Technical side:
Creating a new server won’t be hard and can actually be helpful to test out some of the back-end upgrades I have wanted to do for a while now. The server will be a forge only server with NO plugins besides WorldEdit (Thanks Creative for pointing out that worldedit is a forge mod). This means the only difference here between a vanilla server and our server is that this new one has the conquest mod and worldedit. This means that there will be no kind of other help plugins. This also means there will be no permissions besides OP and potentially a whitelist.
My idea would be just to have a flat world. I can run a few test servers with our world converted and we can have separate times for people to go through stuff to find bugs for the converter. There’s no point in making our current map into 1.15.2 at the moment.
Both servers can be running at the same time. I can make it so the server would start and stop at different times but that seems like it would just put people off and may have issues where the time the server is up is not the time someone wants it to be up. I would prefer we just leave it up.
What’s going on with Sponge???
Sponge has made lots of progress over the past year and they have demo’d the use of the SpongeVanilla server within the past month. I think a use able Sponge Forge build will be ready within a few months. One issue people here need to realize is that it won’t be easy to convert all our plugins to the updated API. We’ll probably have to hire someone to help as I don’t have too much experience with the plugin development and dags is busy with other obligations. Even when Sponge does get updated it will take a while to update plugins. It looks like Sponge is also moving straight on to 1.17 so @CreativeRealms if it’s easy to update then we can just skip 1.16 all together.
Why can’t we just update without sponge???
Sponge is an API that lets us use plugins with forge mods. We can’t use spigot or bukkit because those are meant for vanilla and are not compatible with forge mods.
Aren’t there are few other server platforms that are updated and work with spigot/bukkit and forge???
Yes. But our entire plugin stack is meant for Sponge. So most of the things we have on the server for plugins would not work anymore and would require an entire rewrite for new platforms that don’t have much support.
My own thoughts
This situation reminds me of what the server was like when it was first created. The map was not finished yet so we just had a free-build server setup. Albeit that server had plugins and permissions. I do see the benefit in having this kind of freebuild server up. It’s also the situation MCME had when it created it’s new map. For those of you who were there there was the main middle-earth map, a staff only flat world and the plots world. The main server was dead except for the flat and plots world. It’s something they dealt with and overcame. We had lots of concepts and had a small group of people on when the first ArdaCraft server was up. Server progress will be slow but at the moment once current projects are finished it will continue to be slow. Having an apprentice and up (or whatever system we want here) whitelisted flat world that is open all the time is the best option.
What this means is that unless you’re working on the treegrid or developing strict concepts for moria and gondor, you will for all intents and purposes be using 1.12 anyway. It makes no difference.
I agree here. If we have a freebuild it should be for select projects/concepts only. We could maybe let people do some fun concepts of stuff but ideally if there are projects on the main map left to be done people will just use 1.12 to finish them. (I know it will be hard to get others to help, but that is something that might end up happening anyway.) This would also help builders that feel like they are burnt out or are not excited about our current projects. Being able to make concepts is super fun and still counts towards server activity in my opinion.
I think best to just ditch the building on the 1.12 server entirely and move on to 1.15. Even if that means banning guests for a while until we have protections (they can still see the 1.12 server and it’s easy to explain what’s going on to them).
I don’t like the idea of ditching the server all together. Both being up is fine.