1.13/1.14 PSA

[luisc99 (OP)]

Mojang said today that they plan to release 1.13, or "Update Aquatic", a week from today.

Aside from the cool new ocean stuff and new blocks and mobs, this update includes a HUGE change behind the scenes regarding the inner workings of the game. It's completely changed how blocks work, "flattened" the block database, removed block/item IDs, began a re-write of how fluids work, and made a whole bunch of data changes to help simplify the game down the line. However, this means things like Spigot will take a while to update to everything. I've seen the Minecraft pre-releases, I've tried (with not much success) to decompile them, and I know how big some of the changes are. Spigot has had some API pre-releases out for a while, but they too change a lot of things, especially now block/item IDs don't exist any more. Many plugins will need some changes to make this work, most likely.

What I'm saying is it'll take a while for VC to update. Personally, I'm on holiday until the end of September, so I've got more than enough time to fix broken plugins myself in order to try and speed up the update, but I want to make sure there's no risk to anything breaking during the update. As soon as a semi-stable 1.13 build of Spigot is released next week (when they've finished changing the API all the time), I'll start testing each plugin and working out which ones work, and which ones need an update.

On the plus side, these changes do help to make the game much easier to edit in the future, and will likely help with future updates. Their approach is to try and break everything in one update, rather than breaking little things over many updates, which seems like a pretty sensible approach to me.

I'll try my best, but don't expect the update to come to VC straight away.

EDIT (2019-04-26): The only thing I changed was the title to include 1.14

[Gamalin]

The more I read the more I see this as such a massive update. I am sure, excited though we are, that we'd prefer a stable play experience that a mismatch of play and errors, crashes etc.
Many thanks for letting us know of the sort of timescale we'll be looking at and all the hard work being put in behind the scenes. We always have SP to play around with until then, it'll give us a chance to delved into it safely.

Cheers!

Gamalin

[Theologist_Green]

As much as I can't wait to get myself a trident. I don't mind the wait!

[OctoGamer]

i've been watching a few youtube series based around the 1.13 update and it actually looks pretty sick and makes me wanna play Minecraft again after not caring for the game for the majority of this year. cant wait for VC to be updated.

[luisc99 (OP)]

Thought I'd give an update on this, so you know I'm actually doing something.

I'll start off with the good news I think. Spigot has updated to 1.13, and around 40% of the plugins we use have a version tried and tested to work on 1.13. This doesn't mean that the other 60% of plugins won't work with the update, most of them will (for reference, now ~30% of the plugins we use are built against 1.12 or lower. The oldest one we have was last updated for MC 1.2). Plugins will likely be fine

However, there's some bad news. While Spigot has updated and works "well", there are thousands of serious bugs in Vanilla that make me very hesitant to update right now until they're fixed. One major one involves chests that span chunk borders being emptied, which would be a nightmare to deal with. Another bug causes chunks to randomly get reset when the world upgrades to the new flattened format. The main Spigot dev said there's about 1300 major bugs right now, which he recommends to take "extreme caution" with running. As a personal note, I don't know how Mojang released 47 snapshots, 12 pre-releases, and 2 full releases, without solving this bug. That's some terrible quality control if I've ever seen it. People are predicting Mojang are working on some 1.14 teasers to show off at Minecon, then they'll push a 1.13.2 build after that's over to fix most of these bugs. I don't know if that's true, but we'll see.

So yeah, don't worry. I've not forgotten about updating. I check the threads every day to see if there's any major news on safely updating. I want to play with the new stuff just as much as you, but I want to make sure it's done safely.

Oh, and there's a whole load of stuff I've got in my development world that may one day show up on VC, if all goes to plan

[Gamalin]

Thanks for the update! Definitely wait! No hurry to have a bugged up version, plus Optifine ain't ready yet either (90%)

Cheers!

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

Some news:

• A plurality of our plugins have a 1.13 version available. And thanks to the great (but annoying) way Bukkit/Spigot is coded, it's likely many of the older plugins will work just fine. There's two graphs below from my spreadsheet, which *should* automatically update as I test things
• The Spigot dev got tired of waiting for Mojang to fix the chest bug, so fixed it himself. This means Spigot has moved from "extreme caution" to "caution", which I'm personally prepared to accept
• I'm going to try and run a local test this weekend, and see which plugins are completely broken. Then I'll try and see if I can either find a more updated fork, or update them myself
• I reported a bug to Mojang back in January 2017, and last week they marked it as fixed. I've not been able to confirm that, but we'll see in the next snapshot. If it is fixed, you'll see something cool in a few months/years
• We're getting the first 1.14 snapshot on Wednesday, of which the contents will be interesting. They've announced some features (including loads of new slabs/walls etc), but they've also said they're planning to completely re-write the rendering engine, so hopefully there'll be some performance upgrades in the new year
• After all this update business is finished, I'll be able to spend more time on a project I've called Supernova, which I hope you'll all enjoy. That'll come in a few months probably, and would almost be like an update in itself.

~ Luis <3

[Gamalin]

Many thanks for the update.

Are those graphics (charts) live or are they just an example of how things stand? If live do you think you could add them to that status page?
Not even played with 1.13 yet due to processing lag (awaitning optifine) but 1.14 sounds great! I wonder if they'll ever sort vertical slabs or stairs. The scaffolding will be great. Without fly, building by town erm village has been a scary time haha

[luisc99 (OP)]

The graphs updated. I'll keep working on testing stuff, but there's a few plugins I'm going to have to fix to make work again. One of them I may have to completely recode from scratch...

On the plus side though, it seems to be going well

However, I'd recommend taking shulker boxes out of your backpacks. I'll try not to update until that big is fixed, but they're pretty hit-and-miss when it comes to them saving their items. As I said, I'll try and get that fixed, but to be on the safe side, I'd keep them in your enderchest or something

[Gamalin]

So the skulker boxes in chests would be ok just not in backpack for now?

[luisc99 (OP)]

So the skulker boxes in chests would be ok just not in backpack for now?

Yeah, it's just the backpacks that may have issues

[Gamalin]

Hi there!

I was wondering if there was an update to see 1.13. I'm sure it would inject a much needed spice into the server (if all is working of course)

Cheers!

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

Hi there!

I was wondering if there was an update to see 1.13. I'm sure it would inject a much needed spice into the server (if all is working of course)

Cheers!

Gamalin

Hey!

There's still a couple of plugins that are broken in 1.13. One of which I know for certain I'm going to have to personally recode it to fix it, as I've had to tweak it a little over the years to fix the occasional bug. There's a few other plugins that are quite buggy, which I'm either going to try and find a working fork of them, or failing that fix them myself also.

I agree, 1.13 on the server would be great, and I was saying to Ako the other day I need to dedicate more time to getting it working. I've been really busy over the past 2-3 months, with a bunch of exams and coursework to do, as well as building a satellite in the free time I had, so I've not had as much time as I was hoping for to get the server updated. Hopefully in a couple of weeks it *should* quieten down a little, so I can spend more time properly updating things.

Sorry for not doing it sooner ;(

[Gamalin]

Hey that'as great and never would i ask for this server to be put before exams etc. The Satalite project sounds interesting!
Look forward to things happening! On a completely diff note, the poor old java version is getting way left behind the Win10 version, such a shame  !!

[Gamalin]

Hey there @luisc99 ,

Hope things are calming down for you now. could you give us an update on when we might see 1.13 or further additions to the server please?

Cheers!

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

Hey there @luisc99 ,

Hope things are calming down for you now. could you give us an update on when we might see 1.13 or further additions to the server please?

Cheers!

Gamalin

Hey!

Starting on Saturday, I'll be home from uni for a month over the holidays, so I should be free. I'll dedicate some time there to update the server, given everything can work properly. I still need to recode some plugins, which will probably take up the largest chunk of the update time, but I'll try and do it quickly. I'd be disappointed if I've not updated it by the time my holiday is done.

1.13 will add a lot of content to the game, and from what I've seen of the 1.14 snapshots, that'll add huge changes to the game, so we can look forward to that too. In my dev environment, I've got a bunch of cool features to add to the server which would expand gameplay, but I forget how much I still have to do for those for them to be workable. I could implement them in 1.13, however some major back-end changes were made for 1.14 which would make it significantly more stable for me to implement what I want, so I'm tempted to hold out on adding those new things for when we update to that. I'll see though, might work on that in summer and see how I can get it working.

I'm truly really sorry for not updating sooner. I reckon the last day I've had when I've not been busy was probably back in mid-January, and I've been wanting to do this for a while now. It's fun for me to do, and it annoys me I've taken this long to update things.

~ Luis

[Gamalin]

My thanks for the update. I know these things can take a while with RL commitments. Glad to see we may be getting the update soon. I am sure we can wait on the even newer stuff you've got to introduce, if it means more stability.

Cheers!

Gamalin

[gerrit70]

@luisc99 Post pics of satellite or ban

[luisc99 (OP)]

@luisc99 Post pics of satellite or ban

I don't have any good photos of it with me at home, but this is the CAD model we have of it
https://www.dropbox.com/s/98jbw1d5m03qjge/CubeSat_20190414.png?dl=0

It's a bit disappointing I know, I'm sorry

[gerrit70]

Still pretty cool, thanks!

[luisc99 (OP)]

Just so I've covered it, I'll be looking at updating to 1.14 too. Hopefully I'll be able to jump straight from 1.12 to 1.14, providing everything works well, but I may need to run it through 1.13 for a day or two to covert the world over. I'll see how it goes...

Updating the server is my main priority though for next week. No promises, but my plan is to get as much working as I can by then.


Monday Update:
I tried running the latest versions of all our plugins in 1.14. 6 of them flat-out refuse to load, and 10 others have errors, some quite a lot. Those 16 contain some of the major plugins we use though, meaning I'll definitely have to get them working before I update. Aside from that, 5 of the plugins have already got a 1.14 version compatible available, which is a very quick turnaround. 51% of the plugins we use have a 1.13 version available too, and many of the others I'm expecting to work relatively well. There's a chart somewhere at the top of this thread which shows all that data in real-time as I test/update stuff. The world converts okay, from my tests, although the VC world is >100GB, while I've not decided how to update yet. I could do it all at once, which could take hours/days, or I could have chunks update on-the-fly as people go to them, which could work, but would induce lag when chunks are being loaded for the first time. On the topic of lag though, 1.14 is awful. I don't know how it passed through quality control at Mojang, but the server runs incredibly poorly. Dinnerbone has claimed they're releasing a 1.14.1 though "soon" which should fix much of the lag. Until that comes out though, 1.14.0 is definitely not in a useable state on servers.

In terms of the other content I was working on last year, I was hoping to get it ready for 1.14 as it brought a bunch of cool back-end changes that would make my "hacky" features a little less buggy, but the update dropped earlier than I expected it to. I'll try and work on them after my exams, and get a bunch of new custom content added to the server at some point. There's something else I've been working on for literally 5 years which, last time I checked, worked quite well, which I hope to implement soon. One major thing I'm waiting on for that is a bug Mojang need to fix, which I reported over 2 years ago, and just last month Dinnerbone categorised it, so that'll probably be a while coming.

TL;DR: 1.14 update is okay. Very laggy, some plugins broken and some I'll have to re-code. Some other plugins work okay. Waiting on 1.14.1 for a smooth update. Other custom content will be worked on over summer, but I'm not setting a final date for that

[Gamalin]

WOW loads going on! Many thanks for the update. Great to see things moving. I've had a bit of a burn out lately and this is def getting me interested again.
By the sounds of it 1.14 may take quite a while to get up and running smoothly. Do you think you'll go ahead with 1.13 first?
It's such a shame that they've not taken more time with the latest updates. The Win 10  version runs like a dream on low end machines.
Look forward to the next update 

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

WOW loads going on! Many thanks for the update. Great to see things moving. I've had a bit of a burn out lately and this is def getting me interested again.
By the sounds of it 1.14 may take quite a while to get up and running smoothly. Do you think you'll go ahead with 1.13 first?
It's such a shame that they've not taken more time with the latest updates. The Win 10  version runs like a dream on low end machines.
Look forward to the next update 

Gamalin

Maybe. I've not decided yet. It'll probably depend on how long a 1.14.1 patch is expected. Plugins that are broken in 1.14 though aren't super likely to work in 1.13 tbf, unless the plugins are poorly coded. The update's been out less than a week, we need to give people time to update them

On the plus side, the plugin that seemed the most broken that I'd set aside two days to fix turned out to just be one line of code to fix it, so that's nice

[Gamalin]

Hey there @luisc99

Mr Annoying here again 

Just wondering what's the latest with the server? Very much looking forward to getting my teeth into the new stuff 

Cheers!

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

Hey there @luisc99

Mr Annoying here again 

Just wondering what's the latest with the server? Very much looking forward to getting my teeth into the new stuff 

Cheers!

Gamalin

I've been in Greece for the past week, so I've not looked at updating while I was away. However, I'm back now, and want to get it going as soon as possible. Mojang are in the process of releasing 1.14.4, currently on its 7th pre-release, which if the bug reports are to be believed, will fix most of the lag the previous versions have been having. Many of our plugins work well from my testing, the ones that don't are mainly ones used in VcG, which we're considering disabling until the plugins become more stable in the newer versions of MC. I'll test the latest pre-release tomorrow to confirm it's less laggy, and hopefully when Spigot updates we'll be in a good shape to do so too.

It's worth noting our world is huge. Like, over 100GB. It will take the game a while do update that world to the new file format, so there will likely be downtime of at least a day, possibly a few, while it updates. I've not decided yet though, tempted to let it update on-the-fly if the lag is good enough.

TL;DR: It's looking good

[Gamalin]

Hey there!

Hope ya had a grand holiday!

That's great news! I doubt anyone will be overly upset if the server had to go down for a while if the outcome was that we had been upgraded.
Do we have to worry about chest contents etc at all during this transition, when it appears? Fingers crossed for testing!

Cheers!

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

Do we have to worry about chest contents etc at all during this transition, when it appears?

I don't think so. As far as I remember, all the weird chest bugs have been fixed. Inventories *should* be fine, and backpacks should also be fine providing I update the database before the full update, which shouldn't be a problem. I'll keep a full backup of the whole server (which will kill my internet downloading it), so if there are any problems I'll have a copy in 1.12 which I can refer to to replace anything

[luisc99 (OP)]

I'll test the latest pre-release tomorrow to confirm it's less laggy, and hopefully when Spigot updates we'll be in a good shape to do so too.

Initial tests, the server uses an order of magnitude less CPU than it did in 1.14.3 patches, and is considerably less laggy
(Not sure how it compares against 1.12 in terms of CPU usage, I'm too busy watching the moon landing to test it tonight)

[Gamalin]

That's very promising news indeed! Look forward to further results.

I've been watching loads of that coverage of the '69 moon landing. Thoroughly mind blowing what they went through and with such little technology as we know nowadays!!

Gamalin

[luisc99 (OP)]

When I'm at uni I've got a ~500 Mpbs internet connection at the best of times, yet I choose to do the final 1.12 backup in the middle of the summer holiday when I'm at home on my slow WiFi. Great idea Luis, wonderful planning...