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Official Update Thread

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  • NEW: Holding a Feather in your hand now has an additional behavior that shows Hopper stress. In effect, the more a Hopper is working to move or scan for items, the more Dragon Breath particles it will show. This is a good tool to use to find out if your autosorter or other machinery is clogged or working hard due to trying to pull from a container that it cannot get items out of.
    • In effect, This was the source of Hilo's Autosorter Lag that was adversely affecting server performance. They're not the only ones with this issue, to be fair, but they had a concentration of a dozen or so "bad hoppers" that were doing most of the harm.
  • CHANGED: Town Ruins will now run once again. During the nightly restart is when a dead town is selected to become "more ruined". Now that we have the ability to keep people from joining Loka until it is ready, we can safely run this operation at max-speed and then let people reconnect once operation is complete. This will result in nightly restarts taking anywhere from 3-10m longer depending on the size of the town. This will likely continue to be optimized for less downtime.
  • CHANGED: Jobs Updates
    • NPCs that have jobs will now display a GUI similar to Boros (the quest-board NPC). Jobs will no longer be presented to you in chat as it's slow and can get drowned out by active chats going on.
    • As a result, this paves the way for NPCs to be able to hand out multiple jobs at once.
    • Jobs shown in /j l and other lists will now show the Item Stack of the job's requirement rather than just paper. This should make it easier to just see what job is which and remember which one is to gather coal, for example.
    • Job Items' now have a stack size to show the gathering requirement, rather than just being 1 item.
  • FIXED: A variety of issues that all resulted in occasional little .5 - 1.5s lagspikes on the server.
  • FIXED: A load of other various bugs with all kinds of things, as usual. Hopefully made a few more too.
 
Orbs are Here!
  • Stat Track Charges and Lore Scrolls have been converted into our New Premium Currency - Orbs
  • You can now purchase Decorative Heads from our store in-game. All premium thingies can be looked at/found/browsed in /profile.
  • Check out our updated Store where you can purchase Orbs here.
  • Minor various other bugfixes. Enjoy!
 
Time for October Conquest Changes!
The theme of this update is trying to address the very stale meta of modules. As such we have tweaked/buffed some of our modules as well as added a couple minor changes to help incentivize invasions and prevent more proxy tactics:
  • Module Changes
  • Heavily Buffed the TnT Module: TnT explosions now have falloff (they didn't, previously). If you take a direct hit (inside the block) from a tnt module charge, you'll take upwards of 6.5-7 hearts of damage. This will fall off to usually no less than 3-3.5 hearts of damage within about 4 blocks or so of the TnT. Previously, you would take a virtually guaranteed 3 hearts of damage if you were within 4 blocks and that was it.
  • Slow Module is now an AOE debuff rather than a single-target laser. All players within 15 blocks of the Slow Module will receive continuous Slowness II.
  • Weakness Module now continually applies a shorter-duration weakness within 50 blocks of the module, rather than a periodic 30-second weakness. You should generally be able to fight at your Inhib without weakness.
  • Spectral Module (Not Yet Implemented) - The intent with this module is to buff it by showing when players (enemies) are below 50% health. We haven't locked down the visual on this yet, though, so it's not yet in.
  • Laser Module - Now has a vanilla sound effect on activation (in case you don't have the pack) and is just a bit quieter overall. It will also play a damage sound effect each time it does damage to you.
  • Other Changes
  • New Core-Attack Mechanics are in! It is now sufficient to hold left-click to attack the core/sub-cores and do damage. It is no longer viable to spam/jitter-click cores to do more damage. This will likely result in Cores going down a lot slower, however this is by design. Many, including us, feel that once the Core is exposed, the fight is over, and we don't want this to be the case.
  • You can now only receive one reinforced attack a day. Basically if you're attacked and the attackers call reinforcements, that specific defense is tagged as such and when it falls off (becomes available 20 hours later), enemies can call reins on you again.
  • Beachheads may only be attacked once every 24 hours. So if you can defend your Beachhead, you can rest assured it stays in your hands until the next day.
  • We still continue to evaluate particle effects and other things and have some more plans to cleanup entities, arrows, etc so that you fine potatoes out there can still participate in big battles.
  • All of these are subject to change too, as balance is something eternal, but these are the big changes for this month.
Go Forth!
 
Big congratulations to our new Slicers, Sentries, Guardians, and Elder!
  • Slicers: _Adzy, Zonath_ , Jaimeees, Turkeyman11a, N8Skillz, RedSkilZZ, Donutified, epicafroninja
  • Sentries: Thanius_, Ldana, TeraMarie
  • Guardians: Aggressive_Gibon, Mrpisquallie
  • Elder: Lottaine
New Voting Rewards!
  • With /vote: You can now earn free orbs, shards and possibly a Title or two by being the top monthly voter(s)! Voting for all three sites gets you that day's reward. Only if you vote for all 3 do you advance your calendar day, so make sure to vote every day!
Bug Fixes!
  • It's not Halloween yet... No more bats for now, sorry folks! :)
  • Fixed a bug, which may fix a lot of bugs, but that ultimately means when you get off boats, you'll now be pointing the right direction. Rejoice in no longer having to always turn right when getting to Garama, for example.
  • Hopefully, maybe fixed some Discord bugs with town/alliance chats? Don't hold your breath just yet.
  • And other exciting ones that aren't that exciting but may also not be fixed. Best to stay cryptic.
 
  • You may now edit which Stat Tracking stats are displayed on your items! [GIF]
    • By Opening your /profile, going to Orbs, then Stat Tracking Tools, you can now click on any of the tools in this menu to toggle on/off which stats you'd like to be shown on your items.
    • Categories will toggle on/off as a whole if all/none of the stats in that category are toggled.
    • Stats for things not shown are still tracked.
  • The Fishing Tournament is now random between Garama and Kalros.
  • Other delicious bug fixes
 
  • Nether's Eve Category now available in /db list. Enjoy some spooky and scary new decorative blocks. These are only available during Nether's Eve!
  • Fixed issues with being locked to a different town allowing you to use spawn beacons, but then just get immediately kicked back to spawn.
  • Fixed being able to use both spawn beacons, even though you were obviously only on one side. This should also remove confusing "double-prompts" for which fights to go to.
 
Announcing The Dreadfort!
A place of great twisted mazes, fire, and insanity. Only the strong will overcome its challenges and unlock the secrets of the fort.

After nearly a half-year of development, The Dreadfort is now upon us. The wards of the fort have dropped with the slaying of the Horseman and the horrors within are now open to be conquered by you brave souls:
  • Corridor upon corridor of madness lie within, with a harder set of nether denizens inside.
  • Find your way to the final room where you may battle the Wither King. The fight is harder and more complex than usual, so prepare yourself accordingly!
    • Killing the Wither King will spawn a chest containing:
      • 1 Nether Star
      • 50% chance of 1 Recall Stone
      • 5% chance of the Wither King Skull (same droprate as Ender Dragon)
As well, this morning update includes the following changes/bugfixes:
  • Dreadfort Updates:
  • Wither fight is now a MythicMob fight and is not the usual Vanilla fight. Sharpen your blades and prepare your potions!
  • Fixed bugs with doors/soulsand not respawning properly.
  • The soulsand to spawn the wither will respawn 3 hours after the Wither is slain.

  • November Conquest Update
  • We had intended to do a more significant update to Conquest, but the Dreadfort and other Nether's Eve shenanigans took our time. This gives us more time to do a better overhaul come December. That said, the one big update for November is:
  • Ender Pearls now have a 12 second cooldown after throwing them. This does not apply to any infinite-pearl perks (in-town or as a subscriber in spawn)

  • Other Fixes:
  • FIXED: Hunting Jobs should now work again. This should also resolve that the hunt jobs weren't saving your progress correctly. This was all tied together.
  • FIXED: Capital halls now properly revert and send their contents to the previous owner if they change owners during Capital Day.
  • Also fixed a ton of other minor things and hopefully broke a few new things.

Go Forth!
 
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Lotsa small fixes this morning:
  • FIXED: Fixed instances of being queued for games showing you 0 queued, when, of course, at least you are!
  • FIXED: Flame Arrows could ignite Armor Stands in towns and thus pop them. You can no longer set animals on fire either with arrows.
  • FIXED: Breaking the top block of a door will now check the bottom block of the door in town protection for perms.
  • FIXED: You will no longer lock to a town when fighting during the Conquest Truce Period
  • FIXED: Not being able to place any kind of Skull block on top of Soul Sand. Now it's just Wither Skulls you can't place on them (cause you gotta go to the Dreadfort to slay the Wither!)
  • And a few other unnoticeables.
 
  • This update hopefully fixes a lot of inconsistencies, as well as performance problems with the Battle Zone Colors.
  • Now there is merely Red, Blue, and Yellow. Yellow will be any player who is not in the fight, be it nomad, other town, etc. So long as you're in the Battle Zone, you only have these three colors in your tablist.
  • The update also fixes a lot of other performance issues, prepares for a Hopper Burnout feature which will automatically stop hoppers that are "overworked" from working and tanking server TPS (more about this later).
  • Finally this prepares for another fancy update to Conquest that we'll also talk about later that should help distinguish friend from foe on the battlefield.
  • Also a load of other bugfixes and some server-crashing ones :o
 
Big Performance Update this morning!
  • The Leather Armor Colors update is in!
  • There is now A New /profile Setting that will Disable the Shimmer of Enchanted Armor (the purple bits) in Conquest Battles
    • This has the potential to help your FPS quite a bit, especially in larger battles if you're suffering FPS issues. The animated texture of enchanted armor is taxing when applied to lots of people and lots of pieces of armor/weapons. Check out this test that shows just how drastic and FPS boost you can get (and I have a fairly decent computer in this test).
    • This setting is ON by default (meaning you'll see glowy enchanted armor like usual). Go to /profile and Settings to turn this OFF and see if it helps you out during bigger Conquest Battles.
    • Also, it's reported that turning off Dynamic Lights in Optifine also helps with Conquest battles.
  • We've added Hopper Burnout to the server to help alleviate TPS issues.
    • What is Hopper Burnout? When a hopper tries to pull from a chest above it, but cannot find the item it's looking for, it will check every slot of the container above constantly looking for something to pull. A good example of this is an autosorter in which a hopper is looking for, say, Dirt. 4 out of 5 of the Hopper slots have dirt in them and the 5th is Coal, or something. Because that 5th slot is coal, the hopper will scan the above container over and over and this hurts server performance.
    • How bad is it? A single-chest over a bad hopper will scan for items over 50 times a second. If it's under a Double Chest, it'll scan over ~110 times a second for all the slots.
    • What Hopper Burnout does is effectively detects when a Hopper does this and turns off the hopper. Then, every second, so long as the hopper is failing, it will emit a small puff of smoke and play the Fire Extinguish sound effect to let you know it's failing out (Think redstone lines failing and burning out).
    • What this should do is help maintain good server TPS when we get lots of players on. Bad hoppers don't themselves kill the server, but when there are enough of them coupled with 50+ players online, the server TPS drops dramatically. This is why admins have the ability to turn hoppers off server-wide when they need to (generally during Conquest Battles) to keep things running smoothly. With luck, this feature may make it so they don't have to.
  • A host of other various bugfixes, but overall this update should help both server performance AND YOUR FPS (if needed).

Go Forth!
 
Lil' Fixes:
  • You can now put things on the market for sale for up to 12,000 shards, oof.
  • You can no longer turn in fish that somebody else caught for the Fishing Tournament.
  • Concrete Powder is now a valid road material for the Roads Perk in towns.
  • Guardians have gained the power to show up when caught during the Fishing Tournament.
  • When right-clicking NPC's with things that would otherwise fire as a projectile (Snowballs, Ender Pearls), they should no longer fire.
 
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  • Praise the Sun! Alliance-chat and other instances (hopefully) where colored chat would turn white on new lines should be Fixed!
  • Stat Tracking Lore has been cleaned up a little bit. We got rid of the green italics text and replaced the header line with -- Cryptite's Mining Stats --
  • Lots of fixes over the weekend with our Discord link which should both make it more reliable, disconnect less, and then crash Loka less... rip
 
  • Hopper Burnout will send nearby players occasional messages about the burnout with a link to the Wiki Page on the topic.
  • Added Dragon's Breath Particles on top of the hopper block if it's burning out so you can identify the bad hoppers easier (You'll probably need Particles on).
  • FIXED: Nomad Fights (to start towns) no longer ignore vulnerability windows, if applicable.
  • FIXED: /ignore now works on PM's (/m, /msg, etc)
  • FIXED: Blocks that were embargoed wouldn't count towards Mastery at all. For example, cutting spruce down, but only getting oak resulted in no Logging levels for your town whatsoever.
 
This is your last day to take advantage of up to 40% off on Orb Packs on our Store!

Otherwise, we have a smattering of fairly significant server and client performance bugfixes:
  • Intro Fight instances (for new players) are now pooled and kept alive, rather than created per-player on-demand. This should thus fix the 1-2s full-server lagspikes that happened anytime a player joined Loka and got to their intro fight.
  • Further, Industry Building particle fx (signifying chests being full/empty, etc) were being sent to every player in the entire world of that Industry Building. We've patched this so they only player if you're in-town, within 100 blocks, and that industry building's chunk is loaded.

    This may result in some FPS boosts for players in a variety of places just because they're not getting these seemingly useless, particle packets being sent to them. As well, this was causing server TPS to drop a fair bit once we reached over 50 players or so and so this should help TPS issues during some of the biggest Conquest Fights.
  • FIXED: Claimable Zones now respect the Zoning Town Permission
Go Forth!
 
This morning's update was mostly AAC updates and then a couple minor extras. In short, what to look for being better after the anticheat update:
  • 1.9+ sweeping edge hitbox false positive
  • Elytra checking
  • Fishing rod false positive
  • Elytra checking in water
  • End of levitation potion effect
  • Opening a shulker box while standing on it (1.12)
  • Falling with an elytra onto slime blocks
  • Phase bug when mining downwards
  • Criticals false positive when destroying boat next to land
 
It's the 2017 Lokan Yuletide Festival!
Yuletide decorative heads are now available in /db list

Variety of bugfixes accumulating:
  • Updated/fixed up the Discord registration method. Hopefully it's a little nicer and more stable, maybe no expirations now.
  • FIXED: Hunting Jobs didn't really work...
  • More fixes to colored messages with links in them etc. This has the potential to change/break some of the usual fancy messages you seen on Loka. Please report any oddities you find with clickable messages, coloring, etc.
  • Fixed a lot of known lagspikes. More smoother Loka!
  • Turned off gray links to /vote sites until we can more accurately implement that feature. They'll just stay green now.
  • Fish now have their weight in their name and will now have lore that says where they were caught. This should also fix Fishing Tournaments displaying 99lb AIR and breaking, etc.
  • Tons of other small fixes and new bugs introduced.
 
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We're still laser-focused on trying to figure out what's causing the crashes, so most of our efforts are on that right now. We're also still polishing performance issues and trying to tackle the server running smoothly when we get upwards of 50-60+ players.

Other than that, still fixing the colored text issues on a case-by-case basis. Please /report all that you find. Otherwise, some bugfixes:
  • Well, this one sucks for everyone, but due to the nature of Minecart Hoppers and how they work way-too-fast (bad for server), we've had to disable Hopper Minecarts entirely. We're going to have to leave this one as-is until they become less stupid or more optimized. Thanks, Mojang.
  • Fixed a bug in which lighting issues would remain after breaking a Decorative Block.
  • There's now a title for top-donator-ever. This currently belongs to Aurye and is called Tycoon. It's a transferable title, as you could guess.
  • More Discord fixes.
  • Hopefully fixed the issue with Leather Armor colors in Conquest battles being all switchy and stuff.
  • other stuff
 
It's the Lokan Yuletide Season!
But also some bugfixes:
  • Continuing to find ways (and there are more than a few) to speed up server restart. This will be slow and methodical so we don't break everything, but we expect to be able to shave 3-5 minutes off of the restart time when all's said and done.
  • FIXED: That darned Paper bug in the Market!
  • FIXED: Stat-Track will no longer update your items every time you close your inventory. Now it only will if you've been changing which stat-track stats you're showing.
  • Other stuff
 
The Performance/crashing is still being heavily investigated, but Phase 1 (so to speak) of optimizing some of Loka's Conquest systems is done. In layman's terms, Loka's restart time has on average now dropped from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.

From a player's perspective, this means virtually nothing, but what has been fixed as of this morning's update are some known lagspikes. The following events would cause anywhere from 600ms - 1s full-server lagspikes (no fun during a battle!)
  • Placing a Radar
  • Destroying a Radar
  • Installing a Module
  • Removing a Module
  • Winning or Losing a fight
  • Placing an Inhibitor pad
  • Fight starting
  • Calling reins
And likely even a few more of these kinds of Conquest events. All of them were causing a half-second or longer lagspike. But no longer! Most of these things do happen outside of the actual fight time but Module destruction does not and thus would cause everybody to spike. Hopefully this combined with consistent updates to anticheat (there was another one this morning as well) should result in a smoother Conquest experience.

As always we're keeping an eye on things and I won't say we've nailed down everything that's broken over the past week or so, but we're on it!

Go Forth!
 
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