Tag: server

Server Changes / Patreon Benefits

I’ve been having a lot of problems with my previous hosting provider ChunkHost – after many years with them. I am sad that they seem to have gone downhill so much. Problems with their name severs, unresponsive to requests for support, and so on… I have since moved everything to Digital Ocean and while their site is extremely heavy on the “hey you can buy these services” from us all over the place, I cannot blame them for that too much. We live in a capitalistic hell-scape and they need to make money. Still, the server is now working very nicely and more responsive than it was previously at ChunkHost.

This move has necessitated the shutting down of my private email server. This is a blessing and a curse. Running an email sever on my own was extremely problematic, thanks to spammers mostly. The server was under constant attack from people trying to break into the system to send out spam email. Since it was a VPS (Virtual Private Server) there were reputation problems with the IP address as well. The email server software (postfix and dovecot) were also extremely problematic to run. Both requiring digging deep into configuration files with somewhat confusing help documentation among other issues. I am not sad to see those responsibilities go! Since I actually use my cyclops@moltenaether.com email address and our web services need a method to send emails, I have signed up for Google Workspace. While it does cost money for every user on the system every month, it is also secure and I don’t have to deal with any of those issues.

I am taking this as a new opportunity! Since I started the Patreon account, I have struggled with what kind of perks to offer. Since I usually operate on the basis that anyone who wants to participate can participate. That kind of means (usually) that anything is just up freely for anyone to do with as they please. A Discord role is worth very little and early access doesn’t always work very well. Now since I have access to Google’s services as part of the domain, those who donate $10 or more will gain access to their very own Google account at moltenaether.com with 30 Gigs of Google Drive storage as well as access to Gmail @moltenaether.com, Google Calendar, and other Google services.

The support of our players has actually meant a great deal to me over the years, not only in seeing how much people value what we do but also financially. Running a web server is not always cheap and the costs for me have just gone up as Digital Ocean is more expensive and there are the additional costs of Google. I don’t expect anyone to pay for these for me, though I believe we all get value from the forum and the wiki being online (and this WordPress). If anyone wishes to support these services, I will gladly accept. Otherwise, I just wanted to give a primer on what had gone on recently and the changes that have happened.

Discord Reunification

As many people know, we took a poll on what people think should be done to better revive our role play. Play has diminished significantly over the last few months and that is in the face of many people being stuck at home, which should increase participation. The pole revealed that while there is a certain amount of support for killing off the Angelic Sins and Embers of Soteria settings there was far more people who (thankfully) also think everything was fine. The top two things that people think should be done were to reset everything and start over and to consolidate the servers back into one.

My choice to split the settings up into their own servers was controversial and intended to increase role play. Unfortunately it appeared to do the opposite. From the server having right around 100 people (though most were inactive) the membership has been cut in half. Also role play in AS and EoS are both at an all-time low. Since I am not very keen on resetting everything back to scratch, though that might have some advantages, I decided to reunify all the settings into a single server.

As part of this I cleared out the server invites list and generated a new invite, cleared out the old servers, sent out invites to players who were not still a member of the Molten Aether server, and moved all of the channels back. All the channels are blank of course, but my hope is that under this new (old) configuration we can once again start getting all the settings moving again.

Since roles were changing, everyone should check and make sure they have the proper permissions on Discord.

Changes Made

While there were some reservations about the changes to be made, I still believe we can increase our total player count and activity across the 3 settings by splitting them across different servers. Over the last week or so, that is what we’ve done. All 3 servers are now operational and set up. All content on the original Molten Aether server has been configured to be archived and read-only until such time as we feel comfortable deleting it.

The server Molten Aether will remain online and be a centralized hub for all the settings / servers. All the OOC channels are intact and while the roles have been heavily simplified, it maintains the same idea of who can get where. The “Founders” role will also now contain those who run additional servers as well as those who have contributed a lot to the setting, since those are also mostly the same thing.

Those who run other servers will be granted access to the #staff channel on Molten Aether. I have also simplified our bot experience, we have 3 core bots on most of the servers, and a few more on Molten Aether itself. The main addition is the bot called Alyssa, which is an instance of Nadeko Bot that I host myself. If anyone is interested, it is open source and pretty easy to configure. The primary reason for this bot is that it provides some “global” options for when running a self-hosted version on multiple servers, as such we have use of the following global commands:

.start
.end
.pause
.resume
.links
.servers

These commands replace the Dyno commands which were similar. In addition, on Blazing Umbra there is the command .welcomekit which gives links and a description of a welcome kit for new arrivals to the station. More commands will be forthcoming as they are needed.

The server invites can be displayed with the .servers command for all of the Molten Aether servers. Soon, I will begin posting advertisement links to the Portal and we’re already listed on Dynobot’s site for all the servers. The hope is that we will attract people for each setting who may or may not want to do other settings and each server gain increased membership that way.

Proposal for Server Changes

I have considered server changes for a while now. Everyone knows that the server has gone through many iterations. For a good while now I have seriously considered doing something we did previously… That is to go back to having a server for each setting. Not only that, I would like to allow those people who have starships to have their own servers for their ships and thus allowing people to play around more with time-fudge (as is kind of becoming a term in my brain) so that people could more easily break away from the constraints of being all on the same server at the same time.

At this time, the changes outlined here are a proposal awaiting commentary from the group. If no commentary is given, we will proceed with making the necessary changes, otherwise consider this post an engraved invitation to comment and / or complain about these ideas. I am especially interested in peoples concerns both with how we do things now (which feels excessively complicated at times to manage) and how I am proposing to do things in the future (which might also feel excessively complicated to manage to some). I would like any and all constructive commentary.

Setting Czars

I have decided that each setting is going to get its own “Czar” who will be in charge of said setting in its entirety, except for accepting some co-input from myself when and if it became necessary to do so. Though the intention is for whoever is in charge of that setting to have a server dedicated to that setting where they are in charge of character approvals, story line choices, and even setting / background choices.

Reality Czars

Along those same lines, since we have Janus Gate in operation, I would like to give people the opportunity to (again on different servers) run a linked-reality with even more control unto themselves. This is the framework I imagine for servers to partner with ours. A prime example is a pure Star Wars, Halo, or Troy Rising universe along with other customs (including Cyber Star’s custom setting if he wishes, or Winter’s setting if she wants). Within each of our 3 settings we have methods of traversing realities and such partnerships would come with a “full faith and credit” kind of clause. This would allow approved characters, ships, and technologies / concepts from one reality to traverse to another reality unchecked so long as it has been previously approved in one of our servers.

Reference Material / Game Mechanics

I have always found participation points to be an important part of any setup. Thus, servers joined together in this way would need a bot (similar to Tatsumaki in this feature) to accumulate points and displayer server-only points and network-wide (as I think we could reasonably call a set of servers a network) points. We would still all share the same Wiki (though reality-specific servers would get the choice to reference their own Wiki should one exist).

The in-game mechanic of the Janus gate or even a singular Stargate works for me for transit between realities within Blazing Umbra, and magical solutions in the other 3 settings, the Umbral Passages / Drochaid stones in Embers of Soteria along with generalized magical spells and such in a more advanced world such as is in Angelic Sins.

Since Discourse (our Forum solution) and WordPress (thus, duh) have an extensive capacity to be customized and provide a unified front for all things, those people who are running external servers could use the forum and/or word press to unify announcements and the like. Some adjustments would need to be made, in all likelihood, in dealing with cross-posting and such but that all can be dealt with on the technical side at a later date.

What and Why?

My life is quickly getting more complicated and my personal life is blooming out into something I am really enjoying. I don’t want to give up Molten Aether nor any of its sub-settings but I am becoming too busy to properly manage it (and I didn’t really have time before to do all 3). Also a lot of other people have a lot of other ideas that are far better than mine when dealing with things like Fantasy and Modern Horror and even SciFi that isn’t Star Trek and Stargate (which I know an obscene amount about). Doing it this way allows people to be creative and benefit from our combined creative talent which is, well I think it is an impressive amount of creativity we have here.

Taking Applications

So what is going to follow is going to be the draft application for doing a partner server to ours:

Server Name:
Link:
Admin:
Description:
This should be a paragraph or 2 at least.
Base Universe:
If the reality / universe is based on an existing one (such as Babylon 5, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Halo, Troy Rising) or anything that we can look up specifically as the base for the setting, it would go here include existing resources for if an original setting is being used here as well.
Special Information:
Anything we need to know about the in-universe game play and rules, be as detailed as possible if there is anything unusual outside the rules outlined on the Molten Aether Wiki that needs to be considered.
Additional Notes:
Anything else we need to know.

Application Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions apply to every partnered server, of any type, which is added to Molten Aether. All partner servers should aspire to the same overall feel, our goal is to create a network of servers to cater to the creative desires of everyone who may wish to join and support those people in becoming better role players, writers, and such.

Full Faith and Credit

Any and all characters approved on any individual server are valid for every server within Molten Aether and its subsidiary servers and our character creation guidelines must be met as outlined here. All servers must follow the rules of conduct as outlined here, at a bare minimum, this does not mean that individual servers cannot have more strict rules of play so long as they do not violate the rules specified. Interpretation of rules should be as uniform as possible, but server admins do retain the ability to interpret the rules as they see fit while minimizing conflicts with other servers.

Moderators vs. Administrators

Moderators are defined as those who work within a server to assist in role play, producing plots and stories, going over applications, and enforcing the rules of an individual server. Administrators are defined as those who administer the server’s framework, channels, bots, roles, and other such things. Administrators also, under this plan, will assist in unifying all the servers in the network should some kind of conflict arise.

Admin Sharing

While each server will have its own administrators moderation privileges will be extended to administrators from the other servers. This does not have to include moderators getting similar privileges on all servers. However, anyone who is an Admin on one of our core servers (currently defined as SysOp we currently have on Molten Aether) will be expected to be administrators on subsequent servers unless there is sufficient reason not to. Moderators can also be shared, but it is not required and individual server owners have the final say on if a moderator of a partnered server is allowed to be moderator on their server.

Comments

In addition to our normal comments being on the forum, there is a Google form for extended comments and voting for these changes.

New WordPress URL

So, since WordPress is so much easier to update than raw HTML code, even with an application as awesome as Adobe Dreamweaver, I have moved all of the information that used to be on out home site (https://home.blazingumbra.com/) here to the WordPress.  This includes our TOS and Privacy Policy (yes, we have those) as well as information about the game, links to the wiki, forum, etc.

The new URL is simply:  https://home.blazingumbra.com

All previous URL’s should redirect back here, that is if I’ve configured Apache correctly.  If anyone has any problems, please let me know.