This week we recieved an unprecedented amount of traffic on Portal 2 Sounds from the front page of reddit. On May 28, 80,000 people browsed the site, making it the largest spike in traffic we've had yet. This was particularly exciting since our server was finally able to handle the increased traffic without dying spectacularly — previously we've crashed servers and caused them to be disconnected due to excessive bandwidth usage. Here's a graph of the number of concurrent viewers over time:
MyCraft+ hasn't had too much work done on it recently because we've both been busy with school and other projects. There were a couple small updates to the beta that should fix some mods. Hopefully we'll have more time for development than we've been having recently.
We've made promises about when our Minecraft server will be made public, but it hasn't been smooth sailing. Every time we look at it either there are plugins to update or something isn't working as it should. The server has been set aside for when we have more time or can find someone who can manage it for us. If you know anyone with experience setting up a Bukkit server (maybe yourself), you can PM xthexder about helping out.
Read moreWe've been frantically working on trying to clear up the todo list. The more we work on a project, the more things it seems we have to do.
Most recently we've completed the new Portal 2 Sounds player and uploaded all the Portal 2 in-game music. The Core Swap music is a good set of songs to listen to with the playlist feature if you want to check it out. Added to the player were the playback mode selection, pausing, and volume. Still to come on the site are some "obnoxious filters" so you don't have to listen to the annoying songs if you don't want to. This will be a while before it's added though, because of the other projects going on right now.
We were planning on finishing the Minecraft server and releasing it this week, but that hasn't happened due to some bugs with plugins that we're still trying to fix. The creative world is completely set up, but the survival world is somehow being ignored by some plugins, and the general permissions for the server are a bit screwed up. Hopefully we'll be able to fix up these problems over the weekend and make the server public early next week.
Development on MyCraft+ has finally resumed after all the work done to Portal 2 Sounds. Like the Minecraft server, an update for the beta will be released next week that will update the name, fix all the mod bugs we've recieved, and hopefully add some new features for portability.
As mentioned in the previous blog post, the current wiki page contains a list of tested mods that work with MyCraft+. If you find any mods that do not work with MyCraft+, you can contact us on our support IRC or on our forums and we'll fix them for the next release.
The plan is to post a new blog entry once a week summarizing what has happened during the week.
Read moreA whole lot of stuff has been happening recently, and we've still got tons of plans for Frustra. There's a couple features for the website that we're still adding/updating, like an rss feed for the blog, and the wiki pages. The RSS feed should be added soon, but the wiki will take some time to complete. We're continuing to work on our other websites as well. We've just added the new quotes from Portal 2's Perpetual Testing Initiative to portal2sounds.com, and we're almost done indexing the Portal 2 Music page with all the in-game background music.
Our minecraft server has been neglected previously, and required a large amount of work to update. It is nearing completion now, and should be public within a week. All that is left now is configuring a couple plugins and testing permissions.
MyCraft+ has been slowing down in development because of all the other projects we have going on, but development will resume soon after the minecraft server is released. As a result of the beta, we've been able to identify several bugs with certain mods which will be fixed soon. The current wiki page contains a list of tested mods that work with MyCraft+, which will be updated as often as possible. As before, if you find any mods that do not work with MyCraft+, you can contact us on our support IRC or on our forums.
Read moreYou might have already noticed that we've completely redone the website. The new site is coded from scratch and runs a fancy new tech stack that includes Node.js with Express, HTML5 with Jade, and CSS3.
We are currently running a beta of MyCraft Pro's drag-and-drop mod installation feature. We're working hard on finish up the rest of the features and preparing for the big release of the full version!
We haven't been posting on this blog very much until now, but we'll try and keep it updated as much as possible with our current projects.
Read moreJust a small update on what has happened since the last post:
Portal2Sounds.com has become quite popular, and it's quite amazing to see how some tiny idea grows into something interesting.
There have been very few MyCraft updates recently because we've been having so much other work to do, some updates are coming, but it's going slow.
The game servers (Specifically the minecraft server) have progressed some since they first started. The tf2 server hasn't changed, and hasn't been updating when it should for some reason, but we've got big plans for minecraft. As soon as the plugins we need update, we'll be opening up the role playing world to everyone. Until then, there are the survival and creative worlds.
Team Fortress 2 Server: tf.frustra.org
Minecraft Server: smp.frustra.org
Read moreAlthough you might have seen this already, we track concurrent usage of MyCraft, and make this information public. The image below is updated real-time and shows usage trends of MyCraft over the last few days.
Read moreRecently I've been working hard on many things. I've updated some of the physics in UberSand, and made many bug fixes for MyCraft as well as updates.
The big thing is that I've bought a new computer, so I've gone and made some youtube videos to show off my projects on it.
Youtube video links:
MyCraft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrAC62YefYo
TetrUs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrNaEEzLTgM
UberSand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrNaEEzLTgM
Link to MyCraft Page: http://www.frustra.org/mycraft
Link to MyCraft Forum Topic: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=153315
Link to MyCraft Support IRC: #mycraft on irc.strictfp.com
Link to TetrUs Page: http://www.frustra.org/tetrus
Link to UberSand Page: http://www.frustra.org/ubersand
Read moreA new update for MyCraft has been release including and Auto Updating system. This way you will not have to redownload MyCraft every time we update.
MyCraft also automatically downloads the Minecraft launcher, so there won't be any more confusion about how to get it installed.
The TestMod has been removed from the download, so if you want to use it still, you will need to download it and extract it to the mods folder from the MyCraft page.
File logging has also be added so that it is easier for us to help fix problems. All you need to do now is copy the contents of the MyCraft Log file and post them on the forum or send them to us on the IRC.
Link to MyCraft Page: http://www.frustra.org/mycraft
Link to MyCraft Forum Topic: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=153315
Link to MyCraft Support IRC: #mycraft on irc.strictfp.com
Read moreA bug caused by the new launcher has been fixed in this version. This will only fix black screens before the login screen. If you get them during the loading screen, get the output by running with console and we can help you on irc.
Link to MyCraft Page: http://www.frustra.org/mycraft
Link to MyCraft Forum Topic: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=153315
Link to MyCraft Support IRC: #mycraft on irc.strictfp.com
Read moreThis bug fix is slightly bigger than the last.
It includes a fix for the weird triangles with the Optimine mod, and the particle effects option has been fixed as well.
I've also moved the TestMod into it's own folder to demonstrate how the mods folder can be organized. It is also simpler to remove now.
Link to MyCraft Page: http://www.frustra.org/mycraft
Link to MyCraft Forum Topic: http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=153315
Link to MyCraft Support IRC: #mycraft on irc.strictfp.com
Read more