haloman30

Hey, everyone! We've done a few upgrades/changes to the forums as well as our Discord server.

 

First, let's start with the themes. We've changed the default theme to Chaotic United - 2020. You may not have noticed, as besides some minor tweaks, it's largely the same as the 2019 theme. Typically we wouldn't create a whole new theme for such a relatively minor change, but considering that these changes do make some fairly broad changes to the inner workings of the theme, we figured it's best to keep the original one separate for anyone who may wish to opt-out of the changes (because more options are always a good thing).

 

So, what did we change? Well, you might notice the little paintbrush icon to the left of the search box. If you click that brush, a dropdown menu will open allowing you to make some customizations to the theme, such as:

 

Accent Color

 

This is something that was suggested a long time ago - and something that, upon examining the District One theme, we realized would be fairly easy to implement into the CU theme. You can customize the accent color to any color you like. Want it a darker shade of blue? Green? Orange? Red? If you can represent it with RGB values, you can make it your accent color.

 

Unfortunately, due to the way that IP.Board 4 works, there's a known issue where if you open any popup dialog within the site, the color will become inconsistent and most elements will reset. We're continuing to look on a way to work around this. If you find any other issues or circumstances that cause the custom accent color to break, report it on our bug tracker.

 

Rank Formatting

 

This is something I've wanted to do for a LONG time. A way to optionally enable the classic rank formatting for users who want it - as well as be able to have it set on classic CU themes for the most immersive nostalgia possible - all without compromising the current color scheme and breaking the modern look of the forums. You can change them on the fly from the menu, or you can choose the "Change Group Formatting" link at the top of the Rank Formatting menu to view more detailed info about the various rank formatting schemes. Currently, the following formats are available:

• Default - The default formatting
• CU Classic - The formatting seen on the old CU forums
• ND Classic - The formatting seen on the earlier days of the ND forums
• ND Modern - The formatting seen on the later days of the ND forums and used here until February 8, 2020
• CU 2015 - The formatting seen on these forums until we returned from the ND forums after their shutdown

 

For more details on what the schemes actually change, check out the page with full details and previews here.

 

 

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So, moving on from the themes, the other "major" change has to do with our ranks, although there's a bit more that goes into it. If you don't like words you can skip all the backstory and get on with it. If you do however like words, you can find the backstory in the spoiler below.

 

 

The real issue was inconsistency. We'd introduced Forum Mod, Game Mod, Game Helper, and Veteran - fine additions for sure. However, in doing so, the original ranks (which realistically made more sense) were lost - Global Moderator, Minecraft Moderator, and Benefactor. Some ranks were removed that just didn't make any sense or serve any real purpose, including:

• Server Technician - Was the original rank assigned to Collin and Michael
• WebDev - Assigned to basically nobody
• U.A.C. Owner - Was the original rank assigned to Alycat, before she was made a proper Owner of CU
• Interviewing - Was conceived to be an intermediary rank for someone who was being interviewed for staff -  as interviews would be handled via forums somehow?
• Demoria Administrator - Was given to people who were administrating for Demoria Online, a planned (and later cancelled) MMORPG (this rank still exists in the current forums as Game Admin, but is unused)
• Demoria Staff - A more general-purpose rank assigned to those who were part of the Demoria team
• NPC - Also part of Demoria, the idea was that characters of the game would make announcements and such on the forums in-character (or something of that sort)

 

However, even with these excess ranks trimmed out, the rank setup only got worse over time. With the introduction of the Advisor rank, its color was far too visually similar to that of Game Helper. For some people this was more obvious than others. For comparison, the original formats were as follows:

• Advisor
• Game Helper

 

 

The deep blue next to the deep purple tend to be far too similar to be instantly distinguishable. I mostly wrote this off as a nonissue - because after all, how could I dare deviate from the ND rank colors?

 

The other part has to do with the names. As I mentioned before, there was a serious lack of consistency in the ranks. On Discord, we had "Moderator" and "Game Moderator", which matched up with "Forum Mod" and "Game Mod" on forums respectively. On top of this, you have the Moderator rank in Minecraft which is equivalent to Game Mod on both Discord and Forums. The term "Moderator" could easily be muddled up and it's just a total clusterfuck that, quite frankly, doesn't need to exist.

 

So, starting today, it doesn't.

 

Forum Mod (and the Moderator rank on Discord) has been renamed to Global Moderator - which, frankly, is what it's always acted as since we've moved over from ND. Game Mod has been renamed to Minecraft Moderator - since we don't exactly have other gameservers anymore. Game Helper has been renamed to Helper since it isn't exclusive to helping in the gameservers.

 

Along with that, the color for Helper rank has been changed back to its original color from old CU - both for old time's sake as well as to help distinguish it from Advisor.

 

Benefactor rank has not been added to forums - yet. This is something that I plan to explore in the coming days so stay tuned. Benefactors all became Veteran after the move back over - but in retrospect, people who donate $100 or more to the community deserve more than Premium, but Veteran doesn't really work either since it's meant to distinguish those who were members of the old CU or ND.

 

Part of why I was comfortable with this change is the fact that now, any user can essentially opt-out of the change if they so desire. With the new CU themes (and eventually all of the themes if all goes well) having support for user-selected group styles, if you liked the previous group names/colors, you can have them. I'm a nut for preservation and I'm a nut for user choice. I want to enable members to experience the modern CU forums the same way they did at any point in CU or ND history ever.

 

Whether you're from the old CU, ND, or even HurricaneCraft or Tidal Wave Gaming - I try to make it a priority that you can keep on enjoying the forums designs you're already familiar with. I do encourage everyone to use the default theme, but for those of you who want something a bit more old-school, my goal is to ensure that whether it be right now, or 10 years from now - you'll still be able to take a trip down memory lane and see the community through the lenses of the past.

 

But to digress, that's all I've got for now. As future themes get support for the custom group formatting styles I'll let you know.

 

 

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To close off, I want to present a poll. You can vote here on the forums, on Discord, or both if you wish. Your vote will only count once, so you only need to vote on one or the other. Up to you, really.

 

How do you guys feel about the old-school idea of rank icons and glow effects? Would you like to see those become a default for groups like Platinum (and potentially soon Benefactor) once again? Would you like to see them used in other groups? Do you not care either way? Would you be down for updated versions of the original star and heart icons for those ranks (ones that aren't like 16x16 and actually match the rest of the site design) or do you prefer they be left out?

 

Additionally, and this is a bit of an oddball, would you be interested in seeing color-changing support introduced in some of the classic themes that never had it? Would you like to see light/dark versions of classic themes? I can't promise any of these will happen, especially soon - but I do want to gauge if there's any demand for it. Several classic CU themes are pending a full rebuild (or at least massive reworking), and when I get time for it, these kinds of features could likely be accomplished with ease. But hey, that's just an idea.

 

Anyways, that's it for me folks - happy browsing!

So, here we are. 2020. A new decade, and a promising first step into the future of Chaotic United.

 

For those of you who might be knew, you probably aren't familiar with all the rich history that this community has under its belt. There's a LOT more that went on besides what I'll detail here, but this post will mainly focus on a specific period of time in the community, from February 4, 2014 (technically Feb. 7 in terms of public launching), all the way through August 2016. During that time, a community called Nuclear District was hanging around.

 

Some of you may or may not have heard mention of ND during your time here. Whether this is your first time hearing of them or not - that community plays a large part in why we are here today. Before we can dive deeper into ND, we have to talk about the old Chaotic United.

 

The Old Chaotic United

 

The term "Old CU" refers to the community as it was between April 26, 2011 and early 2014. The exact dates aren't entirely locked down in terms of when the closure of old CU happened due to the way it shut down. But, in essence, what happened is that the owner at the time (named Killerteddy) was found to be abusing donation money. He left it to Nuke (Atomicbeast101) to pay the server bills while he did... something. He essentially vanished for several months without a trace. Upon his return, Nuke was denied a refund for the money he spent from his own wallet to keep CU afloat in Teddy's absence - followed by Teddy threatening to shut down the MC server entirely. After that, Nuke and the other staff of CU left - to create Nuclear District.

 

Nuclear District - And Beyond

 

ND kept the legacy of CU alive all the way through to mid-2016, where they finally shut their doors. After many long years, those honorable folk were simply tired. They were done with the community management stuff and wished to move on with their lives. After all - nobody could do this forever. Had we not been around at that time, that would've been it. The end of the Chaotic United story. A simple footnote in time, gone out with a whimper.

 

But of course - we're still here. The "New CU" (which is from September 2014 onward) was around at that point, and in mid-2015 we merged with ND.  Because of that, we were able to have the torch formally passed down to us. Originally, the relationship between the new CU and ND was not a friendly one. But as time passed, they came to understand our goals - and in some cases, even respect the sheer willpower and determination to press forward after all these years.

 

Part of our mission has been to always ensure that the work done by those people back then doesn't go unappreciated. To ensure that future generations of CU players at least have some knowledge of who the "founding fathers" were, so to speak. And for us, our commitment to honoring the legacy of Nuclear District in particular has always been one of the ways we do that.

 

 

 

But you may recall - the past few years we've kind of shown all the history. We've shown all the old server files, created an archive of past websites, polished old topics, and preserved an incredibly large portion of ND. There isn't much more to really showcase or talk about.

 

That being said, we did have one idea this year - an idea that's a bit different. The general premise was: "what would the ND forums look like today had they not closed down?". Now of course, it's merely an interpretation of what it could've looked like. I didn't design the websites and stuff for ND - Nuke did. I could've gotten him to work on it perhaps, but he's got enough on his plate - and I wanted to try and tackle this myself.

 

So, without further adieu - feast your eyes upon the newest addition to the forums theme list: Nuclear District - 2020! You can access this theme right now by checking the Theme menu in the forums footer. If you're on the default 2019 theme, it'll be towards the bottom left above the footer links. Oh, you need to be convinced to check it out? Well, have a glance at a few screenshots:

 

 

The design was influenced heavily by the style of the unreleased 2016 homepage design, with a handful of liberties taken. As you'll notice, it's built off the current CU 2019 theme and shares a virtually unchanged layout from that theme. After all - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. On top of that, for some of you this theme may appeal for a different reason - this is currently the first dark theme based on the new forums design. For those who want a proper CU dark theme, don't sweat it. It's on the way. I can't give exact dates since I am somewhat occupied with both a job and Elaztek Studios, but it will come.

 

I don't know if we'll have much to do next year, though. We've kind of run out of things we can do. Don't be too surprised if this is the last "major" ND event for a bit - potentially for the foreseeable future. There's only so much history you can pull back up before you run out. And I'd say that's a good problem to have.

 

The vast majority of ND's legacy has been preserved to what I consider to be a fairly sufficient degree. All forum posts can still be found, all website designs can be seen still, and most of the Minecraft stuff is still safe and sound as well. Unlike the old CU, a lot more care was taken to retain archives for ND.

 

Either way, for now - enjoy this theme! This theme was a little bit rushed - so there may be a few bugs here or there. If you spot any, please report them! Otherwise, enjoy this little glimpse into what could've been.

In the future I suggest using the Bug Tracker, but yes I am familiar with this issue.

 

I haven't had the chance to figure out why it happens, but Beta 1.7.3 seems to be a bit weird when it comes to chunk loading on login in combination with AuthMe. Unfortunately AuthMe is a requirement for any sort of security since there's no premium checks in that version anymore.

 

Generally the only way to get around it (that I know of) is to install Zombe fly mod, and immediately after joining enable fly, then run /login <password> and from that point you can turn fly off and play normally.

 

It's an annoying issue, I know - but it's basically that or have zero server security

 

If you can't be bothered to install Zombe (or if you aren't familiar with how to do so), you can grab this download which has a pre-modified version of Beta 1.7.3 with Zombe and a couple other fixes added.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Howdy folks! We've updated our MC server to MC 1.15.1! Luckily, 1.15 didn't bring a great deal of API changes, so the move over was fairly straightforward. With this update, we're hoping to fix most of the lag and performance issues our server has been having as of late.

 

In this announcement, we'll be detailing some of our plans if 1.15 doesn't solve our performance issues - as well as a couple other noteworthy bits.

 

Christmas Sale!

 

Just a quick note before we get into the actual announcement - we've got a Christmas sale running on https://donate.chaoticunited.net all the way until January 7th. If you've been waiting to pick up a rank, now might be a fine time to do so!

 

The Backup Plan

 

The ideal scenario is that updating to 1.15 would fix most, if not all of the TPS issues as of late. 1.14 was rushed out by Mojang - which is why 1.15 is so light on actual features. It was primarily a bugfix update - to clean up some of the mess that was made in 1.14, as well as various issues that have been around for much longer. My personal favorite (besides the lag) is sign colors. On (I believe) 1.8 through 1.14, signs placed facing north or south would have any colored text appear sort of muted. My theory is that they were trying to reduce the "neon" effect that colored text on signs had on 1.7 and prior. However, this created readability issues on multiple occasions. The colors simply appeared darker than they were on those two directions. On 1.15, however, this has been fixed - at long last.

 

But, I digress. There is still a very real possibility that 1.15 won't fix all of our issues. In this case, we'll need to do some further investigation but the most likely next step at that point is migrating to BungeeCord - for good. For those of you who are new to CU, we've tried BungeeCord before - multiple times. The only two times it "stuck" was during our merge with Nuclear District, where our MC server as it exists now (except older of course) was linked with ND's survival server, and when we had a Semi-Vanilla server, which was also linked in a similar fashion. Both setups were retired once the other server stopped existing. ND closed their MC server, and eventually their community entirely, and Semi-Vanilla was closed with many of its core ideals brought into main MC survival.

 

This attempt at BungeeCord would be a long process for us, and would require a lot of custom development. Currently, our MC server has a very strong sense of interconnectivity. You can talk to anyone, from anywhere. You can go to any player, from any world. You can go to Minigames from SkyBlock, then to Survival, then TP to some guy in Creative. If we migrate to BungeeCord, this is something that we MUST retain. Some of the more obvious things, like cross-server chat, are fairly straightforward. However, replicating the ability to warp anywhere, TP anywhere, use mail, private message, and so on between all servers is a whole different beast - and none of the available offerings are satisfactory. My goal when it comes to enhancing/replacing features with new technologies is to preserve the look and feel for the end user. That means all the specific details. The formatting, colors, and anything else must be exact.

 

To put it short, if we do BungeeCord again, you as a player shouldn't be able to tell, at all - besides the improved performance, there shouldn't be any weird oddities or clunky operation.

 

But, this is all theories at the moment. The hope is that 1.15 just fixes everything and we can keep on trucking like we have been thus far. Only time will tell.

 

Relay Servers

For those who aren't near North America and are experiencing lag (whether from distance or network issues in their area), we have decided to implement several relay servers to help ensure you get a better experience on MC. The relays act as a middleman between the main server and your local internet - reducing the strain on both sides of the connection, ensuring a smoother experience for those further away from the US or Canada.

 

The currently available relays are as follows:

• France: fr.mc.chaoticunited.net
• United Kingdom: uk.mc.chaoticunited.net
• Australia: au.mc.chaoticunited.net
• US East: us-east.mc.chaoticunited.net (will be available within the next day or two)

 

Special thanks to some of the Errite Games, LLC staff (Michael as well as a few others) for contributing servers in these areas. We are also working on finding a server in South America for a relay there as well. Don't worry - we aren't leaving you out!

 

Reflections, and a New Decade

 

So, let's talk about the elephant in the room. The big, lovable, and incredible elephant. We're alive again. Some of you new folk have probably heard - but it wasn't even 2 months ago (November 2019 for those reading in the future) where having even 5 players on MC at once was a big deal. And 10 was unheard of, except for very specific special events. But for the past week or so, we've been maintaining really good player counts (compared to the past).

 

For those of you who are new, we've been around for a long time. Chaotic United dates back to 2011, with what's often called the "old Chaotic United". This was a period of time from 2011 through 2014 where CU was under mostly different management. I'm not gonna get into all the details here (there's reading you can do here on the website if you're interested though - check Help > History in the navbar), but this current iteration of CU is the "new Chaotic United", which started in September 2014. Between September 2014 and this December 2019, we've largely been at rock bottom in terms of population. That's not to say it's been outright dead for five years, you'll notice builds and structures from people who were clearly here before. But the way those all went were largely the same - some special event or thing happens, a bunch of people get on for a little bit, then a week or two pass and it drops off almost entirely. Another week and it's gone. That's it. Back to 0/20. Even when we had strong bursts of 10 people on for a couple days, they didn't last at all. Usually they lasted even shorter than a week most times even.

 

What I'm seeing with this however is something different - an actual steady, stable growth. We've got a long way to go still - but for the first time in over five years, we have real traction again. Chaotic United is finally starting to grow as a community again. I'm not an emotional guy typically - but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't moved by that fact. Seeing this continue to happen...

 

 

Seeing this starting to become a regular thing is a truly beautiful thing to see. It's all I ever wanted to see. I (and alycat - who's also an Owner as well but is preoccupied currently) started this project back in 2014 because we didn't want to see CU fade into the shadows. Year after year, we'd make an announcement post, with server updates, on the various anniversaries of ND, old CU, and the new CU, all with the same promise of future plans of growth. And I'll be honest - when I wrote the 1.14 announcement topic, I halfway expected that I'd be doing the same thing again a year later. Now? I think that announcement was it. I think that was finally the starting point.

 

Real quick, I want to give a big thank you to @AwakenedRage for his work the past few days on MC. He's put in countless hours over the past few days - fixing the server when everything got horribly damaged, as well as doing a ton of backend stuff fairly quickly and setting aside his other projects temporarily to ensure 1.15 has a smooth (and swift) launch. He truly is the ntx2 of this generation of Chaotic United - and I don't say that lightly.

 

Additionally - I don't want to stroke this man's ego further, but I have to credit @Z0mbieslayer2013 for a lot of this. It was he who originally pointed out what we needed to do to start all of this - voting. It seems obvious, but I simply didn't realize that voting would do anything. I figured that we didn't have enough people on the server, and we would still be buried hard by the competition - so why even bother? He told me that a server he'd played on previously had gone from nothing to 60 players from doing voting. Nothing else. Just votes. He showed me how shit the previous vote rewards were, and guided me in the creation of new vote rewards. This new system was the catalyst for everything we've seen in the past month. It only took 5 years for someone to finally ask the question: "hey guys, what if we voted?"

 

Of course - I've gotta thank the rest of the staff team as well - as they've been doing good keeping up with voting for the server consistently - which gave us the extra boost we needed to get us seen. The result? A playerbase. An actual playerbase. For the first time since the shutdown of the old Chaotic United all the way back in early 2014, we're starting to grow again.

 

For those of you who are new, I and the rest of the CU team would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You are a part of this community's rebirth.

 

And I think that's the best way to enter into a new decade. Who knows what the future will hold? Only time will tell. But based on this, I think we're gonna have one hell of a ride coming up.

 

Thank you all - players and staff alike - for everything.

 

- The Chaotic United Team

 

A note from Michael/Eptic

Hey everyone,  normally I leave these announcement posts to Halo. However with this particular update there are a few things I wanted to talk about here that involve me heavily more then Halo.  First off, the boost in activity on the server. I am also amazed that all it took was voting (Even though I thought we were already doing it), I have also been brought concerns regarding maintaining the servers with there rarely being times in the day where players are not on the server. Beforehand we did not really have more then basic measures of keeping the server maintained, and often then not I would have to bring the server down for maintenance to do this. I am happy to say that, we have integrated measures to greatly reduce the need to take the server down. This does not eliminate the automated restarts (but we have changed the times that this happens). These measures were implemented during the past two days where we took the server down for an extended period of time . We are continuing to integrate as much as we can to not disrupt your experience on the server and are looking into different technology that can benefit the community.

 

Next, I want to address something involving my future at CU. Some of you may remember that I intended to move away from CU near the end of  the year to move onto other projects. While i do confirm that I am involved with other projects. I no longer have any intentions to leave CU. I assure everyone that I am not going anywhere and intend to keep Chaotic United on a road to success in all of its IT/CS related aspects. Furthermore, I plan to be more involved then I have been in the past two years in regards to things other then the back end and lurking around. 

 

Lastly,  I also  want to give  my sincere gratitude to @Atomicbeast101 for his assistance with the move to 1.15 and giving us valuable feedback while CU enters a new era. Not only has he been helping on a technical level, he has also been helping in the staff/moderation side of things as well. Which has allowed us to get 1.15 out to you all quicker without cutting any corners. 

 

Adding on to what Halo said before, thank you everyone for everything. 

 

Regards,

Michael/EpticRage/ErriteEpticRage

 

Soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just an added note: While I personally find completely wiping AuthMe/FastLogin data twice a year a bit excessive - I should reiterate that this (and any future) resets will only ever affect cracked players. Since Premium users are logged in and registered automatically through FastLogin, you will never have had to enter any passwords. The only change you'll notice is that, with this reset, you might get a message upon logging in that you were auto-registered. That's it.

 

So if you're premium you shouldn't have anything to worry about. 

15 hours ago, alycat said:

I've always liked moods

 

Ye moods are cool - just the original designs are ancient and look really out of place when sat alongside the rest of the modern and clean design.

 

That's why they got a much-needed facelift before their reintroduction :^)

11 hours ago, TheHumanMachine_YT said:

hey i just joined your server and im wondering is your server dead?

 

 

Population isn't all that great but the servers themselves should be functioning without issue. Main has some lag issues we're investigating but Beta 1.7.3 seems to be doing just fine

3 hours ago, Alex said:

That quote is absolute gold. How'd you even dig that back up

 

It was in one of the staff topics, I believe the News/Updates Info regarding moods being added. I had to go dig that one up again when we did this lmao

Hey, so uh, for any of you who might have been around back in early 2014, you might remember this. No, I'm not talking about Nuclear District - I'm talking about the original name of this specific incarnation of Chaotic United - Chaotic District.

 

I know, original name. Much creative. Very original. Wow.

 

The original website was up at http://chaoticdistrict.net23.net for the longest time - and I'd kept it online for quite a while - but it appears that the host I used at the time, 000webhost, decided to remove my account at some point - without notifying me. I shouldn't care but knowing that I could've just logged in once in a while and preserved that URL seriously fucking hurts me deep down. Knowing that something is gone that I could've prevented from being gone.

 

But, while the actual URL itself is gone, the content on the site never was. Multiple backups were taken over the years - once when we first came over to the new webhost, again when 000webhost were about to migrate everything to a new system, and again at some point later for what I'm about to go into.

 

A fully functional, usable, and essentially flawless carbon copy of the website can be found at http://chaoticdistrict.net/.

 

I've had that domain for a while, but it sat dormant and empty for a lot of its life. Around a year ago (give or take, not sure when exactly) I did some tweaking to make the original forums/database work with the current webhost. See, back in the day 000webhost used a fucking abysmally old version of MySQL - which I suspect is part of why they migrated to a new setup entirely. I never got the old site to really work after the migration - things were broken and buggy, and while trying to upgrade the database to use multi-byte encoding, the database reached the size limit for 000webhost and it sat broken until it's deletion.

 

The archived version on chaoticdistrict.net is, and has been mostly fine, minus the fact that IP.Board 3.x really hates having its URL changed. It mostly worked, but most theme assets and logos failed to load as they were still pointed at the original website - which obviously doesn't exist anymore.

 

The files were all there of course - I just had to tell the site to use them. And that's what I've just gone ahead and done.

 

Feel free to go in and browse - though there really isn't much to see. Only a handful of forum topics - all of which are also available here on the CU forums as I manually copy/pasted them myself right after the switch. However, I suppose you can see the really awful stuff I put together and called a "theme" (literally just consisting of changing the logo and nothing else).

 

On a similar note, if you happen to fancy the overall look of that website, it's basically the default theme of IP.Board 3.x - a theme which I'm in the process of re-creating here on the CU forums and will hopefully be available in the future.

 

I suppose some of you may question why I bother doing this kind of stuff, keeping this ancient shit online and running - and it's for preservation. I'm of the belief that anything and everything should be preserved. So much content online is lost forever because of various people, companies, and other entities deciding that it should be removed or purged. I think that, if nothing else, it's a good way to see where we came from and how much we've grown. While the actual population of CU hasn't grown a great deal since all those years ago (which is pretty sad in its own right), to say we haven't grown and learned would be dishonest.

 

Forgive me if I sound like I'm tooting my own horn or bragging - but I think it's fair to say that the overall quality of the web content, in-game content, and most everything we have nowadays has shot up drastically since those early days. Even so, it's all based on those small origins. You may not know this (or care), but there's a lot of data from those early days that's still kicking around. I mentioned forum topics - all of those are still around. On MC, every single spawn/hub we've ever had since Chaotic District is still present. Each one has sat in a dedicated hub world - where all hubs are placed. Every hub from first to last can be found within that world somewhere. This is part of what made the CU Archives on the server a thing we could do. Most of the content was already there, and has been for years.

 

Other things such as configuration files, ranks, and so on - many of them still having traces of their origins. Speaking of ranks...

 

member:
  group:
  - member
  options:
    prefix: '&8[&7Member&8]&r '
esponshadwo1:
  group:
  - member
bruno593211:
  group:
  - donator
k1ll3rxc4shx12:
  group:
  - admin

This is a part of the data that stores player ranks, prior to 1.8 when UUIDs were implemented. Not sure how it ended up so far down the list, but you'll notice "k1ll3rxc4shx12" as a username - this is one of the folks from the Chaotic District days. See, originally CD wasn't exactly intended to be "CU 2.0" (or I guess CU 3.0 if you count ND), it obviously had some of the CU spirit in it (as if it wasn't obvious), but it was still largely just a server designed to be belonging to me and my Xbox LIVE buddies. They didn't really stick through all that long - but the remnants of those days still remain - back when there was a proper "admin" rank on MC. The rank doesn't exist currently as any community admins are listed as Manager ingame (because only i can be red huehuehue) - but there's little bits and pieces all around. Not many that go that far back, but a few.

 

I tend to leave these kinds of things in place on purpose - because at the end of the day, they don't harm anything - in our case, there is no Admin rank, if he logged in and PermissionsEx decided to carry over the legacy data, they'd have no rank. I look at these little bits and pieces of configuration files, HTML, and other things as pieces of history in themselves - Little bits of DNA that serve as small reminders of where we came from. And as long as they continue to be harmless, those little things remain. Maybe I'm a bit too sentimental about things as seemingly meaningless as server configuration, but hey - it doesn't hurt anyone, right?

 

Anyways I got a bit off-track. If you're interested in seeing what the old Chaotic District website was like for the brief time it was up, check out http://chaoticdistrict.net. If not, that's okay too. Only a select few were even on back then.

 

Since that forum is intended to be an archive, I have also disabled new registrations to the forum. This is also done as a sort of security measure, as IP.Board 3.x is pretty old at this point and likely has a number of security holes. Even should it become targeted, there's nothing of relevance on that site - not even login credentials are up-to-date. The database user is a different user - so even if someone could manage to access the entire SQL user, it wouldn't be able to touch anything except that database. Consider disabling registrations a courtesy - as that's something you'll never need to worry about getting leaked out or hacked or whatever.

 

Anywho - that's all for now folks!

Hey, everyone! I think we're due for some updates as the holidays approach!

 

New Hub

 

First up - fitting with the holidays, we've introduced a brand new hub! That's right - not just a modified version of our current hub for the holidays, but a brand new hub. Not only that, but this new hub will continue to be in service after the holidays (with less snow and ice of course). After years of basically the same hub with minor tweaks, and continuously growing hubs, we wanted to take a step back and make a smaller, cozier hub. Along with that, we wanted to echo back to the earlier days of CU with the design - which is why the hub is once more in a biosphere. You old bois might remember that several old CU spawns were located in biospheres. We figure that such a design is fitting for a return to smaller spawns. They were dropped with the introduction of "MegaSpawn" - which was the sort of codename for the large spawn that was a mashup of a bunch of old CU and ND spawns.

 

If you aren't able to hop on, enjoy a few screenshots of the new hub:

 

 

 

CUAuctions

 

Here soon, we plan to introduce a custom-coded Auctions plugin for use in Survival and SkyBlock! Auctions are a fun way to sell specific items in a bidding war! Our original plan was to find an already available auctioning plugin, but it seems that most modern auction plugins take an "eBay-like" approach, where you essentially post a listing for an item, rather than the traditional "Player has started an auction! Do /bid to bid!" type of auction. So - we'll be handling that ourselves. We don't have a release date for it set, but expect it to show up before the end of the year (unless things go horribly wrong).

 

 

Status of Modded MC and Beta 1.7.3

 

Both Modded MC as well as Beta 1.7.3 have been neglected pretty heavily for a long time. If you haven't been keeping up on our Discord, you'll no doubt have already heard that we've been working on a new modpack to act as a successor to Brink of Chaos in order to revitalize our Modded MC offering. Brink of Chaos has been a fairly disorganized mess since its inception - in terms of mod list, server features, and even versioning. For those of you who haven't kept up with the changelogs, the versions basically jumped from 1.0.0 to 1.7.0 with absolutely nothing in between. Why is that? No idea. Apparently they were all internal testing builds? You'll have to ask the haloman30 of the past on that one. With the new modpack (whose name we're keeping secret for now), we plan to refine and redefine Brink of Chaos' goals. The initial release will essentially be an optimized and more streamlined version of what Brink of Chaos offered, acting as a foundation for the future.

 

Fun fact - we offer a MC Beta 1.7.3 server! You may or may not have known that since we've given it next to no love and care until very recently. Originally the plan was to have it sit untouched as just "a thing that exists", similar to TeamSpeak - and while we aren't gonna be investing quite the same amount of effort into it compared to our other services, we do want to help it have a level of quality. For instance - the spawn. The previous spawn for Beta 1.7.3 was abysmal. It was trying to sort of emulate the spawn of old CU's Beta 1.7.3 spawn, except it was worse in basically every way. The new spawn actually looks halfway decent - through abandoning the original idea of making things look "from the era".

 

Part of why the old spawn was so plain and boring is because it was built partially with the design styles that people used in the past. Which, while it can yield some good results, this wasn't it chief. The new spawn is a major overhaul - and with that new spawn, comes a brand new world on a brand new seed. The original seed was just the famous gargamel seed (though not as famous as the likes of Glacier). This new seed is a custom seed, chosen based on a community seed suggestion we did on Discord a little while back. We can't disclose the seed for obvious reason - can't have people using tools to find goodies offline!

 

We'll be doing more stuff to Beta 1.7.3 as well, stay tuned for more details on that in the coming weeks/months/however long.

 

A Note Regarding Minecraft/Server Exploits

 

Something that was previously neglected from our rules (I could've sworn it was there at some point) but has technically always been a rule is regarding exploits. As a general rule, they are not allowed. If you're using something that utilized a glitch or bug in the behavior of a plugin, Bukkit, or Minecraft itself - you'll receive a warning, jail, or a ban outright depending on the severity. As an added note, since I've had some people bring up this as a defense, something being possible in vanilla Minecraft has not, and will never be a deciding factor in whether or not something is or isn't allowed. Mind you, on old CU back in 2012, you could get banned on the spot for using a piston glitch to convert stone bricks into mossy, cracked, or chiseled stone bricks (called "circle stone" at the time ). I don't plan or want to go that far, but the general sentiment still remains. Don't try and break the game to gain an advantage - you'll have to face the consequences if you do.

 

 

Update Notes

 

Before we close off, I'd like to remind everyone that we have a blog for changelogs for the website, forums, and servers! Anytime we make a change or fix to anything in the community, an entry is posted in our Update Notes blog. Sometimes these things get an announcement, but usually they don't. For example, here's a few of the noteworthy changes you might have missed out on:

• Nuclear District Topic Polls - Previously, all topics from the Nuclear District forums that had polls showed a random and irrelevant poll. I went through some local archives I took before ND closed to re-create the poll data by hand and point the old topics towards it. Not all topics got their polls back, but some is better than none, right?
  • Part of an update on 11/9/2019 - Click here to read more
• Award Updates - A handful of awards got their icons and descriptions updated, along with having a lot of members get their awards issued to them.
  • Part of an update on 11/8/2019 - Click here to read more
• /sit and Weather/Time Price Cuts - The prices for weather and time signs in Survival got cut down to $125 instead of $500, and /sit has been added to allow you to sit anywhere! (Chairs still work however)
  • Part of an update on 11/13/2019 - Click here to read more
• Status Updates Block Redesign - A forums plugin has been added to make the Status Updates sidebar block function more closely to how it did back in the IP.Board 3.x days - which is arguably better
  • Part of an update on 11/9/2019 - Click here to read more

 

If you don't want to miss any changes, be sure to hit the follow button on the blog page! You'll get notified any time we publish a changelog. Additionally, those changelogs send a notification to #forums-feed on our Discord server - so you can keep an eye on them there, too.