VictoriaPorter

There really there to throw your ban hammer into some purple goo :-D

A month to go!
 
Am I right in thinking the list of people confirmed going is:
 
darrenstraight - Darren
madrad - Rob
SteerpikeSister - Vicky
Nikki_Nutta - Nikki
ryanfenton - Ryan
Dynamo12xr4 - Joe
ElseJon - Jon
DevonHD - Devon
 
Does anyone need help sorting anything? Let me know, I'm happy to help as much as I can!

Have moved topic from build projects as this is a suggestion and not official

I uh... have the bodies of other players in my basement?

So me and madrad went for a 11.2 mile walk today, down many pathways:
 

 
Across our travels we encountered a gate opening of some sorts.
 

 
Interesting we thought, what could be inside.
 

 
In we walked, encountering barren waste land.
 



 
It looked like something was built here at one time, but what we wondered?
 

 
So much laid in ruins, this place looked like it had been destroyed by TNT.
 

 
Then we sssssssssspot ssssssssssssomething!
 

 
BOOM goes the creeper! Now we know what happened to this place....
 

 
Minecraft is everywhere and no this was not photoshopped or made by us, we actually did find this in the middle of nowhere!

So the stable is finished there's 13 pens so about 26 horses can fit in !! So bring your horses down people !!

Haha yes steer said she told you, swinton hotel near kings cross. This is going to be fun! Im sure I can say this for the other 3, you are invited to come out for food and drinks with us! Get ready for a good time!

UPDATE:
 
Just a reminder this is tomorrow the 25th of August at 8pm BST. Click here to see the correct time in other countries.
 
Thanks goes to SwanofWar and ryanfenton for helping me do some massive terraforming jobs that needed doing, really appreciate it.
 
To those of you who are attending tomorrow, I have a little something in store for you all should you all choose it... I'm hoping you will like it, come and take part tomorrow to find out.
 
Thanks,
Darren

Barty just like Nikki said, part of the fun is that it's wacky hence the name of the race.
 
I did look into plugins last time we played that would stop boats breaking but there wasn't any out there and to be honest a lot of people still seemed to enjoy it, if I didn't think people did I wouldn't have started this topic, also last time I gave up me playing to help other who were struggling, giving oats out and pointing them in the right direction etc.
 
This is a community event and everyone's welcome so it's up to you whether or not you take part, but if you are not interested then don't come here putting others off, it's depressing, a few people would like to play but cant because they have other things to do, so you posting "meh" comments is kind of depressing and discouraging to them and others.
 
As of late your posts have not been the greatest, some of them we wouldn't expect from a member let alone a CSO, members look up to you as a CSO, so please try to be encouraging about things like this, you know how much time I put into events like this.

Calling all captains/skippers/navigators and sailors...
 
We have a boat race challenge for you!
 
The boat race lasts for 30 minutes at least and starts on Sunday the 25th of August at 8pm BST.
 
Click here to see the correct time in other countries.
 
Boats will be provided. Starting location is at the main boat race starting area on the way to Farefall.
If you would like to take part please signup below.
 
It doesn’t matter if you're not very good with boats, it's all just a bit of good fun!
 
To those of you still experiencing lag issues, I suggest you try using Optifine and see if that helps, if you have troubles installing I'm sure me or someone else can help. It really does improve performance issues.
 
Thanks,
Darren
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3cLSnzN-p0

Ok it's official, me, Steer, Nikki and Madrad will be in London for the 26th/27th of October, we have booked a family room!

Others being... The Guests of the Comic Con? Or us YAMS people? I'm mainly going for YAMS people!

i often travel with pot noodles/cup a soups when going to conventions etc

After party at Nikkis hotel...
 
And I would not be around for Friday as I'm at work till 3:30pm, I could however get a train after work and come up and meet anyone after if they wanted too.

Pub!!!

Shopping centre update:
 
Just to make you all aware, namscupcake is now in charge of the shopping centre/collecting rent.
 
If you don't pay on time she will use her kitty claws on you, as well as throw hard cupcakes at you!

Oi thats what I've been telling you maplehold needs for as long as i can remember! Idea stealer!

YAMS is now over 2 and half years old and we are still alive and growing, and though it's not at the same rate as it once was, it's still great seeing both new and long term members come on YAMS and enjoy it for what it is, a community.
 
We loose for a multitude of reasons, that being: their personal lives are busy, not agreeing with the way I run this community or because they got themselves banned.

We don't do enough self promoting as I'd like but at the same time I don't like shameless self spam promotion. I know servers that go around spamming everywhere they can think off, I don't agree on this. We mostly rely on these forums and word of mouth. Server lists don't always work and when they do they attract the wrong kind of people, stealers, griefers, trolls etc...
 
I do want more players to join us and work harder on having more active players instead of players that come on and then go away for months at a time, we do so many great things on YAMS it’s just such a shame that so much of this is not seen by people out there.

I try and leave whitelist off as much as possible, but sometimes it has to be on, normally because of a lack of staff on a certain times (that's not saying I want my current staff to have to be on 24/7, it's not fair on them) or because we have had trouble makers.

When I take whitelist off, sometimes it seems like the staff suddenly disappear at no fault of their own (lunch, dinner time, going out etc). It seems whenever I take it off, I end up being the only member of staff on the server and have had to do multiple tours all at once, now I don't mind doing the tours at all but as an admin I have loads of other stuff to do to, do I give a tour to a new person of fix something that’s been annoying current players? Trying to balance it all out can be quite stressful at times, so I end up putting whitelist back on until more staff come back on.

Now most of YAMS is setup so if there is no staff on new players can still work things out (if they read all the signs) however I like the personal touch, it's not something you see at a lot of servers, someone greeting you and actually helping you around, though some people say things like "what don't you trust me why are you spying on/following me" its not that at all, its more to help them out so they know exactly what to do and wont get in trouble later.

Unfortunately however a lot of players do eventually get themselves in trouble, this is mainly due to there not being enough follow up from staff. Once they have left someone in Sandbox they should regularly keep checking up on this player over the next couple of days or more to ensure they are doing well and understand the approval process, even help them on their houses if need be.

So this should be happening but it doesn’t always happen as there's so many other things that need doing on YAMS too, not to mention the fact that people also like to play (I don't blame them) instead of feeling obligated they have to do yams work all the time.

Anyway I know I've said this many times before and I'm sure I'll say it again and again, but id like to get these things sorted and take whitelist off more, every day I see people join and get refused because of whitelist, we used to be in the top 1-5 of various Minecraft Searches. Searches such as: Family friendly minecraft server, Family friendly minecraft servers, banned from minecraft and many more but we have now fallen onto page 2, this is not good...

So why not just take whitelist off and try and get them to sign up to the forums? Well as I said above it’s the amount of people with authority we have on the server; we still have various time zones in which no member of staff is on! We have various protections in place but as I said earlier I like new players to be shown around and explained everything when they join. This can be done by regular members if no member of staff is on but this doesn’t always happen or happens badly as they are missing the required training or don’t fully understand the rules themselves.

It's just a shame that when I do take whitelist off we end up putting it back on a lot because of griefers and such. You try and be nice by allowing people to come on your server and they treat you, your staff and the server badly – it’s not nice for anyone. Safe to say these kind of people are always dealt with. It's just such a shame that you give them a 15 minute tour only to see them banned an hour down the line.

Ok so enough rambling, it's time to recruit more staff so we can have whitelist off more often!

Here's a little information about what a Community Support Officer job entails:

1. Greet new players.
If you love to meet new people, you are proud to show them around this great server, help them find resources, give them building ideas, or just chat with them for company then you already have the most important skills.

2. Reinforce server rules.
Are you familiar with the server rules posted in Spawn Tower? Do you encourage players to read or re-read them when they don't seem to know/remember how to behave? Would you feel comfortable muting players who can't seem to control what their fingers type in public chat? Can you handle the pressure of putting someone in jail when they get caught breaking the rules? Are you willing to investigate the reason behind the behaviour and give them a second chance? Do you set a good example for others by just being you?

3. Report bannable offences to Mods/Admins.
Occasionally there are times on the server when all the Mods/Admins are offline for a moment. As a CSO, it is important to document griefing by taking screenshots of the damage or the playerlist of people online at the time. Do you mind taking a little personal time to contain/clean up griefed areas? Do you feel comfortable posting in the forums, something along the lines of “I saw so and-so do such and such today and here are some screenshots of the damage along with locations."
 
4. Be a part of a team
As a CSO you would become part of our team of staff so you would need to work well in a team, can you work well with others? From time to time I seek advice from all staff on changes I which to implement in YAMS, can you actively take part in these with good feedback?
 
5. Acceptable to job role change.
Understand that from time to time you job role may change and you may be asked to help out on other things that are totally unrelated to what you normally do but that give a benefit towards the community. You may also get the opportunity to be in charge of a public building or specific Job. If you are shown to be active and good at what you do, then there's also chance for progression to Moderator.
 
6. Enjoy knowing that you are part of the reason YAMS is the best place to spend your Minecraft time!
Think about what you like most about YAMS and how to keep it being a place you visit to get a good dose of community spirit. We have such diversity here with people from many ages, interests, and countries. We might each have our differences but the best thing about all of us is that we have so much in common. We just have to get to know each other to find out what those common interests are and to introduce new ideas to share. That's what community is about, so if you would like to support the YAMS community, apply to be a trainee CSO.
---

To apply, you must be registered on the forums in order to reply to this post (keeps it open and fair). Please give a brief summary of why you think you would be right for the job and what you can offer that others cant. Take a moment to look back over previous applications (April 2013, January 2013, August 2012, April 2012, October 2011, June 2011, April 2011) if you need ideas of what to say but please be original and bare in mind that a lots changed since them applications (don't just copy and paste we will know).

Also it doesn't matter if you post now, or wait until someone else posts, your post should be your words not someone else's and anyway your post is not the only part we base your application on, we will also base it on things such as your previous forum activity, severity of past crimes and how much time you have spent in game and when you are on are you helping the community.

We want to know which assets you will bring to the staff team. Why you and not that other person?
Good Luck!

Closing Date: 1 week from date/time of post.
Amount of positions available: undisclosed.
 
Past applicants (who were unsuccessful before) and ex staff (who's circumstances have changed) can reapply, hopefully you have taken previous feedback into consideration.
 
This topic is for applicants to post their applications only. Please do not post other stuff or like other peoples posts, thanks.

Loki.

As you all know, in YAMS we do not allow mods, it's really that simple.
 
This is for many reasons, one being the fact that we don't have the time or resources to continuously keep ourselves up to date on which mods would be ok and which ones would not be ok, as some alter your gameplay to such an extent that they give you an advantage over others. Such as when mining, exploring or killing etc.
 
In February 2013, I made a post about mods in which I asked you all to private message me if you use mods and tell me what ones and why. Though I didn't specifically state it, my main mod of interest was optifine, I knew people out there were using it but I wanted to see if they would be honest and tell me and then understand more why they were using it.
 
I had a 3 people say they were using optifine and one person that said that they didn't use it but heard it may be of use to them. There was no repercussions for those who told me, they had been honest and that's what I asked for, so I was happy to leave them using it, though I never actually told them this.
 
If have ever been asked directly if Optifine is allowed, I may have either ignored the message or said something along the lines of the following (extract from the BattleArena topic):
Our policy is no mods simple as that, I will always say no to optifine if I'm directly asked, however I know quite a few people who use optifine to improve their performance and I havent told them off yet because I trust they wont use some of the features it has to gain unfair advantages over others... if that makes sense. I cant stop you but If I find people abusing the system, well you know what happens. That's all Im saying. The fact is that optifine has always been a grey area, because while it has good benefits it also has some features which can be used to gain some advantage over others in terms of pvp games and mining etc. Also some people have used optifine before with added features in which clearly are against the rules xray/flying etc and then saying I didn't know it had these "extras" in the version I downloaded (hacked clients) when quite clearly we detected them using these so called "extra features" to a proper extent.
 
Since we have moved over to Minecraft 1.6.2, I and many others have noticed a decrease in FPS (Frames per second) that shows up when you press F3 (The higher the FPS the better) or to better understanding an increase in lag.
 
I have never really paid much attention to FPS as I have never had any problems, but with 1.6.2 and the new launcher I was getting about 7-11 FPS when walking down spawn tower, whereas before it was a lot higher (I have tested in 1.5.2 old launcher and get no problems).
 
I decided to do some investigating and found out the main cause of the lag was tile entities/entities (Signs, chests, item frames, paintings etc). The biggest problem out of all of them was signs with text on.
 
To test my theory, I went out in the wild where I was getting 80-100 FPS and generated four 255 block high walls containing wall signs (totalling 10200 signs) and measured the FPS, it was low but nothing compared to what I was getting in spawn tower.
 
So I then decided to do the same again, so a cuboid containing 10200 wall signs, but this time with every sign containing 4 lines of random text, as soon as I generated this my FPS decreased drastically, ranging from 2 - 8 FPS.
 
My theory was sound, the problem was signs with text on and it was because Minecraft renders the text of all signs you can see even if you cant actually read the text, which is kind of pointless.
 
I tried making some changes to spawn tower, removing any signs I could, however this was not enough, the problem still seemed to occur which is quite annoying as it's not like I can just remove all the signs (signs were being renderd from sandbox and other places) and also because in 1.5.2 I was getting no issues at all, I had also heard others saying they were getting more lag at spawn but yet others said they were getting better FPS than before which doesn't make sense!
 
I'm hoping Mojang will fix these performance issues, but in the meantime I have a solution for those of you are experiencing issues. I have decided to officially approved Optifine as one mod which can be used in YAMS because Optifine improves performance issues considerably, especially with signs as it only renders the text when you are near and able to read them. Please respect this allowance, do not abuse by trust, no more is it allowed/isn't it allowed, you have a definitive yes now, you can use Optifine now providing you do not use it to gain unfair advantage over others.
 
If you wish to download Optifine, you can do so via this link here. You will probably want to download the version that says "OptiFine HD B4 Standard for Minecraft 1.6.2". There are also installation instructions on that page, either by manually addint the files into the .jar file via the WinRAR/7-Zip method or by using Magic Launcher which you may find really simple.
 
I have decided not to make my own tutorial on how to install it as those links should get you started, with that said if you think Optifine will help you and you are having problems installing it, you are more than welcome to post here asking for help and I'm sure someone will try and help you, if they know how to of course.
 
As a reminder do not abuse my trust and please remember this is the only approved mod, no other mods are approved.
 
Thank you,
Darren

Well, I got back earlier this afternoon, and I have to admit that I had a great time!
The weather was perfect, if a little too hot... but we were walking through a thunderstorm on the last day, which was both exciting and refreshing. Also a little disgusting as the I could taste 3 days worth of sweat trickling down my face...
I also got bitten to death by midges on the 3rd night, as they got into the tent which was rather unpleasant.
Overall though, I had a fantastic time. We ascended the highest peak on the island, which was almost 900m high. And doing that while carrying a 14 kilo bag on your back is no small feat
 
Here are a few pictures I took whilst there...
 

 

 

We have 17 votes for YES and 0 for NO so consider this implemented.
 
Just type:
 
/recipe item_name_here
 
Hope you find it useful!

About 15?!? About 5 is good for Newcastle. Well... It good enough for the blokes to have shorts and no shirts on >_>

pshaw!!!! I'm taken aback by your bluntness!  

Greetings residents of snowheim and other towns of yams.
I know you are all busy with the mining hub build at the moment but please don't forget we still need some designs on a tower to be hidden in town somewhere.
Also we still have a long way to go on our castle project. I know Luke is in charge of this however I don't want it all to be left to him to do everything. I know we have had some players helping lately an for this am grateful. But I would like to see some things being built soon to allow us to move on to other things. And maybe help other towns too.
 
I am quite busy this week and probably won't get on as much as I would like buy I will still try to pop in now and then (probably when I am working at the same time ).
Hope you are all enjoying the horse riding and see you soon
 
Nikki