are free item frames with each map purchased. See llama for details.

To the left of the gallery you will see a large cleared area. This is where we will have the player market. There is a form at the bottom of this article where you can put in your request for a spot and let us know what you will want to sell.  We will be using signs instead of chests for the individual player shops, so I will be installing these on a case-by-case basis once the requests have been approved.

Quick Notes

So quick. So satisfying.

  • SA Points are in for Patrons
  • Marriage Master is on until the end of the month
  • Check out the stream on Fridays too when we play 7 Days to Die
  • Want to know what Secret Beta is this month? Look at Patron Posts on Patreon!

Market Sign-Up Form

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27Jun

Getting Ready for 1.14 + July Upcoming

Posted in Holidays, Servers | Leave a comment

There are months, and then there is June. Let’s look ahead to July shall we? I’d like that.

1.14 and the Amazing Technological Dreamcoat

This weekend is Link’s make-up birthday party, despite already making up for his original birthday plan (circumstances were just ugh) with a last-minute Orlando escapade skillfully put together by my ace in the hole, a.k.a. my wife, which Link had already said was the “best birthday ever”. But I’m a total pushover, and he’s a born salesman, so here we are. To wit, that means we’re scheduling a tentative AquaNu update to 1.14 over the holiday weekend, starting July 5th with a don’t build anything you’re in love with couple of days following that, just in case something corrupts and we have to do a rollback. That being said, with the exception of a couple non-essential plugins, things are shaping up pretty nicely according to current tests. So get ready for some Pandas Power.

AquaNu 616 is Still Up & Stable

Yes it’s a Marvel Universe joke, which I will not apologize for, even though it was pointed out to me by a few people that 616 is the canon universe, and this is a test server, so yeah, I’ve been better with clever names.

Anyway, in case you don’t know, we have a 1.14 server up and running that is a copy of AquaNu. Everyone has Creative over there, so feel free to fly around and scope stuff out. Once we’ve migrated the true AquaNu over, you can go claim land that you might have seen over on the other server. Everybody is once again going to get one free claim so make sure you have those coordinates ready, and we do expect you to be at the coordinates you want to request a for when we go to mark it off (or if you’re logged off, we can see the coords you last logged off at). The trick is making sure you can get to those coords quick enough to claim your spot, but not before we switch over (because then they’d end up being 1.13 loaded chunks) so you’ll need to stay frosty yo.

You can visit the test server at 616.smaws.me. If you have trouble getting on, let me know.

RUSH MAP PARTICIPANTS

If you logged into the Rush Map at any point, and you have stuff in your inventory, you will receive those items in a shulker box which will be placed in your backpack. If your inventory overflows into your enderchest, you will receive two shulker boxes in your backpack with said items. Obviously you can’t have more stuff than that, so two is the max you can get. I will be personally taking on this responsibility and it is a little tedious so please bear with me on that once 1.14 is deemed a sure thing.

End of July Steam Run

We owe you guys for sticking with us through this fraught and frustrating year so far so what better way to make it up to you than with a juicy 1.14 Steam Run. I can say with conviction that it will not be as bonkers as the last one, but I can assure you it will still be worth your while. If you’re new and you don’t know what a Steam Run is yet, check out the video of January’s run below for a general idea.

Sign ups for the Steam run will be available once we do the Facebook poll for best two days. As per usual, Awesome Tier players will be able to attend both days of the run if they can make it (as of the time of this writing, there are currently 4 more slots available for Awesome Tier so try not to lollygag if you want one).

There’s More on the Way!

I know the admin ladies have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline with regards to Fourth of July, plus we’ll be revealing a fantastic new Secret Beta, an updated Command of the Week ( /firework ), Serverus Shack updates for the holiday, and whatever groveling I have to do to ensure that everyone continues to like me, because I have a fragile ego and need constant validation that I’m not a fraud ?

Seriously though, I can only thank you guys for your continued support and dedication to this server yet again, another month going, while Tonya and I continue to navigate this minefield that is currently our lives. I’m not necessarily trying to be dramatic here or anything, we’re not asking for pity, but we certainly appreciate your patience, and we just want you to know it.

So now, here is a video salute to all our players…

23May

All The Things

Posted in Servers, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dear Diary, it has been 47 days since I last wrote to you…

We have a lot of catching up to do so let’s get right to the nitty gritty.

Rush Map Ends Sunday

And we’ve updated the Rush Map to 1.14.1!

Now that a stable 1.14.1 seems in the cards, and with our plugins getting updated (most of them anyway, more on that later) for compatibility, we find ourselves at the end of the road for yet another Rush Map. I’m sure when Microsoft starts putting out 1.15 a month from now we’ll have it available again. ?

Make sure that everything you plan on carrying over is on your person or in your enderchest by 11am EST Sunday morning. Nothing else you gathered on the Rush Map can make the trip. I will port your goodies over, once AquaNu is given a go to update, via my patented I AM YOU player data transfer method (basically I just copy your data onto my player file) and I will empty this out into a chest for you. I’ll reach out to you to see where you might want the chest to go.

In it’s place, we will be putting the official Minecraft 10th Anniversary map up and trying out some plugins in the meantime to see which ones will fit the bill for 1.14.1. That map will stay up for one week.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE RUSH MAP

Updating AquaNu to 1.14.1

I know we are all anxiously awaiting this update, but we still have some plugins that are a bit behind, including:

  • Bottled XP
  • Treefeller
  • ItemRecycler
  • Ridables
  • TimedFly (aka /flymenu)
  • DoubleJump

We’ll be testing all our plugins on the 10th anniversary map once that is up. If we can all agree on alternatives or just plain old “doing without” for these plugins, and provided that the other plugins are up to snuff, we will look towards updating AquaNu sometime next weekend (likely Saturday, June 1).

New Bows at the Serverus Shack

If you haven’t noticed yet, we’ve replaced the entire wall of the Serverus Shack with fun new magic bows. Each one is 1000 SAMCoin and up to this point I hadn’t said exactly what each of them were, except to hint at it through their kitz names, but here’s what each of them do:

  • Fiyaz – Fire Bow (fire burst, area-of-effect burn)
  • Izez – Ice Bow (ice explosion, area-of-effect slow)
  • Acidz – Corrosive Bow (area-of-effect poison)
  • Zapz – Lightning Bow’lt (summons a lightning bolt)
  • TPz – Void Bow (teleports you to the arrow when it lands)
  • Threez – Trippple Bow (fires 3 arrows instead of one)
  • Gravz – Gravity Bow (attracts the target to your location)
  • Boomz – Explosive Bow (area-of-effect damage)
  • Rumblez – Earthquake Bow (summons a shockwave)

Patreon patrons on Gold and Awesome tiers can now enchant their special bows.

We’ll be swapping out bows every now and then for new ones. Grab yours while you can at the Serverus Shack today!

New Calendar

Are you sick and tired of missing events because you missed a post on the Facebook group? Well now you can just go to this page and take a look at what we’ve got going on for the month, as well as upcoming birthdays. I promise you we will try to keep it updated ?

We’ve Gone Double Secret

Not only are Secret Beta items now in your backpack (if you are on Awesome Tier) but on top of that, we’ve also changed the Facebook group from Closed to Secret. There was a practical reason for this but also I’ve been wanting to do this for some time now.

The reality is, for a while it has been rare for a person outside of this group, with no connection to anyone inside the group already, to pass our verification test. That being the case, we’re very happy with the caliber of players we have in the group already, and would rather lean on the side of exclusivity than risk having to deal with unvetted players.

People already in the group may invite others to the group without issue, and I prefer that the players hold the power of this server’s growth, since I trust you guys to pick people like yourselves to play with us.

Quick Notes

If you’ve read this far, you might still be interested to know the following quick tidbits:

  • KeepInventory is now OFF (please be careful!)
  • ItemRecycler list of allowed items has been updated
  • Command of the Week on Sunday will be SuperTrails
  • The stream on Monday will be located on the 10th anniversary map
  • Remember if you need some flying time, you can buy it with /flymenu

Thanks!
~ Serverus

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