Defenestration is a small server catering to casual, mature players who want a stable environment for long-term individual or collaborative projects. We aim to be a publishing house and display area for creative, elegant and technically innovative works. Minimal moderation, a slow pace of recruitment and frequent backups create a low-stress, quiet atmosphere.
Defenestration has been active using the same map since December 2010 and despite being small, it enjoys a quietly committed support admin/player team of professional programmers and sysadmins who have helped the server weather host outages, plugin system changes, update-related problems and griefing attempts while preserving content.
This server is a place for:
Long-term building projects with no time pressure from rapid player turnover.
Creating designs and sharing/publishing them. We appreciate innovators and welcome them.
Small groups of players to collaborate and interact online.
Mature players who know what they want from the game and don't need a moderator.
Families and friends to play together in a safe environment.
Visitors and tourists! (Everyone is welcome to look around.)
It's not a place for:
Building giant letters, most pixel art or obscenity.
PVP: We're all pretty cooperative-minded people.
Creating a town for lots of residents. We recommend MinecraftTunnel for that!
Aspiring moderators/admins. We don't really need any!
Since we don't really need a full-blown discussion forum, go ahead and post anything related to the server here. That way your comments will be preserved. The admins will see them here and you won't have to try to match schedules to find a particular person online.
I play entirely too much Minecraft on this server, and I highly recommend it if you're looking for long-term stability and cooperation.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I play on Defenestration.co. It's a mature, well-maintained vanilla survival server focusing on long-term stability and ownership of your own data. Join us or just come see the sights. You've really got to see our public rail system.
Hi all! I wanted to invite some discussion on the topic of resource farms, dark rooms, xp farms, etc. We need to formulate a policy.
What are we talking about?
I'm thinking about any construction that greatly accelerates farming or xp. There's a definite spectrum of creations, some more complex and effective than others. The more powerful or dramatically visible the farm, the more this discussion applies to it.
Why do we need to talk about it? What's the problem?
Resource devaluation; we don't have an economy to destroy, but the "vanilla" feel is lost if a resource is available to everyone in such quantity that its scarcity becomes meaningless. Consider that we have Pioneers build houses that can only be reached by throwing 4 Ender Pearls. The consideration that Endermen are hard to find and kill has been completely destroyed, and we no longer offer that part of the vanilla experience to new players. In effect, as far as Ender Pearls go, we've failed the primary server charter to offer an "As-Vanilla-As-Possible" experience. The same goes for sharing access to easy XP or any other effort-intensive resource.
If a farm is "Public Use" then it creates a strong disincentive for other players to build/create/invent their own farm for a similar purpose. In effect, only one player got to enjoy that building part of the game, figuring out how to make a farm or carefully following instructions online. That experience and challenge is more likely to be denied to other players, because someone has already done it for them.
Egregious ugliness. There's years worth of careful, elegant buildings that we've preserved for 2.5 years now. They shouldn't share the same map with giant floating rectangles. Part of the promise we make to players is that they can play at a slow pace and come back to find their creations intact, partial or complete. Part of "intact" is the context in which they were building: a world free of giant floating rectangles. We have a world that's meticulously free of architectural nightmares and the whole point of having Builder privilege is to preserve that sense of aesthetics.
What to do about it? From here on out, these are just my INITIAL OPINIONS. Please discuss.
We should not going to ban or destroy people's creations, including resource farms. We need to find a way to let the technical creativity and accomplishment co-exist with maintaining the As Vanilla As Possible gameplay and aesthetic qualities that are what distinguish this server from the rest of the world.
I'm inclined to allow any resource farming that isn't a blatant exploit of a bug.
I'm strongly inclined to NOT allow sharing of farms beyond very small groups, and definitely not with new players. Everyone using a farm should have somehow contributed significantly to its creation.
Making giant farms not ugly takes a prohibitive amount of effort. Probably some kind of admin intervention will be needed en route to having a better plan for how to handle aesthetics. Possibilities using Xit's island tool to eventually move them out to "ugly islands" that visitors cannot reach, or carefully moving them underground, if possible.
No immediate action is planned, but I think we should figure out a long-term policy for how we want this aspect of the world to work. Please add thoughts!
I don't think anyone reading this would describe Minecraft as a game about defeating a dragon and seeing the credits roll. It's about us. It's about what we build, how we build it, and (at least in the case of myself and Arirish) how many truly awful puns we can make while doing so.
I'm very interested in industrialization. That's the Minecraft I want to play. My Seed Bank. My Tree Eater 2.0. My recently completed implementation of Tango Tek's Iron Trench. Accelerators. I enjoy building them, and I enjoy sharing them with my friends on the server. I want to industrialize, but I want to do so in such a way that everyone on the server can benefit. I've used resource accelerators built by others in the past, and I'd very much like to share mine in turn.
I think that resource scarcity, even in the presence of accelerators, is still a choice available to those that want to explore it. It is my opinion that the individual players should be given the ability to make both that choice and the choice to share accelerators that they've built.
Thanks for inviting us to share our opinions on this topic, Zorac.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I play on Defenestration.co. It's a mature, well-maintained vanilla survival server focusing on long-term stability and ownership of your own data. Join us or just come see the sights. You've really got to see our public rail system.
Progress on things has been kinda slow, and even though our premise is to go slowly and play at a measured pace, we need to move forward in a few ways.
There's a lot of topics, but the one I'd like to look at first is the Pioneer program.
Here are some problems:
- It's a long trip out to Pioneer, and somewhat more isolated than strictly necessary.
- Pioneer area is getting pretty full and a lot of it is with bad examples that might put off the better new players.
- It's not scalable and we're limited in how many people we can take on.
Please suggest more problems.
One of the things we can do is to make a separate world for Pioneers. The idea is that we'll create a new world with a fixed border and then seed it with some good examples of building to get people started. Then we save that world and make a new copy every so often so we never have a full and cluttered Pioneer area, but several older ones that are gradually retired as people promote to Builder or wander off. Once all the Pioneers in a world are promoted or gone, then take it offline and we archive it.
Things to build might be:
- A nice spawn, that's a little more pastoral and spread out than our current spawn.
- A rail hub and several remote rail stations already connected, that people can add/change as their interest takes them.
- Some small sample builds that demonstrate desirable qualities:
- Tasteful, themed design and appropriate sizes
- Good spacing between builds
- Appreciation for working with the terrain. (Though the new generator makes a lot of reasonably flat boring areas, so that's harder to do.)
A few things we might build would be:
- Some roads and bridges
- Some simple houses
- A nicely laid out start to a mine
- Lighthouses (because we have a fetish)
- A small city that demonstrates a little more forethought than on most servers: non-rectangular plots, greenbelts, etc.
What other things should be built as examples to new pioneers? Please suggest some that you'r like to see or build. We'll be inviting people to come into the new world and work on them, as soon as we figure out what should be done and get it organized!
I like the Pioneer world idea. I'd be glad to assist, but I don't know if my aesthetic sensibilities are up to the task. If one of the contributors could use an extra pair of hands, though, I'm in.
Another possibility of an example build would be a short maze/puzzle (e.g. the one that you must traverse to reach [REDACTED].)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I play on Defenestration.co. It's a mature, well-maintained vanilla survival server focusing on long-term stability and ownership of your own data. Join us or just come see the sights. You've really got to see our public rail system.
I'd be onboard with the a separate pioneer world project. Something to consider beyond what's been discussed is a simple way for builders to access this area. I'd assume another door in the portal house would suffice for this. This would allow builders easy access to advise and assist pioneers with getting up to speed, especially newer players to the game. A good transportation system would facilitate better response times for help, not only physically, but from a motivation standpoint, i.e., "how much I can be arsed to go help this guy figure out how to build his door again."
If we were to go this way, would the current pioneer be left intact? Perhaps certain areas can be cleared with mutual consent or moved to retirement, freeing up land for more up to date projects.
Re: freeing up old Pioneer for builders: absolutely, that was one of the main goals. That'll take a long time. Also, we will somehow need to create more buildable space, and think about matching projects to terrain. In the very long run, there's no reason to have a giant flat project sitting on top of the older, more bumpy terrain, when it could be sitting on one of the newer flat biomes. That's a much later question, though.
Re: Quick transport to help Pioneers. There'd definitely be a portal to a new Pioneer world somewhere convenient. Definitely need a good skeleton of a rail system. Should some faster form of getting to Pioneers exist, like teleport? I'm leaning to no, because Pioneer is supposed to be really temporary; just long enough to figure out if someone would work as a Builder. Where we fall down is leaving people in Pioneer forever instead of firmly encouraging them to find a more appropriate server.
I think a simple but complete rail system laid down early would suffice for transport to areas, especially if there are direct lines spaced out conveniently, teleportation beyond spawn and home seems unnecessary.
Re: Leaving people in Pioneer, are there any specific guidelines beyond 'our kind of people' or not? Granted that I'm still fairly new, but currently it seems to be 'ignore them away' if they're not fitting in. Perhaps simply more purposeful awareness of new pioneers can help guide decisions of whether to groom a new member or to invite them to go elsewhere.
I have a somewhat more radical idea for future Pioneers (and possibly Builders.) There has been talk for some time of individual islands. We could generate a medium-size "island" (e.g. 15x15 chunks) for each Pioneer, and give them a fixed amount of time (two weeks? a month?) to do whatever they can with it. At the end of that time, if they make Builder, then they can choose to stay on their island, get a new island, move to the mainland, etc.
In the meantime, there are plenty of worthy example builds around the server spawn, and they could still tour the World and use the Quarry to keep their island looking nice.
Just an idea I had and wanted to throw out there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I play on Defenestration.co. It's a mature, well-maintained vanilla survival server focusing on long-term stability and ownership of your own data. Join us or just come see the sights. You've really got to see our public rail system.
I think that for a new pioneer we should have it in a seperate multiverse and have it on a small chunk of land with the edges cut off like in the main world, if it's smaller people will be forced to adapt to the terrain instead of searching for flat spots. Also, if we had an area either in pioneer or somewhere close that showcases builds that have gotten people promoted so that new players have an idea of the standards they need to meet would be a good idea as well. Another alternative to this could be having the current builders build something small scale like everyone having a small house in there or having a town done by the builders as the spawn. It also seems like a lot of the new pioneers are wasting time building farms and mining instead of trying to get to builder status. Maybe the smaller space will make them want to get out of there as fast as possible.
I just thought of an idea for long-distance travel that might be interesting: a series of dungeon-like structures that use command blocks to move players. In my head, I see these structures as buried deep, and they would form an irregularly-shaped, directed graph of destinations. They could be scattered throughout the world and would have to be discovered and activated somehow in order to be used. I imagine that this would be a ton of work, but I liked the idea enough that I wanted to at least mention it.
EDIT: I guess I like it in part because it feels kind of vanilla even though it clearly wouldn't be.
I play on Defenestration.co. It's a mature, well-maintained vanilla survival server focusing on long-term stability and ownership of your own data. Join us or just come see the sights. You've really got to see our public rail system.
I just thought of an idea for long-distance travel that might be interesting: a series of dungeon-like structures that use command blocks to move players. In my head, I see these structures as buried deep, and they would form an irregularly-shaped, directed graph of destinations. They could be scattered throughout the world and would have to be discovered and activated somehow in order to be used. I imagine that this would be a ton of work, but I liked the idea enough that I wanted to at least mention it.
EDIT: I guess I like it in part because it feels kind of vanilla even though it clearly wouldn't be.
Or a TARDIS.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out Boats Evolved; the fancy huge customizable boats Notch tweeted about brought to life!
So with one quick shout I am now unable to connect to the server without Minecraft locking up...such an inopportune moment xD
What have I done...
*EDIT*
This post is in remembrance of the 2,500+ cows that inhabited Acreage Acres bred to cater to the needs of of the grand library of Belmont, and whose breeding subsequently got out of control and was the culprit of Defenestration's many lag and server problems, nearly destroying the server in the process. Requiring the action of gchristopher, every cow was unfortunately, but necessarily, smitten before their time. Though fire and brimstone has claimed their lives (and leather), their sacrifice was not in vain. The Library will continue to gather its leather, though not so destructively. And the promiscuity of the cattle of the Cleansing of Acreage Acres shall serve as a cautionary tale to all who have plans of breeding dense populations of animals. The servers simply cannot handle this number of horny cows.
As their animal spirits return to the ground to replenish the life force of our world, they and their surviving kin will live on in our hearts and minds. But mostly, our hearts.
I've seen way too many servers in my day, but this one seems to hold a sort of professionalism that seems so unheard of these days. Before even clicking on minecraft in my task bar, I can tell with no doubt that this is a good server.
This will provide a hefty amount of time to waste during my two month break before my last year of school.
I look forward to it guys!
Defenestration has been active using the same map since December 2010 and despite being small, it enjoys a quietly committed support admin/player team of professional programmers and sysadmins who have helped the server weather host outages, plugin system changes, update-related problems and griefing attempts while preserving content.
This server is a place for:
I'm very interested in industrialization. That's the Minecraft I want to play. My Seed Bank. My Tree Eater 2.0. My recently completed implementation of Tango Tek's Iron Trench. Accelerators. I enjoy building them, and I enjoy sharing them with my friends on the server. I want to industrialize, but I want to do so in such a way that everyone on the server can benefit. I've used resource accelerators built by others in the past, and I'd very much like to share mine in turn.
I think that resource scarcity, even in the presence of accelerators, is still a choice available to those that want to explore it. It is my opinion that the individual players should be given the ability to make both that choice and the choice to share accelerators that they've built.
Thanks for inviting us to share our opinions on this topic, Zorac.
There's a lot of topics, but the one I'd like to look at first is the Pioneer program.
Here are some problems:
- It's a long trip out to Pioneer, and somewhat more isolated than strictly necessary.
- Pioneer area is getting pretty full and a lot of it is with bad examples that might put off the better new players.
- It's not scalable and we're limited in how many people we can take on.
Please suggest more problems.
One of the things we can do is to make a separate world for Pioneers. The idea is that we'll create a new world with a fixed border and then seed it with some good examples of building to get people started. Then we save that world and make a new copy every so often so we never have a full and cluttered Pioneer area, but several older ones that are gradually retired as people promote to Builder or wander off. Once all the Pioneers in a world are promoted or gone, then take it offline and we archive it.
Things to build might be:
- A nice spawn, that's a little more pastoral and spread out than our current spawn.
- A rail hub and several remote rail stations already connected, that people can add/change as their interest takes them.
- Some small sample builds that demonstrate desirable qualities:
- Tasteful, themed design and appropriate sizes
- Good spacing between builds
- Appreciation for working with the terrain. (Though the new generator makes a lot of reasonably flat boring areas, so that's harder to do.)
A few things we might build would be:
- Some roads and bridges
- Some simple houses
- A nicely laid out start to a mine
- Lighthouses (because we have a fetish)
- A small city that demonstrates a little more forethought than on most servers: non-rectangular plots, greenbelts, etc.
What other things should be built as examples to new pioneers? Please suggest some that you'r like to see or build. We'll be inviting people to come into the new world and work on them, as soon as we figure out what should be done and get it organized!
Another possibility of an example build would be a short maze/puzzle (e.g. the one that you must traverse to reach [REDACTED].)
If we were to go this way, would the current pioneer be left intact? Perhaps certain areas can be cleared with mutual consent or moved to retirement, freeing up land for more up to date projects.
-de Bo
Re: Quick transport to help Pioneers. There'd definitely be a portal to a new Pioneer world somewhere convenient. Definitely need a good skeleton of a rail system. Should some faster form of getting to Pioneers exist, like teleport? I'm leaning to no, because Pioneer is supposed to be really temporary; just long enough to figure out if someone would work as a Builder. Where we fall down is leaving people in Pioneer forever instead of firmly encouraging them to find a more appropriate server.
Re: Leaving people in Pioneer, are there any specific guidelines beyond 'our kind of people' or not? Granted that I'm still fairly new, but currently it seems to be 'ignore them away' if they're not fitting in. Perhaps simply more purposeful awareness of new pioneers can help guide decisions of whether to groom a new member or to invite them to go elsewhere.
In the meantime, there are plenty of worthy example builds around the server spawn, and they could still tour the World and use the Quarry to keep their island looking nice.
Just an idea I had and wanted to throw out there.
EDIT: I guess I like it in part because it feels kind of vanilla even though it clearly wouldn't be.
Or a TARDIS.
What have I done...
*EDIT*
This post is in remembrance of the 2,500+ cows that inhabited Acreage Acres bred to cater to the needs of of the grand library of Belmont, and whose breeding subsequently got out of control and was the culprit of Defenestration's many lag and server problems, nearly destroying the server in the process. Requiring the action of gchristopher, every cow was unfortunately, but necessarily, smitten before their time. Though fire and brimstone has claimed their lives (and leather), their sacrifice was not in vain. The Library will continue to gather its leather, though not so destructively. And the promiscuity of the cattle of the Cleansing of Acreage Acres shall serve as a cautionary tale to all who have plans of breeding dense populations of animals. The servers simply cannot handle this number of horny cows.
As their animal spirits return to the ground to replenish the life force of our world, they and their surviving kin will live on in our hearts and minds. But mostly, our hearts.
10/16 2013 NEVER FORGET
Sorry I nearly wrecked the server, guys.
This will provide a hefty amount of time to waste during my two month break before my last year of school.
I look forward to it guys!