On Saturday May 25th, VeteranCraft will be hosting a Pixel Art Build Off Event. We are looking for up to twelve individuals or teams to compete, creatively using various blocks to build large scale two dimensional images.

Build Off Information

Pixel Art Build Off Event
Saturday May 25th, 2013
6:00 PM Eastern
Warp Sign at Spawn.

Rules

• Contestants must be on-line one half hour before the event begins.
• No obscene or offensive builds.
• Builds must fit within the 73x35x256 plots.

Prizes

First Place: 50,000.00 shillings
Second Place: 10,000.00 shillings
Third Place: 5,000.00 shillings

Q&A

Q: How do I sign up for the Pixel Art Build Off Event?
A: Click this link, and fill out the form.

Q: What materials will be provided?
A: None

Q: How long will contestants have to build?
A: Contestants will have one half hour to ferry resources to the arena, and one hour to construct their two dimensional image.

Q: How large are the building plots?
A: 73x35x258

Hope to see you there, and we look forward to showcasing some fantastic builds!

VeteranCraft

The time has come for us to bid farewell to the old and long standing Vetropolis Merchant Hall. Thanks to the effort by both staff and players alike, it is my pleasure to announce to you the grand opening of our brand new Merchant Hall located just across the plaza from the old Merchant Hall site.

We have made numerous changes to the way the Merchant Hall operates. Foremost, we will be moving from a one time flat fee to a weekly rental system via our Residence plugin. Prices and more information may be found via the Vetropolis Commerce page of our VeteranCraft Guide.

In addition to cost changes, we have learned and adapted to deal with common user issues with the Merchant Hall to better ease the flow of commerce and trade. The Merchant Hall was built with way finding in mind, each unit having an identifying unit number, and organized in a more intuitive manner. Each shop name will now be prefixed with their unit number in square brackets, so that the use of the /shop find [item] command is swiftly followed by commerce rather then a game of hot/cold attempting to locate the shop.

While the Merchant Hall is open, it will be a few days before we may begin distributing plots to bright eyed entrepreneurs. During the next few days we will allow current tenants of the Merchant Hall to bid via this thread establishing a pecking order in the selection of zones. This not only celebrates the power of the shilling in commerce, but has been deemed the least bias moving method. Current Merchant Hall tenants are not required to bid for placement – those who do not bid will be moved into plots at staff’s discretion at the conclusion of the selection process.

Once the pecking order is established, those who bid will be asked to select their new shop according to their bid price. After the selection process has concluded and remaining current Merchant Hall tenants have been shuttled over to the new Merchant Hall, we will begin moving in applicants in the order they applied via the Vetropolis Commerce thread.

If you have any questions or concerns about the new Merchant Hall, please join me in discussion on the forums or speak with me in-game.

Shots From the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

VeteranCraft

The long awaited starter zone/newb spawn has been opened and is in operation! I’d like to thank those of you who’ve been involved in getting this massive project completed. Initial discussions started back in January, and many people have put in countless hours to make this thing happen.

Why did we build a new starter zone?

1. Filter out bad players
   Now when people login for the first time, they can’t use commands or talk. This right away gets rid of spammers and trollers without any staff intervention. Additionally, anyone who is not capable or willing to complete the trials won’t make it to the main server, which filters out quite a bit of other bad players, like griefers.
2. Attract good players
   Our players love the security we offer in VeteranCraft. The fact we’ve been in operation nearly 2 years and have a high retention rate of loyal players prove that people like the idea of something that is safe. Something that will last. Our target players will surely appreciate the steps the new starter zone takes in filtering out turds from the punchbowl so they have the best chance for awesome game play with awesome co-players.
3. Educate and inform new players
   The very act of getting through the trials proves that the player has learned some important elements about our rules and culture. This will lighten the burden of repetitive questions to staff and others that take up time.
4. Handle large volume of new players
   As we start to scale up traffic as summer approaches, having this filtering tool will help us save slots for players who are worthy of being here. It handles players in a way that it can handle large volumes of players without needing help from staff.

Introducing the New Starter Zone!

This project was planned tediously and organized at a pretty high level compared with most Minecraft projects. A lot of discussion in the forums as well as Trello planning boards, helped us manage this project and its’ many aspects. The following list will go into the basics of the sections of the starter zone. The zone incorporates VeteranCraft’s role-playing and lore culture into the process as a story line.

1. You’re on a journey to Vetronia.

You begin your journey to Vetronia.

You seek brighter pastures, so you decide you’re going to take a leap of faith and emigrate to the enchanted land of Vetronia, in search for a new life. You board a ship, bound for Vetronia. The seas are fair and skies clear. As you make your way to your sleeping quarters, you learn a bit about this awesome place, anticipating your arrival.

2. You wake up. Your ship has wrecked in the Nether.

Your ship has wrecked in the Nether.

What happened? Your ship is broken up and sinking in lava. You don’t know what to do but something tells you that you need to make your way out of this place. You proceed, learning about some server basics, and about the staff. You soon discover you are going to need to complete some trials of righteousness before you can get out of this predicament.

3. You tread through Cthulhu’s head into a hellish Nether Fortress.

You enter Cthulhu’s head.

You approach a scary, lava-surrounded nether fortress. You venture inside, and learn a bit about VeteranCraft account upgrades. You make it through the trial of Cthulhu!

4. You are now lost in a system of mine shafts.

A chasm in the mineshaft system.

You can see the haze and creepiness start to let up as you ascend through a cobweb laden, abandoned mineshaft. During your hike you learn all about the laws of the land of Vetronia, which will be helpful if you ever make it there! You are paying close attention, because you don’t want to wind up in the Vetropolis Graveyard.

5. You find your way out, through a grassy cavern.

Looking down from the top of the grassy cavern.

The shaft opens up into a large, open cavern. Your sense of anxiety starts to lessen as a nice gravel path winds up a grassy hill. As you cross the foot bridges over the stream, you learn about ways you can build in Vetronia, once you get there. You feel as if the trials are nearly over.

6. You come upon a quaint village.

Underground village

After no sign of civilization, you pop out of the mineshaft to a marvelous sight. You’re awestruck by the completely underground timber framed village, surrounded by natural trees, and a sense of peace overtakes you. You hike up through the streets, learning about how you can protect your property with Residence. You realize that you have the means to protect your property, and that gives you a good feeling.

7. You enter the heavenly quartz temple.

Interior of the quartz temple

At the end of the village you see a quartz temple, and venture inside to find a magnificent structure. You learn a bit more about the culture of VC, but you realize your trials have come to an end! You will make it out after all!

8. You find your ship, it’s repaired!

Your ship outside the quartz temple

As you exit the temple, you lay your eyes on a very Goonies-esque sight… Your ship has magically been repaired and is awaiting your embarkation. You get a few provisions offered by the community, and board the ship to sleep off the journey.

9. You wake up during your arrival in Vetropolis – it was all a dream!

The ship is now docked in Vetropolis.

As you wake up, you realize the trials were all a dream! You peek out your porthole and realize you’ve made it safely to Vetronia, and your ship is docked right in Vetropolis. You gleefully disembark the ship to be welcomed by the citizens, and begin your new life.

What’s Changed?

• New players go into newb group, making it so they can’t see chat or talk, or use commands.
• Once they finish the trials, they will be placed into the player group, and be able to chat, and use commands.
• Old players who want to see the starter zone can access it via a portal in the /spawn tower, upstairs.
• If you do so, your donor status, or other default permissions will be temporarily disabled until you complete the trials.
• There are currently 2 messages for new players – The first announces their start of the trials. They can’t hear you. The 2nd is when they’ve completed the trials, feel free to welcome and congratulate them when that message plays.

This message plays when the user has completed the trials.

Please be patient for the time being, as we work out tweaks on the tech end, and the physical end. We hope to make this starter zone better as we learn ways to improve it. Please report bugs or issues you run into in the forums.

Who do we Have to Thank?

From the initial planning, to the big dig, to the designing, building, and technical programming, so much time and effort has gone into this, and we want to give a hand to all who were involved. I will edit this list as I remember who I’m leaving out. Please don’t be offended if I don’t initially remember who did every single thing.

Keep in mind that this project was built by hand with legitimately mined materials. Nothing was spawned, and World Edit was not used to dig the massive hole. We take a great deal of pride in that.

Excavation, Planning, Design, Building

Pherian’s pre-build sketch of Cthulhu.

• Emulated
• Pherian
• Meatbawllz
• LightWarriorK
• Ryanpitts
• Bonzai728
• jonthepope
• sebasgokart
• Spentxlr8tion
• vEchozZ
• MintYogi
• Frelling
• MusicPlayer16
• TheMackFather
• lilmack96
• Roseis
• Dalferes
• Chrissyfly82
• Countless Others!

Programming

• Frelling
• Mudwog
• Hannahbrian

Comment below what you think!

VeteranCraft

Due to issues not under my control, update times have been changed: update times are now 1 PM to 6 PM, Friday 5/17.

Well, the time has come. We need to complete the last part of our server upgrades to support new features such as the new starter zone, better donor management, and so on. There never really is a good time to take the server down for a couple of hours these days other than the wee hours of the morning. Sadly, by that time, the tech team is generally on the third case of Coke and 15th pot of coffee – not a good time to change things on a production environment.

That said, we’re all going to get a good night’s sleep and upgrade Veterancraft in the later morning hours when we are fully rested. For the time being, Veterancraft may shutdown and/or be in Maintenance Mode unannounced several times between the hours of 1 PM and 6 PM EST on Friday 17. Hopefully, its not going to take us 5 hours to complete the upgrades; though its better to over estimate in this case than to under estimate.

UPDATES:

• 12:50 PM – Full back made, just in case we have roll back.
• 14:30 PM – New permissions systems installed. You shouldn’t notice anything differently – hopefully. However, if you do venture in the Newbie zone, you will have to complete it – no tp, home, spawn, etc.
• 15:30 PM – New chat system is in place. You’ll notice a few minor tweaks here and there. No starter zone is in full effect. At this point we are just keeping a close eye on the system. However, the server may still be restarted, shutdown, or put into Maintenance Mode without notice as we tweak things here and there.

Join the forum discussion on this post

VeteranCraft

On Saturday May 18th, VeteranCraft will be hosting a TnT Cannon Build Off Event. We are looking for up to twelve individuals or teams to compete against each other and construct the most awe inspiring, eardrum rupturing explosive cannons known to Minecraft.

Build Off Information

TnT Cannon Build Off Event
Saturday May 18th, 2013
6:00 PM Eastern
Warp Sign at Spawn.

Rules

• Contestants may not move their launch block.
• Cannons must be constructed to aim only in the direction of their target
• Cannons will only be given one live fire.
• Contestants must be on-line one half hour before the event begins.

Prizes

Closest to target: 5,000.00 shillings
Best aesthetics: 3,000.00 shillings
Creative design: 3,000.00 shillings

Q&A

Q: How do I sign up for the TnT Cannon Build Off Event?
A: Click this link, and fill out the form.

Q: What materials will be provided?
A: One stack of TnT.

Q: How long will contestants be given to build?
A: One hour. 

Hope to see you there, and we look forward to an explosive event.

VeteranCraft

Do you have a thirst for blood, an uncontrollable urge to watch the world burn? Do you have what it takes to beat your fellow Veterans into a senseless coma? Sign up for VeteranCraft’s PvP tournament on May 11th.

PvP Tournament Information

Saturday, May 11th, 2013
6:00PM Eastern
Warp Sign at Spawn

Each match will have one round. There will be four contestants per round. The slots and fight schedule will be announced prior to the competition. Each round will have a prize.

Rules

• Contestants must check in 30 minutes prior to the fight, if you’re not there, your slot may be forfeited.
• Clear inventories only.
• No outside weapons or armor.
• No donor/staff perks.
• Fight to the death.
• No rematches (only exception would be technical issues throwing a match)

Cheaters or breakers of rules will be fined 5,000 shillings and/or banned.
Players who sign up for the tournament and do not show or give notice at least an hour prior to the start of the event will be fined 2,000.00 shillings.

Prizes

The winner of each round will receive a 3,000.00 shilling prize.

Q&A

Q: How do I sign up?
A: Sign up via the forums, by following this link.

Q: May we bring anything to the match?
A: No.

Q: What do I do if I’ve signed up and realize I cannot attend?
A: Post on the forums at least one hour prior to the event to avoid fines.

Q: May I use my McMMO abilities?
A: Yes, so train up.

VeteranCraft

The Tech Team will be performing a lot of server work today, but hopefully most of it will be transparent to you, albeit there may be some more than noticeable lag spikes from time to time. Apart from installing a few plugin updates for 1.5.2, we will be working on our own core plugins in preparation for the release of the new starter zone.

Most notably we will be replacing our old PermissionsBukkit plugin with an in-house version – JCPermissions – which is more flexible and configurable. Furthermore, it provide essentials features that will help us reduce turnaround time of donor upgrades and will eventually support full automation of the process.

We are also installing a major upgrade to JCChat – our general purpose chat plugin. This update bridges the gap between JCChat and its eventual successor JCCommunity; but more on that later.

All features and functionality will remain the same and won’t require you to do something a different way. We will announce any new features in a later post. We will exercise most of these updates on our test server, but in the long run the only true test is Veterancraft itself.

We plan on rolling out changes through a series of restarts during which we will install a subset of components and monitor their performance and behavior. We will try to give the customary 5-minute warning per restart, but it may be as short as a 1-minute warning or none at all.

Keep an eye on the MOTD in your Multi-player server display. If it says MAINTENANCE MODE it means that the server is not open to the public. For those of you that have modded clients with auto-connection scripts, it is in your best interest to disable them. Repeat attempts to connect during MAINTENANCE MODE may trigger an auto-ban.

We know that we can rely on our longer-term Vetronians to understand that this for the greater good of all and will exercise patience. For those of you who have just recently joined us, we ask that you do the same, but here are some guidelines:

• If you find a problem please post details in the Support forum. If you need help in figuring out what is going on, ask a Moderator for help. However, if you do, please make sure to set aside the time to answer any questions that Moderators may pose. Please provide as much detail as possible to avoid having Moderators resort to a game of 20 Questions.
• Don’t spam chat with questions about what is being done. If there is a need for immediate feedback, we will ask the questions. Please refer to the forums and tweets for progress updates. We won’t provide a blow-by-review, but when important information needs to be disseminated, that is were it will be.
• If these interruptions cause your blood to boil, instill a sudden need for Xanax, or have you teetering on the edge of a full blown temper tantrum, please just log off and come back tomorrow, lest you find yourself on the business end of the Ban Hammer.

Join the forum discussion on this post

VeteranCraft

The server is running on a very early Development Build for 1.5.2. It seems stable enough, but honestly, because this came as a surprise to us (we didn’t expect server-side changes), it hasn’t yet undergone our regular rigorous testing of such releases. You can update to 1.5.2.

Join the forum discussion on this post

VeteranCraft

On Saturday May 4th, 2013, VeteranCraft will be hosting a mass Parkour event. We’re going to release players in small sets (number TBA) into an obstacle course in a race to the finish line.

Parkour Event Information

Saturday May 4th, 2013
6:00PM Eastern
Warp Sign at Spawn

Rules

• Contestants must check in thirty minutes before the race
• Contestants may not harm each other.
• No donor perks. (i.e. compass)
• No animals allowed.

Prizes

The winner of each round will win 3,000.00 shillings each!

Q&A

Q: How do I sign up for the Parkour event?
A: You may sign up via this thread. (clicky!)

Q: What items will I need for this event?
A: No items will be required.

Q: Will I need food?
A: No. Healing signs will be provided at the beginning.

VeteranCraft

Did you know that a pig’s scream is louder than a jet engine? I bet you didn’t. In fact,  I bet you don’t even know a pig can run a seven minute mile! That’s one speedy swine.

In honor of the eardrum piercing, marathon running, walking slabs of bacon, VeteranCraft has decided to host it’s very own Pig Race! We’re looking for up to eight contestants per race to face off against one another for the title of Pig Rider extraordinaire.

Pig Race Information

Saturday, April 27th, 2013
6:00 PM Eastern
Warp Sign in front of Spawn 

Rules

Contestants must check in thirty minutes before the race
Conteststands may not cause harm to another contestants swine.

Prizes

First Place – 3,000.00

Q&A

Q: How do I sign up?
A: You may sign up via this thread (click!).

Q: What will be provided?
A: Three carrots on a stick, and one saddled pig.

VeteranCraft