Baz Foobar

As we all know, digging into the sand under water causes the water to get all wonky. I've found that dropping blocks of water (via the Terraformer) onto the area clears the issue up and everything settles down nicely. After loading the map into the editor, it became apparent that the blocks of water were still in the air above the area I was attempting to fix, so it seems that when you place material down with the terraformer, the game retains that original location even if gravity forced it to disperse below. Is this intentional? Does this cause any issues that I haven't run into yet? From a player perspective, it's non-impacting since the water splashes into the area below and just fills in the space, but I wonder if these extra objects being tracked by the game engine are taking up resources needlessly?

Glad to see you guys are still at it! Not so glad to see that asshats are still asshats and server maps still become unstable over time... I had hoped that problem would have been addressed by now. I'll have to log in one of these days and pay a visit!

I noticed with 0.8, the editor's ability to display plants/trees is no longer working correctly. It doesn't seem to toggle until you move out of the current visible section you're in? Animals may also be the same way.

Probably best to have the admin of the server add him to the ban list. I don't think BI takes disciplinary actions on dedicated servers run by players (private or public). Now BI-hosted servers on the other hand, that's a different story. Has anyone seen this guy causing trouble on any of those?

You can re-write it from the Editor, but not in-game. If it's in your barrier, you should be able to deconstruct it and just start over though, if I'm not mistaken.

I recommend you read up on how to get dedicated servers up and running on the Dedicated Server Feedback forum (ask Ane for access if you don't already have it). In a nutshell, there's a configuration file called DsConfig.json that has a SessionData parameter that needs to be changed from Creative to Explore.

I think the P1 Gaming servers are hosted on Nitrado - if that's the case, they appear to be up and running. @RedEagle_MGN keep me honest here - you guys still on Nitrado?

For those of us who run Dedicated Servers, the headless monitor functionality is missing. Not a show stopper but this prevents us from gracefully shutting down and sending system-wide broadcasts, among other administrative functions readily available from the console.

Griefing will always happen in multiuser environments even with agreed upon terms. My server had two signs you couldn’t ignore at spawn and a message spammed server wide every 5 minutes. We still had asshats and it was only controlled by actively monitoring the game and backups to see who’s doing nefarious things, banning the Bohemia ID and then sharing that ID with the other admins I trusted to reciprocate on similar terms. In open sandbox construction games especially, there is too much opportunity for someone to do something that is “acceptable” by the game engine rules but “harassing” by social norms. Like building a pile of dirt around and under someone’s ship that is out on the open sea. Sure, we could probably implement protection barriers for ships, but the pile of dirt would just go around the whole barrier. The easiest solution for that is restore from the most recent backup before the griefing event and hope you don’t lose too much work.

I believe I said this elsewhere, but there's really no point in trying to do anything other than Bohemia providing functionality that prevents players from harming others on servers configured by their admins as PVE. Anything else relies on people to abide, and we all know how well that works. The good news is that this is supposed to be in the next update 0.9 - and hopefully that's coming out next week.

Official servers are wiped with each update. Private dedicated servers get wiped at the discretion of their administrators. That said, new functionality may only be available on a newly generated map, so even though a dedicated private server is upgraded to the latest patch, new functionality may only be available if that server starts a new map. Some things that went through this are the new hair styles, for example. As a matter of sustainability, most dedicated servers are wiped more frequently than the refresh cycle anyway. The longest I've been able to keep a server up and running on the same map before wiping was probably between .6 and .7. With enough activity on your server, you will eventually hit a game-breaking event that locks up the entire server and clients. No amount of editor cleanup can fix it, and you're forced to wipe clean. Sure, you can go back to an earlier backup (I was backing up every 5 minutes), but it only buys you a bit of time before it happens again. I'll be back with my dedicated server once the sustainability improves to the point that I don't have to constantly nurture it. Hoping .9 is that pivot point, but if not, I have patience.

Interesting. It looks like the DS .9 update pushed out, but the client is still at the old .8 release, so the dedicated servers that updated today won't be visible or reachable from the current clients out there. @Ane was this intended or did the DS push out too soon?

Unfortunately, you can't have the second type with no PVP until Bohemia implements that restriction to be enforced out of the box. Once you implement the custom roles with no death penalty (to dissuade PVPers (although as stlnegril9 points out, griefers will be griefers), you're forced to go with one biome, no natural caves, and no barriers... Red, I applaud you for trying to come up with some interim options, but I think the best path is really to wait until Boehmia implements this from their end.

'sup bro?

I feel that you guys have been doing well at keeping things simple, whether intentional or not. That design philosophy will serve you well, in my opinion.

Hey guys, do you see any recurring errors in the Ylands Server Logs? An empty server (no players doing stuff all day long) usually stays steady as far as memory usage is concerned in my experience. Some things to check - do you have animals overpopulating? Not just on islands, but underneath them as well? I've found that regularly culling the wild life above and below ground helps to reduce lag. See if you have any vehicles stuck on things - docks, shallow water levels, other vehicles, sharks, animals, etc. Object collision on boats or cars can really create some chaos on a server. Move them apart if so. Finally, the devs have fixed some of the problems, but I've still seen issues occur with propeller packs, canons, and boats in general. If your server hasn't been populated too much, you might want to try a test on a backup and remove all of these objects and see if it runs any better. Not ideal, but it might explain the culprit if nothing else. As a total last resort - wipe and start with a new map. Sometimes a map just goes corrupt and there's no saving it. It only gets worse over time.

Public servers hosted by Bohemia wipe with every update.

Generally, a shovel has more of a defined "scoop" to it so you can use it to move loose material from one place to another (snow, gravel, sand, etc). These can be pointed, rectangular, square, you name it - so long as it has the raised sides or scoop to keep the material in it. A spade has a sharp flat edge normally to assist in breaking ground and digging. To that end, you may both be correct.

They're usually on the polar desert biomes - it appears to be a tanker ship.

I hope you creative folks are working on adding to the great submissions Spyler and TinyMonkey have provided so far! Once again, I am impressed by both of these talented individuals and I hope there are more to come!

Also barriers can become disassociated with the owner (it's a bug).

Goes without saying - many of us have reported that already. We're not saying do this instead of fixing the existing problems. The whole game needs fixing before enhancing any functionality, to be honest.

Once the game leaves Early Access.

Played what? This isn’t available yet on the current release.

In my experience, your character got stuck in some physical situation that the game engine couldn’t resolve.