Update Blog

Graphic design is my passion - 6/13/2023
I'm gonna update the website but for real this time.

This is another one where I just don't have much to say, kinda just gonna make it prettier and more consistent.

Been working on a new server idea in the background very slowly for the past couple of months.

I forgot to update this for a while - 4/23/2023
So yeah, the server still exists. We kinda just go on it for a couple days every few months.

The continuous 1.19 survival has been up for a while, just hop on whenever you guys feel like it. As well, we've had the advanced creative up for about as long, but this has been running that one creative world me and that one guy have been working on since 1.14 (so it's special and only like a few of you guys can go on, the goodest of the good gamers.)

I do have the world from that Christmas thing a few of us did back in like November, and that will be used for the regular, everyone's allowed creative. That isn't started yet, because there just isn't much of a demand for it, the like 3 of us who sometimes play creative just work on the advanced creative.

Let's start fresh yet again - 11/13/2022
Based and epic take, the 24/7 servers just aren't as good as the Aternos ones.

Unfortunately, the 1.19 server didn't last all too long. This was mainly due to everyone having issues with minor annoyances like the sanity system/spooks,  the complexity and bugginess of some content like Mechanization, as well as the lack of convenience features like TPA and homes.

Once again, we're going to have a massive shift in the server ideology.
Instead of spending months planning some janky, confusing server with all sorts of content no one will ever get through every time a major update comes out, from now on there will only ever be two major servers (occasionally a temporary server for us to play through a mod pack or do some minigames might pop up).

The first of these two major servers is a survival world.  No more random content to try and keep people entertained, meaning it won't have nearly as many issues with bugs and lag, and I won't have to go through and update everything once a week. This newest survival server will be an almost completely vanilla survival (for real this time). No new content, no major gameplay changes, and no Spooks. The only features we'll have is a handful of commands, including the beloved TPA and homes.

It stands to reason that if we have a stripped-down survival, we'll have a stripped-down creative too. Which we will. Eventually. Just a standard creative for everyone to join and build whatever they feel like. It isn't as empty as the survival, however. There will still be a handful of useful commands like homes (makes life easier for building in different places), as well as WorldEdit and VoxelSniper (but only the good-est goblins will get to play with them). A world has already been started, but the server probably won't be made for some time.

Expect the survival sometime this week, and the creative sometime soon™

Buss Pass Supremecy - 8/3/2022
Ooooh boy, it's almost time to mine and craft, and I couldn't be more excited. I have a handful of big announcements with this one.

With everything working well and the server just needing a few touch-ups to be playable, we're planning to start the server on the 5th (I'll go into further detail below).
Although there are some issues, most of them are smaller and don't impact gameplay too much so I'll be working on getting them fixed in the background.
However, some packs I really wanted to use had to be cut for the time being because of lag problems or compatibility. Hopefully I can push devs to get these issues fixed, and once they get patched those packs will be re-added.

As well, I am now the proud owner of busspass.ca, thanks to that dastardly character Carson for covering like half the cost ( it was $20 :)   ).  Anyways, now that we own the domain, busspass.ca will direct you to this website making it a lot easier for you dummies to find your way here. Working on getting an IP for the actual Minecraft server setup to be play.busspass.ca (you will still need to be whitelisted to join so sucks to suck).

Not all of the news is good, some is meh. With 1.19.1, which the 1.19 server will be running on, Paper and Velocity have been having some issues. Because of this, I can't have the whole proxy set up that lets us have multiple servers up and connected to each other. I'll get this sorted out eventually but I'll probably need to wait for the two to update a bit, so for now we're just gonna have the one server you immediately connect to like normal.

But hey, another good thing. I updated the 1.19 page so it isn't just cryptic spoilers, having some more info on the server such as a link to the content guide and the recommended (but not necessary) mods.

More on the starting date, I'll hopefully get the server up and gaming this Friday (Aug. 5th) morning. I'm choosing to start it in the morning, as not everyone will be on and able to play, preventing the clusterfuck of confusion and lag that would be everyone getting on at once. As well, if people join in groups throughout the day, it would incentivize said groups to go off and form their own colonies (which we want, but at the same time we don't want people leeching off of others (no trophy wives))


P.S.    I may have also upped the world border a bit cause I felt like it :)

Drawing closer and closer - 7/22/2022
A month has passed since the plan was unveiled, and each day we're getting closer and closer to finally playing on the server. One more pack needs to be updated, and at this point, as long as it gets to a playable, somewhat bug-free state, we're just gonna use that and get started already.

Of course, I've continued to actively work on the server in the background, testing out pack combinations, fixing loot tables, creating a functional resource pack, even working on the website as well as a content guide for the 1.19 (which will be progressively updated as we play through the new stuff to prevent people from spoiling the new content ;)  ).
I'm starting to get to a point where, once this final pack updates, we should be able to just drop it in, set up a few things like death counters and the server shop, and we'll be good to go.
So hopefully we see it get updated soon, but don't think that'll happen anytime soon, I'd give it maybe another week or two and hopefully, it'll be working well (trust me, we'd use the pre-release that's out now but literally like 3/4 of the new items and blocks don't work in the slightest).
I've had to sacrifice a handful of packs due to lag or incompatibility reasons, if they ever get fixed, I'll add these back cause they were fricking sweet.

There's also the idea of running multiple servers at once. I've done some more thinking, and we will only be hosting one or two servers at a time, primarily the 1.19 which will almost always be on, but on some occasions, I will get one of the older survivals up and running for a couple of days, same thing goes with mini-games as well as whatever other worlds/servers we think of.

Buss Pass? - 7/18/2022
After leaving the server questionnaire open for a few days, and letting everyone interested leave their opinion on some important topics, it was finally time to analyze the results.
And the results sure are a real mess. I'll quickly be covering the answers to some of the questions that help to decide on some gameplay features.

For the first question:
"To incentivize players to interact more and form more of a community, this server will have an economy system as well as player run shops. Would you be interested in the possibility of there being a handful of server-owned shops offering generic items and blocks for players? "
Although it at first seemed like the majority would pick for the server-run shop (using the chest shops and economy system included in the 1.19) to only have building blocks, many of the last answers submitted swayed the vote, so the server shop will sell some blocks and generic items. This was intentionally vague on purpose, as the shop will have a lot of different things. Don't expect anything crazy, just generic building blocks such as dirt, stone, terracotta, etc. as well as some basic food items like uncooked meats, some common materials like flint and feathers, or even some low-tier tools like wood or stone.

The second question:
"Further on the economy system, as an incentive to avoid dying, players will lose a percentage of their money on death, without this money being able to be picked up again. What do you think is a reasonable percentage to incentivize players to avoid death?"
Some very different results showed up here,  some wanted a challenge and others wanted life to be a little easier. Although I personally was gunning for 25%, at the end, 15% ended up winning with a third of the vote. However, around the end of the answering period, a lot of people regretted choosing 10 or 15% and wanted to change their vote to 25% or even ≥30%. Because of all this confusion, the upper council decided we should just average out the votes and go with that.
Therefore, players will drop 20% of their total money when they die on the 1.19 server.

For the fourth question:
"In order to prevent lag in the earlier stages of the server, a world border will be set up. This prevents players from running off "exploring" causing the server to drastically slow down. This also keeps all players within a more reasonable distance. About how large would you like this border to be? (Keep in mind, the options are the radius of the border, so side to side of the border would be twice as long) "
Pretty cut and dry, the vast majority of people voted for a 1000-block radius world border. This gives us all a lot of wiggle room to do our own things, while still keeping everyone close enough to incentivize interaction. Also for a scale reference, here's a picture comparing the 1.17 server's initial border (for those of you who remember that (we had a lot of space there for everyone too, for some reason we were all just stupid and clustered together)) in the top left, to a world with a 1000-block radius border

Then finally, the seventh question:
"Do you have any ideas of a name that could be used for server? "
Ooh boy, were there a lot of good names in here. But in all seriousness, most of the answers, although funny, were completely nonsensical or referencing someone or something that didn't really have anything to do with the Minecraft server. And yes, we wanted an original name for this Minecraft server. The four of us who analyzed the results decided on what a couple of the names we liked best, went through about how much a domain for each name would cost, then made a little survey polling you guys on which name you liked most.
Because of this, we are now Buss Pass, as it got a majority of the votes, being the only name to get more than one vote.

Long live Buss Pass.

Important Questionnaire - 7/9/2022
As I work hard on getting the server ready in the background, I've decided that some community input could help me make a few important decisions.
So, a questionnaire was written up and sent to a lot of people who show interest in the 1.19 server, asking them a few questions regarding features that will be involved.

Not much else to say here, just answer the questionnaire pretty please.