As you all noticed, today the server kept crashing like mad. It wasn't any particular error - I checked the logs and the Windows Error Reports - it was just that we were running out of RAM. :-(

The virtual machine we are running the MineCraft servers on has 7 GB assigned (now 9 GB due to SaintK's emergency intervention) - it might seem a lot BUT we're running SMP on it now (2 GB), there was a Natural Selection 2 Server (1 GB), fCraft - usually low on memory usage BUT we had 40 players today - when they start joining multiple maps (which are all huge), the server can easily go to ~1.7 GB or so - not counting the two other MineCraft servers. In the end there's also MS Exchange Server, which is what this machine used to be mainly configured for, that likes to have RAM spikes, especially when running some indexers or whatever kind of crap it's doing - apart from normal functionality.

Now - long story short: WE NEED RAM; another 4 GB die to be precise.

SaintK looked it up and the RAM we need would cost around 111 Euros. We're not demanding donations and not saying that the servers will go down without them - SpA always finds a way, but we ask you politely, if you have some spare change, please consider donating. Every bit helps, since we have the monthly server operating costs to cope with already.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

I'll talk to some of my friends and see if they're willing to donate.

They're mostly TF2 players, so they might have played SpecialAttack's servers there.

Unfortunately, I'm strapped for cash right now.

EDIT: They don't.

I'm gonna see if I can pick up a $25 disposable VISA card and send its contents to you. It would be about 18 Euros. This is tentative. Don't get too excited.

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I spent all my money on stuff I don't really need

Yeah, pretty much same here.

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I can try to donate if i can save money i recently got a small job with minimum wage! WOOT! an yways it wouldnt be much sadly.

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Not in cruelty. Not in wrath. The Reaper came today; an Angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away.

I fished up my once abandoned paypal account and updated the info on there so it might take some time before any money starts moving on my end.

I'm Totally broke but i'll see if i can do anything

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"Why ever me?"
-Fulgrim, Spleefer of the SAS (SpecialAttack Spleef)

"BRB, going to be AFK for a long time."
-Someone, Someday

I would if i could, but can't. Hm might figure out a way, but cant promise anything.

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"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

A nice new shiny 20 Euro to the good people at SpA!
Keep in mind though that the Aussie dollar gets killed by the Euro, so my donations are much smaller on your end. You only have your awesome economy to blame.

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Breasts

Awesome! Every little bit helps. I'll chip in myself most likely after I return from the SpA meeting in Romania. =)
I'll talk to SaintK (IRL!) what we can do for donators in MineCraft. In TF2 they get SpApoints to change maps, get reserved slots etc.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Something promotion based to a limit? Or make a class better than advbuilder but not quite up called donator with some extra commands or something, that could all be negotiated with Fragmer? Access to certain types of block in SMP assuming you are sticking with similar custom software?

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Breasts

I've had to temporarily suspend my month donations while I get another job but will be starting again in the next couple of months - until then sorry

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The stats below lie. I'm actually much much worse.

No worries - this is more of a call to the Minecraft community for some one-time support than to SpA as a whole. We still got the server location costs to cover...

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Thanks for your donation m8! We're still looking into a reward structure for donators, once this is figured out we'll implement it and pass out the rewards.

No worries man. Are these spoken of points automated? And then I assume that I couldn't really use them at all considering I don't play the other games hosted here?

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Breasts

Normally you'd need an spapoints activated account for this. All our hosted games are steamgames, so spapoints is tied to steamID's gathered from our stats for those servers. Because we haven't worked out yet how to integrate this into minecraft we can't activate minecraft players accounts yet. (Neither have figured out yet what to reward people with in the first place). Once this is all figured out we'll be rewarding the donations.(including the once made now)

By the way, just to show you that we are not kidding with the RAM, here's a little screeny:



Note that this is the peak AFTER SaintK moved an additional 2 GB to the Win2K8 VM. Poor li'l serv0r. :-(
Ah, and we didn't even have THAT many players on since then... Also watch the current commit, which is only a few hundred MBs away from 7 GB with only 17 players on Freebuild (and some on SMP).

(The limit includes the page file but once the server is forced to use that extensively it's f00ked anyway, since obviously HDDs are slower than RAM)

BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ALREADY DONATED! DONATIONS FROM THE MC COMMUNITY WILL BE SPENT ON NEW RAM!

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

I think promotion on smp OR freebuild just for donating is a bad idea just cause they give money doesnt mean they are trustworthy

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Not in cruelty. Not in wrath. The Reaper came today; an Angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away.

But then again, it shows they have an attachment to the servers and the community. I know I would never destroy something I payed money towards.

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Friends don't let friends massacre civilians, Jim.

Both are true, that just a special rank needed, thats something like adv but with more (or less limited) build commands.

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"Why ever me?"
-Fulgrim, Spleefer of the SAS (SpecialAttack Spleef)

"BRB, going to be AFK for a long time."
-Someone, Someday

Maybe make 3 more classes, DonatorGuest DonatorBuilder DonatorAdv. It's just some suggestions.

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"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

I think it could be used maybe for /item permission style stuff in Beta?

Anyways, I'm sorry to say that my donation is on hiatus at least as long as my attendance, due to some nastiness with nVidia drivers. I'm gonna finally move to Windows 7 (Hopefully not too expensive?), then see if it'll work better, if not, I'll have to probably fiddle with it for a while before it works.

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Yeah, was thinking about something like that.

Proto, maybe go back to an old one?
Also, the /item thing should be good if not abused (an iron tool set each 4 hours, or something like that... or golden toolset for looking awesome - without or with a small limit for thsi one)

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"Why ever me?"
-Fulgrim, Spleefer of the SAS (SpecialAttack Spleef)

"BRB, going to be AFK for a long time."
-Someone, Someday

Yeah, I would go back, but I'm just so sick and tired of switching drivers. It seems like now I'm finding lots of games don't work with any drivers compatible with others.
So I'm just upgrading. Plus, I'd get 64-bit this way.

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Hehe... window$ fail like ever...
also green, your forget about some ranks: DonatorOP, DonatorSOP, DonatorTrustee and DonatorOwner ...err... DonatorLim-Dul ...umm... Lim-Dul ... nvm...

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"Why ever me?"
-Fulgrim, Spleefer of the SAS (SpecialAttack Spleef)

"BRB, going to be AFK for a long time."
-Someone, Someday

I think that you could get a special donator title or tag or something. A nice little cosmetic thingie. With fCraft, it would be possible to give donator ranks based on the individual, which would allow some degree of customization (color, though if there are restrictions [no Op colors etc.], it might be helpful to post this somewhere, maybe an increased /c limit, though that would've been better with MCSharp or stuff that has cuboid limits for advbuilder+)

Sorry if there are a ton of typos. Stupid wrist acting up.

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Donatorsop/donatorttrustee/donatorop which commands could they possible get, that they dont already have(especially sop+)

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"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

OP+ well, only for knowing their're donators, and for the other... name color customisationseems good... Don't see anything other possible. And as i say, a litle something on SMP.

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"Why ever me?"
-Fulgrim, Spleefer of the SAS (SpecialAttack Spleef)

"BRB, going to be AFK for a long time."
-Someone, Someday

We have the source code and we have fragmer. We can modify everything to suit our needs. We don't even need custom ranks. We can just hardcode nick color changes or even titles, just like fragmer fruitified his nick to make it more ghey.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Maybe a greenyfiing of my name then

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"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."