The Digital Factor FTB: Ultimate Server RSS Feed

June 1st Update

Jamie-nyanchi — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 05:39:35 +0000

Hey everyone! It's been a long time. I'm just here posting that I am, in fact, still thinking about the server and getting it back up. There's just a few small things I'm considering before doing anything big.

1.) Should we use a public or private pack?

Public has the benefit of getting us access to a wider audience so that's a bigger chance of us having a larger and more active community at any given time. Private though let's us create the pack we want. The pack that we think should represent us and the server.

2.) Should we continue to rent or buy a dedicated server?

Renting is easier since it let's a professional company manage the server and keep it in good shape. We had issues before with our host, but I believe they've been resolved since. Of course we can always go with another provider. Buying one is more expensive, but then we have complete access to the hardware and the only bill we have to pay each month is the internet bill. Daniel came up with a list of parts for the server we could use and it looks good, but is a pretty hefty price.

3.) Who will help me run it?

I tried to run the server with minimal staff last time. I thought I could do it almost by myself, but I was wrong. I need a strong staff who I can rely on at any given time. I believe some of the people who helped me run it before were trustworthy, but I think we need more. I also need people to keep me in check. I got a bit hostile later on in the server's life and that's mostly due to stress and I apologize for it. I did things that I shouldn't have and I need people to tell me that I'm not doing things the way I should.

~~~~~~~

I have something in mind that may actually help us out. This fall, I'm going to be receiving about $50 a month (My friend is receiving a ton of scholarship cash for college and he's splitting some of the extra cash with me since it more than covers his stay. This cash is also allowed for personal use.). If I was to save this money for a few months, I could potentially rent a server for a year, giving us a discount and a lot of time to build that cash back up. What are your thoughts on this? Should I do it or use the extra cash to help pay for my stay (I don't really need it, but it'd help)?

I just want to thank everyone who is still here by any chance. You guys are great and I thank you for sticking with us through all of our problems. When I launched the server, the intention was to make it our server. Well, I didn't go as far as I wanted to last time. If we can get the server up and running, I want everyone's input on more stuff. I want this to truly feel like our server. With sponge (see spongepowered.net ) coming along nicely, we can potentially get this server up later this year, but I'll need your help. Let's try to actually make this everyone's server and make it one of the best out there.

Please share any and all thoughts below. Am I not being realistic enough with bringing back the server or do you all agree with me that it's possible? Do you want to see us make a return?

Update: What's Going On Right Now?

Jamie-nyanchi — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 02:28:57 +0000

Greetings, everyone!

It's been a while since I made an announcement here, and I apologize for that. I had a series of life events pull me away from the Minecraft scene, but I'm finally ready to return. First, I'll briefly cover why I was gone for so long, discuss a little bit about what's going on in the Minecraft community keeping me from continuing the server, and then mention what we could do for our future.

Well, first off, in the past few months (from around June until now), I've been busy handling stuff in my real life. In June/July, I was focused on a summer study trip to Germany I took part in for a few weeks. Once I returned, I had a brief trip to Niagara Falls which took up more of my time. After I got back from that, I was focused on getting back into school and preparing to apply to colleges and scholarships. Then early last month, my computer's hard drive crashed and I lost everything on it (except for what I had backed up on Google Drive and Dropbox). The worst part is that this happened literally the day before a backup hard drive I ordered arrived. So, I've been spending the past month just getting everything back and I think I'm good to go on with my projects. All of these things have kept me busy these past several months. Thankfully, it's all starting to die down which allows me to focus on doing this again.

Now, while I was fixing my computer, apparently there was an incident regarding Bukkit and everything related to it getting DMCA claimed. This is pretty unfortunate as it includes MCPC+ and Cauldron, which are my favorite server software since they combine Bukkit (which has better plugins) with Forge (which has better mods). One of the members from Mojang said he'd personally update Bukkit to 1.8, but it looks like there's a better replacement for Bukkit coming up soon. It's called Sponge and is made as an extension to Forge and is being developed by the creators of WorldEdit/WorldGuard and MCPC+/Cauldron. This looks good because the developers of some of the plugins (like GriefPrevention) that I used on the server say they may remake their plugins on Sponge. This is great news as it means plugins like GriefPrevention will be able to protect against griefing much more effectively than it has been able to in the past.

Now, I would like to make a comment about FTB's official packs really quick. It seems that their flagship packs (in the past these have been Ultimate, Unleashed, and Monster) are always super big. This was fine in the Ultimate and Unleased days when they weren't incredibly large, but I feel they're getting a little crazy in size now. Modpacks that big require more powerful computers for the users to run and more powerful servers for the users to play on. So, unless 1.7.X or 1.8.X have massive performance improvements, I feel we shouldn't base our pack off one of these flagship packs.

So, what could we do for our future? First, I think we should wait for Sponge to become available. I just feel safer using software that I know has a future, unlike Bukkit which might as well be dead by now. Sponge looks like it'll be a huge improvement on MCPC+/Cauldron if they make it right. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with. As for our modpack, I think we should create our own list of mods independent of what the other modpacks have. We should make it more personal to us and get rid of the mods we don't care about. It is nice having the option to do whatever you want, but we should limit how many mods we have. If we ultimately do decide we want a modpack base, I think we should use the mods from Unleashed as our base as that pack was very good in my opinion.

Please leave your thoughts down below or in a thread in the discussion board in the group. I hope this has explained why I haven't said much here at all recently and I hope that we can re-launch our server sometime soon.

Thanks for reading!

Minecraft's EULA - What This Means For Us

Jamie-nyanchi — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 07:40:27 +0000

Hello, everyone!

If you haven't heard, Mojang is going to be enforcing parts of the EULA for Minecraft and this will affect all servers using a donation system like ours.

Please read this thread created by Daniel for more info and a link to the source: http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/DigitalFactor/discussions/1/522730535825880710/

If you have any comments regarding the issue, please post them in that thread.

Thanks!

Idea for the next Modpack

Jamie-nyanchi — Sun, 25 May 2014 23:42:36 +0000

Greetings.

It's great to see that some people here are excited for the return of the server. You are all lovely people. So, I'm now here to share an idea we came up with for the next modpack. We would like to hear your thoughts on it.

For the 1.7 modpack, let's make something smaller than the main FTB pack (In 1.6's case, this was Monster, 1.5 was Unleashed, and 1.4 was Ultimate). In 1.6, the pack was rather big and didn't offer much room for adding mods we wanted. So, we thought about taking the mods that were in one of the 1.5 packs and using that as a base for the mod list and working from there. I'm thinking about Unleashed personally, but Unhinged is also good.

The suggestions we got for our 1.6 pack will still be taken into consideration, but this allows us to make the pack more for what we want it to be. If you have more mod suggestions, this thread is still fine for those: http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/DigitalFactor/discussions/1/630800445633086413/

What do you think about this idea? Do you like this?

*****
In other news, we're still looking into how to handle our money. Should we pay for the server annually (Which is about $280) and save about $70 per year or try something else? The problem with this idea is that we don't have the money needed to do that. We could continue doing monthly, which requires less money at a time, but does cost more in the long run. One suggestion I heard was to have 28 people donate $10 each or some other combination of people and money. Do you have any suggestions on that

Feel free to share your thoughts below. I'm reading every single comment you all leave. Thanks in advance! Take care.

Let's Move Forward!

Jamie-nyanchi — Sat, 10 May 2014 04:06:50 +0000

Thank you to those of who responded to the announcement from last week! We really appreciate it!

So, let's start forming a plan to work with together.

I was talking in private with staff members on the previous server and here's what we got as a base. I'm sharing this with you to get your feedback and opinions on what we change in it.

Server:

We're thinking of keeping the same level server. This means that the server would be identical (tech-wise) to the previous server. We are thinking about doing this because RAM, disk space, and bandwidth were never a problem.

The problems we had before were related to the CPU as these mods love to use up a lot of CPU power. To resolve this, we should consider limiting access to certain items that are CPU crazy.

We could search for plugins and mods that optimize Minecraft and make it run better which would definitely help us out.

As for plugins on the server, we'll get your opinions on what we should have at a later date. Once we get a better idea of the direction we're going, then we can start getting plugins.

Modpack:

The main concern we have with the modpack is whether we should stick with private or go back to an official, public pack.

If we go public, it makes it easier for people to connect to the server and could potentially get us more well known. Perhaps we could switch back to private after a period of time.

If we stick with private, it allows us to make the modpack the way we want it. We can add, remove, and re-configure mods to our liking. However, it's a little more difficult to connect to the server this way. I could make it so the server is already in the server lists when you load up the modpack though. If we do this, we should try to spread the word of our server out as much as possible.

If we decide to go with private, I will have a public beta period before we launch where you all can help us test the modpack and make sure it's good before we start up the server. We want this to be a smooth start.

Money:

This is my biggest concern, personally. We need money to keep the server up, obviously. Thankfully, while we were gone, our former host lowered the prices of their servers a considerable amount. The cost for the same server we had before was lowered from $39.60 to $29.99. This could help us out a lot since we'll be spending $10 less each month.

One idea we thought of was to pay annually for the server. It's $150 to $200 for that, but we only have to pay once a year. They'd also give us a discount if we paid like that. I believe we'd save about $70 a year if we pay annually as opposed to monthly.

The question is, though, how will we make enough money to keep the server up and keep consistantly making money?

Donations worked on the old server for a whole year (Thank you to all of you who donated if you're reading this), but I feel we should be relying solely on donations as it's not a solid source of money.

So, we need ideas on how to make money for the server!

I could attempt to get a job, but that's something I'd prefer to avoid at this time. Due to school, sleeping, managing a Youtube channel, working on game mods, and (hopefully) soon this server, I really don't think I'd be able to manage the time well enough for that. If it comes to that though, I'll do it.

I did become a Youtube partner recently, so I will get paid for making my Youtube videos, but it's not too much. I haven't gone through a whole month yet, but it looks like I'll only get about $3 - $5. It's not much, but I suppose it'll help.

One idea I had was to get a plugin that puts ads on the server in the chat, but that could potentially annoy players. The chat was already pretty cluttered at times, from what I remember.

We could try to make some sort of deal or partnership with others though. Perhaps advertise a service for someone and have them pay us a set amount per month.

If you have ideas on how we could make money for the server, tell us! We'll love you. :)

Feedback!

I keep saying it, but I'm serious when I do say it. We want your feedback! We want to know what you think about all this. Tell us you thoughts, comments, questions, or concerns about all of this.

You can leave your thoughts here on this announcement, in a comment on the group page, or in a thread in the group discussions. Feel free to open up a new thread if you want.

If you rather it be in private, you can PM me on Steam/Skype if you have me on there. If not, I'd suggest for you to contact me on Twitter (since I check that site rather often). You can find my twitter page here: Click Me For Teh Twitterz

Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for supporting us!

A New Start For Us? Please Read

Jamie-nyanchi — Sun, 04 May 2014 09:22:19 +0000

Greetings, everyone. It's good 'ol Digital here. I have a wall of text to put here regarding our future. I hope you'll take the time to read it. This is also most likely going to be all over the place, but bear with me.

So, as you most likely have noticed, the server isn't up anymore. It went down back in March because I feel no quick progress towards moving to 1.6 was being made. However, this can be used as a positive thing.

This period of time has been used by me to reflect on the past year of hosting a server and plan out everything better next time.

Over the past year, I believe I haven't been a great Admin/Owner. This was due to me being inexperienced, unfocused, and unorgranized. I was terrible at handling complaints and even got upset at some users for just trying to help. To all of those who I did that to, I apologize. I was also bad at managing requests. You all had lovely ideas for the server, but I never did anything with them. I should have taken your ideas and helped grow the server.

This past year has given me more experience though. I now understand the stress a server owner goes through with having to manage the server, the complaints, and finances along with their real life. This has taught me valuable lessons that I am greatful for.

Now to get on to the more important part of this announcement. I feel the server needs to come back. The server needs to be revamped and improved.

When I started the first, I wanted it to feel like "Our" server. Now it's time to actually live up to that.

First off, no more hiding information. Unless the information absolutely needs to be kept secret for some strange reason, I will answer any and all questions you may have to the best of my ability. If I want you all to help, I should make you feel welcome to ask questions.

Second, your voice will matter. Do you have a suggestion for the server? Do you have criticism? Do you want to change something on the server? I will take all your feedback and use it to make the server better. I can't promise all your ideas will be used, but I will make more of an effort to utilize your ideas.

Third, you'll be more protected. Griefers can ruin the entire game for people. If and when we relaunch, I will make more of an effort to make sure your stuff is protected and that griefers/cheaters/hackers/etc, are all dealt with faster. This may include more use of server logs, better plugins, and more admins/moderators watching the server.

These, however, are only ideas. It's our job to put turn these ideas into reality.

So, I'm thinking about just relaunching on 1.7 or possibly even 1.8 (depending on when that comes out). This gives us plenty of time to restructure our system and get a plan into action.

I want us to upgrade the server right off the bat. Our previous 3GB shared dedicated server was fine until plenty of people got online (the CPU would then choke if there were plenty of machines on). My big dream is to get us a completely dedicated server, but that's far out there. I'm not sure what we should upgrade to. I'd like to stick with Fragnet as I'm familiar with how they work, but if you want to suggest a different host for us to use, feel free to do so.

Our staff, as you may remember, was rather small. If would be best for us to expand this team soon after launch so we can prepare for anything that may happen in the future.

Community Involvement. This is something I feel that I've failed at doing. I want you all to be involved from now on. I want you to suggest mods, plugins, staff members, events, anything! I want you, the players, to feel more involved with the activities on the server. Perhaps you can all help build the next spawn area as a start. Maybe later we'll have community events to help get everyone more involved. I want this to feel like a family.

The donation system at http://rapitalftb.buycraft.net/ for the previous server was pretty lame. I want to revamp it, give some good benefits for donating and make it worth your while. I also feel that I relied too much on donations before. If and when we relaunch, I will attempt to rely less on donations and more on other, more solid sources of income.

We should be a family here! We should all feel welcome! If we all work together, we can grow together.

Perhaps I'm just tired and I'm just speaking nonsense, or perhaps we could actually do this.

Do you want to see this server come back? Do you like the ideas that I've written about here? Comment here, make a thread in the discussions, do something to let me know. Let's make our plan together.

1.6.4 Information - Suggest Mods For The Modpack!

Jamie-nyanchi — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 15:47:38 +0000

Hello everyone. It's been a while. Well, 1.6.4 is getting closer each day so I have started putting together the 1.6.4 version of the modpack and I would like your help.

Starting right now, I would like to hear your suggestions for what mods I should add into the pack. You can suggest any mod and as many as you want.

I plan on using every single mod in FTB: Monster so there's no need to request those.

Please post all your suggestions in the following thread so they don't get lost: http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/DigitalFactor/discussions/1/630800445633086413/

Thanks in advance! :)

The Sever Has Been Updated to v1.0.5

Jamie-nyanchi — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 00:54:49 +0000

Greetings, everybody!

I have updated the server to the latest modpack version (v1.0.5) and it seems to be working a lot better already. This version brings the latest 1.5.2 versions of IC2 and Logistics Pipes. I can confirm that the crashes with the Advanced Solar Panels and IC2 has been fixed as of this and the server will crash a lot less often because of just that. The LogisticsPipes and ExtraUtilities mods may still cause problems, but those can probably be fixed server-side and not require a client update which means I can put up the fix whenever I have it available.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience that was caused over the course of this week and hope to see you all back. :)

The server is going to remain heavily unstable til Friday

Jamie-nyanchi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 00:19:04 +0000

Ok, I need to be forward with you guys so here it goes. The server has a few problematic mods right now. Logistics Pipes, Advanced Solar Panels/IC2, and ExtraUtills. LogisticsPipes is the most common one and I've been trying to fix it to no avail. I'll keep working on that one. Advanced Solar Panels/IC2 is an EnergyLink issue between the mods. To fix it, I'll have to update IC2, but it'll most likely break other EnergyNet items. It's what's used in Unleashed 1.1.4 anyway though, so I suppose it can't be that bad. As for ExtraUtills, this one is new and is some sort of chandelier block crash. This is the newest one and I'm still trying to find out information about it.

What all this means is that the server is going to be very unstable til Friday when I can get the IC2 update out. That'll fix a good bit of the crashes. If I'm not mistaken, I can fix the LogisticsPipes issue serverside so that'll go up whenever I have the chance. As for ExtraUtills... I have no clue what that's about.

So, here's what I want to recommend to all of you. If possible, try to avoid playing on the server til Friday. The world will be safe, don't worry. It's not going anyway. I just don't want you to be surprised if the server ends up crashing and I have to roll it back a few hours during the course of this week. The server *should* be stable next week.

This is a message I don't want to say, but I want you all to be as aware as possible and I want to save your sanity. Thanks for reading and I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

The Server has been updated to 1.0.3!

Jamie-nyanchi — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:42:34 +0000

I don't use this Steam group enough, so I'm gonna start posting announcements here when the server updates or when I have anything else that needs addressing.

The server has been updated to version 1.0.3 of the modpack! Be sure to update if you wish to keep playing!

Five mods have been updated: Applied Energistics, Logistics Pipes, Modular Powersuits, Modular Powersuits Addons, and Tinkers Construct. This was just a bug fix update, no new content was added. This does include a fix for the annoying crash issue with the Cosmetic GUI on the Modular Powersuits mod.

Have fun!