Posted on by joehills

Newsletter for March 28th, 2022

Howdy!

Welcome to our first attempt at a weekly newsletter!

I’m not sure which parts will work and which won’t. Let’s find out!

Expansion!

Thanks to Yirggzmb for piloting our first server operator role on the Deep Slate Nine server. I consider the experimental pilot a huge success, and spoke with Yirggzmb afterwards about setting up a more formal structure later this year.

Folks who played on the server can leave feedback in the Joe Hills Meta > #moderation-processes-and-hiring room in Discord.

Upcoming

Mario Kart practice stream this Thursday night!

I’ll be avoiding April Fools’ spoilers on March 31st by streaming Mario Kart 8 with friends at my normal stream time of 8:30pm US Central.

Confirmed players so far include Samihiggins, Mr. Hardluck, and NJCoffeeJunkie.

Earth Day Parade Float Build Contest with Sean Hills

The Babilar neighborhood from the Season 8 vanilla server will be hosting a parade float build contest for Earth Day on April 9th at 11am US Central Time.

Our musical guest judge will be Sean Hills of “Sean Hills Sings Joe Hills” fame.

All $10+/mo Patreon members are welcome to participate, so get your barge brainstorming underway!

D&D charity stream!

On April 9th at 2pm US Central time, I’ll be joining Quinn Murphy, Ryan North, and Jack Packard‘s D&D party to play for three hours of a 24-hour charity stream benefitting Child’s Play, an organization that helps medical facilities obtain, install, and maintain game systems for children.

Our dungeon master, Saucefire will be live from 11am US Central on Saturday the 9th until 11am US Central on Sunday the 10th at https://twitch.tv/saucefire, so I hope you get the chance to check this out, even if you can’t make my time slot!

Patreon Minecraft Server Planning Discussions

I’ve got a few planning calls with the community scheduled about what kinds of game rules, modpacks, etc. we should consider in the future.

If you’re interested in shaping the agenda for each, you may do so in advance in the appropriate Discord channel.

  • April 10th at noon, US Central: Experimental server discussion based on notes in #2022-experimental-next
  • April 24th at noon, US Central:  Broad server expansion and operator role roadmap planning meeting based on notes in #sustainable-growth (thanks to Aviva for proposing that)
  • May 14th at noon, US Central:  Vanillish “Survival-Comfort” server discussion, based on notes in #tbd-vanillish-next

Conventions

Here’s a few events I’ll definitely be attending. I hope to see some of y’all there!

Books and Media

I’m going to try to write a bit each week about shows, movies, and books I’ve enjoyed.

Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

If you like fantasy novels and the Baltimore parts of the Expanse Series, this is the novel for you! That means I really liked it, but I’m not sure how much it would resonate with other readers.

Everstorm Server Obituaries

  • Michaelsocks was killed by a golem he tried to rescue from a tree.
  • seanard was killed when he foolishly opened his front door to a zombie riding a chicken.
  • netcropolis met his end when he decided to cave for the first time in 1.18 on a hardcore server.
  • MisterLantz died making a parrot friend.
  • Gritmonger was killed by a creeper while trying to make a creeper-and-mob-proof tunnel of cobble.

Monthly Petition Notes

These are an edited version of my notes from petitions. I’m sorry.

2022 Experimental Server

  1. Gracious AKA Mantuamaker
    1. Requested: two llama eggs to get pack animals on the server
    2. Add-on request: Mars requests goat eggs
    3. Proposed solution: Seanard wants to expand world border
      1. Joe asks Seanard and Kindalas to get new center and diameter coordinates
  2. Seanard wants to update to 1.18.2
    1. No problems raised
    2. Have to update the mods
    3. Joe queues mod audit updates for mod and jar
  3. Mr. Hardluck presents prox mod request
    1. General caution but enthusiasm
    2. Joe commits to installing in the next 30 days
  4. Michaelsocks asks for otherwise disc and pigstep disk
    1. Traded golden apple for otherwise disk
  5. Mars requests super powers for an hour
    1. Joe grants them and also provides everyone milk
  6. Mars on behalf of maahes wanted a bunch of riptide five tridents
    1. Joe requests a mechanism to provide that in game, and Apoteosis mod is mentioned, waiting on more feedback
  7. Mallora data pack request
    1. Enable bundles recipe from vanilla tweaks
    2. Joe  queues
  8. Shapeless crafting data pack
    1. Joe queues
  9. Mr. Hardluck requests Scar-style hat mod
    1. Joe says that’s not technically feasible because of the way HC does hats, but is open to other suggestions
  10. Michaelsocks requested spyglasses for everyone
    1. Granted
  11. Mallora wanted player head that said slain by joehills
    1. Joe creates one… with a sword
  12. Seanard requests Joe allow players to slay him to earn player head
    1. Granted.

Deep Slate Nine Vanilla Server

  1. Kindalas requests sleeping percentage change
    1. Player vote results
      1. Most popular was 30%, but that did not have a majority of votes
      2. 2nd most popular was 50% with almost as many votes
    2. Judgement: Joe set to 40% for now, with intention to slide to 30% in a month
  2. Kindalas requests committing to no end resets on the server
    1. Benefits
      1. Allow mapmaking
    2. Downsides
      1. Run out of elytra
      2. Run out of dragon heads
      3. Run out of endstone
    3. Joe commits to not resetting the end, as expanding the worldborder later should fix those
  3. 5th Alice requests a rabbit spawner
    1. Stated goal is to open rabbit stew shop without generating lag
    2. Tech analysis shows desert is within worldborder and wouldn’t be a lag issue to build a regular rabbit farm
  4. Meep requests Thorns V on elytra as accessibility offset
    1. Technically not possible
    2. Desirefire suggested protection 5non-elytra armor in lieu 
    3. Thorns 5 on boots, helmet, and pants instead
  5. Crohn requests adding data packs/discord bot to allow discord to repeat audio for visually-impaired players
    1. After discussion of privacy issues with publishing server logs elsewhere and the technical issues of JAWS, MisterLantz is taking point on helping Meep solve the issue
  6. Sami petitions on behalf of soragirl18 for lost items
    1. Crohn44 will offset the loss out of personal inventory
  7. Des requests Discord rooms
    1. #ds9-quarks: spawn coordination text and voice chat
    2. #ds9-holosuites: share works in progress
    3. #ds9-fire-caves-of-bajor: Nether coordination text chat
  8. Phali reports two villagers kidnapped
    1. Other players offer their own
    2. Joe gives everyone a polar bear
  9. 5uperStone requests skeleton spawn egg to convert a spawner
    1. Kindalas offers to offset boon by destroying own skeleton spawner elsewhere
    2. Joe grants wither skeleton spawn egg
  10. NJ requests four unbreakable shields for people who helped her when game started
    1. Sami requests same for CryingRug
    2. Meep has similar add-on request
    3. Solution: /give @a shield{Unbreakable:1,EntityTag:{Invisible:1b},display:{Name:'[{“text”:”Help for the helpers”,”italic”:false}]’,Lore:[‘[{“text”:”This shield was given to you because you helped someone.”,”italic”:false}]’]},Enchantments:[{id:loyalty,lvl:3}]} 1

Possible future sections

I ran out of time to include everything I wanted to in this first newsletter, and I’ve heard a lot of great suggestions for things I’d like to try in future weeks, like a list of VODs with summaries.

Patreon folks with ideas, please leave them in the #feedback-newsletter channel, thanks!

Additional thanks

Thanks to ThatTommyBoii for helping out with this weeks’ newsletter!