Author: Danny

As of 23 March 2019, the Real Tech subscriber server is live! This server is running the full Real Tech pack.

Please read the rules, guides and tips posted at spawn before playing. This is very important! We don’t want this server to die an early death. These rules are hard to enforce, so I’m trusting in you to be a good Minecraft citizen and come up with creative builds that work within the guidelines.

If you have problems with FPS while running this pack, I would recommend disabling the following mods: Better Foliage, Dynamic Surroundings, Sound Filters. These mods are not required to play on the server and do require significant resources.

For the server address, server status and current modpack version, see the sidebar to the right.

Our new Real Tech server is scheduled to open this Saturday, 20 March. I am debating on whether to use the full Real Tech pack or the Real Tech light pack. If we use the Real Tech Light pack, I plan to add a few mods to that pack.

The advantages to using the light pack are that people with less powerful computers will be able to play without lagging like crazy, and the server itself will be less likely to lag over time. Obviously, the disadvantage is that we’ll be missing out on some mods.

Here is a list of mods in the Real Tech pack that are not included in Real Tech Light. There is an asterisk next to those mods I’m likely to add if we go this route:

AppleSkin
Better Foliage
*Baubles
BiblioCraft
Biomes O’ Plenty
*Building Gadgets
Cloche Call
Colossal Chests
Cyclops Core
Decocraft2
Dynamic Surrounding
*Engineer’s Decor
*Exotic Birds
Farseek
Ferdinand’s Flowers
*Flat Colored Blocks
Forestry
*FTB Library
*FTB Utilities
Immersive Vehicles (MTS)
ItemPhysic Lite
*ItemZoom
JEI Bees
Just Enough HarvestCraft
Light Level Overlay Reloaded
MalisisCore
MalisisDoors
Natura
Not Enough Wands
OreLib
Pam’s HarvestCraft
*Project:Vibrant Journeys
PTRLib
Sound Filters
*Stack Up!
Streams
SwingThroughGrass
Transport Simulator – Official Vehicle Set

Most of these mods are extra frills that don’t affect the feel of this pack significantly. There are a couple that some of you will be reluctant to go without, and I’m open to your feedback. But, let me briefly explain my reasoning on a couple that I found difficult to decide on.

Pam’s HarvestCraft – There are many food options in this pack even without this mod. It is quite large, adds a ton of items, world gen and other overhead to the game. It also stresses the balance of the game by making food trivially easy. Aside from the annoying gardens spamming the world, I really love this mod, but it’s questionable whether the overhead is worth the game play benefits.

Forestry – It’s already a stretch to have this mod in the Real Tech pack. Many of the machines are “magic block” machines. And bee breeding is just silly for Real Tech. On the other hand, the tree breeding is great, and some of the machines fill some convenience gaps in the pack. But again, it’s a huge mod with a lot of overhead. So, whether it’s worth it for the benefits is questionable.

Please vote on the Danny and Son community page.

Our new server with the Integrated Progressions modpack goes live today around 6:15pm US Central Time (11:15pm GMT). If you have been whitelisted on any of the servers, you will automatically be whitelisted on this one. But, we may have to limit the number of players to prevent server overload. If this happens, I’ll open up another server in the near future.

Please read the rules, guides and tips posted at spawn before playing. We no longer have restrictions about base distances or chunk loading. But, the rules about automation and hoarding are more strict than previously. We don’t want this server to die an early death. These rules are hard to enforce, so I’m trusting in you to be a good Minecraft citizen and come up with creative builds that work within the guidelines.

I will also be starting a new stream series on this server. My first stream will be tonight at 6:30pm CDT (11:30pm GMT) on my new Danny and Son Twitch channel. I’ll be basing with ArcusM who will be streaming at ArcusM Gaming. The stream will be recorded and posted to my Danny & Son YouTube channel afterwards.

For the server address, server status and current modpack version, see the sidebar to the right.

I’m really excited to be able to play with you all again!

Some of you already know that we’ve been beta testing a new modpack that should be ready… oh, about a month ago or so.

In the meantime, since no one was playing on the FTB Beyond servers, I’ve taken them down in order to free up resources for our testing server and our soon-to-be new server. Here are the world downloads, if you are interested:

• Play1
• Play2
• Play3

FYI: These files are not small.

Once the new pack is ready, the new server will go live, and I will start streaming again. At that same time, I will be whitelisting a few new users and inviting you all to join. We may have to limit the number of people on the server to keep the load reasonable, and it will be mostly first-come-first-serve, though I may prioritize contributors and those who have not yet played on a server with me.

You will definitely here more about it here and on my channel once we get close to the release date.

Whitelists and user data on all 3 FTB Beyond servers is now synched!!! So, you can now visit players and builds on the other servers. And, when you connect to the other servers, you will have all your stuff! So, you can share and trade items, shop at the shops (if we get any), help each other with builds and everything!

Please only maintain a base on your home server. And, there are a few things to look out for:

• The player data syncs about once per minute. So, if you disconnect from one server, you may want to wait about a minute before connecting to another server or you could lose anything you’ve gained within the past minute.
• This is experimental. If you run into problems, let me know right away by tagging @admin on the discord server. Everything is backing up, but the backups are maintained for a limited time.
• Your Angel Ring will only work on the server where you are generating GP. Wings of the Bat, Jetpacks and such should work on all servers.
• Anything linked to things in the world will not work on the other server: i.e. remote storage tablets, mana mirrors, charged porters, etc.
• You will end up in the exact same location when you go from one world to the next. If there’s something there, you could suffocate, so I’d recommend going to spawn before leaving one world and entering another.

Have fun exploring the other servers! Of course, feel free to check out our base on play3. You can take the matter transmitter from spawn or ride the train! I look forward to having more visitors!

We now have 3 FTB Beyond servers live and I will be sending out whitelist invitations this week. But, I need your help with one more thing before I can complete the whitelisting.

I’ve added a new section to your profile that basically has a few multiple choice questions about play style. These questions will help me to set up the servers to fit your play styles better rather than trying to get everyone to follow the same rules that might not fit their style.

Go to your profile (you can click your name in the right sidebar), click “Profile”, then “Edit”, then the “Play Style” tab. Then, select the three best answers. You will need to be logged in to this site in order to do this. Keep in mind, there are no wrong answers. This will not affect whether or not you will be whitelisted. It’s just to help me set up the servers to best fit your style and decide which server you would enjoy playing on most.

I will be playing on all three servers on a rotating basis, so I should get to play with everyone eventually. It should be fun for me to try out some different play styles. I’ll also be visiting all servers frequently to say hi and check out the builds. And of course, all three servers will have synchronized chat and will be using the same Discord server. So, it’s all one community. 🙂

I have good news and bad news. Good news: I found the reason our server is lagging (and why all of our previous servers lagged as well). Bad news: there’s no easy fix.

A few key mods are loading chunks whenever they feel like it without forge tickets. This is causing nearly everyone’s base to be at least partially loaded all the time, whether they are playing or not, and basically negating all my attempts to control chunk loading.

Details

• RF Tools
  • briefly loads every chunk that contains a matter receiver any time a dialing device is accessed.
• Refined Storage
  • loads every chunk within a network when any single chunk within the network is loaded;
  • therefore, if any chunk within a network contains a matter receiver, that entire network will be loaded when anyone clicks a dialing device;
  • loads all network chunks when attempting to use a wireless grid, even if the user is out of range and very, very far away.
• Applied Energistics
  • keeps the entire network chunkloaded all the time as long as any player is in the overworld (or whatever dimension the AE2 network is in).
• Other mods?
  • There are probably other mods causing similar issues. These are just the ones I tested and verified. Just about any kind of network or multi-block structure (anything that might cross chunk boundaries) could possibly cause the same problems.

Possible Solutions

• Keep matter receivers in a separate chunk from all other machines, especially RS systems or other networks (conduit, pipe, XNet, etc.).
• Don’t use AE2 in the overworld. … Yeah… I just said that, and I know it sucks. And, I’m not even sure how to approach this. I’m half tempted to just remove the mod from the server.
• Allow fewer players on each server. I had already planned on setting up new servers and freezing the whitelist on existing servers. But, we’ve already had over 45 people play on the Beyond server which is way too many chunkloaded bases.

I am still brainstorming solutions as none of the above are particularly desirable, and they require that all users cooperate with some complicated and restrictive practices. Of course, your ideas are welcome!

Chicken Chunks

We finally have reasonably configurable chunk loading on the FTB Beyond server, but it comes at a small cost. Chicken Chunks has been added to server. Since this is not a part of the FTB Beyond modpack, in order to play on the server, you will need to add this mod to your mods folder yourself. As always, check the server status sidebar on this site to see what version of Chicken Chunks to use along with a link to the Chicken Chunks page. If you have any questions on how to add a mod to your mods folder, just ask in Discord. Someone will be able to help.

Waiting List Status

Our waiting list is still rather long and I have not had time to do anything about it yet. My plan is to add a new FTB Beyond server (or two) so that we’re not all overloading one server. New users will be whitelisted on the new server. Existing users will not. Patrons will have the option to choose the server they want to play on. In the future, new users will be put on whichever server has the lightest load.

Since the server chat is synchronized and we’re using the same Discord server, we will still all be playing together… just in different worlds. I do plan to visit all servers, but for the time being, most of my survival play will be happening on Play 3.

Resets

In order to make room for the new server(s) and whitelist those of you who have been waiting so patiently, sadly, I will probably have to take down the existing Play 1 and Play 2 servers. I will provide the worlds for download. Since there has only been one person playing on each server, and we have almost 100 people waiting to play with us, I think the time has come.

Sadly, we have experience some nasty block id related world corruption on our new FTB Beyond server. And sadder still, I wasn’t aware of the problem until several hours after it began, so I’ve had to roll the server back 14 hours to the last good backup. Anyone who has played today will be losing their progress, and there really isn’t any reasonable action I can take to fix that.

You can download the corrupted world here if you want to grab schematics of any builds you may have done. After giving it some thought, I’ve decided not to attempt to restore items. Since everyone has lost their progress, and there is no easy way for me to restore everything, it’s best if we just pick up where we were. I know this sucks, and I’m really sorry.

I have disabled the FTBU chunk loading as it has been crashing our server frequently and is at least partly responsible for this corruption problem. That means we have no chunk loading capabilities currently. We will probably have to add Chicken Chunks to the server. I really wanted to avoid having to modify the pack, but there just aren’t any reliable and configurable chunk loading options available in FTB Beyond as is.

Hopefully, this was a fluke and we will never see this problem again. But, if you do see any strange blocks in the world, or if blocks have been replaced with other blocks, please tag me in Discord right away. If I can fix it right away, I can roll back to an hourly backup rather than rolling back so far.

We will soon have a third server to play on which will have the FTB Beyond modpack. I will be sending out invite emails this week to spawn builders, and we will be starting the spawn build this Friday, March 24th at about 6:00 PM CDT. I hope to have the server open for survival play early next week.

Those of you on the waiting list for the whitelist may have to wait a little longer until the third server is ready as our existing servers are struggling with the current load. I hope to start adding more people to the whitelist some time next week. There are quite a few people on the waiting list right now, so unfortunately, some of you may have to wait much longer.

In the meantime, we will be attempting to troubleshoot stalling issues we’re having with play 2 which seem to only happen when certain players’ bases are loaded. Some mods may be lost in the process. Rollbacks are remotely possible as well. We knew this would be an extremely unstable pack with some potential for disaster, so here it comes. Are you ready? Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!