haloman30

+ Added retirement notice to Brink of Chaos information page * Enabled snow effects on Forums and Website - Removed Killerteddy

Jobs. Employment. Work. I've had a long and bumpy road since 2018 as I've bounced around jobs. After graduating High School, I didn't really know where to start - nor did I really care at the time. I was just a dumb kid who was happy to be free of the nightmare of High School. I was so fed up with teachers, assignments, and needless bullshit that I didn't care what happened next - because in my mind, anything was better. And for the most part, I still hold that belief. However, unlike back then, I can somewhat understand where other people come from when they say they miss their High School days. After having worked some pretty awful jobs, I can imagine that I'd yearn for those younger days had I stuck with those jobs. I had this idea before graduating that I'd find some nice office job or something like that. Imagine my dismay when the only job I could get was at Walmart. Job 1: Walmart - Overnight Stocker Well, it wasn't that shocking as I'd taken a few months off, and I knew that without a college degree my options would be limited. But it certainly wasn't what I expected. While I was there, I was an Overnight Stocker, which as the name implies, had me stocking shelves during 3rd shift. I got an extra 50 cents an hour as a result of working 3rd shift, which had me earning $11.50 an hour. At the time, I had horrible shoes, no work ethic, and was generally in much worse shape than I am today. I'm not in great shape today, but back then I was in particularly rough shape. Not to mention those awful 20$ shoes that I mentioned before. After being on my feet for 30 minutes, it felt as though I was walking barefoot on the hard floors. I stuck through that for a couple months, but eventually lost the job due to calling in too much - the job was just too physically demanding for me, especially when I was tasked with stocking the Automotive section, where most of the items were large and heavy. It also didn't help that most everyone at the place seemed pretty miserable - you could tell they did not want to be there. And these weren't 20 year-olds either, most of these people were likely in their 40s or 50s. Not exactly old, but getting up there. Along with that, the one thing that kept me going was being able to listen to music on my phone, which at the time didn't want to cooperate very well and resulted in me getting yelled at (figuratively, not literally) once. It would routinely pause itself due to my failing earbuds and due to the convoluted way I had everything setup. I had to bring two phones, plus a cable and rechargeable battery pack just to keep something going throughout the 9 hour shift. YouTube also wouldn't play in the background, so the screen always had to be on. No wonder the solution sucked. After a couple months, I got out of there - expecting to move on to better prospects. Job 2: Recycling Center - Sorter From then until mid-2019, I remained unemployed. I eventually found a job at a recycling center paying $10.50 an hour. Not as much as Walmart, but close enough. By this point, I'd started to get in (slightly) better shape and learned that I had much better heat tolerance than I once thought - as well as largely got over my silly fear of people seeing me sweat a lot. I started going on walks periodically during the blazing summer heat - and it was pretty nice. The recycling center job originally appealed to me because it'd give me an extra opportunity to get a good sweat in (since it's a big warehouse, gonna be pretty warm in the summer months), as well as be something easy that I was physically capable of doing. I'd ruled out anything very physical after Walmart, so I figured this recycling center job would be a good fit. The job was a Sorter, and it also offered a consistent schedule, Monday to Friday. I kept that job the least of any job I've ever had - after one shift, I quit and never went back. Why you ask? As silly as it sounds, it was too filthy. It's obvious in retrospect, but at the time I thought that "recycling = clean", but no - the job was picking specific kinds of trash out of any kind of trash. It was simultaneously boring and stressful all at once. You had to have a relatively good attention span or else you'd miss your item and people further down would have to shove everything back down for you to grab it. Speaking of trash, the items that came down the belt (routinely apparently) include but were not limited to: dirty diapers, cat litter, old food, used condoms, vibrators, and so on. On top of that, every single thing on that belt was covered in some sort of dirt. I don't want to even imagine what it consisted of. That job was just filthy and isn't something I wanted any part of. Job 3: Schnucks - Bagger, Checker (Cashier) From that point until November 2019, I continued to be unemployed. I tried applying for more office jobs, to no avail. Most of them didn't even have that much in terms of qualifications, but I just wasn't qualified enough I suppose. Eventually, things started to get a little dire - so I had to shift back to retail. Eventually, Schnucks took me on as a Checker (which is what they call Cashiers) - sort of. Initially, they had me be a Bagger starting out, as they had a bunch of cashiers already, as they get some that come up for the holiday season. Come January, I could become a Checker properly. Until then, I'd be a Bagger - whose job was to, as the name implies, bag groceries. They also were set to grab shopping carts from the parking lot and bring them inside for an hour at a time, twice during their shift. I really didn't mind being a Bagger, and originally tried to stay as a Bagger - I was still pretty uncomfortable with socializing with people at this point. The manager pressed me a bit to go forward, and so I went ahead and did so. I stayed as a Checker from January until June 2020, when I finally left. Why did I leave this time? Two reasons: One, the pay was awful. Checkers make $9 an hour, and Baggers make $8. Along with that, the hours were pretty sparse and inconsistent, which is somewhat to be expected - but combined with the poor pay, this made the job barely capable of sustaining us. It was enough, but barely so. The other reason was just... I got tired of the job. I didn't hate the job as much as others, but I'd have rather been out there grabbing carts or whatever. I didn't want to deal with customers constantly or be on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of a fine or jailtime if I accidentally didn't card someone. That risk wasn't worth 9 dollars an hour for me, and neither was everything else about the job. The one redeeming quality of Schnucks was the atmosphere, although this may largely be a result of the general region more than the store being some great place. The staff were nice, although they brought in another manager who definitely made things worse. Which is a damn shame too, because she was the one who conducted orientation - and during that orientation, she was great. She wasn't an asshole by any means - but seemed a bit rougher than the others there. Job 4: USPS - PSE/Mail Processing Clerk After leaving Schnucks, I set out to try and rapidly find some kind of office work - which as usual, went nowhere. Eventually I repeated the process of trying for retail work again, attempting to get a job at Target and Best Buy - both of which gave me interviews, and neither of which actually hired me on. By October 2020, Eventually I landed something that I thought was close to an office job, a job at USPS. This job paid a hell of a lot better than anything else I've had - starting at $18.15 an hour. It took nearly a month after the original overview before orientation finally happened - and I stuck through this job for all of a week before abandoning it during a panic. So, what was so bad about this job? Well, let's start from the little things and work our way up. The time was in a strange 24-hour time format, that seems to be specific to USPS for some reason. Hours were 0-23, but minutes were out of 100. So, if I was set go in at 8:30 PM, the listed time on the schedule was 2050. Yeah, kind of a nitpick, but it also gets compounded by the fact that you only know the schedule a week in advance, if you're lucky. The schedule can actually change during the week, without warning - so you better keep checking it every day in case it suddenly changes. Taking a photo at the start of the week won't cut it here. The job itself is very physically AND mentally taxing. That "and" is important. If it were one or the other, it'd likely be tolerable. But this job was both. You had to be on top of everything, and you were essentially doing a workout the whole time. You're allowed to listen to your phone, but don't expect to be able to listen to it. You can't mentally tune out here, you gotta be on top of things. But even this wasn't the major issue. The major issue was one that I actually knew about before finally accepting the job, but made the mistake of taking the job anyways. Where most of the other jobs were 40 hours a week if I was lucky, this job has you working 6 days a week - and at LEAST for 8 hours, usually more like 10 or 12. On top of that, everybody works 12 hours the day of, before, and after major holidays. 12 hour shifts, back to back to back. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after. Now, for some people - that might not sound so bad overall. But for me? I'm trying to run a gaming community and build up a game development studio. I'm not looking to shut my life down for a job that I don't even like. The main reason I went through with the job was that I was distracted by the pay. I saw $18.15 an hour and didn't care about the rest - I had to get this job, it'd pull us out of poverty almost instantly. It wasn't until getting the job that I realized that this just wasn't for me. So, after a week, I quit. I wasn't gonna let myself get trapped here, I'm gonna find another job that will at the very least give me a better work/life balance and give me the chance to keep looking for other jobs if I want. The first job I applied to, the day before quitting? Job 5: Walmart - Cart Attendant I ended up coming full circle, ending the journey thus far where I began. I didn't apply to the same location, but to a different location - within eyeshot of the Schnucks I worked at before. Remember when I worked at Schnucks and I started out as a Bagger? The part of that job I really liked was being outside and pushing those carts around. I genuinely enjoyed it, despite it being in the middle of winter. I figured hey, maybe I can get that to be my entire job. That sounded like it'd be pretty nice. At the time, I didn't realize Walmart actually had a dedicated Cart Attendant position - I thought it was lumped in with the Janitorial positions. So, I applied to that position - and a few days after quitting USPS, got a call back. I asked how much Janitorial stuff I'd be doing, and was told that was the bulk of the job. I asked if there was a position that was purely cart pushing, at which point I found out that yes, there WAS a position for that. They didn't know if there was an opening, but they'd check into it. A few days later, I got a call back - and it started off with what seemed to be defeat. I was asked if I was interested in the Maintenance (Janitor) position, as they had someone else transfer in to be a Cart Attendant - to which I said not really, I was more looking to push carts around. After a bit of a pause, she said okay and that she'd see if she could bring someone else inside instead - and then I found myself with a job offer. Not too long after that, I was in Orientation, and pushing carts the next day. I had a bit of online stuff to do, but turns out - my old Pathways (Walmart's internal training videos and stuff) progress was retained, so I had much less to complete. All I had to do was the newer stuff introduced since 2018 and one section that was specifically for cart pushers. I got all of it done within one day, and then I got sent out to start pushing. The first couple weeks were a bit tough, but not too bad overall. I never felt sick in the same way I did back in 2018. Now, at the time of writing, I'm in week 3 - and I honestly kind of like the job. This is particularly mind-blowing to me, as after so much job hopping, I figured that I'd hate every job I had until the day I finally quit and did Elaztek Studios full-time. I accepted this as reality, somewhat influenced by seeing those around me stuck with jobs they despise, and also influenced by my own experience thus far. But even with the job being physical, I find myself adjusting quicker than I expected, and really enjoying it much more than anything else I've had before. You can listen to music/podcasts/whatever on your phone the whole time, which for me is now made much easier thanks to an app Jeffrey (FlipWhip on Discord) suggested that I use called YouTube Vanced, which enables most Premium features for free - namely, background video playback. No more having to keep the screen on the whole time. I use that combined with Battery Saver and the phone easily lasts the full 9 hour shift (8 hours plus a 1 hour lunch). Since the job is all physical and no mental, I can largely focus in on what's in my ear, and my body can just do the job mostly on autopilot. And you know what? I don't even mind the job itself either. It's exercise for sure, but I could use some - and I'm able to even tolerate the colder weather pretty well. It also has that one thing I was looking for in that recycling center job as well, a job that will give me a good sweat in the summer months. Hell, it's managed to get me to sweat even when its 40 degrees outside. I can't help but be both curious and kind of excited to see how drenched I end up being in the warmer months. I'll probably be pretty anxious for the first few days of that - particularly when it comes to interacting with customers and/or managers, and especially the idea of my dad seeing me that sweaty. But honestly? I kind of like the idea of clocking out dripping wet with sweat on a daily basis. Considering how great those hour long walks in 100 degree weather feel, I can only imagine how fucking amazing I'd feel after pushing carts for 8 hours in that kind of weather - and how insanely I'll drench myself with sweat. Maybe I'll be able to wring my shirt out after a couple hours - who knows. I just find myself honestly looking forward to those hot months with honest, pure, genuine excitement. Which, coming back to the central theme with this job, is fucking insane. I'm looking forward to a job. I didn't think that would ever happen until the days of Elaztek. And honestly, I think that this job is a better fit for me than even generic office work. Would I be happier working in an office, doing paperwork and all that other stuff? If you asked me a few months ago, I'd have said "Well yeah, of course". But now? I'm not so sure. I'm not gonna be able to listen to whatever music or podcasts during office work. I wouldn't get any exercise from sitting in an office all day. I wouldn't ever get a single bead of sweat to drip off me from organizing schedules. And I sure as hell wouldn't enjoy doing much of that when it's not in the context of my own company. I honestly believe that I've found something special with this job, that I've finally found the job I can finally hunker down and stick with for a number of years. It's not what I expected, but I don't find myself dreading the workday like I have with every other job. I find myself looking forward to it, which is something I didn't expect to find for another decade. I don't know why I feel compelled to share this in a long form blog post like this, but I'm just... excited. I'm excited that I've actually found something that pays decent enough and that I've found a job that I actually enjoy, without having to go into deep debt in college or bust my ass for a decade just to bring into fruition. Don't get me wrong, this isn't my career - my end goal is for Elaztek Studios to be my job. And this job I feel is best suited to allow me to both reach that goal sooner (due to having a better work/life balance), as well as enjoy my life between now and then.

* Updated CUBungee to 1.1.2 * CUEmotes is now a feature of CUBungee rather than being created using MyCommand * Restored formatting of /me emote - it is now handled by CUBungee as an emote rather than VentureChat * Welcome, join, switch, and leave messages are now handled by CUBungee * Welcome, join, switch, and leave messages now use new Blue color - Removed old /cubungee MyCommand command - Removed old /alert MyCommand command - Removed old /emotes, /emotes2, /emotes3, and /emotes4 emote list MyCommand commands - Removed all old CUEmotes MyCommand commands - Removed the following emotes: /arg1, /arg2, /arg3 - Removed plugin from BungeeCord: BungeeSwitchAlert - Removed Killerteddy

Hey, everyone! Just within the past day, we've taken the first step on migrating CU's server to a BungeeCord setup. There's a lot of technical talk about that in here, what it will entail, and how our plan has changed from the original goal. Additionally, we've got some details on my break as well as the current status of my job. If any of that interests you, keep on reading. My Break As most of you also know, I took a fairly long break from working on CU stuff due to some drama and other nonsense that transpired towards the end of summer. Those events, combined with me already growing stressed and tired due to the seemingly insurmountable pile of bugs, as well as a desire to go back to working on Blamite, led me to finally retreat into Elaztek. Unfortunately, it seems that while I was gone, player counts have begun to drop back down again. They haven't plummeted to 0, but they've gotten uncomfortably close. Granted, I don't think this is entirely my fault, but there's no doubt that my departure contributed to this. Now, for those of you who have been around for years, you likely have seen me do similar things before - and me taking a few months off here and there tends to be somewhat ordinary at this point. However, there's a lot of new faces around this year - and to them, the thought of me taking multiple months off seems absurd. I want to try and explain my thought process on this. Let me start by saying that yes, I am well aware that these breaks are not ideal. Ideally, I'd have things set up in such a way that, when I feel the need to take these breaks, the server doesn't have to come to a grinding halt. I know this - but I don't know of any way to solve it in the immediate future. My primary reason for taking these breaks is to avoid the same trap that the staff of old CU and ND fell into. People like Alex, Nik, Kendev, ntx2, and many more all devoted everything to CU for a few years. Whether they loved it or hated it, they gave it their all pretty much nonstop for years. But after those few years, they were done - and they never came back. The only significant figure of old CU/ND staff who's really still around is Nuke (aka, Atomicbeast101) - but even he isn't exactly considered active. He's still largely moved on with his life - only coming in when he feels the urge to do so, or if his advice in particular is being sought after. But everyone else? They're pretty much gone. The most I've seen from the others is a single drop-in after a few years, followed by departure. I don't mean to say it's a bad thing per se. People move on with their lives - that's a given. But me? I genuinely don't see myself ever truly wanting to leave. Maybe I'll change my mind someday, but I easily see myself still doing something here in another 10 years. What I fear is going too hard too fast and burning myself out - to such a point where I too want to wash my hands of CU and move on with my life. I don't want to do that. I never want to do that. While I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would love to keep CU going, and even people who may do it better than I did - I don't know of anyone who would be willing to commit to it this long term. I've been doing this more or less consistently since 2014. I've taken breaks during that time, yes - but I'm still here. I still do my best to ensure the continued growth and survival of Chaotic United. I may not be the best when it comes to carrying this torch, but I sure as hell won't ever let go of it. I don't know if anyone else out there would be willing to do something for 6 years - all while seeing such limited success. I'd imagine most people would call it quits a year in if their server only brought in 4-5 people. But even if someone else out there could and would do what I do - I love this community. As small as it may be, Chaotic United has been a part of my life for nearly half of it. I first joined in January 2012, and almost 9 years later I'm still here, still playing on CU. I don't want to let it go, and I don't want to burn myself out to such a degree where I can't bring myself to even touch it again. And this isn't just me either - the advice "remember, this isn't a job" has been given to me pretty regularly since I began, often from those same people who have since moved on from it. And it's that approach that leads to these extended breaks. I haven't, and likely never will treat CU as a job. When it begins to feel like one, I know that means it's time to step away for a little while. Ideally, I'd have things in place so that when those times come, it doesn't inevitably lead to the server suffering. This is a problem that likely won't go away anytime soon - but one that I eventually hope to nail down and resolve. But it's something that can only happen with time. If you're upset at that fact, I'm sorry. I understand if some of you are irritated that I don't commit 150% into CU like those who came before me - but I try to look at it from the broader scheme of things. Is it better if I burn myself out and end up deciding to close CU after a year or two of that? Or is it better if, while I may take long breaks here and there, I am able to stick around and keep pushing forward for potentially another decade, if not more? I lean towards the latter, but hey - that's just me. The good news is that this topic also marks the formal conclusion to my previous break. I am officially back to working on CU stuff again. I've got a lot of stuff planned (as always), and for those who read my previous announcement, this may come as quite a surprise. What happened to that job where I was working 60 hours a week? Well... My New Job 2.0 If you're active on Discord, you likely have heard the news. I quit USPS after just a week. Yeah, I know. It's kind of pathetic, but not without justification. The job at USPS was not only physically demanding, but also mentally taxing as well. In addition to effectively lifting weights for 8 hours a day (at least), you also had to keep your mind on about 8 things at once. That detail, combined with something I should've known from the very beginning, led to me taking a rapid exit before things got too crazy. What was that other thing I should've known? The fact that I am not willing to work 48-60+ hours a week. I imagine that for many people out there who don't have a ton of other stuff going on in their lives, they can afford to devote hours upon hours to work. But me? I've got enough on my plate to stay busy without any job at all - so in retrospect, accepting a job that would demand more than 40 hours a week was a fairly dumb decision on my part. So, if I knew that going in, why did I go through with it? Why accept it only to quit after a week? Two reasons: One, I had the idea that as a PSE, aka a Mail Processing Clerk, that the job would be largely non-physical. Maybe it's just me, but when I think of the term "clerk", I think of an office clerk or something similar to that. I don't imagine lifting these heavy things nonstop for 8-12 hours a day. I expected that I'd be doing occasional lifting, with the bulk of the job being standing or sitting somewhere, sorting letters into slots. What's worse is that I didn't have anything to go against that until my 4th day at the job. The first two days were orientation, the third was supposed to be training but we ended up being shoved into doing work for a whole different position, and the 4th day was the first day doing our actual training. The second reason was largely more to do with it - the pay. I would be making $18.15/hr, and that detail alone had me distracted and justifying anything else to myself and to those around me. I was so fixated on that hourly rate that I forgot my own personal beliefs and values. I've always been of the mindset that time is infinitely more valuable than money. I'd rather make enough to get by and be able to enjoy my time out of work, rather than dedicate 20-30 years of my life to work and do little else. I want to enjoy my youth as best as I can, I don't want to wait until my body is falling apart after decades of abuse to finally enjoy myself. But fear not - for I've already landed a new job: I'll be a cart attendant at Walmart. Yes, I'm going back to Walmart ladies and gentlemen. And yes, this will still be a very physical job - but the difference is that it will only be physical. Mentally, I can essentially tune out aside from ensuring I don't get run over or shove a bunch of carts into a vehicle. Along with that, you're largely left alone as long as you're doing your job well. It doesn't pay as great as USPS, but it starts at $11/hr, which is fairly decent all things considered - and assuming my hours are decent, will still leave me doing pretty okay once things stabilize. Not only that, but I'll have a much better work/life balance that I wouldn't have had at USPS. Most of all, however, the job itself is something that I not only have experience with, but is something that I could honestly see myself growing to enjoy. I did it for an hour at a time twice a day back at Schnucks, and out of everything I did there - I enjoyed pushing carts the most. I liked the freedom and peace you had when you were out there just left alone. And that was during the winter, too - the weather I enjoy being out in the least. For those unaware, I'm a bit weird in the sense that I really like being in hot weather. I've routinely gone on walks in over 100 degree heat, and while I finish those hour long walks drenched in sweat, I always felt good during and after them. I don't know why, but for me - sweating genuinely feels good. Maybe it's just the feeling of accomplishment from having done something to make me sweat rather than the sweat itself - who knows. I enjoy the heat, sun, and rain - and I can tolerate cold and snow. All of that combined makes me think that, after the initial adjustment phase of getting used to being on my feet that many hours a day, I'll actually like the job. I find myself honestly looking forward to that first day pushing carts in the heat - as weird as that sounds. The point of all of this is that I've switched jobs, and with this job, I'll still have time to dedicate to CU and/or Elaztek. In other words, everything in that previous topic about me not being around to do stuff? Forget about it - that's all null and void as of now. But enough job talk - let's get technical and talk about this renewed plan for BungeeCord! BungeeCord In the past, I've been both gung-ho and also extremely hesitant to start jumping ship to BungeeCord. I always knew in the back of my head that it'd become a requirement for continued feature and player growth, but for a while I figured we'd be fine up to 60 or more players. However, there were a couple brief times earlier this year where we hit 15 players - and the TPS dropped from 20 to 17. TPS, aka Ticks Per Second, is used to measure how fast or slow the server is running. Minecraft natively runs at 20 ticks per second, so 19-20 TPS is considered perfect. 17 is playable, but lag is noticeable. 15 and below starts to become very frustrating, and anything below 10 is usually considered unplayable by most. You may recall some of the issues with BungeeCord - namely that things begin to feel more sparse and separated. Things that people take for granted just don't work between servers, so for me that was a deal-breaker. Not only that, but getting those features introduced would take months... so why is BungeeCord already here? Well, upon reflection, I've decided to adjust how these changes will come into the server. The original plan was to get everything accounted for, then split off all the gamemodes at once and shove the entire transformed server out at once. I think that grouping everything into this umbrella made me feel more hesitant to start to tackle it, due to just how much work was attached to this - which in turn sapped my motivation to even do it. This is what led me to shelf it repeatedly. The new plan is to, instead, introduce these changes gradually over time. As of today - Chat, Ranks, Announcements, WorldEdit schematics, and the tab menu are cross-server. As time goes on, things like Mail, Player-to-Player Teleportation, Warps, and CUEmotes will become cross-server as well. These will be developed and rolled out as time goes on. Once these core features are made to work between servers, gamemodes will be broken away from the main server, until eventually every gamemode has been sectioned off into its own server. Make no mistake - this will all take a while still. However, doing it as a gradual rollout means that you'll see these changes gradually come into effect, and it means that new gamemodes (like Semi-Vanilla) will be available sooner, rather than having them held back until the surrounding components are ready. As of now, there are three servers available, currently accessible using /server: Hub/Waiting Room (hub) This server will act as a fallback in the event that one of the other servers is restarted or crashes. At the moment, restarts will unfortunately still kick users outright, but at some point we plan to get this solved. Here, you'll find a modified version of the hub that we used when we were merged with Nuclear District, and they still had their own server. It's kind of been a tradition that every time we've had BungeeCord setup that we end up bringing this old hub back - so why should this be any different? Semi-Vanilla (sv) Once everything is ready, this is where you'll go to play Semi-Vanilla. Much like when we had it before, it's server name is simply sv. It will be largely comparable to the original Semi-Vanilla server - no advantageous perks for donating, no crazy custom items, just a vanilla survival experience with economy and grief protection. You know - the basics. The only significant change is that unlike before, you'll still have your same rank on this server - as ranks are synchronized between servers. You'll have the basic cosmetic perks (like /me, chat colors, etc), but all of the real perks will remain locked to Survival. As of right now, you won't be able to do anything here. We've still got some work to do before Semi-Vanilla is ready. When that day comes, expect an announcement all about that. Main Server (cu) This is the main server, and it's largely unchanged from before. As of right now, all the gamemodes are currently within this server. Over time, however, gamemodes will be broken off into their own separate servers - at which point this server will likely act as a true hub server, and might contain some of the other miscellaneous stuff (such as builder world for instance). Also in keeping with tradition, the server name was kept as cu - since back when we were merged with Nuclear District, this was the name that our server got. This is one of those other things that has largely remained unchanged every time we've messed with BungeeCord before. Other Changes A few other smaller changes have been made that are notable, but don't really warrant a full section of their own. So, let's go through them here. Branding First off, you'll likely notice that some branding has been updated within MC. Since 2013, CU has rocked a Cyan and White color scheme within in-game messages. Outside of this, however, we've mostly stuck to a regular blue color. As of 1.16, Minecraft now supports hexadecimal color codes. What this means is that we are no longer limited to the 16 colors available, but that we can now use any color we could possibly want - including the exact shade of Blue that we use on CU's forums. After holding a poll, the overwhelming majority of the community voted to use this Blue color instead of Cyan - so you'll start seeing more and more Blue instead of Cyan. This won't be a universal change starting out, as some plugins don't yet support these color codes. Along with that, all of our custom plugins have the CU branding hard-coded in, and many of them will keep their existing Cyan branding for the time being. As time goes on (most likely when each of these plugins receives an unrelated update), the branding will be changed to the new Blue color scheme. Dynmap Since dynmap doesn't have any native support for BungeeCord either, we have to have separate dynmap instances for each server which uses it. In order to ensure the livemap continues to be easy to use, you'll now see a navigation bar when viewing the map on Desktop, which lets you switch between the different dynmap pages for each server, as well as return to the Forums or Homepage. Right now, the only options are the Main server and Semi-Vanilla, but this will expand as gamemodes get broken off into separate servers. Announcement Plugin Port Since 2014, we've been using the same Announcement plugin that I found on BukkitDev one day. It hasn't been maintained past 1.8, so I've been keeping it updated myself since then. Since it's such a simple plugin, I tried to see if it was possible to port the entire plugin to BungeeCord - that way, announcements would display cross-server (and that way the same message would be broadcast). Turns out, yes! With the only major changes being how configuration files are written/read, the old plugin never did anything that depended on Bukkit APIs that didn't also have an equivalent in BungeeCord (since it was just chat). This doesn't mean a whole lot to you guys, but I thought it was neat that this old Bukkit plugin was able to be completely ported to an entirely different API. Redesigned Tab Menu Since our old tab menu plugin lacked BungeeCord support, we needed to find a new plugin. And boy, did we find one. This new tab menu is everything I wanted the tab menu to be back in the day. Have a look for yourself: Old Menu New Menu The old animations were easy to migrate over, it has support for the new hex colors, and you can do a lot more with it than you could with the old plugin. Not only does it group players depending on what server they're in, but a few useful stats will always show at the top and bottom of the list. Additionally, you'll notice that usernames display differently as well. Each username will display in a different color depending on what rank they are - a feature that has been absent since Nuclear District's original MC server in 2014. Along with that, staff members will have a gold star (yes i know it looks like a snowflake, its an 8-spoke star) next to their name, and AFK users will have a gray hourglass next to their name. They're small additions, but ones that I think are pretty neat. Contextual Information in Chat Try hovering over a player's rank prefix or username in chat - you'll find something new! If you hover over someone's username, you'll see a few stats (as of their message) and you can click their name to start sending a message. If you hover over their rank prefix, you can get some information about that rank - be it what they do, or how to earn it. User Tooltip Rank Tooltip Wrapping Up Whew - another nice and lengthy announcement update in the bag! A few other minor changes were made here and there, but if you're interested in those you'll need to check the full changelog. Otherwise, that's all we've got for now. Hopefully, we'll have another one of these coming sooner rather than later.

MC Server: + Implemented BungeeCord + Added server: hub + Added server: sv + Added plugin: VentureChat + Added plugin: BungeeTabListPlus (BungeeCord) + Added plugin: PlaceholderAPI + Added plugin: BungeePerms (BungeeCord) + Added plugin: ServerUtils (BungeeCord) + Added navigation bar to dynmap webpage * Updated CUPackage to 1.2.4 * Updated Announcement to 1.0.8 * Updated NuVotifier to 2.7.1 * Updated Autorank from 3.8 to 4.4 * Reconfigured Autorank to use MySQL instead of flatfiles in order to track time cross-server * Ported Announcement from Bukkit to BungeeCord * Start rebranding in-game CU prefixes from Cyan (&3) to the custom blue color used on forums * Minigame permissions are now only granted in the Minigames world * Survival economy permissions are now only granted in Survival worlds * SkyBlock permissions are now only granted in SkyBlock worlds * PermissionsEx group/user data is now shared between servers * Chat is now cross-server * Redesigned tab menu * Changed page title for dynmap webpage, now displays as "Chaotic United Livemap" followed by the server name instead of the server MOTD * Increased maximum MySQL connection limit to accommodate multiple servers and increased database usage * Fixed world spawn for Hub world still being set at the Halloween 2020 hub - Removed Killerteddy Website: + Added Ruin Community to Partners page - Removed Killerteddy

+ Added new banners for Elaztek and NARA on Partners page - Removed Killerteddy

Special thanks to @GuitarXpress for updating Tennis and MagicStuff! * Updated Tennis for 1.16.4 * Updated MagicStuff for 1.16.4 - Removed Killerteddy

+ Added emoji: + Added emoji: + Added emoji: + Added emoji: + Added emoji: + Added archives of older webs.com sites related to CU as webs.com is shutting down soon - Removed Killerteddy

Howdy, folks! As of writing, the MC server has just been updated to 1.16.4, and with it - a few features are temporarily unavailable (but with others returning). Unfortunately, I gotta be real - this post likely won't be a very positive one - but I don't think it'll exactly be doom and gloom, either. Server Updates/Changes Unfortunately, several custom plugins that were made by GuitarXpress (MagicStuff, Tennis, and Soccer/Football) have broken with the update. This was happening with past updates already, but unfortunately he isn't around to update them. I do have the source code, however when I tried to compile myself I ran into some pretty tough build issues, that may or may not be a result of the plugin's code - I haven't had time to check yet. And unfortunately, I don't know when I'll have that time - but that's for later. Also unfortunately, the server will, for the time being, not support cracked players. This has nothing to do with any actual desire to leave cracked support behind, as I feel it's integral to CU's MC server, in at least some capacity. The issue is that FastLogin - the plugin we use to ensure premium players (those who actually own MC) don't have to run /login and /register commands. That plugin finally broke with this update (of all updates) and we're stuck waiting for an update to be available. As to when that'll be, I don't know. There hasn't been one for a very long time unfortunately. As soon as an update is available (or a suitable alternative is found), then you can expect Cracked support to return sometime not too long after. I have been informed that dev builds of FastLogin exist, and as such cracked support is back. But before I get into the real bad news (kind of), one good thing did happen - Dynmap is back online! It's been down for a while (due to waiting on an update), but turns out there's an updated version for 1.16.4! Yep, that's all the purely positive news I've got. There ARE good parts about the following subject, so don't feel gloomy just yet. My New Job If you've kept up on Discord, you've probably heard that I've recently started a new job at USPS. This job has some benefits - and some downsides. The upside is, above all else, the pay. I'll be working as a Processing Clerk (or PSE as they call it), which starts at a whopping 18.15$ an hour. The downside? Until you become a regular employee (as in, you're considered there for a career), you get very little in terms of a consistent schedule - and you have long hours. From what I've been told, I'll likely be working between 40 and 60 hours a week. Along with this, the days around holidays (the day before, day of, and day after) will usually see me working 12 hour shifts each of those days. The real kicker is that, for PSE's, the typical time to become a career employee is between 1 and 2 years. The nice thing is, this will pretty much instantly pull me out of poverty and leave me sitting pretty. The downside is that I'll be spending a lot of time working. Ideally, I'd be working a more balanced job - you know, 40 hours a week. And the good thing is that once you get career, that overtime becomes entirely optional. So after those couple years, I'll have that balanced job and will likely be making more than 18.15 an hour. Unfortunately, this means that my ability to commit to any new features or major additions to CU is going completely out the window. My ability to fix bugs quickly will be extremely limited. The plans for semi-vanilla and BungeeCord will likely not be happening anywhere remotely soon. Even assuming I had all the time in the world, doing BungeeCord alone would be months of work. With this job demanding these kinds of hours of me, there's no way in hell that's gonna get done anytime soon. I'd like to do it at some point, but as things stand currently - it's gonna be a while. The upshot is that there will never be anything resembling a financial concern with the server anymore. There will be more than enough money to cover all the bills many times over. Even if not much is happening during these next couple of years, the server will not be going away. I'll still make sure to find time to keep the server up-to-date and do general maintenance like that, but I simply won't be capable of committing to any sort of time frame for any new features. Even seemingly simple features would take hours upon hours to code, test, implement, and bugfix. Hours that, for the time being, I won't have. Now, does this mean that I won't have any time at all? No. I'm guaranteed at least one day off a week, and depending on how schedules line up, I'll likely have days here and there where I've got a fair chunk of ample time between work shifts. But this amount of time is going to be significantly limited compared to my previous job at Schnucks (which was usually 20-32 hours a week). Now, you may be wondering - if the hours are this rough, why don't I find a different job? After all, I've talked a fair bit about how I value time over money. Well, I do - and I still hold those beliefs. But currently, I'm in a rough spot. I'll be honest - had I not landed this job, there's a very high likelihood that I would've had to shut down the MC server, potentially for months. Finances are tight, and even with this high of pay, it's going to take 2-3 paychecks before we're fully dug out of this hole. That being said, if it turns out that my time is limited to such an extent where I feel that I'm unable to even have a life outside of work - and assuming that no amount of time management skills can remedy it - I may potentially look for other jobs. But I can't repeat what I've done in the past. I can't leave this job before finding another. Things are just too tight. And even then - I'll be making just over 18 bucks an hour. That's nothing to scoff at. That wage is higher than my dad or grandpa ever had during their lives. And I'm getting that at the age of 21, where my life has just started. Even if it sucks a bit and time is sparse, this may end up being a case where I decide I want to power through for the year or two before I reach career - because it's smooth sailing after that. Consistent, unchanging hours, balanced hours (no overtime if you don't want it), and damn good pay and benefits. As much as I don't want to basically take two years off - especially as we approach Chaotic United's 10 year anniversary - by getting this job, I am able to at least guarantee that CU actually lives to see that day. So, to recap. You'll likely still see me in Discord text chat fairly consistently - although I won't be always available like I was before. I'll be on there for at least a little bit every day, though. I don't know how often I'll be in voice chat, but it likely won't be very often. I'll try to make sure to do so at least somewhat consistently - if only for my own sanity. You likely won't see me on MC much at all for a while, and you likely won't see any major features come in anytime soon. Bugfixes also won't be as common, though I'll try and make it a priority to fix particularly serious ones (as in, real game-breaking bugs - not just minor inconveniences). I'll do my best to ensure the server is updated to newer MC versions as they come out. And, of course, once I get the funds (which should likely be within just a single paycheck), I'll be buying a new router (and possibly a modem) in order to fix the constant error 522 issues the website has had since we've migrated. Unfortunately, that's all I can guarantee. If I get an urge to work on something during some of my free time, then you may see fixes/features in that scenario - but don't count on it. However - since I'll have more than an excess of funds, this may allow for some new things that weren't possible before. Things that don't require me to be directly involved, but can still help keep things interesting. Some ideas include giveaways with proper cash (digital only tho) prizes, paid advertising, or potentially paying someone to help out in some areas. Don't count on that last one as it's a pretty remote idea, and something I don't know that I'm wholly comfortable with anyways - but the other two? Only time will tell. With all this going on, I only have one request - as tall of one as it may be. Keep playing. Keep voting. If you want to see CU continue to succeed and not dwindle to the starting line over this potentially very long period of time, the best thing you can do is play and vote. I'm confident that there's enough features on MC for people to have a decent time - even if there may not be much added for a while. If you have friends who play MC, invite them in. If you know people who used to play but have stopped, try and get them back in. But most of all, vote and keep playing. My worst fear with taking the break I mentioned before, and with taking on a job with such demanding hours is coming back afterwards to find that, when I get out of that situation, I come back to find that all I've worked to build has faded. That the people I've met and the community we've built might not be there when I'm able to finally make a formal return to consistently working on CU again. If you can't be on MC, please - keep in touch on our Discord server. That's where myself and many others have been, and will continue to be for a while yet. If you want to stay in touch but can't find time to play MC (or just find yourself bored of it), being active on our Discord is the next best thing you can do (and might even be better in some ways, to be honest). This job is a massive opportunity, and one that I desperately don't want to have to abandon. One that will result in not only a brighter future for myself - but for CU as well. We've been heavily limited in what we can do due to finances since the start. Limited funds to pay for servers, and for any money beyond that? Ha - forget it. Not a chance. But this job can change that. The pure resources made available from this job has the potential to do more for CU than any amount of time ever could. So, as said before - my one request is that you guys help me out by making sure that, when the day comes, I can make a formal return to working on CU - and have all you guys still there to celebrate with me.

+ Dynmap is back online * Updated server to MC 1.16.4 * Updated plugin: Dynmap (3.1-beta5) * Updated plugin: WorldEdit (7.2.0) * Updated plugin: WorldGuard (7.0.4) * Updated plugin: Holographic Displays (2.4.5) * Updated plugin: GeyserMC (#474) * Updated plugin: Citizens (2.0.27-b2166) * Updated plugin: VivecraftSpigotExtensions (1.16.4r1) - Temporarily disabled plugin: AuthMe - Temporarily disabled plugin: FastLogin - Cracked support has been temporarily removed as FastLogin is not currently up-to-date. Cracked support will return as soon as possible. - MagicStuff, Football, and Tennis are temporarily unavailable as they broke with 1.16.4. They will return as soon as an update is possible. - Removed Killerteddy

+ Added Halloween 2020 Hub to /warp archive * Set main hub back to non-Halloween version * Fixed rank colors from Discord all displaying as gray in MC - Removed Killerteddy

Accepted! Thank you for applying, you've been accepted! Enjoy your time here at Chaotic United! For a list of the perks you get for registering, check out this page. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask! Also, please make sure you've read the rules found here and you can vote for us here. Notes:

+ Added plugin: GeyserMC * Made some minor adjustments to MobArena map: Ruin - Removed Killerteddy

Update I've decided against having the poll, because upon further consideration, having cracked support on Bedrock doesn't really help anyone. By keeping it, we lock away the potential for our existing players to utilize it as a means of cross-play between devices/platforms. In terms of bringing in new Bedrock players, very few - if any - are likely to stick around if they have to do /login and /register commands - especially when Bedrock doesn't even really have cracked outside of Pocket Edition/mobile devices. As part of that too, there aren't many cracked Bedrock players to be brought in, anyways. So, should you opt to join the server on Bedrock, you'll be prompted for your Java Edition credentials. These credentials never get to us, they go straight to Mojang to authenticate your session and that's it. If you happen to be worried about it - the plugin used to do so (GeyserMC) is open source, so feel free to dig into it if you like. If you happen to feel really strongly that we should in fact maintain cracked support for Bedrock clients, feel free to try and make a case on Discord or reply to this topic. If there's a really good reason I haven't thought of, I am willing to potentially re-open the poll. Otherwise, don't worry about that poll anymore. :^)

Howdy, folks! This likely won't mean much to most of you - but for those of you who primarily play on the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, listen up! GeyserMC As of now, we are gonna be testing out a plugin called GeyserMC. What does it do, exactly? Why, it means that you can connect to the main MC server on Bedrock Edition. That's right, if your preferred version of Bedrock Edition MC supports custom servers (ie, Windows 10 or Mobile, not sure about Xbox/other platforms), you'll be able to hop on and play on the main MC server in its entirety - every minigame, rank, donation perk, you name it... mostly. We'll get to that. We've done experiments with Bedrock Edition in the past, and they've usually not gone anywhere - as most all of them have involved using an entirely separate server specifically for Bedrock. Granted, Bedrock servers do have some pretty unique capabilities that aren't nearly as common (or in some cases, may not even be possible) on Java servers. However, those features usually tend to be pretty minor and, at the end of the day, we haven't really seen much justification for having an entirely separate Bedrock server that's just the same as the main server, but isolated to a separate platform. With GeyserMC, we no longer have to make that decision. It acts as a middleman/proxy between our main MC server and Bedrock clients. What does this mean for you, the player? It means that starting right now, you'll be able to hop on MC - the same server that most everyone else plays on, with all its features - on any version of Bedrock that supports custom servers. Windows 10 and Mobile both do, though I'm not certain if other versions do. If the other Bedrock versions let you type in an IP address (and both your game client and the GeyserMC plugin are up-to-date), then you'll be able to hop right in. Most things work as expected, not much to really talk about since, well, it's the main MC server. However, there are a few somewhat significant issues that will detract from the experience somewhat. Not enough to make it unplayable, but still ones worth mentioning. The Issues GeyserMC is still undergoing development, and isn't actually advised to be used in production at this time. However, it's far enough along in development to be fairly playable. The current features that don't work correctly as of writing include (but are probably not limited to): Several inventories/GUI screens Enchantment Table (as a proper GUI) Beacon Cartography Table Stonecutter Structure Block Horse Inventory Loom Smithing Table Several entity flags Invisible item frames used throughout the server instead display as regular item frames Player heads don't work Probably some other weird issues here and there But currently... that's it. In terms of basic Minecraft functionality, that's not a long list. Compare that to something similar that I was following called DragonProxy, where all you could do was login and chat - no world, no chunks, nothing. We've certainly come a great distance since then. Unfortunately, after some minor testing, there are a couple other things that are exclusive to CU that won't work on Bedrock. Not many, but again - still worth mentioning. Custom textures/models for Durite, Magic, and any other custom texture/item will not display - The vanilla texture of the real item is used instead. Bedrock Edition currently doesn't have any support for custom items, and technically neither does Java. The custom textures are made possible with Optifine - and since Bedrock isn't exactly moddable, there is no Optifine for Bedrock. Bedrock players are currently treated as cracked users - Due to how authentication works, Bedrock players are treated as cracked players on the server. There is a workaround for this, but doing so makes it mandatory to own Java edition. This is likely fine for many of you who probably have Java Edition already, but doing this could hamper our ability to gain any new players who play on Bedrock Edition exclusively. That being said, I'm also not entirely concerned with getting a bunch of Bedrock-only users on CU - so I've attached a poll to this topic and to the Discord announcement. There may still be some false anti-cheat detections - During my (brief) testing, the main trigger I saw continue to get flagged was for Speed, which I proceeded to increase the block limit of. It still notifies staff, so we're still able to see any potential hackers using it, but it should be much more forgiving for Bedrock players now. However, it's still possible that some checks occasionally get hit. If you get one that is easily reproduced, let one of our staff know so we can try and see if that can be fixed. The real downside to these issues is that they're largely out of our control. The issues that remain have to do with GeyserMC itself, or are simply limitations that are unavoidable due to the differences between Java and Bedrock editions of Minecraft. Even so, what I've listed is pretty much it - and while some of them do certainly detract from the experience, you're still able to have fun and enjoy the server in almost its full capacity - which is pretty incredible when you consider how different the two editions of the game are on a technical level. Plus, it means that for people who aren't home and want to play on CU, people who have weaker computers that might struggle with Java but can handle Bedrock, and maybe even at some point players on consoles - they can join in on whatever things are going on with our MC server without having to be a second-class citizen on an entirely isolated server from the rest of us. And hey, that's pretty cool. Hey, what about that break of yours? I'll wrap things up with a status update on my break. As some of you may (or may not) have noticed, I've technically been taking a break for a couple weeks now. Unfortunately, I'm not officially coming out of that break just yet. Originally, I took the break due to some of the recurring drama, as well as stress from what felt like a constant piling on of bugs. But I'll be honest - at this point, neither of those are much of a factor anymore. The vast majority of the bugs that exist currently aren't game-breaking. All the gamemodes work to basically their fullest extent, and there's plenty of stuff for players to do. Along with that, pretty much every source of anxiety from back when I started the break has been tied up and resolved. At the moment, there's two main reasons I'm still on my break. Focusing on finding employment - If I'm unable to find a job soon, then bills won't be able to be paid anymore. That obviously cannot happen. There isn't much use in me working on the server now if I risk being unable to cover the bills in a month... or worse. Focusing on Elaztek Studios and the Blamite Game Engine - As some of you are now aware of, Chaotic United isn't my only project. The other primary project I focus on is Elaztek Studios - something I have much higher ambitions for than CU. Whereas Chaotic United is more of a hobby project of sorts, a community I tend to and care for during free time, Elaztek is something I hope to someday turn into my career. I don't really see CU as ever being something I do as a job - and to be honest, I like it better that way. Elaztek, however, is something that has the eventual end goal of being my own independent game development studio. The first step in that plan? Build a game engine from the ground up - Blamite. Over the past few months, I've neglected Elaztek and Blamite entirely - and that's something I really need to stop doing if I ever want Elaztek to succeed. As such, I'm going to continue spending a bit of time working on Blamite, or other things for Elaztek in general. I can't say for how long as of yet - but what I do know is that when I shift my focus back to CU, I've got a lot of stuff planned. The good news is that I definitely won't be withdrawing from the community, which is why for some of you - you may not have even noticed I ever took a break at all. I've been just as active in Discord as before - and that won't be changing. Well, I'd say that wraps it up pretty well. Put a bow on it and send it out! Remember to vote in the poll in regards to Bedrock Edition authentication! Otherwise, see you boys and girls in the next one.

+ Added new image URL for og:image meta tag (used in Discord rich embeds) - Removed emoji from Discord and forums: (windwaifu) - Removed emoji from Discord and forums: (pylon) - Removed emoji from Discord and forums: (wind) - Removed emoji from Discord and forums: (wfold) - Removed emoji from Discord and forums: (wf) - Removed emoji from Forums: (arlem) - Removed Killerteddy

Okay holy shit sidenote - after migrating over it seems that, at long last, Discord rich embeds work now. It would seem the issue with them was something to do with the InMotion host itself... huh.

Howdy, folks! You may have noticed that the forums were offline for a bit today. That's because today was the day of... The Big Move™. And by that, I mean that today was the day we migrated away from InMotion Hosting. But why? Why the sudden webhost migration? Well, if you've been active on the Discord - you'll know this wasn't sudden at all. This has been the plan since earlier this year. It just took until fairly recently for it to become feasible - or at least, seemingly feasible. Why We Moved As great as InMotion has been considering how much we paid for it, they've become increasingly frustrating to work with. On more than one occasion, I would get an email in my inbox telling me to remove a handful of .zip files. You see, according to their ToS, you aren't allowed to use the webhost for anything other than a website and email. Hosting files or other content that isn't explicitly part of a website doesn't fall into that category. I was at first unaware of this - because let's be real, nobody reads the ToS. Luckily, they don't just instantly shut your account off if they detect zip files. You get 48 hours to remove the files and only if you fail to do so afterwards are you at any risk of account termination. At first, this was still a pretty fair thing. It wasn't every single zip file, rather it was just a handful of larger ones - usually world archives. By the time this started to come up, I'd already had a subscription to OpenDrive, which gives me unlimited cloud storage for a mere $100 a year. So - I just moved everything over there, and while it took a while (especially to upload), it was done and things were good. But of course, if that's where it ended, we wouldn't be putting up a topic saying we'd moved away from them, would we? No - this continued to become more and more of a problem. What started as requests to remove 20-50GB archives later turned into 100-300MB archives, and later did in fact turn into every single .zip archive on the entire host. The last email I got about excessive "backup content" was one listing 196 different files, many of which were only a few megabytes in size. A select few were larger - but some of them were so small that they were even less than 1MB. This wasn't the only issue I'd had with them. Additionally, performance had become a recurring problem. Now in fairness - this is undoubtedly in part due to poor optimizations on my part. There's likely stuff I could do to improve things. For a while, the banner images you'd see on most pages were at 4k resolution, and in PNG format. Many of those were later downscaled to 1080p JPEGs, which somewhat helped. However, one of the biggest factors with the performance of the host happened to not be large images used in various places - but rather, resource limitations on the host itself. Not disk or storage limits, mind you - one of the best things about InMotion was the unlimited everything. Turns out, the CPU usage even during a single page load was being maxed out. The poor response times were a result of the machine itself being stressed and strained. Now, you might be wondering - why not just make a ticket? I could've theoretically made a ticket with them, because it's entirely possible the CPU usage had little to do with my own site. And this comes into the other issues with InMotion - it was a shared host. For smaller or simpler websites, there's absolutely nothing wrong with shared hosting. All the hard management stuff is taken care for you out of sight - all you worry about is the content itself and that's it. Things just work - and that's the beauty of it. It worked for us for a while too, and it perhaps could've continued to do so going forward. However, when running under shared hosting, if someone else is hitting the CPU hard for whatever reason, that'll start to affect you, too. It's all under the same machine - hence the term, "shared" hosting. You can get dedicated hosting to work around this, but this tends to be much more costly. The common thread interleaved between these issues all center around one thing - ownership and control. And that's precisely what this move was designed to fix. Our New Home So, where did we move? What hosting company did we go with? If you're active on Discord you already know the answer, but if not... nobody. We aren't hosted with any 3rd party company. For the first time in CU's history since 2015, one of our services is running off of owned hardware. That's to say, hardware that is itself entirely under ownership and control of CU. I've upgraded my home internet to a business plan with faster speeds (at virtually no increased cost), rebuilt my old AMD FX-8370 desktop, hooked it up to my TV, and went out and bought a single-user cPanel/WHM license and got everything set up. The only stipulation with that single-user license is that it runs in a virtual environment - which it does. However, I am in full control of this virtual environment and it's got plenty of breathing room to work with - so any performance/latency losses from virtualization should be negligible. The system is setup to have automated backups, and I'll be getting it setup to periodically upload them to OpenDrive as well for added peace of mind, as the website is one of those things that we've been negligent to back up regularly. Along with that, it's got two 2TB hard drives that are mirrored - so it's also safe from any potential hard drive failures as well. Now - full disclosure, this is partially an experiment in a way. It took a lot of tinkering and many days of slamming my face into my desk to work out some of the kinks with the whole setup - but things should be running smoothly now. Even so, I fully expect bugs to crop up just because of the fairly different system being run. Along with that, I'm also in the middle of sorting out stability issues with the FX board itself. But don't panic - I've got a backup board/CPU if it turns out that the FX (or the board it's on) are faulty. The issue at this time appears to be a faulty RAM stick - which has since been removed and the server has been stable ever since, but we won't know for sure for another week or so. If the site does happen to go offline, I can assure you it'll come right back online as soon as possible. And, in the worst case scenario - if running this stuff off of local hardware turns out to be completely infeasible and just isn't working out, I'll be holding onto the InMotion host for a while still - so that if we ever have to move back over, we can. But, as of now - everything seems solid. DNS works, Email works, the forums and website both work, everything seems to finally just work. If you find something that goes against that - don't hesitate to report it on the bug tracker. If the site happens to go offline for an extended period of time, ping me or DM me on Discord and I'll get it back online once I see it (likely after doing some hardware maintenance if it turns out the machine froze again). Oh, and be sure to let us know if the site is any faster than before. It should be a little faster, but there's still one more hardware upgrade that the machine needs - so it won't be running at full speed until then. Otherwise, if no issues arise - that's it. We're moved onto what will hopefully be the new home of the Chaotic United, Elaztek, and any other websites for the foreseeable future. And this time, there's nobody to tell us what content we can or can't have on the site. No arbitrary rules on zip files or having too large of files. The only one who has any say in what we do with the CU website, is us. And damn does that feel good. Just as a sidenote, I'm not intending to throw any shade at InMotion. They gave us pretty decent hosting for 13 bucks a month. Unlimited disk space, addon domains, email accounts, and so on. The performance wasn't great - but even then, when it's that cheap, it's hard to argue with it too much. If you happen to be wanting to host a site of your own, don't let my words against shared hosting scare you off of it. For simpler stuff or for people just getting started, shared hosting is affordable and relatively easy to use. It served ourselves, Nuclear District, and the old CU well for many years - we've just decided we want to take things into our own hands now. Anywho, that's all we've got for this one folks! Apologies for the downtime - though to be honest, it didn't last nearly as long as I was expecting. Overall, the migration went about as smooth as I could've asked for. Be sure to let us know if you run into any issues on the site.

* Updated to 1.16.3 * Updated CUMobArena to v1.0.1 * Fixed an issue where Netherite Tools needed to be shift-clicked into a Grindstone * Fixed an issue where CUMobArena wasn't checking for world name when checking if a block was part of an arena * Updated server resource pack to 1.1.11 - Removed Killerteddy

+ Added and to Forums and Discord + Added Icon Gallery * Updated forum icons - Removed Killerteddy

Yes, I know - it's a really minor detail. You probably look at them for about 20 seconds tops. Hell, you may not have even noticed them. Well, you're gonna notice them today motherf- Sorry - got a little too excited. Anywho - icons! As subtle of a detail as they may be, they should still always be quality and easy to look at. The old icons, while not exactly dated, were a product of a young graphic design student who only made them with a limited knowledge of what looked good vs. what didn't. In fairness - the icons aren't awful, especially when they're so small. However, deep within them, there are some pretty awful things about them that, for me personally, make them really awful. We'll get into those in a few minutes, but first - it's time for Granddad Halo to give you whippersnappers a history lesson! The Classic Icons (2012-2014) The icons that started it all. They're old-school, pretty dated by modern standards, super low-res, and... unoriginal? That's right - most of the old CU forum icons were pulled straight from the internet. You won't find as many nowadays, but some of the icons can still be found on some icon websites. They weren't hand-crafted by some designer just for CU, they were available for any regular Joe to use - free of charge. One example of a publicly-available icon is the following - the General Gaming icon. The left one is the one that was used on the CU forums. The one on the right was found by doing a reverse image search on Google from that original icon. Turns out - there's a higher resolution one out there that has significantly more detail! This is important for another reason that we'll get into later. Now, while the old icons may not have been original - they're somewhat iconic (pun not intended) in my opinion. They were seen for most of the old CU's lifespan - and, hey - they're nostalgic. And that's why the first custom icon refresh in 2016 was intended to modernize those original icons. The Flat Icons (2016-2020) I'd been fairly early into learning graphic design at my tech school (some of you around back then may recall it). At several points during the class, there was allocated "free" time - it wasn't really free time, rather you were supposed to work on any assignments or portfolio work. A few things came out of those instances of free time. The Elaztek logo, the HD version of the CU logo that we still use today, and - you guessed it, the forum icon refresh! You may recall me mentioning the importance of locating higher-resolution versions of the original icons. This wasn't always possible, but in cases where it was - it was a massive benefit. In order to create icons that were truly faithful to the originals, the more original detail - the better. The original arcade cabinet icon seen above was pretty low-resolution, and several details might've been missed - such as the specific shape of the joystick or the angled edges on the bottom corners. Since we're already using that icon as the benchmark, let's stick with it. On the left is the HD icon found online, and on the right is the flat recreation I made in 2016. At a glance, it probably looks pretty clean. However - and maybe this is just a case of me noticing all the problems in my own work - upon closer inspection, some weird issues begin to emerge. We're gonna go through a few of the major ones - across various icons. The Flaws This is the part where I nitpick a few of the icons. I ended up putting far too much effort into these fancy little diagrams - enjoy. The breakdown of each icon is each in its own spoiler and labeled accordingly. If you don't care about the specific flaws (or don't feel like poking fun at my old designs with me), feel free to skip past them to find where we get into the new icons. General Gaming Icon Console Gaming Icon Suggestions & Feedback Icon News & Announcements Icon MineCraft Registration Icon Computers & Tech Icon PC Gaming Icon There are other flaws with other icons not mentioned here. The general point being made is that the old icons, while they served their job of being modern replacements of the old ones, could've been a lot better. So, four years later, I finally did. The Brand-New Icons As of today, both the Chaotic United and Elaztek forums will be rocking a brand new set of icons. Icons that are both modern - but aren't just flat and devoid of detail. For instance, have a look at the new General Gaming icon: So far, everyone who's had a look at these icons says they're pretty good. And while I can't say for sure if they genuinely mean that or not - I'm pretty proud of how they've turned out. They've got just enough added detail from the originals to make them feel fresh, but at the same time they aren't overly detailed to the point that they look dated. All of the other icons showcased above can be found in the spoiler below. Additionally, a page has been setup where you can see each iteration of every forums icon thus far. I'll likely keep that page updated as we continue to update/redesign icons - because hey, archiving doesn't hurt - right? For the most part, the designs of each icon is the same as it was - just with a fresh coat of paint. However, several icons saw fairly significant departures from their originals. You can check the comparisons on the Icon Gallery page - but for now I'll describe the changes here. Computers & Tech - The icon is now of a purely front-facing perspective rather than a 3D perspective. I was honestly on the fence about this one - and honestly I may end up changing my mind later. The main reasoning behind it was partially to due with laziness, as properly replicating the original icon in it's 3D perspective is not a simple task. Along with that, it also ends up being somewhat out-of-place - as every other icon is of a front-facing object of some sort, with this single icon being a full 3D render of a PC tower and monitor. The new icon is a front-facing view of the original icon, with the front of the tower maintaining the same design and the monitor getting the original wallpaper back. If you like, you can download a 1080p or 4k version for your own wallpaper. I figured why not - it does look kinda neat (to me anyways) PC Gaming - The icon is now of an actual PC rather than a Mac. Additionally, rather than just being an ugly flat purple background, there's a real wallpaper and desktop UI represented. Fun fact - the wallpaper is the same design as the one used for Computers & Tech, and yes - you can download this one too. Both are linked at the bottom of the page. Sports - The icon has been changed from a Soccer Ball to a Football, Baseball, and Basketball. Why? Because soccer balls are annoying to make, and because the old soccer ball isn't even original. You can find the exact one on Google. Good job 2016 haloman30 Cars & Vehicles - The icon has been changed from a goofy looking car to a tire and wrench combo. Cars also happen to be annoying to draw and - just like with the soccer ball, it was pulled straight from Google. So - a redesign was in order. Music & Movies - Similar story to the first two, but with a little more depth. The original icon was just of a music note and a film spool. However, the particular arrangement of those two happened to look really clunky and just...bad. The note and the film reel were both pulled from Google, and since the icon itself was already pretty ugly - a full redesign was needed. The new icon is a blue play button. There were other minor adjustments made, but in general most of the icons are still largely based on their originals. Part of the redesign goal was to remain faithful to the originals, where I felt that the 2016 ones weren't as faithful as they could've been - even besides the whole flat style, since that's largely just a design decision. Whew - that was a lengthy topic, all about a handful of icons that most of y'all probably don't even bat an eye at. I figured I'd go into some of the nitty gritty details of some of the icons, because I'm sure there's at least one or two of you out there who can appreciate some of these details. If not, that's okay too. As mentioned above, you can grab 1080p and 4k wallpapers of the backgrounds used for the PC Gaming, Computers & Tech, and Streams icons. Along with that, you'll also find the link to the Icon Gallery below - where you can take a trip through the history of the icons found on the CU forums. Anywho - that's all for now. That break I mentioned before is still in effect as of writing this, I just had an urge to make icons. Not the most important thing ever - but hey. See you folks around! Wallpapers: PC Gaming PC Gaming 4k PC Gaming (no icon) PC Gaming (no icon) 4k Computers & Tech Computers & Tech 4k Streams Streams 4k Icon Gallery: https://chaoticunited.net/material/icon_gallery.html