Pandora News Letter Issue #2 - Part 1

Pandora




Monthly Newsletter Issue #2 - Part 1



04/12/2011



Statistics

* may not be completely accurate

Server outages: 26 minor 1 Major (Due to update)
Most people online: 30+ (24th November)
Current CTF & TDM champion: None
Current Redstone genius: Atty
Current top builder: ahammond
Server online: 57days
Forum registrations: 33
Number of forum posts: 297


Promotions

You should all be aware by now the server went through a rank refresh to coincide with the changes the server experienced. There are a number of reasons why this took place it’s not worth me going into it in full but needless to say it was a tough decision and some will not be happy but hopefully most will not mind and wait for the chance of promotion again. Congratulations to those that have been successful in promotion already.

Advanced Builders

Moderators
Atty
Maddieclear

PreAdmins
Hasanisir
Anders

Send your applications for promotions to: promotion.pandora@gmail.com

Announcements

This newsletter is split into 2 parts. The second part contains a very important server wide announcement that effects all players.

The great server give away.
On the 10th December we will be running a whole day of activities with a number of server events. Depending on the timing it may carry over to the 11th but we will inform you on the day if this happens. All you need to do is join the server at 6pm GMT and look out for the announcement for the next event and request to join it. Once again we have IRL prizes (the creeper pendants are back) to be won to the winner of each event (you can enter as many events as you like). I will give you an idea on the type of events:
Timed build competitions
Treasure quests
A Fight to the death
Diggy diggy hole
Pin the tail on the donkey


Top 3 Featured Builds

OceanView
Creator: ahammond
Location: Unknown

This place is made underwater and consists of separate rooms for housing. Along with all the comforts a player would need like a leisure centre/ spa, farming area well I wont spoil the rest of the areas for you it you just go check it out for yourself. One of the most amazing things about this build is its size, this build goes on and on so make sure you pack some lunch if you plan to explore it all.


Redstone Tutorial
Creator: Atty
Location: /warp redstone
Always wanted to know how to use redstone??? This warp has every possible redstone use that you would ever need, with full working examples so you can mimic it for your own design.
Go check it out now, you wont be disapointed.

Creative zone
Creator: Many
Location: /warp creative

The creative area allows players to be in gamemode 1 and create anything they wish. This has been very difficult to manage and many people have broken the rules in that you can not be in creative mode outside this area. This is not completely their fault as a lot of the time no admin or owner are on to be able to change their status back and also its quite easy to just stash some items in a hidden chest outside the area the temptation is too great. Unfortunately this zone will now not be used. Its not completely to do with people breaking the rules, although that has not helped, its more to do with the griefing people do while in this mode and the difficulty we find in managing it.
Those that already have a plot and build in this area are more then welcome to go back to it and we will give you creative mode as you are considered a trusted member but from now on no new members will have this option until we get multiworld and a creative map.



Top 3 Future builds

PAN’s quiz
Creator: PAN1C
Location: (Secret)
A quiz show type game where answer a question correctly will allow you to progress but answer incorrect and only death awaits. Get all the questions correct and you will win some treasure. The cake is a lie


De_Dust2
Creator: anders
Location: unknown
This build has been worked on for quite sometime now this is due to the amazing work to detail that has gone into it. It is a direct copy of the counter strike map with a good use of sandstone. I believe the main aim for it is to turn it into a ctf/tdm/pvp arena. I can not wait for this to be complete

Haven
Creator: Atty
Location: Come out of spawn and look up
At the time of starting this newsletter like 2 days ago atty informed me that he has plans to make a sky city. Well 2 days latter and it appears complete. One of the parts I most enjoyed in this build is the passport control and waiting areas, of course this is built by our redstone genius so you can expect use of redstone and pistons. Take a good look but don’t forget your passport.


Top 1 plugin installed

At the time of writing this we have pretty much the basic plugin setup including those of permissions and block protection. This is because of the minecraft 1.0 full release, some plugins broke others are not compatible and some just cause us lots of problems. We are trying to deal with this as quickly as we can so please be a little more patient.

The plugin I like is the treasure quest. Over a set amount of time a chest will randomly appear somewhere on the map. You job is to hunt for it. You do this by typing /hunt or by left clicking some rotten flesh. The treasure inside the chest will vary depending on what type of quest is created Common to Epic. When you type /hunt or use the rotten flesh it will tell you how far you are away from it. When you reach 1 block distance dig straight down and you will find the loot.

Server future top 3

Multi World
Just before we updated we managed to install this plugin and play around with preloaded maps. I must say I was impressed at how easy it was (once I got my head round it) and can see this being a great thing for the server once an updated version is out. This was mentioned in the previous newsletter but it does deserve another mention its pretty much going to be a very important part of what the server will become.

Wireless Redstone
Ahhh redstone. I am not the best person to talk about this kind of stuff but if you do need help I would recommend talking to either Atty, hasan or jr. I did see some of it working and appears you use a sign instead of redstone to link the redstone together this means you don’t need lots of trails of redstone everywhere and can make the redstone in any direction you need instead of using a set path

Inventory
This will be used in conjunction with multi world. When you enter a different map your items will disappear but stored so will be given back when you move back to that world. This will be a great help in making sure players do not move items from one world to another ie creative world to a pvp survival world.


Behind the scenes

Remote logging
All Lan Hut staff now have the ability to reboot the server and make changes to the config files. This is a great help in making sure the server is kept stable and up as much as possible.


Rollback
During this month we were hit by a team of griefers. They were the best worst griefers I have ever known and the destruction they caused was like having a nuke go off. They had the ability to fly and remove a 10 block radius in their trail it was pretty spectacular as within 10 mins they had obliterated the creative zone. With the help of Lan Hut we were able to roll the server map back very quickly and to most they probably never knew something had happened. I would also like to quickly say thanks to our friends on tzahi’s server and those on hurricane’s server who tried as best they could to stop the griefers but as they had no permissions they could only sit back and watch. We continue to be hit by griefers so please keep an eye out and report any incidents to a Moderator, Admin or owner.

Server upgrades
Lan hut have been working hard in keeping the server stable and continue to upgrade their servers to make sure we have a lag free server. They continue to spend a lot of money so much so it makes you wonder how they ever make a profit. I do have the details of the parts that have been added so if any techies out there wish to know what the servers current spec is the let me know alternatively why not speak with the main man himself Aaron.


Randomness IRL

Birthday wishes
Happy birthday to Kierito, Maskesatan & anders. We like to celebrate players birthdays by building them a little something and I hope they liked their server presents. Make sure you add your birth date in your forum profile so we don’t miss yours.

Football to be banned
ITSEDWARD broke some fingers while playing football. Last month we had broken bones from a football injury (Kierito’s wrist) so I would like to request that no one plays football during the month of December just so I don’t have to write about an injury in next months newsletter. Speedy recovery Sted.

Teachers Pet
Homework & exams, it seems it’s the time of season? Many of you have been busy recently talking of either lots of homework to do or exams to take. Make sure you guys study hard it will be worth it in the end, the last thing you want to do is end up like me.






Smidgers,
PAN1C

i practically just pulled an all nighter. @_@

I know what you are saying. I mentioned to players before that I will try to make it a little shorter and turned out to be even longer. I will try for next month to make the formatting better and the newsletter shorter (the plan is to use youtube videos and links).

We should rather have "pin the tail on Pan1c" . Would be kinda easy i guess so, but well well

Well since the pvp title aint taken, i will surely take it, and i also have built the new nether ctf, so its kinda cool when war comes back and we can play ctf again, i miss it so much

@panic i actually wasnt commenting on how long the post was. I didnt even realize how long it was til now. I just literally meant what i said. I pulled an all nighter. lol.