VictoriaPorter

As discussed in the Future of YAMS topic, I was thinking about adding a room with signs displaying warps/commands to all the different games we have in YAMS as not everyone is aware we have all these games, there used to be signs in the old spawn tower (though not warps) but they got took out.
 
Well I'm pleased to announce at the bottom of spawn tower you can find a place that lists most of the games we have along with required warps/commands to get to them, there is also a community build teleport location - if a moderator ever wants a teleport button to a big town build, they only need ask me.
 
Please go and take a look. Good or bad idea? Feedback please.

Apologies as I too have been absent recently! But that's not out of choice - right now I'm too bogged down with revision to be able to get much of a chance to get on!
 
YAMS is truly amazing - across my short time playing minecraft I've never come across a server that runs so well and has people who truly care both about the server and one another. Before I found YAMS I'd been jumping from IP to IP to try and find somewhere worthwhile where I could settle down, and a little over a year ago I found it It's now the only place I bother to connect to!
 
I really do appreciate the work you do here Darren - as well as all of the other moderators and staff who've been here long before me - without you  YAMS would be nothing. I feel at the moment because it's exam season and many of our players are entering uni or adjusting to work levels we are experiencing a little stagnation here and there - but that's to be expected! 
 
I can hardly fault YAMS as a system - I believe we offer great building challenges and events, we have a good community and an admin to match I think where we are suffering at the moment is a lack of new players or connectivity - as I said above. I've mentioned this before but I do think we should look into setting up an official youtube account - not to be updated daily or even weekly - just to showcase events and things if anyone's recorded them - people will come! I know had I run into a youtube account showcasing just some of the things that happen here I would've scrawled down the IP and run to my laptop The only other thing I can think of is twitter - although I'm sure how useful that is as a medium at the moment!
 
I think I'll start piecing together something longer to post here - but for the moment I think I'll have to go back to looking at enzymes and polymers and all that fun stuff :')
 
Anyways - just in case you haven't read it enough - this place is amazing and it really is unique - we're all here to support you and you shouldn't have to feel so stressed - we're here to talk if you need it!
 
Long live YAMS

Little update:
We are now on Minecraft 1.7.8 running Spigot (A fine tuned version of CraftBukkkit) which has had some notable performance increases, it allows us for example to set item frames only visible as a certain distance, so there's less lag for you in areas with lots of frames!  
New public build warehouse is coming along very nicely, massive thanks to madrad for helping me on this, the new warehouse is located away from spawn area to reduce lag on players within spawn, once we have completed the new warehouse there will be a portal/warp to it which will be announced. The current warehouse at spawn is currently closed while all items are transferred over and the warehouse dismantled  
Today someone said to me "I still think you should include a warp command for veteran players so they don't have to run the whole way down spawn tower XDDD". I didn't get a chance to respond but my response would have been... "How do you know there's not one?" warps are everywhere, if you look back a page to my first post, you'll find I said this "A lot of people say to me you should place a warp at the bottom of spawn tower so we can get down quicker, my answer normally goes along the lines of there are warps everywhere you only need to find them. It’s true, the people that usually ask are just not looking hard enough, where’s the fun in having a warp that’s in plain sight, it’s much more fun and rewarding to find hidden warps, they are there, yes even right at spawn tower, you just need to look." so yes don't forget to look around for things!  
Someone recently asked if we can sethome in the mining world, this was once a very long time ago available in the mining world + nether, however it was disabled due to a few reasons, some of which were: 1. People were rush mining good areas and just using warps/spawn etc to get back and then /home again to carry on taking all the good stuff. 2. People were using home to get further and further away from the main spawn in one direction, causing more and more chunks to be loaded. 3. People were setting up mining bases and calling that their home and forgetting about the main world. I told this person that if he wanted to see sethome to post here with why etc, as of yet they have not done so.  
Someone recently asked if we can use ender chests. The main reason they are not allowed is to stop items being brought back from creative worlds etc, while I could block the use in those types of worlds, it's another thing to remember to do when I suddenly decide lets do so and so event! With that said I have thought about allowing ender chests before but there's never really been a big ask for it and no one certainly asked here, I told this person to suggest here and as of yet they haven't.  
In a post on the previous post, I mentioned village trading and that we don't allow it so the shopping centre doesn't become obsolete. I asked however if this is something we need to look into again. There has been no response about is so i can only assume people are happy with them staying blocked, except when there's an adventure map with them in etc.  
Talking about adventure maps, I have installed an adventure world plugin that allows us to enter a world and then after the last person leaves the world resets, this will be helpful when I run events so I don't have to restart the server and upload a new copy.  
I am currently designing a mini game, it's been in my head for some time and this world reset plugin will help it come true, unfortunately it seems other servers have had the same idea, but that's not going to stop me designing it, they use a custom built plugin, I'm trying to build it with redstone and command blocks. I do require some help though... I need builders to build me: 1. A decent sized floating island, I can get approximate dimensions. 2. An airship or something similar that is big and flys. More info and tools will be given to the person/s who decide to help.  
I've had some more thoughts about the games/events section room, and I'm thinking this can be located maybe under spawn tower were the current "old" warehouse is and that in addition to teleports to games it could also be used as a teleport section to ongoing build projects, makes sense as we have always used the bottom of spawn tower for portals to build challenges and events etc. Hopefully a central place like this will make people more aware of what's on.

Hello everyone,
 
Big thank you to everyone who has posted here, I've been thinking long and hard on what to do and have discussed the whole issue of whether to renew or not with both Minecraft and non Minecraft friends.
 
It's been very hard deciding because while I have previously said that the cost isn't an issue if people come on, this month:
I have more than expected to pay out in other bills, have had to cancel/downgraded some of my own personal subscriptions. 8 days into the month and the most players that have been on at any one time is 5 players, do I really want to pay so much money (I could go on holiday for this amount) when there's only ever been 5 players on at one time, most days its only a couple. I want to renew YAMS but I'm torn between the expense and the community not to mention the fact that I've been running YAMS for over 3 years now and certainly don't want to just see it die or with no big celebration of  success!
 
So what have I decided? I've decided to renew but on some conditions:
I have downgraded from 2GB of RAM to 1.5GB, this shouldn't impact us much in terms of performance as we no way hitting the 2GB mark but will save a huge amount in cost. I have downgraded the player slot limit from 24 to 16, this isn't a huge cost saving as it would have been by decreasing it to 12 but we had at least 13 players on at one point during the YAMS Anniversary so I certainly don't want to stop anyone from coming on due to a player slot limit. If we ever feel the need to increase I will do so if I can. You the players of YAMS don't forget about YAMS and continue to come on and enjoy YAMS! We celebrate our 4th year of YAMS in case there isn't a 5th. That is make YAMS the best there is: Play our existing mini games and suggest new ones! Enjoy taking part in world challenges and events and suggest new ones! Suggest interesting plugin ideas http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins even if it's just for an event that day. Overall be a part of the community and have fun. Don't think we have enough fun? Just suggest things in the forums and turn up when we do actually do the things you ask for! If you've been keeping up to date in the forums you will have already seen my efforts to keep things moving:
Back in January I installed the ColorShuffle plugin to bring some more fun into YAMS, it is popular amongst players. You can join by typing /color join I've been wanting a theme park in YAMS for ages, I decided that in case we were not around for much longer to go ahead and do this, it was very fun world to do and Id certainly like to bring it back again to complete the other areas. I recently finished the University of YAMS just in case this is our last year, I also added a maze though one ones completed it yet! I recently finished the fun room house just in case this is our last year. Did some work on the snowheim castle area so this isn't forgotten about, I installed Spigot to improve on performance as I knew that I may be downgrading the server specs. As ColorShuffle was popular I also installed the TNTRun plugin, you need 2 players a minimum to play and you can join by typing: /tr join 1 Today I finally finished the ender dragon statue after spending the past week finishing it off. I added /warp park amongst other warps! I am looking to redesign the spawn public build warehouse, madrad has some good ideas for this and I am hoping he can design this for me, the reason it will be moved elsewhere is to improve spawn/sandbox lag / fps. There will be a teleport portal to it and back with a possible warp too. I notice the acknowledgement room hasn't been updated in a while, I always liked the idea of this but if it's not being updated we may need to change this, please suggest. I am thinking about about adding a games sign/portal/warp room so you can quickly know what games/events we have and teleport to them, good or bad idea? Some areas could be: ColorShuffle, TNTRun, Battle Arena, Infected, Hide and Seek at the Mansion, The Maze, Oasistadium, Boat Race, The Park and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots etc... Looking into more events we can do. If you know any please suggest in the right section and I'll see what i can do. Making the Adventure of YAMS more known, ever seen the pumpkin monster under spawn? I wonder why hes there. This is just a start on my part, please do your part to make this a great year of YAMS just in case it is our last, please don't make me regret paying the renewal fee!
 
Thank you,
Darren

Ender dragon statue completed this morning! Big thank you to everyone who helped complete this over so many months.
 
I will probably find a better location for him at some point, or move him closer to the rails, being as big as he his I'll have to do it in sections as moving big structures like this can crash the server for few minutes.
 
I have removed /warp dragon till we find a better use for the dragon, maybe a roller coaster inside or something, lots of space.
 
I have moved all unused wool to the spawn warehouse, if anyone would be so kind to sort the chests I would appreciate it, they are located on the left hand side where the sorting area is near the rails inside the warehouse. Thank you.
 

Last chance to see the lava version of YAMS Spawn, I will be removing this world very soon.
 
To get there just go to /spawn and find the pressure plate on the quartz floor and stand on it.
 
P.S. New updated non April fools Future of YAMS post here: http://www.darrenstraight.com/minecraft/index.php/topic/4010-the-future-of-yams-for-2014-feedback/page-2?do=findComment&comment=25434

As ColorShuffle has proved popular amongst the players on YAMS I have decided to setup TNT Run too.
 
I've been meaning to do this for quite some time now as a few people have suggested similar games to me before
 but I've just never got round to it, so with the Future of YAMS lingering (though I believe I've made a decision - hopefully a good one) I thought id get this up and running, you may have noticed I've been quite busy finishing things on YAMS like this.
 
So for those of you that don't know what TNTRun is, basically its a mini game where players start on layer of sand and every block that they step on disappears. If a player falls through the hole they fall down to the next level of sand and so on until they reach the last level of sand. The last player who doesn't fall to the bottom wins the game.
 
To join, in chat type: /tr join 1
 
You do not have to worry about items/xp on you that will be saved and returned to you afterwards, the only time it wont is if a server crash/restart happens during a game in progress.
 
Enjoy! 
 
P.S. Please report any bugs as I haven't had anyone to help me test playing it with yet, well except TheTimeMeddler!
 

I have noticed no ones done any more of the terraforming so I have gone ahead and done some of the underside of the mountain.
 
August 2013 (Screenshot from Ruddles) - Didn't know was so long ago!
 

 
And now but still needs a lot of work:
 

Hello everyone,
 
As I'm sure you are all aware yesterday was April Fools day and I played the joke of stepping down and promoting TheTimeMeddler, had any YAMS player been on in the morning I would have got them to become joke admin but no one was on so TheTimeMeddler was used which actually worked quite well with his previous antics!
 
I can safely say that while it was funny writing the list of changes, most of them will not be happening....
 
Mostly being, that one of them is... has!
 
Lucky its not a bad change, but rather last weekend I changed us over from CraftBukkit to Spigot to improve our server performance, this actually appears to have helped for lag around spawn, at least for me when I tested without Optifine.
 
Hope you enjoyed the bit of fun and if you would like to see the nether version of spawn you may go to /spawn and step on the random pressure plate in the middle of the quartz floor on top.
 
Long live the bright future of YAMS, I can not wait! 

You're absolutely right, you good sir can stay a Moderator in this new regime!
 

Sorry for the late post - lazy slime is lazy 
 
I first logged into YAMS in September 2011, having not really spent a lot of time in multiplayer. The previous servers I had been on were big, and no one was very social. When I first logged on, I was taken aback by how friendly and sociable people were. Everyone was super friendly, and I soon got settled in (after a minor rule infraction...).
In the 2.5 years since, I've spent a great deal of time on the server. I applied to be a CSO not long after joining, and became part of the staff team, eventually becoming a moderator. Even though I'm no longer on as much as I used to be, I still care a great deal about the server, and I pop on when I can.
 
That said, it is not hard to notice the decline in player numbers we have had over the past few months. I remember when the server used to always have at least 3-4 players online, and when the nights were equally as busy as during the day. People will always come and go from the server, though there are always those of us who have stayed long term.
 
I've made some amazing friends during my time on YAMS, some just on the server, and some irl 
I think it would be a great shame if our little community were to end, and we'd eventually lose ties with each other. I should be going to university next year, so my time on the server will be reduced even further than it is now. It would be great knowing that the server is still there, for when I have free time on my hands.
 
For as long as cost isn't an issue, I think we should try to maintain our community and keep the server running. We seem to have a little stream of whitelist applications on the forums, and perhaps new people would be more inclined to come on if they saw more players online.
 
-Nick
 

This is my 1000 forum post! For me, thats impressive, since usually I give up on forums before 5 posts through. Kinda shows how interested in YAMs I really am. 
 
Thats... pretty much it. I mean, whoo, go me! xD

I like the idea of bringing it back now and then to do different areas/regions of the park.

I'd still like to get my obstacle course done before it closes, but with the way classes and senior project have been lately my timetable's not exactly reliable.
 
 
 
As for tuna's idea, I like it.  The original goal was to have a massive theme park with different styles for each area around the lake.  With this, we could have future build challenges where people focus on a specific region and theme/style to build on, so that after a few more of these we'll be close to a completed park.

So me Jon and Nikki finished the last of the digging
 

Sorry about the quality of it but imageshack is being poopy

Over 2 years ago even before we had moved to our current world there was an idea to create the University of YAMS, a central place of learning for YAMS to teach anyone willing to learn. Original building ideas included:
 
- College of Fundementals (The basic 'How to's of Minecraft' as well as all blocks)
- College of Crafting (Incorporating all the uses of essential Crafting Table)
- College of Agreculture (All you need to know about growing/planting)
- College of Fine Dining (All your eating needs explained in one place)
- College of Miners (What you can expect to find in a mine)
- College of Construction (A small college showing good examples of walls...
- College of Interier Design (A place for interior designers)
- College of Citizenship (YAMS)
- College of Redstone (Teaching the art of redstone)
- Library (Library worms dream)
 
6-7 months latter and we were ready to start building the University in the new world, this topic was created by madrad who would be overseeing the University of YAMS building project.
 
At first progress was fast however after some months it started to dwindle what with madrad being on and off and such due to personal reasons.
 
A year after we had started actual work on it I decided that I needed to place someone else in charge, staff members were invited to apply to take charge of this project, I choose lord_verigan and discussed with him in great detail about madrad and mines original ideas of the University, I even made an updated map:
 

 
But yet again progress was slow and lord_verigan eventually stepped down as a staff member as he didn't have time for Minecraft any more.
 
It started to upset me that there was so much potential in building the University of YAMS but nothing was being done.
 
The last thing done in the University was properly around October time.
 
This Sunday just gone, I decided it was time to say to spend some time on finishing the University as best as possible and call it done as I could see now that we were never going to finish it properly.
 
So me and steerpikesister (thank you) did the following:
 
- Added a new building on the hill (would have been where farming college was going to go), we choose a building namscupcake designed in one of the free build events, me and steerpikesister did extensive work on it and it will now be used to teach the basics of redstone, madrad will hopefully do this for me.
- Added a beach area with secret cave.
- Added the beginnings of a maze, I will build this when I have time and will announce when complete.
- Added trees/flowers in as many spots as possible.
- Added 2 things from old shopping centre and something extra, can you spot them.
- Finished some more wall off + delivery entrance.
- Finished deans office in college.
- Finished student records section.
- Recoloured windows
- Finished pathways
- Added tip boards.
- Removed all material chests .
- Lots more!
 
Still to do:
 
- Add redstone basics to the redstone college, hoping madrad will do this for me.
- Lay blocks down in block showcase room, most of the blocks are inside chests (before 1.7), just need to lay down and put material names on top/side of them with signs.
- Finish the maze when I get time.
 
So please come and visit and see if there's anything small you can help with (more detail such as rubbish bins etc) but we wont be making any more buildings really unless someone can promise me they will finish it if they start on something.
 

Thanks to those who took part helping me dig out the lag, unfortunately once the efficiency + unbreaking shovels I supplied run out people started to get bored or go. If anyone has any efficiency shovels please can we use them? I'm going to take a break now as I've been on for over 9 hours so I've done my fair share and deserve a rest.
 
Below is what we have done so far, nearly half way to digging the main part of the lake out, once lag is digged out will start terraforming it properly and then creating trees and such on the island.
 
We also need to decide how much distance between the water/lake edge to the main entrance/ticket areas, in between this would be shops and food places etc... does 100 blocks sound ok? Or too much? From my and madrads visit to mcmagic  itseems about right, there's was even longer!
 
Is anyone good at building ships? We need a paddle steamer ship as a ferry ship.
 

Don't worry Darren. I used the minecart system.

Runaway minecart in a mesa
Log flume in forrest (with rubber ducky)
Rapids
But most of all the Extreme Queueing Ride

I assume you mean animal farms, unless food and saplings are running away?
 
Talking about farms.... I believe steer wants to move/make farms in the big flat area we have now where there used to be plots, the plots were removed as they never got used. I suggested to steer that if she is doing that then to make the farms interesting... let me explain my idea:
 
So you all know we have the wood land / forestry area *cough* my idea *cough* well I was thinking something similar where that flat area is near the tracks where old plots were, but make it for farms and instead of just having lines of standard farms have them dotted around farm houses and such and even integrate the trees into it too, have lots of tree areas all around that you can chop down and replant but not necessarily in linear fashion (like sandbox etc) so while there would be signs saying these trees can be cut down it would like like a feature.
 
Farms/reeds etc could be a long a stream river that goes down to the big river/lake at bottom.
 
And mushrooms could be inside a cave.
 
Of course would require quite a bit of terraforming, but I think it could be nice touch instead of the same old farms in a row.
 
I did have a picture to share... but Flickr is down.
 
Hopefully you understand what I mean, let me know what you think. I'm trying to convince steer.
 
P.S. Steers away for a week tomorrow... so while she's gone we shall party! Muwhahaha! 

Just to make you all aware I will be doing maintenance this evening (GMT / UK Time) on the YAMS website so there may be intervals in which you cant access the website correctly.
 
Thanks,
Darren
 
I will update this section with progress:
17:30 GMT - Running backups. 17:40 GMT - Backups complete 17:41 GMT - Uploading upgrade files. 18:28 GMT - A break in communication happened while uploading the upgrade files, as a precaution I'm re-uploading all the upgrade files to make sure I did not miss any. 19:05 GMT - Just over half the upgrade files have now been uploaded. 19:38 GMT - All files uploaded now going through the upgrade process. 20:00 GMT - Upgrades complete.

As many of you know as part of YAMS 3rd Anniversary celebrations we played a minigame called ColorShuffle, this involved you being spawned into a multicoloured arena floor where you were given a piece of coloured wool in your inventory hotbar and you had to run quick to that  corresponding colour mat before the rest of the colour floor collapsed beneath you... anyone not standing on the correct colour would fall and loose.
 
Everyone really enjoyed playing this and some of you asked to see it come back again, so I'm happy to announce that ColorShuffle is here to stay for as long as the plugin works and doesn't cause issues!
 
To join, in chat type: /color join 1
 
You do not have to worry about items/xp on you that will be saved and returned to you afterwards, the only time it wont is if a server crash/restart happens during a game in progress.
 
Enjoy!
 

I enjoyed what time I had early on, gutted had to work, as it looks like I missed a lot more fun...can we play colour shuffle again please I liked that one

Here's a few of the screenshots that I took froom today
 
Waiting with a few pals for the fun to start!

 
We found a snow biome in wellworld, so we had some fun

 
Waiting for a few slowpokes to catch up >

 
Waiting to find an opening

 
Look at all the people stuck in one block when we started the go north challenge xD

 
One of the many boat rides we had to take during the challenge

 
An example of some of the beautiful things that minecraft can create!

 
Signs for Day 2 (sorry dont have them for day 1...)

 
Sneaky Darren waiting for us to break through the other end of the mountain

 
Day 3's signs

 
Our journey lead us to the beautiful ice spike biome!

 
Day 4 signs

 
Day 5 signs, with nams blocking it a bit

 
Day 6!

 
Our final camp, sandbox approval worthy in my opinion

 
Day 7 signs and nick 

 
And the back of our wonderful house, also a bit of the garden 

 
The last game of color shuffle 

 
I know there were a lot of pictures, but I just couldnt stop taking pictures and wanted to show everyone how fun events are-so you should come join us next time! Once again thank you darren for organizing this aswell as keeping YAMS up for 3 years
 

Thought i'd upload a few shots I got...
 

Just before we started our series of games

Long boat journey (Shortly followed by Darren killing me...)

I think this was our 2/3 day, The attempt to grow wheat...

Next day travelling


Surprising found a beautiful Spiked biome

Another attempt to grow wheat... But nothing


The end is near, the last house better make it the best we can
 
I had a great day! Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of the other events, but I'm sure someone else did. I'd like to say a massive thank you to Darren and everyone else for keeping this server so enjoyable!