G46

It's always utter chaos while gaming with ravens and woffles.

[give46-blog]

We are currently playing a map from Orange1095's Emerald Dream series called "Keystone". It's atmospheric and very unique. It is surprising that not many people have caught on to it yet!

-wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

The server has been set up and is pretty much already underway in hosting our fun game times. It is a little bit slow, admittedly - mostly Wally and I have been making use of the server so far along with a handful of ranomd strangers that have happened upon it. We are currently running four things on the server in dedicated mode (technically that would make them NOT dedicated but, shhh, don't tell anyone that!). The first is a major one for us: TeamSpeak. Having an easy, non-intrusive way to communicate with our voices makes a lot of games much easier to play in multiplayer sessions. Having to stop and type, "Help me! I am south of the big green building!" is not exactly ideal while you are being chased by a horde of zombies. That's just one of the benefits of TeamSpeak - we can also have players join different "channels" for team-based games among other awesome things. Of course, we also have our Minecraft server going. This one still needs to be further stressed tested but so far it is decent enough for casual play. If it turns out that the server cannot handle our Minecraft sessions when we have a full load of players on, we may have to go back to running it from a more powerful laptop during peak hours. Those two are kind of expected things to be running on the server, what we also have going is Hockey? and A New Zero - two games by Cryptic Sea that we are excited to be hosting. These are games that have very small communities so we are really happy to be able to provide an outlet for those people to play the game. Hopefully these will see more use over the coming months. Our server can be accessed by opening up the appropriate games and looking for the "G46" brand. Our TeamSpeak will remain private for now and Minecraft still needs to be tested so we will let you know when those will become more readily available for joining (not that we are expecting people to join a random server, heh). -wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

We are changing again. Does that mean less Minecraft or less of a particular type of gameplay? No, it actually means a lot more of Minecraft and fun survival times. The gang has recently hit upon some luck and will be able to run a dedicated server for our Minecraft shenanigans. This means a lot more play time will be had as our Minecraft server will be available virtually every hour of the day. But, that's not all folks! For just an extra $25.95 you will also recieve our Ezee-Mate™ Super - err, sorry, wrong channel. What this also means is that we are going to be expanding our gaming time to include other titles - such as EVERYTHING EVER that this guy makes: http://www.crypticsea.com/ Now it's not that we have not played other games before but having a dedicated server that can run these games means that it will be a lot easier to organize such sessions. Worrying about ping too will (hopefully) be a thing of the past as we will not have to spend time playing on dodgy servers. Of course, administration is also an important thing. Playing with like-minded people is the whole reason why we started up playing on our own private Minecraft server in the first place. So being able to choose who we can play with is pretty important to us. This does not stem from an elitist mindset or anything like that - different people have different play styles. It's much easier to play a game with someone who you know and can, at even a small level, predict than it is with strangers. In any case, no one really reads this stuff but I find it interesting to have a journal of sorts to look back on and see how things have come along. -wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

[give46-blog]

If you've tried to visit the Give46 server over the past month or so, you may have noticed that it was down. I don't expect that many people even pay attention this blog outside of our core users so that's probably not such a big deal. I mostly write these updates as a log of our server's status and as a way to remind me that this is something that we will hopefully keep going until our eyesight crumbles and we no longer have the dexterity to use keyboards and mouses. Anyway, the server has been down because my internet situation has kind of been in flux ever since moving out of my old place. I finally have an internet connection that I can use  for the server, though, so we are back in business. There will be some changes, though, as we no longer have a crazy fast internet connection so that means the server will not be up all the time. We'll be moving to a more scheduled approach, so the server will only be up during a certain time each day from now on and we will be moving towards having everyone get on at once during a specified "meet up" day. The idea behind this is that, since the server will not always be up, like before, it would be better to make use of the time that it is up by making sure we all are able to get on and have fun at the same time. During the last few months that the server was going steady we saw weeks upon weeks of it having no users online and, when there were people online, it was only one at a time at completely opposite ends of the day. I want to avoid this by, not only having everyone come on at once, but also by varying the activities. We were toying with the idea of making Fridays a random custom map day and now, I think, we are going to take that idea further by dedicating certain parts of the week to different things. We may have a few days be for vanilla survival, another couple for creative, and then have the weekend dedicated to adventure maps. In this way, there is always something different to do and we won't get tired of playing on a single map for months on end. Hopefully this goes well - I am definitely looking forward to it. I will keep everyone updated when the server does officially go back up. -wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

Our Minecraft server, give46 (server IP: give46.dyndns.org) is focused on creating an interesting survival adventure experience without interfering with the core Minecraft mechanics too much. We don't want to add a ton of things that completely change the way Minecraft survival is played. Giving that experience more depth to make it fun is definitely something we aim for, though, and we have been trying to do this by adding plugins that give Minecraft some new features.

Some of the things we have been trying out: you get turned into a ghost when you die and have to be revived by someone else or by walking to a shrine so that death is not taken lightly; different arrow types with various effects to make archery a more viable option in combat; diving helmets that run on fuel to provide you with air while deepsea diving(a.k.a. sugarcane); and glass that is breakable by arrows and by falling through it. We're also going to try out some magic spells that are cast by waving a wand (probably a blaze rod or a stick) and having the proper ingredients in your inventory. Non

None of these things are staying on the server for sure - we're mostly just giving them a try because they seem to give Minecraft cool new features for players to explore and give them more things to do outside of just surviving (hence "survival adventure"). Whether the general consensus will be to keep these things or not in the long run has yet to be seen but we're sure having fun while we're at it!

-wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

Regarding the Minecraft server update policy on Give46: It's pretty confusing knowing when and when not to update your Minecraft application given the fact that many servers like to wait until either their server software is updated to the latest Minecraft version or until all of their plugins for their server are updated. I thought I'd make it simple for our server instead of making people wonder whether they should update and then waste time attempting to log on to the server to see if they should. Give46's policy is that the server will ALWAYS be updated to the current recommended version of Minecraft. We do use plugins but, if those break during an update, then so be it. Updates always come with fun new features and often a lot of bug fixes so we feel that it's better to always be on top of things. Not to mention it's an easier policy to adhere to and allows a greater majority of people to get on the server and have fun.

-wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

Everyone is really excited about the new homeworld. It's been finished a lot sooner than we expected.

-wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

Previous World Description for Posterity

    In the farthest province of the Golden King's kingdom sits Raffleton, a dashing little town that is rumored to be the birthplace of the current royal lineage. Ruled by a fashious farmer known as Lord Woffleyes and protected by a pouncing prattler called Captain Raveneyes, Raffleton is a town of intrigue and adventure. Though Raffleton is thought to be a quiet town by casual passersby, it has seen its fair share of alluring action. As the town sits in a region that has yet to be fully explored, there are bound to be all sorts of interesting ruins, abandoned towns, and gigantic structures waiting to be discovered. The question is, who will find them first?          give46 is a goal-based survival adventure Minecraft server. Everything is survival-based meaning that all resources must be mined and the focus is surviving in the harsh world of Minecraft. The server will have little to no mods to keep the original experience of Minecraft intact however players will have goals to accomplish aside from just surviving or aimlessly wandering about and creating things. These goals can range from things as simple as making sure the town is lit up enough so that monsters will not spawn in it all the way to exploring a massive structure that was just discovered - this is the adventure part. We are hoping to populate the world with all kinds of interesting areas to jump about in. If you would like, feel free to check out the server at give46.dyndns.org - we will be happy to oblige you.

[give46-blog]

Looks like it's that time again. Our plans for the future of the server have mostly been finalized. Within the next week or so we are going to change the server's "homeworld" to a new one that will not have a central town but, rather, a central island. There's been a few things leading up to the change though the main thing is that we want to try something new and a bit less restrictive. With a large island rather than a small, enclosed town, we'll each have the ability to carve out our own areas without worrying about encroaching on another player's land. We'll still likely have a central meeting place and the focus will definitely be on community goals, though. Also, we plan on adding interesting, new things to explore. A lot of the fun is in exploring the world so we will be using tools to generate exciting new places.

Hopefully this world will last longer than the other two. The last world was close to the perfect experience we were looking for but it was not quite there yet. It will be up for a while longer so if you would like to see what we've done in nearly six months, then please visit us at give46.dyndns.org!

-wicked.fable

[give46-blog]

BOO!

Did I scare ya? Hope I did. Anywho, it has been quite a while since our last update though the server is still going strong. The town has been quite busy and our population has received a few new members along with frequent visitors. Things are progressing at a rather nice pace and everyone seems to be having fun, so far, with our survival adventure, goal-based approach.

Updates-wise, I ended up trying to add in adventure locations far too late. It turns out that MCEdit did not support new versions of Minecraft after 1.8b so I kind of messed up our world a bit (there are now horrible chunks of land and mismatched biomes strewn together in some far off places). I do hear that the new, open source version of MCEdit does have support for the current version of Minecraft, but I decided not to bother with it. Luckily, I have discovered MCDungeon, a nifty tool that generates different styles of elaborate dungeons with loot, traps, and spawners in your Minecraft world. This should make adventuring and exploring in our server much more fun!

'til next time!

-wickedfable

[give46-blog]

We're running the special holiday version of the give46 server currently! That just means that we're going to be doing fun stuff like swapping out the main world with some random fun places all throughout winter pretty much. Hope y'all enjoy

-wickedfable

[give46-blog]

Surely you mean give 64

Seeing as how item 64 is a door, we definitely do not mean that! Item 46 is TNT - something we had a lot of fun with. SMP is actually the first time we ever got to play with TNT.

[give46-blog]

Introducing our new banner and our server's new name. The name is a throwback to the first time we logged onto an SMP server and got op powers - our favorite command was "/give 46" (gives you TNT, basically). Of course, there will be none of those kind of shenanigans on our server anymore, now that we're focusing on fun survival adventure gameplay. It's just a nice reminder of our roots.

-Captain Raveneyes

[give46-blog]

Our original server description. Posting for posterity.

Server Location: atoraw.dyndns.org Status: Up During Construction

King Woffleyes and Prince Raveneyes have opened up the gates to their late father's kingdom! A sprawling, most adventurous locale, the Kingdom was the pride of the Golden King's eye next to his two heirs, of course. The Golden King was so jealous of his kingdom that he let no foreigners walk on the grasses of the Kingdom during his reign. With his mysterious passing due to undiscovered circumstances, the Kingdom has been left in disarray. Woffleyes, now known as the Red King, pushes forward hoping to restore the majesty of his father's kingdom by opening its borders to all outlanders. Raveneyes, known to the citizens as the Black Prince, however, continues the investigation into the Golden King's death, hoping to discover the true nature of of his father's passing. Beneath the royals, though, the citizens pass rumors of conspiracy. Some believe that the Black Prince, the younger of the Golden King's two sons by a mere few years, murdered his father to quicken his path to the throne. They say that his investigation of his father's death is a charade and he means to succeed the Red King very soon, whether by natural causes or of more sinister roots. Others believe that the Red King murdered his father to get to the throne and is now basking in the glory of his newfound powers as king. In either case, it is no secret that there is no love lost between the royal brothers and the division of the kingdom into factions of Ravens and Woffles is evidence of that fact. Who or what is really responsible for the Golden King's death? Will the Kingdom fall apart or remain united? Where is the ice cream? I don't know the answers but you can find out! Join the excitement, the adventure, the conspiracy, and the hunt for sweets at atoraw.dyndns.org!

[give46-blog]

This is just a nice map of our world so far. It's a bit bigger than that, but not much has been explored and, currently, there really is not much to see in the way of structures. That's something that we are looking to remedy. The goal is to have interesting places to explore so I have been raiding Planet Minecraft for projects whose authors have generously put up MCEdit Schematics to their awesome creations. We're not really looking to raise a huge server so, hopefully no one will be mad that we won't have a wall of credits in the server. We actually have the player limit set to 10 right now because we really just want a small group of players (we're really looking towards just friends at this point, but we're always on the hunt for other fun people to game with). We're not looking to get famous by putting on all these different creations - it's really just for our own enjoyment and to give us something to explore.

-Captain Raveneyes

[give46-blog]

Of Ravens & Woffles: Server Goals

We will make this a quick, boring text piece. The powers-that-be have decided to go in a new direction for the server. It's actually really what the server was supposed to be all along, although, the idea is a bit more stripped down so that more fun can be had immediately. The idea originally was that the server would be a survival server based around a nice, gigantic city. The problem was, though, that the city was going to take a long while to finish because we had major plans for it. It was also going to be tedious to finish and not much fun to do - the end product would be cool but we wouldn't have much fun getting there. In kind of a spur of the moment thing, we decided to scrap our plans for this grand city and start with something smaller. Something that we could add personality to as we slowly worked our way up from lowly adventurers and miners to more wealthy beings. It would be just as fun, only, instead of having a crazy and huge city to begin with, we would slowly but surely build it up.

So, starting today, we intend to start having survival fun immediately. Our ultimate idea was always to have a survival server but with goals. We've been playing Minecraft a long time and we find it's a lot more fun when a few things come into play: Firstly, you have to be playing with friends. We've done our fair share of solo adventuring, but we've always had the most fun playing with others. Second, you need to be able to die and death has to matter! Creative is fun, but we're a lot more into adventuring and being mortal. We LOVE to build things but we love those things even more when we've spent the effort to actually mine the resources those buildings require. And, finally, you need a goal. The most thrilling Minecraft experiences we have ever had were with Vechs' Super Hostile worlds and that's because we actually had something to accomplish. When all of these things come together, Minecraft is even more fun than it was when we first played.

Without further ado, it's time to have fun! We have decided to use GrimCrafter's Viking Town as our base and we intend to have a lot of different tasks for ourselves to complete. One of the main things is, of course, to upgrade the town. It's almost entirely made of wood so we obviously will need to change everything to stone, for example. We will have a wall of tasks to keep us on point and, in a tribute to our favorite Minecraft worlds ever, we are going to have a victory monument just like from the Super Hostile maps to complete. We will also add new areas to the world every week to keep things fresh and give us things to explore.

-Captain Raveneyes