CU Updates #36 - Durite, Modded MC, DonationStore

[haloman30 168]

Howdy, folks!

 

If you've kept up with Discord, you may have noticed the following announcement was posted, with little to no context:

 

Spoiler

>>> INCOMING TRANSMISSION <<<

FOREIGN ENTITIES DETECTED FROM INTERPLANETARY SPACE...UNKNOWN ORIGIN

ENTITIES LANDED ON WORLD AT APPROXIMATELY 0300 CST IN UNSETTLED TERRAIN...

SURFACE SCANS OF ENTITIES SUGGEST VALUABLE FOREIGN RESOURCES CONTAINED WITHIN...

ENTITIES SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED PROMPTLY USING REALTIME WORLD MAP...

SYSTEM REPORT ATTACHED...

>>> END TRANSMISSION <<<

 

 

 

This was a sorta-cheesy way to launch one of hopefully several server-wide events - leveraging OptiFine's Custom Item Texture (CIT) support to introduce entirely new tools and items into the game. This was all possible thanks to @Windwhistle, who you might recall from such plugins as Grifblock and our MobArena replacement. The textures were first given rough shapes by Wind and I went in and polished them up - with the end result being Durite.

 

The Tools

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Durite tools are just as strong as Diamond tools, but have some extra quirks about them:

• Durite Hammer - Acts identical to the Gravity Hammer in Grifblock
• Durite Pickaxe, Durite Shovel, and Durite Axe - Mines a 3x3x3 cube wherever you mine, similar to hammers in Modded MC (except those are 3x3x1)
• Durite Sword - Nothing too crazy, but does more damage than a Diamond Sword
• Durite Armor - Taking damage can actually charge up the armor. When the particles around the armor show up and turn to a light purple/pink, right click on the ground to let out an explosion

 

Along with those specific abilities, all armor and tools have a 1 in 3 chance of not taking any damage when used/hit - which effectively makes all of the tools and armor 33% stronger than Diamond.

 

Obtaining Durite

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As of now, there are a number of small hand-placed Durite craters, with a larger one present somewhere as well. The specific locations are up to you to find - but here's a hint: Dynmap will likely be of assistance. If that's not enough, the image attached to the Discord announcement (see the spoiler above) also includes a subtle hint.

 

Additional Notes on Durite

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In the event that all Durite craters are depleted, we are able to add more - don't count on this happening for a while though - the whole point is for them to be fairly rare and thus quite valuable.

 

Additionally, textures for the items and armor are handled using a server resource pack. You will need to allow this to be applied as well as be using the latest version of OptiFine for the textures to display properly. We'll likely be making more use of this resource pack over time - and already it does make an adjustment outside of Durite. Go check out Grifblock again if you'd like to see what it is.

 

The only real limitation to OptiFine's CIT is that we can't do truly custom block textures - hence why Durite Ore isn't a proper block texture. But considering that all of this can be done within vanilla Minecraft is, to me, quite crazy to think about and lends itself to a wide array of ideas - ones that you should be seeing in the somewhat near future.

 

Modded MC

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Just want to give a major apology for the lack of updates in regards to Modded MC. I've largely been focused on Elaztek for a while, and because of that I haven't had a ton of time to really sit down and work on Brink of Chaos' successor. Make no mistake - it is coming, and I plan to shift gears and focus on it before returning to working on Elaztek. I can't guarantee when it'll happen of course - because things never quite go to plan - but I just want to acknowledge that we haven't just canned the idea of modded MC. I've just been fairly busy with a bit too much on my plate as of late.

 

What I will say is don't expect it to be super soon. 1.16 is just around the corner (June 23rd), and it likely won't be too long after that Spigot and Paper update. I plan to work on modded a bit before that happens, but once it does I will be focusing primarily on 1.16. On top of that, I've got other adult life things to work on before I can do either of those, so I can't really give a proper time frame as to when everything will happen. Just hang in there - it's coming. I promise.

 

DonationStore

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So, something we mentioned a while ago was an overhaul to our donation store, using the creatively-named software called 'DonationStore'. Unlike our previous stores which used MinecraftMarket and later CraftingStore after MM shut down, this store is entirely self-hosted. How is that a good thing? Well, it means that at no point will we face something like what happened to MinecraftMarket.

 

What happened to them, you might ask?

 

Well, in Summer 2018, they just vanished - with seemingly no real information as to why. They appeared to be hacked by "XrtGroup", although some theorize that this wasn't even a hacker group - but instead was MM's owner trying to just up and leave with people's money (albeit with no real evidence to support that claim).

 

Fortunately this didn't result in any serious ramifications for users who donated to us (or other stores) as MM didn't store actual payment method information. What this did mean was that any configuration, packages, images, and payment history was gone - forever. Luckily, we've kept a list of all the donators available via /warp donator ingame which saved us from losing all payment information, but that list may not be complete. On top of that, any payment history from the old NuclearDistrict store (which I'd been given access to by @Baxman) was also gone for good. In other words, we had no way to see who donated to ND in the event someone from ND came back to CU and wanted a rank back. We also lost package information for our own store as well as ND's store - which is particularly painful for me since, as you guys know, I like to preserve history and archive things obsessively.

 

When that first went down, DonationStore was one of the candidates I looked at. Unfortunately, at the time the only one available was 1.0 which was reported to be fairly insecure and/or buggy. The 2.0 rewrite was well underway, however, but was still years from release. I moved to CraftingStore instead, but kept an eye on DonationStore's Discord.

 

For those who wish for a more in-depth explanation, you can check the announcement we posted upon first moving to CraftingStore here.

 

But, let's digress back to DonationStore.

 

At the start of 2020, DonationStore 2.0 finally launched publicly - and I was all over it. It took a bit to get the funds for it, but I bought a license back in Spring. However, shortly after that purchase I started to set up plans to get CU's services migrated to a dedicated server of my own, to take the burden off of Michael, and so I held off on doing all the configuration. By the time I finally got the chance to get it setup, a ton of updates had been released and I'd only gotten the cheapest upgrade duration - so I dropped another 16 bucks to get the new features (which looked quite nice to me personally) and got to work.

 

The major thing that's nice about a self-hosted store, besides the obvious protection against a 3rd-party site being able to shut down at a moment's notice, is that you have a lot more control over the site than you would otherwise. Granted, you can get almost all of these features by getting a premium plan with one of the existing platforms - but for a monthly fee only. DonationStore allows you to pay once and then never again. You do have to pay for additional feature updates, but then it's no worse than IP.Board (what we use for forums). If you don't care for the new features, you can pay once and never have to again. Your store doesn't get features retroactively locked down if you don't renew or anything like that.

 

Oh, and since it's selfhosted, we don't have to pay for something as basic as SSL - just fire up CertBot and it's good to go. So payments are now finally going through HTTPS - like they realistically should always be doing regardless. The new store is live at https://donate.chaoticunited.net.

 

The new design is a blend of the old MinecraftMarket store, the CraftingStore store, as well as bringing some elements from our own website/forums theme as well. It doesn't deviate heavily from the stock design - but if you ask me, it doesn't really need to. Along with the new design, we've also introduced a setting where you can choose where your donation goes - as mentioned in the apology topic I posted not too long ago. After adding an item to the cart, you'll be greeted with this screen:

 

Spoiler

 

Other than that, all the old payments have been imported from CraftingStore as well as all original packages. Something I plan to do here soon is introduce the massive list of disguises that are currently unavailable, as well as do some price-cutting on a lot of the disguises. While bringing these over, I noticed how ridiculously expensive a lot of these are - so expect an announcement somewhat soon announcing some price-cuts on most, if not all existing disguises (and the introduction of a whole ton of new ones).

 

If you find any issues with the store, be sure to let me know so I can go in and fix it!

 

Wrapping Up

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That's all I've got for now though, folks! Go hunt down that Durite! If you have any feedback regarding Durite (or anything, really) don't hesitate to let us know! Otherwise, enjoy your new toys!