Benie's Games Blog

“Bukkit can hold anything!” That’s their slogan. Now it seems it can also hold plugin-killing CraftBukkit builds.

I upgraded to CB Build 571 a few days ago, due to the fact Minecart Mania was updated and nolonger supports 556, my past build version. Yet Afforess has a 556-compatible version hosted.

Launching my server, lots of plugins are broken. Looks like the Bukkit devs have been doing alot of changing to their code. The plugin angry helped to setup, Dynmap, is broken. FrozenCow apparently is too “frozen” to fix it.
Why won’t he fix it? 571 isn’t the recommended build. 556 is. This goes for other plugin devs. All waiting for the latest RB. I can understand that, so I went back to 556.

Today, the recommended build is 600 (actually 602 now). I finally updated due to Minecart Mania Teleport being “fixed”, in a way. Long range inter-map teleporting claims its working. When I tested it, it created “holes” where you set to teleport you in the cart.

I set a PortTest, linking Wayward Connection South to Tree Islands, and this is what I saw when I got there. Missing chunks. Not the best way to “sell” a plugin.

Minecart Mania also has bugs;
1. Kill blocks aren’t killing minecarts. Instead, the cart goes into your inventory. This isn’t a serious issue, but could be in the future if left unfixed.
2. Intersection blocks aren’t prompting the player to tap their minecart. This also isn’t serious, but it ruins the SPAWN LINE that requires the minecart to stop at intersection signs.

The issue I reported about 20-30 pages back that Afforess claimed he would fix “soon”, Announcement signs being read by players going the other direction of the sign, remains unfixed.
I, however, have my own fix.

Hope Afforess fixes said bugs, and soon.

For weeks, if not months, I’ve been worrying about trivial shit I don’t need to; how to deal with griefing on my private server. As I said, it’s not something I should be concerned with.

Yet, I keep worrying about the “what if”‘s. Like, what if a griefer started placing minecart after minecart and sended them down the line towards a station to fuck up my work?
The answer is quite easy, and was given to me who seems like an expert at dealing with griefers (even has a grief-proof metro system). Build empty cart destroy hubs every 50 blocks next to straight track sections. Simple, yet ingenious.

Another thing I worry about, is what if I make my server public. What would they say about my map? What would they say about my transit system, and its stations?
I first thought angry could host the map on one of his servers, but he can’t. So the best thing to do is when I feel the map is ready, simply release it on minecraftforum.net. That way, I won’t have to deal with griefers… just people with opinions.

I know one of Simon’s friends, Devoid, loves the work I put into the WAYWARD LINE. This makes me feel that what I’m doing is the good thing.
But as they say, you can’t impress everyone.
He hasn’t seen the WAYWARD LINE past Wayward Desert station yet.

Speaking of that guy who told me what he’ll do if he saw what I mentioned, I saw his video and noticed how most of the work put into that map, was done by members in his server. Even these two epic bridges I saw. The suspension bridge is nearly like the one I built years ago in my little creative map, except back then we didn’t have fences to use as rope.
I’m thinking of replacing the Wayward Bridge (the bridge between Residential and Stone Tower) with a suspension bridge that looks like that. It would be so epic…

Anyway, as I said before, almost everything was built by members of his server. And I saw things around his transit system that made me think about mine. It would be cool to pass by things like this when riding the rails of the W2TS.
So yesterday (Thursday), I PM’d Simon and asked him if he could come to my server and build things around the transit system to make the map look like it’s seen activity. He told me to use Facebook to get visitors to the server. This tugged at my emotions, very painfully.
What I was trying to tell him is to get his friends to help, so him and Devoid joined and started building a few things.
This is why I haven’t gone back to WoW. I’m having to make my server more active for them.

Devoid has been working on a maze and a pyramid in Wayward Desert, and Simon, not taking anything seriously, starts using TNT everywhere. I had to kick him out a few times until he stopped. Today, I had to find a “TNT banner” plugin to stop him, and that was quite embarrassing having to ask that it would stop OPs, including myself, from spawning TNT.
But I got a plugin that allows spawning, but disables placing it. It keeps putting it back in your inventory.
Simon did not like what I did, then went to using fire instead. So now I got to ban fire…
Or I can just revoke his OP status.

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Since I haven’t really put work into that webpage I mentioned before, I’m going to now begin to make all stations on the BENIE LINE automated.
The biggest task, will be possibly Cactus Park station. Due to its concourse directly under it. If I was to raise the station platforms up a level, I would have to add more stair blocks.
Maybe I can figure out something.

There’s also two more stations that might be troubling;
1. Valley station, due to the changes I made to have doors and a concourse. Could be problematic when I try to set up the cart call system.

2. House Memorial / Canal stations. Both still use the old design I made for underground stations. And House Memorial is going to be tricky. Not only do I have to wire the redstone, I have to improve it to show it’s the Main Station of the BENIE LINE.
I had a slight idea for a bookstore in one of the walls of the station, but it keeps going *poof* due to the redstone wiring. Maybe angry can help me.

I felt like I went though hell, but they finally unlocked the account. It took a phone call to do it, and they admit there was a “lack of communication” when it came to me trying to get ahold of them through emails.

Seeing how I still haven’t received an email either from them or automatically from the account recovery process, I was forced to call them and ask what’s the hold up.

They told me that they were afraid someone compromised my… email address, and if they unlocked the account, it might go back in the hands of the hacker instead of the true account holder; myself.
I never considered this to be the reason why they never sent me a reply that I got my account back.

They asked me to change the password of my primary email address, then after I do, my account will be unlocked. Went through hell due to forgetting the three security answers in order to change said password though my ISP’s email server.
So I had to call my ISP to get that straightened out.

About 5-10 minutes later, I got it taken care of and got the password changed and made sure it worked, then called Blizzard again and the account was finally unlocked.

They said they were never trying to ‘lock me out of my own account’. Only the hacker, because they were concerned that I didn’t take the steps to make sure my computer is safe. I told him I did virus/adware/spyware scans before I found out about this and they all turned out negative.
The reason I did the scans before, was when I was having issues with accessing my Minecraft map’s backup folder. Lots of studdering happens. Still does it for no reason.

But it’s finally over, my account is unlocked and available for play again. Does this mean I’m coming back to WoW? Well… not at the minute. I’m getting back into Minecraft after a half a week hiatus, and will be explaining what’s going on there in another blog post.
Right now, I feel like I want to PaRtY for my account back under my control. Now I can play, whenever I want to. The fact it was locked made me lose sleep at night.

Also, I mentioned to the guy about the hacker got things I didn’t legitimately collect. He said that I’m not responsible for what the hacker did to my account, which I find hard to believe. It’s my fault the guy hacked me.
He also said about the additional items, to go ingame and make a GM ticket and ask them, and they would let me know if I can keep said items or they will take care of them.
I personally feel, that they will let me keep them. They aren’t rare drops (though I don’t know how the hacker managed to get so many Darkmoon Faire cards).

First off I want to say I’m still waiting for Blizzard to unlock my WoW account, and I’m starting to get worried. It’s been past 24 hours and it says it may up to two business days to complete. Also, I haven’t even received an email from them about the email I sent them about what the hacker was doing to my account.

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But anyway, I’m finally using that webpage editor angry suggested I try to replace my beloved Visual Page; KompoZer, to make “my own” homepage about the W2TS in my map in Minecraft.
How this got started is through the Minecart Mania thread on the Bukkit forums. There’s a guy who is I think a moderator of a server that has a subway. His name is “Etsijä”. He showed off a few stations that were made though Youtube last week, and I fell inlove with his Way Station.
Its station design nearly resembles mine, except it has it where there’s two catcher blocks. One to handle incoming and arriving passengers, and another to handle departing passengers. Quite ingenious, yet very simple. So simple I know how he did it… I think anyway.

Today, I got a response from him with him asking if he would like me to see how he did it through Youtube, and I agreed but added that the Way Station he has looks like it’s made for underground station use, and since my stations are primarily elevated (except for a chosen few which are at ground level), it would be tricky to redesign my stations.

He showed me that what I said isn’t really true, and showed a link to his server that shows a map of the subway, and pictures of the stations. Not really close up ones, but pretty good.
The site is in Finnish, so I had to get Google Translate to show everything in my language. It mentions a guy named “The Seeker” being the designer of the system.

I liked the thing so much that it gave me an idea to make my own, using my site to host it.
The design of the homepage currently is messy, I guess because I’m rusty. Been a long time since I messed with a webpage. But once it’s done and published, I will stop using this blog to post updates.

I’m worried that I might’ve stolen his idea. So that’s why I gave him credit for it.

I’ve decided to start taking the steps to re-secure my account to the point I can play again. It will take 6-12 hours (maybe longer) before the account is unlocked and available for play again (I should had just stayed on the phone and waited the 25 minutes to speak to a person to get it done, but I probably would still have to go through this). Had to reset my password (now using my old one before I went to battle.net), and then optionally sign up for the Dial-In Authenticator.
As extra security to make sure this never happens again, I’ve purchased the Keychain Authenticator which gives you the Corehound pup. It costs $6.50, which is more than reasonable to protect your account.

During the automated account recovery process, it says it may ask me to fill in a form as proof I own the account with my ID and get that faxed. Not liking this, but if I have to do it.. then I have to do it. It’s my responsibility to make sure the account is secure.

This time I did what I didn’t do; I set up my PIN and.. that was pretty much all I had to do. Now, I have to wait until I can play. However I can still log into my account to verify my password has been changed, which worked, then I saw Benie’s character page…

First off, Benie (the character) seems to be the reason why my account was locked. There was alot of activity since I left on Christmas of last year, with the hacker gaining the “Got My Mind On My Money” achievement between February to March, which means s/he was gold farming.
Then, five days ago (the day Blizzard closed my account), the hacker used Benie to run The Botanica in Outland, constantly, to get more gold to sell.
How do I know he was doing constant runs? It says the final boss was killed 751 times, and I remember killing the final boss only one time, which was when I was a Level 70.

The hacker also got alot of Darkmoon Faire cards, that I saw when my characters were restored on Friday. Apparently he was going to sell them to get even more gold, so he could sell that.
My other accounts also saw activity, but they weren’t involved in the gold farming. Beefhunter wasn’t touched at all, it looks like. It shows the last activity being December 2nd, which sounds right since I haven’t taken the time to get him up to 85 yet.

Some of my inactive alts were touched when I was gone. It appears my DK has been grinding achievements. All of these seem to be happening in mid to late February.
And also, a new character was made on my account, and on a new server. “Zcck” is the name, which is usually a random name gold farmers use.

The thing that bothers me, is my password wasn’t changed to lock me out of my account.. ever. It’s like whoever it was knew I was on hiatus, and knew I don’t check my email that often!

This shit scares me. I guess it’s time to start pointing fingers…
It could had been Troy. He’s the only one I’ve shared my password with, but that was years ago, and that was for my second account which no longer exists. I doubt he would still remember it. Plus he wouldn’t stoop so low as to gold farm.
I seriously doubt it could had been angry. He wouldn’t do something so low. And Cooleow.. he doesn’t know my password, and seems too nice to want to do something like this.

Why am I concerned? It scares me. The hacker got me stuff I didn’t legitimately collect. So I reported my findings to Blizzard to piece together what happened.
It seems the hacker compromised my account on February 16th, but it could had been sooner than that. That’s why I need Blizzard’s help.

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However, a thought just came up. The hacker did Bot, 750 times. Does this mean he soloed it, using my account? Or did he have help with other bots? Does this mean I can finally solo Outland instances? 😀 He used Benie, so it might be possible. But yet I also find it hard to believe that he solo’d a 70+ dungeon, 750 times.
It’s just, as an 85, Level 70 Elites are 15 levels lower. Anything 20 or above, to me, is soloable. Such as most 60+ dungeons. The other ones still require you to be in a raid group to enter, like Kara and Ahn’Qiraj (which is now a zone instead of a dungeon).

Apparently you can make alot of money doing Outland dungeons, and that’s why the hacker was going for it.

I said “tomorrow”, which was last Saturday that I was going to re-secure my account and come back by following the four steps in the email Blizzard gave me. But, I did not. Infact, I still haven’t.
What was driving me to do it was remembering the good thoughts in Cataclysm. The fact I can now fly in Azeroth, and I managed to finally, fully solo UBRS by killing the final boss as an 85 (they must’ve nerfed him, or buffed me). Yet those are the only good thoughts.

One of the bad ones is Cooleow, which is nearly the main reason I took a hiatus. He tried to teach me how to compare gear and to stop depending on addons to do it for me. Of course that’s not going to happen with my stubborn nature.
I know the basics of comparing gear, yet I keep forgetting the key stats a Hunter needs, or what are the best things for a Hunter.. nor would I know them the second I get a drop, either by soloing or through a group.
I know one of them is Agility, and another is Ranged Attack Power, and another is Haste. But I forgot the others. Perhaps it would be wise to write them down until I remember.
One of my flaws is comparing rings. They have dual stats for each of them and it’s damn confusing to know which ring is which.
I gave up on him, but told him it wasn’t his fault. He was just trying to help. I left a few days after that and haven’t been back since. I felt bad about what I said, but… I don’t know. This kind of shit is something I NEED to be a better Hunter in both dungeons and PvP. I need no caring coaching. Only way to whip me into shape.
It’s pathetic when I think about it. I’m an 85, yet I still don’t fully know how to play a Hunter, or where to go to get the gear I need for Heroic dungeons.

A second thing was when I was in GS, and someone asked me why I solo dungeons, saying I can make alot more money by doing group runs in higher-up dungeons. I’m not saying the guy doesn’t have a point. He does.
But, he’s telling me something I don’t want to fucking hear or care about, because what they say isn’t the way I play.. which is the wrong way. Yet, will I learn? Nope.

3rd bad one is from a multi-realm (a LFG) dungeon run I did in Uldum a long time ago, to do a very long yet entertaining chain quest (not to get to 85, since I already am). It’s part of the Harrison Jones quest thing.
1/4 into the instance and my party members start complaining that I’m not hitting hard enough. I do my best to ignore them. But it just keeps up to the point that I am kicked out and return to where I last was before I was ported.

It took me a good ten minutes to get over the shit (tried to tell myself that they were just leet players with no lives, who think they have to be the best) that happened and tried again, and managed to complete that section of the quest chain to allow me to do the rest on my own.
Turns out later on I was right about what I was trying to tell myself. Half of them were from a PvP realm, where you have to have high-end gear to survive.

And so, there you are. Half of me wants to play WoW, and the other half tries to suppress the first half with negative talk.

I checked my mail tonight to get an activation email sent though a site I found called mcschematics.com, which features downloadable schematics for MCEdit.

In my inbox I noticed two disturbing emails. One was from Paypal saying my WoW subscription has been canceled, and the other more frightening one about my account has been closed due to “Abuse of the Economy”, claiming I sold gold.

But just let me just set the record straight.. I never sold gold in my life, but I have bought some. And I bought it because I had no other choice.

I thought it was about that. That I bought gold. But what was kicking me was the fact they took this long to bust me with it.

So I replied to Blizzard, asking for proof that I exploited and what dates I have. And today I checked my email and saw several messages from Blizzard, mostly about “Character Restoration”. The reply from Blizzard was an apology, saying someone hacked my account, sold all of my stuff and tried to use my chars to sell gold, and was locked down to protect my security, and my bank account.
They canceled my Paypal subscription to protect me, and changed my password.

As I said, I got emails saying about Character Restoration. All of my gear and coin was returned to those chars, including my main.
Yet.. I’m noticing things I never got. It says it restored a shitload of cards that are redeemable at the Darkmoon Faire. I didn’t collect any of them. This means it’s quite obvious the hacker knew me. It makes me want to get back in and figure out who did it.
It also looks like all of my chars were deleted, or on the verge of being deleted.

But at least I never got banned for buying gold. The whole thing was a big misunderstanding. But it would not had happened if my password was more secure.
To me, I find my account not really valuable enough for someone to want to take the time to hack. Obviously that’s not the case anymore. Because of this, I will use a harder to crack password.

I’m glad this mess is over, yet angered someone would do this. I was about to throw away everything WoW in my room to say I was done with it. Tomorrow I will do the steps to re-secure my account and make my password harder to crack, as I said.
I’m also going to sign up for that authenticator again. Whatever the cost to protect myself. This time, it’s personal.

It started with just putting the station in, to having to make a tough but firm decision to nuke Mystic Woods to save my map.

It all started a few weeks ago, before the major severe weather event IRL we had. I was at Mystic Woods, waiting for the storm to come instead of working on the W2TS, because the Spawner plugin was broken.
Anyway, I accidentally pushed my mouse cursor up all the way, then I heard the sound of a device being disconnected twice.
My keyboard and mouse had “locked up”, but my computer wasn’t. And instead of trying to simply unplug and re-plug the USB cables of my Keyboard and Mouse, I manually shut my computer down. Bad idea with Minecraft.

When I came back, I noticed nothing changed. Fastforward to today, I tried to place the station I made from Plains, to replace Mystic Woods Station with it. With it done, I went ingame to clean out the tunnels for the station then noticed something strange with the entrance with Mystic Woods itself. Part of the road into the park was blocked by grass when it shouldn’t be. Upon further inspection I notice the entire chunk was different than it should been.

So I went into MCEdit, and replaced it with the copy I got in Single Player and saved, thinking that was it. When I went back ingame I noticed more chunks out of place. And that’s not all. When I looked at my console I saw it spamming errors like crazy. I got no proof it was doing it before I tried to place the station, or even when I came back after shutting my computer down.

So I tried to fix them, and the fixes weren’t working. It seemed like nomatter what I did the errors did not cease. So I tried asking Codewarrior saying I have a “serious issue” with my map. He claims that MCEdit 85 has a thing where it will automatically fix issues like this when the map loads. Yet they aren’t for me as I’m still having the issues.

Still, I went on and tried to fix the missing chunks with the copy in SSP in the way I knew how, and I thought I had them all. Which confuses me as to why I’m still getting the error in my server console. One reason I think is I didn’t completely replace the chunks; only the top layer. But if I do that, more missing chunks will appear.

This shit could had been prevented if I had a ‘reliable automatic server map backup plugin’ (try saying that three times fast) for Bukkit. The second I noticed the problem, I could had reverted to a version before it and didn’t lose a thing. Without one, I’m screwed.

Running this map through SSP, causes the same thing I saw when Zan’s Minimap fucked up my map around House station on the BENIE LINE. Severe FPS drops.
Soon I was forced to make a tough…. but firm decision (as mentioned in the beginning). It was either my map, or a fucked up yet beautiful forest. And… I chose my map. Turned around, and wiped out the affected chunks with a tear in my eye… knowing all of the work I put into it is gone, and how it had to end like this. But…, at least the map is safe from corruption.

When the chunks were reborn, they seem to nearly resemble what Mystic Woods was. And it’s quite possible I could bring it back. Maybe make it even better than it was before. It would be tough, but maybe I can pull it off.

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And that’s exactly what I did the next day, except I took it up a notch. And by doing so pretty much made the area look like nothing even happened. And it’s all thanks to my SSP map, and a bit of luck.
I basically took what I had, and placed it into the new chunks without actually replacing them, and managed to save the forest!
I got a few errors, but they weren’t like the one I was getting. It was a “Bad Location!” error. I saw this error when I tried to import frumple1’s “Minecart Rapid Transit Line’ stations, and because I have Minecart Mania, regular boosters are so obsolete they won’t work.
The errors weren’t mentioning anything about chunks, stopped and never showed again, proving that what I did was OK to the server and my map.

With that feeling of relief, I started to bring other parts from the corrupted map to the fixed one, and managed to restore Camp Mystic and its docks with no problems.
All that was left was to bring back the station, and angry’s log cabin + outhouse. That too went through smoothly, except with more “Bad location!” errors, but they too went away.

So now I have the station back and it works. Everything works. It’s like nothing even happened. I even have a map backup plugin. But it seems to be ‘better’ at lagging my computer than backing up my map, silently.

Yesterday, when I wiped out the area, there was one chunk that wouldn’t go. I believe that may had been the corrupted chunk my server console was bitching about. It didn’t look corrupted however.

And now with the station automated, I think I deserve to “tell the boss” I want to “take the rest of the week off” for what I did. But there’s already talk of a planned station north of Mystic Woods, called “W2TS Shipyard”, where it will feature angry’s ship that he made on my server back in Classic.
It was originally going to be named “Angry’s Shipyard”, but the fucking character limit with signs prohibits that.
The idea is pretty solid and the area looks perfect, but the execution is a different story.

First, the WAYWARD LINE will have to be raised really high, or lowered into an underwater tunnel. But it needs something to allow big ships to “pass” over or under it (for realism-sakes).
Maybe I’ll make a section of track that’s really high up, and use Elevator signs to help carts while on the line. Like one of those old bridges that raise up to allow big boats to pass under.

The latest work on the W2TS has completed all stations south of the BENIE LINE. I’ve redesigned the Plains station.. more like a major overhaul.
Before, it was a slab; falling apart and begging for mercy. Now… it’s epic. It’s still a dual platform system, but it has ceiling and a roof for both platforms. It really looks nice.

The next job is the final station on the WAYWARD LINE I’ve made; Mystic Woods. You maybe asking “What about the BENIE LINE?”. Its time will come, with the BENIE/WAYWARD LINE Switch Hub being the “final finale”.

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Still, I wonder if what I’m doing is worth it. Sometimes I see it as a job — “clocking in” every work week. Yet I also see it as a hobby, since I’m the only one working on it, and has been since Day One.

But, why do it if it isn’t having a purpose? And that purpose is getting the public to use my map. But as much as I want to post a thread about my map and put a bunch of pictures on it and get people I can trust that won’t grief the shit out of it to join my server and come use it, I’ve always feared of harsh criticism. Hell.. even non-harsh. Especially if they say to “do this instead” of something I feel works, but it doesn’t for them.

I actually feel like asking angry to do it for me, but that’s wrong. They will ask why I didn’t have the guts to do it myself… I got good fucking reason why not.

So… I continue on making a transit system that will probably never be used except by me. Never to know what I could improve since I fear they’ll say something like “tear apart the whole thing and build it right. You don’t need realistic stations! This is Minecraft, not real life!” and watch everyone agree with them. That will not only crush my hopes and dreams.. but the very spirit my happiness relies on.

What’s funny is even though I’m the only one on my server, I’m already concerned about griefing and how to combat it.
Two issues that need to be addressed, is both cart call-related.
1. Incoming carts coming down the line. How do I slow this?
2. Player in cart at Catcher block, with Hold For sign ticking down. A griefer, in or out of the cart can call for a cart with the other waiting.

The only way I can see to fix #2, somewhat fixes #1. I tried this out in my test lab and it more or less works. Place a catcher block five blocks away from the main one, and wire both blocks to an Inverter. But it doesn’t stop multiple carts.

Another idea is to make another set of tracks somewhere around or in the station. Thing is, it means redoing all of my stations yet again.
Basically, I would spread my stations further apart and have the WAYWARD LINE go through. It’ll look something like this.
I would have a Station block controlling both sets of tracks. For a single incoming cart, it would go right and to the station. When it hits the catcher block, it disables the Station block via redstone wiring, preventing all other minecarts going down the same track.
Problem is I need another automated system that will get the cart to turn around and go to the other track.
And then there’s another issue with that design. What if you have multiple minecarts going down the middle tracks, then along comes the player on the station track.

Seriously… we need traffic control lights like in RL. Red means there’s a cart infront of you so STOP.
Then again… maybe I’m just making a big deal over something that may not need to be. Some stations might be busier than others and may or may not need “drastic measures” to control traffic flow.

I’m thinking of making another video for Youtube to show the WAYWARD LINE as it is now. But this time, I’ll make it public. I’ll use Livestream Procaster as I did before to encode it, then slap that thing on Youtube and throw in a bunch of titles instead of using my brain to think of words.
Hopefully with that, I just might generate helpful replies for this thing.