16

Other Games / City of Steam

« on: March 21, 2014, 08:17:30 am »

It's a free steampunk MMO by the people who did Wartune. It's in very early release, so still buggy in places, but there's a good amount of stuff to do, it's built in such a way that's its playable whether you have a little or a lot of time, and it's overall pretty well-made. There's a solid story, plenty of both pvm and pvp content, and a decent amount of character customization (stat tweaking mainly). They also seem to have learned from WT's mistakes, keeping most of the good and improving on it, while eliminating or at least mitigating most of the bad. This is also a realtime MMO, so plays more like an actual MMO, and less like a browser game with minor MMO elements.

If you're willing to give it a try, now's a good time, as they're giving out a bunch of stuff to people who try it in the first month, and of course, the sooner we get a CC group active, the easier it'll be to recruit.

We're on Server 2 via Steam. Also of note, though it's a 3D MMO, the client is tiny because it uses some fancy load as you go thingie. This makes it both really easy to get started, and more friendly to people on limited bandwidth ISPs than MMOs generally tend to be.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/266070/ - Here's the download link and such.

17

Dungeons & Dragons Online / We've started up the guild again

« on: November 13, 2013, 12:30:20 am »

For anyone interested, we're starting up our DDO guild again, and we actually have an airship now.

18

CC General Discussion / Gone for 2 weeks

« on: July 19, 2013, 03:20:33 pm »

I will be at Pennsic (http://pennsicwp.org/) until Aug 2 or 3. I will likely be able to check in once or twice very briefly, but if anyone is looking for me, I will otherwise be completely gone until then. Thanks.

19

Minecraft / How to join the server

« on: May 23, 2013, 12:57:06 am »

For experienced modders (If you're new to modding, skip to below the dashed line):

Step 1: Update Minecraft to 1.5.2, if it's not already there.
Step 2: Install the current version of Forge Modloader. Don't forget to delete META-INF. You may want to run the game to make sure it's working thus far.
Step 3: Add all 3 of the mods we're using to your mods folder.

And that's it, you're good to go.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Full directions:
Step 1: Update Minecraft to 1.5.2. You should be automatically promoted to do so on load, simply click yes and let it do its thing.
Step 2: You'll need to install Forge Modloader. Here's how:
-Download it from http://files.minecraftforge.net/ (the "universal" link). The exact version you grab isn't terribly important, I'd recommend the highest one on that giant list that's listed as being for 1.5.2, though in theory, any newer version will work too.
-Open your Appdata folder...
--XP: Start->run->%appdata%
--7: Start->Type %appdata% in your search box
-In .minecraft/bin you'll see minecraft.jar. Open this with WinRAR. (rarlab.com if for some reason you don't have that.)
-Also open the FML .rar with WinRar
-Drag and drop everything from FML into your Minecraft jar.
-Delete META-INF from the Minecraft jar.
-Run the game. You should get a popup from FML as it runs its initial setup. If nothing fails, you're good.

Step 3: Install the 3 mods we're using.
This is actually quite simple. In %appdata%/.minecraft is a folder named Mods. Simply dump all 3 mod files into there, and you're done - no need to extract or modify them in any way. The 3 mod links are:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1585216-thaumcraft-305c-updated-2152013/
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1680480-15xforgesmp-bibliocraft-v123-bookcases-armor-stands-shelves-printing-presses-redstone-books-and-more-updated-05152013/
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/561673-152-the-twilight-forest-v1180-naga-updates-more/
http://chaoscluster.com/misccrap/ChaosCreeper.rar

20

Wartune / Leveling plan

« on: May 17, 2013, 02:58:29 am »

Our current leveling plan:

Level Up->Altar->Tower->Level Up...
repeating this cycle until everything but the shop and vault are 10. We will then get the shop to 10, and finally the vault. The vault was originally in the rotation, but now that everyone's rune storage is 1 big stack of 50 xp runes and not dozens of stacks of various types and levels, no one seems to be having inventory size issues.

If anyone would prefer to see something different, please let us know.

21

Wartune / Reverse merge offer

« on: April 19, 2013, 01:53:20 am »

Apparently Ragnarok's upper half is merging into a megaguild, leaving a whole bunch of people behind, and the guy who took over doesn't have time to lead it, and doesn't want to leave behind a dead guild. He was looking for a guild with similar goals, found us, and offered to let us simply take over the guild, including letting us rename it. So we'd retain our name and leadership, but merge into them (they're higher level). It's basically a reverse merge.

Here was the conversation I had with their (temporary) guildmaster:

Him: How is your guild doing?
Me: Quite well, and growing
Him: How do you feel about members who aren't that active..Such as may not come on for 10 days or so?
Me: That's not a problem, there's plenty of room, and we know people have other stuff to do. We generally only kick after a full month, and even then if we haven't heard anything from them as to why they're gone (we assumed they've quit at that point). I'll make sure everyone knows you'll be in and out if planning on joining.
Him: How do you treat low level players?
Me: We generally try to help them, MPD assistance, first dibs on Tree resources, build advice and such when requested, and so on. Our main goal is to have good people in the guild. We're a community above all else, and have groups in a bunch of games. Power comes with time, and is secondary to having a fun group to play with.
Him: Great...that's what I was hoping to hear. In a few days our lvl7 guild building will be available. member fee $3500/week. Would you be interested in moving to Ragnarok as g m as the owner. You can change the name. there would be about 15 members there active between 2 days and 20days. The 12 or so daily actives will be merging with another guild.
Me: I'll need to talk to the rest of the guild to see what they want to do.
Him: Understandable. I am the acting g m. Our former g m has gone to make sure the new guild is ok. So far it looks good and I don't expect him to have a reason to jump back.  I can't stay as g.m. and I don't want the members to come back to a completely dead guild. Let me know what you decide. Thanks, Grimm
Me: Ok, will do. I should have an answer within a day or two. Thanks for the offer either way.
Him: k

As far as I can see...
Pros:
-We'd pick up 10-15 players, albeit many of them inactive. Still, we'd likely pick up at least one active member, and a few popping in and out.
-We'd get an instant boost to level 7, apparently with all buildings at 6, and likely a couple of 7's.
-We would retain name, leadership, everything. They're essentially merging into us, but we're using their guildhall

Cons:
-We don't actually know who any of these people *are*, and would likely not be able to meet more than a couple of them before doing this.
-All saved contribution would be forfeit since we're taking them over rather than pulling them in. This includes overall records (for the title).
-We'd have to successfully get OUR people moved over, which could be an issue with 1 or 2 of them.

22

Minecraft / How to join the server (old, not this one either)

« on: March 29, 2013, 07:42:27 am »

Short directions (for those familiar with modding):
Step 1: Install the current version of Minecraft
Step 2: Install the current version of Forge
Step 3: Add Twilight Forest to your mods folder

Detailed directions:
Step 1: Install the current version of Minecraft
-Simply run the game, it will auto-update.

Step 2: Install the current version of Forge
-http://www.minecraftforge.net/forum/index.php/topic,7053.0.html - Click on "direct" next to "universal".
-If for some reason you don't already have it, download WinRar at http://rarlab.com/download.htm.
-Open your %appdata% directory.
--Win 7: Type %appdata% into your search box on the start menu.
--XP: Start-run %appdata%
-Navigate to minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar, open this with WinRar.
-Also open the Forge .rar file.
-Drag and drop the entire contents of the Forge .rar into the Minecraft .jar.
-In the minecraft.jar, delete META-INF
-Run the game to complete the Forge install, it should say 3 mods are running.

Step 3: Install Twilight Forest
-http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/561673-151-the-twilight-forest-v1170-updated-to-151-the-ur-ghast-awakens/ The download link is here.
-In %appdata%, you will see a folder named mods. Drop the .zip file for TF directly into it. Do not unzip it.
-That's it. You're ready to go.

23

Minecraft / [October '12 Discussion and Vote] Tekkit + McMMO - Discussion

« on: October 19, 2012, 11:04:17 pm »

Info on mods...
Tekkit: http://www.technicpack.net/tekkit/
http://thetekkit.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tekkit_Wiki

McMMO: http://mcmmo.wikia.com/wiki/McMMO_Wiki

Okie, let's figure out exactly how we're setting this up. Important things to discuss are:

1. Ban list: Which features shouldn't be used, or shouldn't be used for specific purposes?
I need to read through the mod list, and will post what I think should go and why later tonight or tomorrow.

2. Are we:
A. Attempting to preserve our world and seed as much as possible.
B. Preserving structures (and possible a couple of full chunks) on request, but getting a new seed.
C. Giving people who had stuff up starting resources, but otherwise starting over.
or D. Something else entirely.
My suggestion: B or C, starting biome that's not too hard to navigate and isn't arctic or desert.

3. Are we adding any additional mods?
Carole suggested MoCreatures, which I'd also like to see, assuming it's compatible of course, and I think that would help add both stuff to do with raising creatures, and some form of extra adventure with the new monsters.
That's the only one I can think of, the overwhelming majority of mods are not tech-compatible.

4. Are we changing anything, such as the difficulty, PvP flag, semi-private server status, or other basic status?
Personally I'd say no.

5. Is there anything we need to discuss that isn't covered by the 4 points above? Everything is open to discussion, so bring up *anything* you want to.
I personally can't think of anything not covered by the above 4.

24

Minecraft / [October '12 Discussion and Vote] TerraFirmaCraft - Discussion

« on: October 19, 2012, 10:43:14 pm »

For those not familiar with this mod, or who are but would like to read up on it more:
Wiki: http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Main_Page
Site: http://www.terrafirmacraft.com/

There's 2 things in particular I think we should discuss here.

1. What kind of world are we aiming for in terms of initial spawn (starting biome, lots of land vs bordering water, etc)? I'll let people who have actually played the mod comment on this before I do... I know biome is more significant than normal with this mod.

2. What difficulty setting should we use? Hard might make the "hardcore survival" aspects of this mod more significant (most notably death by starving), but may also make an already hard mod a bit over the top. I'm nuetral on medium vs hard for this.

That's about all I can think of. If there's anything else you want discussed as well, you should of course post it.

25

Minecraft / [October '12 Discussion and Vote] Please read this one first

« on: October 19, 2012, 10:33:20 pm »

http://forums.chaoscluster.com/index.php?topic=458.0
In that thread (and XFire chat, and various other places), we decided on a rotational server system, then voted on possible configurations, with everyone also able to suggest their own. 2 of these choices were overwhelmingly favored with zero objections, so we will be starting the rotation with these. Note for people just joining this discussion: The original vote in that thread was ignored as a result of later discussion. The actual vote starts on reply #9, and all of the posts after that are votes.

We have also mentioned the possibility of event servers, which are useful both for the sort of thing that's a lot of fun but doesn't hold up longterm, to test a config out without actually committing it to the rotation, or of course, to actually run event games and such. IMO, we should delay any discussion on these until November, so we can get our permanent servers up ASAP and get rolling again. If anyone disagrees with this, please say so here. I'm eager to run these, but want to make sure our main servers are up first.

There are three final steps for these two servers.
#1. We need to discuss things like ban lists, additional mods, difficulty setting, whether to wipe/partial wipe/preserve for the tech one, etc.
Here are the threads for this:
TFC: http://forums.chaoscluster.com/index.php?topic=464.0
Tekkit + McMMO: http://forums.chaoscluster.com/index.php?topic=465.0
Everyone who was in the previous discussion thread should make at least one post in each of these threads, to ensure that everyone has their chance to speak. (Edit: and of course any other CCer that wants to as well - we just aren't currently expecting any others to, and thus won't wait on their posts if they don't join by the time the people from the previous discussion are done with this one.) Once this has happened, we should finish all discussions (using both forums and XFire as needed), then move on to step 2. In the event of a controversial discussion from XFire moving into the thread, please post logs so people know what has and hasn't already been said - the chances that ALL of us were in the room for it are basically nil.

#2. We need to do a line-item vote of everything that has been proposed or debated, with the exception of things that have unanimous support in the discussion. (Let's call unanimous support "at least 3 people supported the idea, and no one had any objections whatsoever".) The results of this will get us our initial settings, which we will then use to make the servers. That doesn't mean we have to keep said settings forever, especially as new versions of MC, new mods, etc, open new options, but the idea is that whatever we do, it's both democratic and aimed at leaving no one out whenever possible.

#3. We'll set up the servers and test them for stability. If everything works, great. If there's conflicts, we'll figure out the options for what needs to go, then hold one last vote to see what's being kept and what isn't. Hopefully, both will simply work and that will be that, but if not, stability is critical. Remember that if we do have to dump something a lot of people wanted, there's always the option to get the dropped stuff into the rotation as a 3rd server.

Please try to check these forums at least daily when possible. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we're back in action.

26

Announcements & Such / We are now on a better server.

« on: October 16, 2012, 10:53:38 pm »

If you can read this post, you are reading this on the new server. Everything should now be copied over and fully operational. Our new server is twice as powerful, is on a much better hosting company, and costs exactly what I was paying for the previous.

There is unfortunately no way to simply clone the old server (and this wouldn't be a good idea anyway, outdated OS and such), so there was a whole lot of tasks with "manual" somewhere in their title. At this point, I've fixed all of the immediately obvious errors, but it's quite likely that I missed something. If anything is broken, behaving strangely, or both, please let me know either directly or in this thread, and I will fix it ASAP.

One issue that IS expected: I didn't copy our logs over (they were freakishly huge, and mostly stuff we're never going to check anyway.) An annoying side effect of this is that EVERYTHING on these forums got marked unread to everyone. This is thankfully a one-time issue. Just hit the "mark all as read" link after you next browse through, and the unread flags will work as expected going forward.

27

Chaos Cluster / Considering new payout rules

« on: September 18, 2012, 10:37:09 pm »

We've had a few complaints that the old payout system was needlessly complex (admittedly, yeah, it probably was ), as well as people asking what we're doing going forward. Here's my idea:

Dom: 2 fully processed Unknown ores = 1 TB
Everywhere else: 20 FP = 1 TB

I'm also thinking of running a Dom contest, the rules would be as follows:
1. 1 fully processed ore = 1 point
2. Contest runs from whenever we finalize this until Dec 1.
3. Prizes:
1st place: 1 +II unit with vars and mods of choice. (No SniperX, anything else goes).
2nd place: 1 +I BOM with vars and mods of choice
3rd place: 1 BE

Comments? Suggestions? Other ideas?

28

Minecraft / How to connect to the current server

« on: September 06, 2012, 03:30:30 am »

I'm pretty sure the following is accurate, but not positive. Please let me know if it fails.

Step 1: Get a fresh install of Minecraft.
Step 2: Download Minecraft Nostalgia: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/106402-tool-cyborgs-tools-mcnostalgia-104/.
Step 3: Install Nostalgia and use it to downgrade to 1.2.5.
Step 4: Download Minecraft Forge build 152. Important: This is NOT the current version.
Step 5: Add it to your Minecraft Jar. *
Step 6: Download Mystcraft 0.9.1.02 Forge. Note: There is both a Forge and non-Forge download. Be sure to grab the right one.
Step 7: Add it to your Minecraft Jar. *
Step 8: Delete Meta-INF from your jar.
Step 9: Run the game before proceeding.
Step 10: Ask one of us for the .zip file of the rest of the mods.
Step 11: Copy all of the files in the .zip to your mods folder in Minecraft (NOT the Jar).
Step 12: Connect. It should now work.

Note: Our server is unfortunately VERY unstable. If you're getting a server not found, it almost certainly crashed - an error in following the install directions will instead either crash the client or give an error message of some kind.

* - For those who have never modified their jar, here's how that works:
1. Open %appdata%, via start->run (XP) or the search box on your start menu (7).
2. In there, .minecraft is (obviously) your Minecraft directory, and in bin under that, you will see minecraft.jar.
3. To copy stuff in there and delete stuff from it, you will need something that can read and edit Jar files on the fly. WinRAR is the usual choice for this. (Works well, free.)
4. To copy stuff from a zip file to the jar, simply open both and WinRAR, then drag and drop.

29

Power of Meep (Clan) / Hobopolis (Jul 17 2012)

« on: July 12, 2012, 09:36:46 am »

We has a Hobopolis for anyone that wants to hop in.

Status at the time of posting this:
Hot: Cleared
Cold: Mostly Cleared (Skeeter wants the boss, please don't kill it)
Stench: Open but untouched
Spooky and Sleaze: Not open yet

30

Announcements & Such / Major virus spreading - check here if you're clean

« on: July 06, 2012, 11:04:48 pm »

We don't normally bother with this sort of announcement, but this virus especially blows, as it makes you use a false DNS server. For those who don't know what that means, it means sites can be redirected to basically anything, and they can block you from loading pretty much anything they want to, as well as doing things like making you log into a false copy of your bank's site to steal your login. We won't be able to help anyone *after* they get hit (this site likely won't load), but we can help you *before* you do, hence the announcement.

Please go here, and click the link to check for infection:
http://www.dcwg.org/

If you're green, you're fine. If you're not, please follow the removal instructions ASAP while you can still download things from the internet. If all else fails and you don't know how to fix DNS stuff, you can always reformat, but that's a royal pain in the tail, and you can fix an infection in 2 minutes via that site IF you do it ASAP. Please do.