IMPORTANT UPDATE #2

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We will have a Teamspeak 3 server set up for the survival marathon. If you don't already know, Teamspeak is like an IRC for voice chatting. You join a server, join a channel in that server, and talk to the people in that channel using your microphone.

While you don't need to be on the teamspeak server if you're participating in the survival marathon, it's highly reccomended that you join even if you don't have a microphone, as it allows us to chat without having to stop and type in-game every few seconds, and because a lot of us will be using teamspeak, you will miss out on a lot of what's said outside of the in-game chat if you don't listen in.

If you're new to teamspeak, here's how to set it up:

1. Go to http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads and download and install the Client.
2. Open Teamspeak 3 and complete the setup wizard. Under microphone settings, if you choose "Voice Activation Detection", your microphone will activate when you start talking, however, it may also activate when there is background noise. If you use speakers, do NOT choose this option. If you choose "Push-to-talk", you can assign a hotkey, which will activate your microphone when held down.
3. Click Connections>Connect
4. Under Server Address, type "uk.teamspeak.cc:9022"
5. Under Nickname, type in your 64digits/Minecraft name.
6. Leave server password blank, and press connect.
7. Once connected to the server, double click on the channel titled "64digits Minecraft Server". When prompted for the password, enter "notch" in the password field.
8. Say hello!

If you're having trouble getting onto teamspeak, let me know.


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IMPORTANT UPDATE

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Please fill out these polls:

Town name - http://poll.fm/38tf2
Spawn - http://poll.fm/38tf6
Buildings, structures, genitalia outside cities - http://poll.fm/38tfk
New map - http://poll.fm/38tfv


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Greetings 64ders,

I've been told that Minecraft is going to be updated within the next week or so to 1.8. This update will be one of the biggest updates minecraft has ever received. Some of the biggest things that are expected to be introduced in the update include:


- New biome generation code, which will allow for rivers, deep oceans, continents, giant mushrooms and volcanoes. Here is a map.
- Endermen, a terrifying new mob that steals blocks and attacks you if you look them in the eye.
- NPC villages populated by pigmen.
- A new maximum height
- Huge abandoned ruins
- Tons of new blocks, including stone bricks
- New foods and farming options


(For a complete list of potentially upcoming features, see: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Upcoming_features )

To celebrate all of these new features, we've decided that we're going to start a brand new map and play straight up survival for a few days, with no server mods, no /giving, /kitting, /tping, /warping, /home-ing or /iteming (bukkit will probably be broken for a while anyway). Eventually, we will turn the mods back on and transition to a fully creative environment on the same map. We're planning to build a large new city on this map too. It will be very fun. I also want to make one thing very clear; if ANYBODY is caught taking resources from another person's chest without their permission, murdering another player or griefing another player's property, they will be permanently banned. There will be no second chances. If in-game city building rules are set by admins during the survival marathon, these rules MUST be followed.

We don't currently know the exact release date of 1.8 (It's expected to be sometime after August 28th), but we will probably be starting at around 9PM UTC (4PM on East coast of US, 1PM on West coast) on the day of it's release. I will update this post when a release date is confirmed.

If you want to bring friends onto the server to take part in the fun, PM me with their in-game names so I can whitelist them in advance. If you plan to attend, let me know, and I'll add you to the confirmed guest list:


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1. Stevenup7002
2. Josea (gmljosea)
3. marbs
4. Jeremy (JeremyDF93)
5. DesertFox (Kitsune)
6. Alert Games (agMark)
7. Cyrus (CyrusRoberto)
8. Kilin (Kilin08)
9. Cpsgames
10. JID
11. hel (Malurth)
12. Juju (JujuAdams)
13. largames
14. adamskii97
15. colseed (Rakaasac)
16. Gordy (GordyKnows)
17. LoserHands
19. Twinsoul (slag614)
20. Kamira (Kamira929)
21. Ferret (Ferrets)
22. avl1991 (anthonyloprimo)
23. Toast (Toast4001)
24. SMP (Eggnogg)
25. Grand-high Gamer (Gradius)
26. Qwilderwibben
27. Friend of avl1991 (mumerus)
28. Friend of avl1991 (w15eman)
29. Friend of hel (TheMessage)
30. BuniSuitClassix (Shnoozer)
31. Moikle
32. mattywooda
33. Unaligned (Sinistrade)
34. Mush (MushSauce)
35. Glen (Gemori)
36.

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Some of you may also be wondering what will happen to our current creative map once 1.8 is released. As most of you know, our current map is nearly 10 months old. Because of it's age, we're not entirely sure how future updates to the biome generation code, and indeed, the addition of NPC villages will affect our current map. We also don't want players to miss out on new features if our current map hinders them in any way. We're waiting until 1.8 is released before we make any final decisions on the matter, but for the time being, we've come up with a few possible solutions that we'd like to hear your thoughts on.

One solution is; when we start the new world, we could paste most of the cities from the old creative world into this new world. That way, we get to keep the old cities and still have the new terrain, however, pasting may create some ugliness, as the boundaries of the paste won't line up properly with the new world, and it would clutter the new world quite quickly.

Another solution is to move ./realm creative to ./realm oldcreative, and use the newly spawned world as the default world, with old creative as a secondary world. This solution is also problematic, as most of the time, the majority of players will play on only one world, which would leave the other world deserted.

If you have any suggestions on how to solve this problem, please leave a comment.


See you all in the new world!

-Steve