1.11 Upgrade Status | Veterancraft Dedicated Server | Forum

I have a sneaking suspicion that test server updates will slide into Saturday. I fell down a rabbit hole today while updating VC's configuration management system. All-in-all positive results, but a serious draw on free time.

A lot of grunt work is underway. My local test server (here at the office) is configured and running and slowly populated with plugins for final test.

The 1.11 update broke my unit test system. Changes to the JavaPlugin class removed a critical constructor used by my unit test library. It is not the end of the world; after all, I have source code. However, I don't relish having to maintain a distinct branch of Spigot for something that should be supported by Spigot in the first place. Mudwog and I are meeting tomorrow to look at this in more detail and identify solutions that will not break or cause problems later. Hopefully, we can use that info to champion an official patch of Spigot.

I'm testing a "quick solution" tonight, which I can use to continue moving forward, should we not find a better approach tomorrow. In other words, we've got a ladder in this rabbit hole letting us get out quick.

That was easier than expected. It only took two large subs, a six-pack of Coke, and about two hours to find a reasonable solution to serve our unit testing needs that should last for a long time. Even though this solution also depends on a deprecated method, we're sure that it won't be removed anytime soon - the constructor for the JavaPluginLoader class. Even better, we didn’t have to tweak any server files directly and have no need to consider proposing an official patch of Spigot.

Once we fixed the downstream effect of this change in our plugins' code, unit tests once more worked as expected. Most plugins passed with flying colors. Shoppe, Tally (voting plugin), and TapeMeasure (region selection and measurement) didn't pass completely, but that was to be expected. The good news is that the errors are the same as they were in 1.9 and 1.10, thus nothing new was introduced.

Mudwog and I are going to take a break and visit with a few friends he hasn't seen in a while. I should be getting back to the "regularly scheduled program" later this evening and continue applying 1.11 feature support to those plugins that need it and all that other testing stuff.

Good Morning. Things are going well. No emergencies at work or elsewhere, have allowed me to focus on server updates this week almost full-time (well, I haven't yet opened up my work email today ). Most of the work now is integration and configuration. That has its own pitfalls, which fortunately, are only time sinks rather than serious issues. Now, if I could only get my time estimation skills working again.

It was such a cool and great idea, but... Yeah, that about sums it up. The great idea was use Citizens2 NPCs along with some custom code to create Stewards that would replace our quirky MultiVerse Portals. Those of you that visited the test server in the past saw them in action providing inter-server teleportation between the Hub server and Spigot 1.9 test server.

We used a very small plugin, NPC Joiner, that worked in tandem with Citizens to provide actual teleportation. We knew this was just a proof of concept and that we would design our own plugin to do all the heavy lifting, since NPC Joiner code looked like it had been designed on the back of a paper napkin. Matter of fact, that plugin isn’t even available anymore as a Spigot resource.

Citizen2 had a much steeper learning curve than expected. Using it to create and configure NPCs from the command line was relatively easy and we were spawning dozens of NPCs easily in no time. However, doing the same programmatically and using its traits concepts took a bit longer. Fortunately, Citizens2 is a well-designed plugin, even with no documentation, lack of details code comments, and sparse Wiki descriptions, we could grok its inner workings and all its dirty little secrets

Stewards come in three different types. Server Stewards will teleport players between different servers within the same BungeeCord network eliminating the need to log off one server and on to another. These guys will become more important later on as we add additional servers (e.g. Events server).

World Stewards provide warp-like abilities. They can teleport player to any accessible location in any world available on a single server. In essence, they are just make better looking warp signs

Portal Stewards are essential two joined World Stewards that provide a controllable bi-directional portal between two locations. The benefit is that setting up portals between two locations is way easier. Just plop one NPC at each location and linked them up, that is it. Future airship and ship portals will become a breeze. Doing the same with Multiverse would take many, many more steps and time to avoid costly mistakes that could only be undone with a server restart.

Okay, I think that is enough. I just needed to do something different than look at Java code, hence this blurb. I’ll keep everyone posted.