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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29Oct

Extra Life 2019

Posted in Competitions, extra life, Special Events | 1 Comment

We’re a little late to the party this year, but that’s right friends, we ARE in fact participating in Extra Life 2019! We promise a full day of fun with a brand new custom challenge map, but first…let us tell you what Extra Life is, and why we do this.

Extra Life is a 24 hour charity event that raises money for the Children’s Miracle Network, a network that raises funds for treatments, research and education for 170 children’s hospitals throughout the US and Canada. As parents you know there is nothing more frightening than your child being in the hospital, it’s comforting to know that there are charities like this working hard to help our kids.

We suffered our own loss as a group in 2015 when we lost our dear friend Jackson Wilson to Ewing Sarcoma, which is a rare form of cancer that mostly affects children between the ages of 10 to 20. As a part of our gaming community, Jackson was a big advocate for community projects. He was always one of the first people to welcome a new player and help get them started. He set up “Helping Hands” to aid other players if they needed help terraforming their land or collecting materials. He loved history and began working on a project to chronicle the server and group history. He adored Halloween and was naturally know as the Pumpkin King.  When Jackson informed us that he was sick. he told us that playing on the server during treatments helped get him through some of the hard times. He knew he had friends  from all over who were rooting for him, and doing whatever they could to keep him company while he was undergoing treatments. We celebrated Jackson when he was in remission, and realized that even though it was mainly through a computer screen we had this wonderful community to share our lives with, and how lucky we were to have each other. Unfortunately the cancer came back and took Jackson from us. His presence is ever felt on any new map we start, with the Event Museum he started on Main, the Jackson_Wilson Memorial Library we built on NuNu in his honor, and the Jackson_Wilson Memorial Highway on AquaNu. He was a beloved member of the community and a true friend. We won’t forget him, and we dedicate our participation in Extra Life to him.

For Extra Life 2019 we bring you another custom challenge map built by our dedicated and talented admins. Skyblock is always a fan favorite, and we love doing it, so we’re bringing it back…with a twist! Villagers and Pillagers! We couldn’t leave out one of my personal favorites in combat updates. The addition of Pillagers and the new villager trading system offers a whole new list of challenges and excitement that should keep you busy for at LEAST 24 hours! Welcome to Villager Skyblock (it’s not our most clever name, but if you follow our streams then you know October has been kicking our butts! We’re a bit brain fried)

Game Rules:

  • mobGriefing = true
  • Difficulty = normal
  • Pvp = disabled
  • keepInventory = false *Be careful when you die!

How it works:


When you log on you will be at the spawn island. There will be no reason to come back to this island as trading is not permitted. Teams of one to three members will be assigned to their own island before the event starts. Once on the map, go to the hut and you can either visit your Extra Life Villager, or spawn straight to your island. All command blocks are team specific so you will not be able to visit other players’ islands.

Extra Life Villager:


As mentioned before, each island has it’s very own villager. This villager is very special as he will not be accepting your stack of cobblestone. Instead he only accepts a very special “Life Crystal” that can only be obtained through experience OR (this is the best part) in the spirit of the charity we are doing this all for, by donating to the Some Awesome Minecraft’s Extra Life donation page! For every $1 dollar donation you pledge you will receive 1 precious Life Crystal to trade with your villager. Did you lose your bucket? Step on a seedling? Your tree didn’t drop a sapling? Dug up all your grass? Your villager has them and more, but they won’t be cheap. The Some Awesome team is trying to raise $1,000 this year and every dollar you donate to the group donation page goes straight towards the team goal, and 100% of that goes to the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. There can not be a better way to turn a day of fun and a few bucks into a good cause.
Note: If you already donated to your own page, or to a fellow team member, we will honor those and give you Life Crystals for those donations. However, any donations made on game day MUST be made to the Some Awesome Minecraft donation page.

Challenges:

 

Villagers: 1 of each, 1 point for every level
Novice +1   Apprentice +2   Journeyman +3   Expert +4   Master +5
Armorer
Butcher
Cartographer
Cleric
Farmer
Fisherman
Fletcher
Leatherworker
Librarian
Mason
Shepherd
Toolsmith
Weaponsmith
(Note: you may have more than one of each kind, but only one of each will be counted)

Villager Items Challenge:
1 Enchanted Helmet OR 1 Enchanted Chestplate per team member
1 Globe Banner Pattern per team member
1 Bottle of Enchanting per team member
1 Golden Carrot OR 1 glistering melon slice per team member
1 of Any Tipped Arrow per team member
1 leather horse armor OR 1 dyed leather cap per team member
1 Name Tag per team member
1 Block any color terracotta per team member
1 Block any color glazed terracotta per team member
1 Quartz Pillar OR 1 Quartz Block per team member
1 Enchanted Diamond Pickaxe per team member
1 Enchanted Diamond Sword per team member

Village Challenge:
1 house per villager type (total 13 houses)
*Must contain: roof, door, bed, jobsite block
Bell
Well
1 Player house
*Must contain: living room, kitchen, and one bedroom/bed for every player on your team
A bridge to your Pillager outpost at least 3 blocks wide

Build Challenge:
Cobblestone generator
Mob box
Wheat farm
Carrot farm
Potato farm
Beet farm
Pumpkin farm
Melon farm
Cocoa bean farm
Sugar cane farm
Bamboo farm
Sweet Berry farm
Chorus Fruit farm
Nether wart farm

Farming Challenge:
Melon slices: 64
Pumpkin: 64
Sugarcane: 64
Wheat: 64
Carrot: 64
Potato: 64
Beets: 64
Cocoa Beans: 64
Cactus: 64
Chorus Fruit: 64
Cookies : 64
Mushrooms: 32 brown, 32 red
Bamboo: 64
Sweet Berries: 64
Nether wart: 64

Food Challenge:
Cook 32 baked potatoes
Cook 32 chicken
Cook 32 steak
Cook 32 pork
Cook 32 mutton
Cook 32 rabbit
Cook 32 fish (total)
Make 32 bread
Make 16 Dried Kelp Blocks
Make 10 mushroom stew
Make 10 beetroot soup
Make 5 Rabbit Stew
Make 5 pumpkin pie
Make 1 cake per team member
(Yes, you may trade with villagers to obtain these items)

Wood Challenge:
32 Acacia wood, 32 Acacia logs, 32 stripped Acacia logs 32 Acacia planks
32 Birch wood, 32 Birch logs, 32 stripped Birch logs 32 Birch planks
32 Dark Oak wood, 32 Dark Oak logs, 32 stripped Dark Oak logs 32 Dark Oak planks
32 Jungle wood, 32 Jungle logs, 32 stripped Jungle wood logs 32 Jungle planks
32 Oak wood, 32 Oak logs, 32 stripped Oak logs 32 Oak planks
32 Spruce wood, 32 Spruce logs, 32 stripped Spruce logs 32 Spruce planks

Animal Challenge:
3 cows
3 pigs
3 chickens
3 sheep
3 llamas
3 turtles
3 rabbits
Collect 32 leather
Collect 32 feathers
Collect 16 eggs
Collect 16 scutes
Collect 16 rabbit hides
Collect 32 wool of at least 3 different colors (96 wool total)
Collect 1 rabbit foot
Tame 1 cat (per team member)

Crafting Challenge:
Craft a white bed (per team member)
Craft 64 torches
Craft 1 Crafting table
Craft 1 Campfire
Craft 1 Furnace
Craft 1 Blast Furnace
Craft 1 Smoker
Craft 1 Barrel
Craft 1 Cartography Table
Craft 1 Fletching Table
Craft 1 Grindstone
Craft 1 Lectern
Craft 1 Smithing Table
Craft 1 Stonecutter
Craft 1 Loom
Craft 1 Composter
Craft 1 Brewing Stand
Craft 1 Cauldron
Craft 16 jack’o’lanterns
Craft 16 paintings
Craft 16 item frames
Craft 16 bookcases (you may use them in your build)
Craft 32 lanterns
Craft 32 purpur blocks
Craft 16 purpur stairs
Craft 16 purpur slabs
Craft 16 purpur pillars
Craft 16 purpur stairs
Craft 60 scaffolding
Craft 24 flower pots
Craft 1 turtle shell helmet (per team member)

Mob Challenge:
64 spider eyes
64 string
64 rotten flesh
64 bones
64 arrows
64 gun powder
32 redstone dust
16 ender pearls
16 glowstone dust
16 phantom membranes
5 iron ingots
Collect or craft a bow (fully repaired)
Collect or craft a crossbow (fully repaired)
3 records
1 totem of undying (per team member)
1 Saddle (per team member)
Collect 1 Pillager banner (per team member)
Collect 1 Enchanted book (per team member)
Collect 1 lead (per team member)

Potion Challenge:
3 potions night vision
3 potions invisibility
3 potions fire resistance
3 potions swiftness
3 potions slowness
3 potions turtle master
3 potions water breathing
3 potions instant health
3 potions water breathing
3 potions healing
3 potions harming
3 potions poison
3 potions strength
3 potions weakness
3 potions feather falling

Redstone Challenge:
16 redstone torches
4 dispensers
4 redstone repeaters
4 pistons

Fireworks Challenge:
32 fireworks total
*4 must be star shaped
*4 must be burst shape
*4 must crackle

Extra Challenge:
5 snow golems (remember to protect them from the elements)
5 iron golems
1 Traveling merchant

Bonus Challenge:
Tame a fox

Yes this is for charity, but it’s also a challenge! So there will be prizes for our winners.

Prizes: (rewards will be divided evenly between members of their team)
1st: 90 levels of XP on AquaNu, 30,000 points on SomeAwesome.com, and a $30 Amazon Gift Card
2nd: 90 levels of XP on AquaNu, and 30,000 points on SomeAwesome.com
3rd: 90 levels of XP on AquaNu

all participants get $2000 SAMCoin on top of what they get from donations

HOW TO JOIN THE CHALLENGE:
Add your team name and members to the post in our Facebook Group  Remember there is a maximum of 3 players allowed per team. If you do not have a full team and another member would like to play but we are out of space, we may ask that they join yours.
If you are on a solo mission you may say no to additional members.

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29Aug

Minecraft Friday + September Updates

Posted in Game Nights | Leave a comment

To start off, we’d like to apologize to everyone for the late notice on canceling Minecraft Monday this week. Tonya and I were experiencing one of those days we’ve been occasionally wrapped up in for the last several months and we really needed to prepare for the next morning. The good news is, the next morning went reasonably well. There’s potentially more coming in the next month, and I don’t want to jinx us, but it appears to be getting close to some sort of resolution. Our fingers are crossed anyway.

To make up for it, we’d like to mix things up a bit and have this week’s stream tomorrow night; same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. If you can’t make it, we totally understand, and maybe there are some folks who normally can’t attend who will be able to this week, so let’s give it a shot and see what shakes out.

    

New Akumoticon Birthday Plan

Two Mondays ago we launched our first week of the Zelda Birthday Gift Donation Twitch Emoji System GO! which had some hiccups since I hadn’t realized that the Akumo emoticon was only available for subscribers. We amended this to include any emoticon posted in the stream instead, but I wanted to offer a new angle that will help boost our final donation to Akumo’s sweet little lady.

So the new plan is this: Any player that posts any emoticon in the Twitch chat during any Minecraft stream (including tomorrow’s) will effectively be donating $1. This is limited to players on the whitelist only, and only once per stream (same as before). However, if you are subscribed to our channel on Twitch, and you use the Akumo emoticon, we will up the amount donated to $5.

Hopefully we see you there tomorrow night!

Patreon Pledges Processed Presently

I like illiteration.

Just a friendly reminder that Saturday is the last day that you can update your Patreon pledge if you need to. Tonya and I will be taking care of rewards on Sunday and Monday, provided the hurricane doesn’t knock our power out. So be on the lookout for those, I’ll make a post in the Facebook group when they’re in.

Another update we’ll be making to Patreon is we’ll be adding FlightPlus access to the Silver Tier. The flight time costs will remain the same, but access to the plugin itself will be limited to patrons on this tier. The reason for this is merely one of practicality and costs. Access to untethered flight means more people traveling quickly over long distances (which impacts the server) and loading more chunks (which we try to mitigate for obvious reasons) so it’s honestly an issue that needs to be addressed before it scales up beyond our control. If it’s any consolation, pledging to the Silver Tier affords you a good amount of points on SomeAwesome.com which you can then convert to SAMCoin that lends to more time you can purchase through FlightPlus.

And I mean hey, write a review for the site and you can earn up to 5000 points per review ?

DefenderCraft

Every other year or so around my birthday I like to throw up the alt server and have a good old few rounds of DefenderCraft. If you’ve never been privy to a DefenderCraft event, here’s a video of the shenanigans we get up to during a typical go.

Since my birthday falls right between the days of the week we normally have events on anyway, it seemed appropriate to schedule it that way again. So we’ll be looking at doing DefenderCraft on both Saturday the 7th of September around 3pm EST as well as Monday night, September 9th at 9:30pm EST. We will stream both events and yes, the emoticon donation system will also be in effect on the 7th too.

If you’re interested, fill out the form below and sign up for a date for DefenderCraft. As per usual, if you’re on Awesome Tier, you are free to attend both events if you’d like.

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Quick Notes

  • We’ll be doing an update on Spigot and plugin versions Saturday night
  • Command of the Week Sunday night will be TreeFeller
  • Coming Soon: Use command zone to purchase flight ability on your land
  • I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts

15Aug

To Zelda, From Link

Posted in Kids | Leave a comment

Around here we can totally appreciate when one of our players has a baby and names that wonderful child after a video game character. After all, we did it ourselves! So to celebrate the 5th birthday of Zelda, the daughter of our near and dear admin Akumo, we’ve decided to engage you all in a little community activity.

Starting on Monday, August 19th, and up to Zelda’s birthday (Sept 15), if one of our players uses the new “Akumo” emoticon in the Twitch chat during any Minecraft Monday, we will donate a dollar from the Patreon fund towards a gift for Zelda’s birthday (only counted once for each player on each Monday stream, although feel free to spam Akumo’s face in the chat as many times as you want ?)

Show your love for everything Akumo and make a kid’s birthday great with just a button click.

NUNU ON A STICK IS BACK IN STOCK

Yes, we finally ordered more thumb drives to put copies of NuNu on for you, so if you’ve been waiting to get your copy, order one today before they are sold out again.

QUICKEST NOTES!

These notes are so quick now because I’m actually writing articles more often!

  • New Facebook page in the server group explains all the Patreon tiers
  • FlightPlus appears to be working better now (might not be perfect yet)
  • WorldEdit & WorldGuard have been updated to latest build
  • KeepInventory will be on until Monday, August 26th after the stream
  • Command of the Week on Sunday night will be TripleJump

05Aug

I Made a Mini Me

Posted in Special Events | 1 Comment

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!

Have you been noticing the disappointing lack of me on the server? I know I have, but soon you will go without no longer! Say hello to Servbot 9000, the all-purpose digital companion that does many things, including:

  • Allows you to breathe underwater
  • Gives you night vision below Y-Level 55
  • Increases your luck with mob drops
  • Runs your own personal lottery (every 10 minutes there’s a chance to win 100 SAMCoin)
  • Comforts you with his classic and debonair good looks

AND SO MUCH MORE!*

You can expect to see this handsome devil in the next couple of weeks. Save those SAMCoins!

SAMCITY IS LIVE AND RENDERING

We finally have a decent system working for the SAMCity map which is being rendered over on the alt server using Dynmap. However it requires manual intervention on my part to get your property in the queue so let me know whether you want your claim rendered by messaging me or posting in the Facebook group. You can click here to check out the map from spawn center. We’ll be adding more waypoints and additional features as time goes on to effect better navigation for the new players.

We don’t have a final process outlined yet to address a map tile update timeline but we will keep you apprised of that once we’ve figured it out.

1.14.4 UPDATE IS TONIGHT

After the stream tonight we will be updating AquaNu to 1.14.4 which means the server will be down for a short bit while we do this. FlightPlus will also be turned on, but since it has logout and portal bugs, we will be reducing the interval and cost of the flight tiers, so if you run into a glitch it isn’t so bad. Please take some time once this is complete to check your properties for bugs. While we have tested fairly extensively over on the alt server, we cannot guarantee a 100% bug free experience once applied.

QUICK NOTES:

Even quicker this time since it didn’t take me 3 weeks to post again!

  • Points are in over on SomeAwesome.com
  • We finally have subscriber badges for the Twitch channel
  • Command(s) of the Week are /workbench and /enderchest

 

* Literally nothing other than what is listed

29Jul

SAMCity + August Updates

Posted in AquaNu | Leave a comment

I’M THE MAP!

A few days ago a handful of you guys were discussing the options behind getting some sort of map system drawn up. Truth be told, for a long time now I’ve had my eye on Dynmap as a fun little aside for us to play around with, but for many years it just wasn’t feasible with our hosting plan, or the timing just wasn’t right, or some other convenient obstacle for me to make an excuse out of. But with me already having to make a copy to test 1.14.4 and experimental WorldGuard builds, I took a page out of Ol’ Jack Burton’s playbook and said “What the Hell”.

So here we are, it isn’t much yet, the process is a little clunky (I’m open to suggestions if any of you have used Dynmap before) and it seems to take an awfully long time when I can tell it’s working at all (the plugin is still heavily in development for 1.14) but it’s pretty cute and it has a lot of useful features and it LOOKS LIKE SIMCITY so I kind of had to roll with it. I’ll keep you posted as when I feel it’s really in the stages for public consumption.

WE NEED TESTERS!

Speaking of public consumption, we’ve got that copy up over at test.smaws.me and we need testers to check out plugin compatibility, especially for WorldGuard. So if you have a property or two that’s deep in the WG biz-nass, we need your feedback!

Other plugins we will need some detective work on are the following:

  • BottledExp
  • MoarBows (that Void Bow in particular)
  • Backpacks
  • Item Recycler
  • FlightPlus

That’s right, the new TimedFly is called FlightPlus and it is better than ever! Use /flight to bring up the menu to purchase time in chunks of 3 or 8 hours. While we’re looking to just test out the basic flight functionality at the moment, we’ll have more announcements to make with this little plugin later on.

FAR LANDS COMMAND BLOCK

If you’re still looking for new digs on a second claim, you’re now in luck with a quick teleport out to 300k, 300k to speed up your research and development time. Can be found on the Community CB floor in the Command Tower, please try to venture out a bit from the teleport destination point so you’re not cramming up against anyone else please!

PATREON CHANGES FOR AUGUST

We’re making some slight changes to Patreon based mostly on what we’ve found are less-than-sustainable rewards (which is a fancy way of saying I’m lazy) but the changes are mostly just good for you so let’s just jump into it.

  • Tier points are now 300 (Standard), 2000 (Silver), 5000 (Gold) and 10000 (Awesome) which are all increases over the previous amount (except Standard) because I hate doing math and adding points to your totals makes me break out the calculator sometimes, not because I can’t do the addition in my head but because after doing this for 20 people my mind is done with math for the day ?
  • Command Zone is now available for all Patrons (previously was Silver and up)
  • The newsletter that we never seem to send (because people rightfully complained that patrons got critical news before they did) is being replaced by Patron Posts. From now on, if I need to pass on information related to your tier or higher, it will be done in tier-locked posts on the Patreon page.
  • Player Heads will be removed except for Awesome Tier. This was just too difficult to keep up with.

Aside from this, everything else stays mostly the same, although we’ve added a lot of great benefits to most of the tiers since we started. We’ll be creating a reference page for this in the Facebook group soon so you can keep track of all the goodies you are eligible for.

As per usual, you’ve got a couple days left if you need to change your Patreon pledge or you want to upgrade your tier for August. We’ve got a previous secret beta coming back into play for next month and there are only 3 spots left for Awesome Tier available so get yours while you can!

OTHER THINGS!

Here’s some other things that you may not care about, that’s why they’re at the end of the article!

  • Command of the Week is Marriage Master (starting tonight on restart)
  • Steam Run video highlight reel is in the making
  • Kumo’s Redeemer (from the Steam Run Kumo Maze) is now available in the Serverus Shack!
  • Each player has been given $100,000 on the test server so go ahead and get your Brewster’s Millions on!