Change Log

DvZ

2012

14/05/2012

  • Dispensers at spawn to provide self-service, with large games each dispenser will hold a limited number of records so you can choose your class.
  • A temporary buff will be applied by Admin's to all Dwarves to prevent suicides before the second night when we release the dragon.

15/05/2012

  • Build restrictions have been implemented to prevent Dwarves building over spawn locations of people joining.
  • Additional height restrictions applied to prevent tall floating islands, that monsters cannot climb.

16/05/2012

  • New plugins to prevent cheating and other security bug fixes are in place.
  • PVP is now fully under control and everyone who joins or dies will no longer be victim of attack.

18/05/2012

  • Changed tailors required item for transmuting from bread to Orange dye.
  • All Dwarves now use a book to transmute, and information regarding what's required to transmute will be shown when the book is left clicked.

19/05/2012

  • Potions can now be left clicked which will buff you and the dwarves that are close to where the snowball lands. Each potions costs 5xp points (not levels), until we move into the Mana system at a later stage.

21/05/2012

  • Added a build height to prevent players making floating places to hide, which results in the core begin destroyed and the game ending quickly.
  • No drop feature, its now not possible to drop records at any point in the game, this is to reduce sharing which could unbalance the class distribution and result in missing classes or put pressure on a shortage of one class.

22/05/2012

  • Prevent fall damage for all dwarves until 3rd night, it seems popular to commit suicide on days 1 and 2, stupid choice cos you have to wait till night 2 to become a monster. Main reason for this addition is to ensure we get a good game and have a need for a dragon.

23/05/2012

  • Fixed monster pvp via melee attack, still working on patch for spider bite. Every other round you will be buffed for explosion and fall damage until I fix this to every round.
  • Fixed silverfish class, needed more permissions to infect blocks.
  • Added chest break notification to all mods, to prevent this form of griefing, anyone found doing this will get a permanent ban. (except late on the 2rd day when chests should be broken)

25/05/2012

  • Magma creams will now let you become a monster if the admin's have released the monsters. This gives people who arrive late a chance to join, instead of waiting. NOTE* if you have left click the Magma cream before the monsters are released but have not chosen your dwarf class, you must be a dwarf first as normal.

26/05/2012

  • Fixed passive mob eggs, for quite sometime we have been denying natural passive mob spawning as they are not necessary for the game. Its only recently come to our attention that this was causing a problem with the spawning of passive mob eggs which are included the wolf class. Sorry to those who reported the problem earlier, we over looked this and believed it was due to a plugin we no longer use to prevent item dropping.

28/05/2012

  • Added a new monster class Cougar. This class is able to disarm at a distance any dwarves holding a sword. At close range the cougar has the ability to make dwarves hungry.

29/05/2012

  • Added a new class Dragon Warrior. The Dwarf that strikes the final blow to the Dragon will be rewarded with the Dragon Warrior class. Besides receiving all enchanted armor and weapons, they will have 5 mins of complete immunity to any form of damage and receive 2000 XP and every potion to help buff the remaining dwarves.
  • Added another new monster class Blaze. A Tank replacement class for the previous Iron Golem class, you get the same abilities plus the new blaze rod which will set dwarves on fire from a distance.

30/05/2012

  • New Dwarves Shrine to protect, thanks to Rob for the idea and our Admin team for constructing our version. This provides new possibilities to the game, and creates more focus on dwarves working together to defend their shrine.

01/06/2012

  • Added a new monster class Hungry Pig. This class is able to eat blocks and transform into a Zombie Pigman with the armor of a zombie class and the sword of a wolf class.

02/06/2012

  • A member of our internal forums added a very useful post containing tips. We have added the majority of the post to the in-game info. please see the tips in-game by typing /tips

03/06/2012

  • Added a new rare weapons which each class accept builder can summon. The blacksmith can now summon a (diamond hoe) Water staff, which will levitate targets and a tailor can summon a Web which will entomb monsters.

05/06/2012

  • Added another three rare weapons, blacksmith can now also summon Berserker Axe (diamond axe) which give a few seconds of fast moving and will ignore armor. Alchemist can summon a Blaze Rod, which will set monsters on fire and finally bakers can summon Easy-fix-slabs.

06/06/2012

  • Thanks to a suggestion on our internal forums Builders now have a rare chance of getting iron bars. The time it takes to break a iron bar without tools is at least double a builders stone. If builders work together they can create better defense.

07/06/2012

  • Chest placement restriction, in a attempt to reduce those who like to cheat, only classes that require chests can place them. Time is being spent on trying to prevent access to chests until day 2 when builders should be chest searching.

09/06/2012

  • Add another rare weapon to the Tailors class, they now have a low chance of receiving a shield when they summon. The shield will prevent 95% of damage for 3 seconds.

11/06/2012

  • All dwarves summon stone once the dragon arrives, anyone that joins after this point will become a monster, and will have to wait until they see the broadcast message. "The Monsters are free!"

24/06/2012

  • Updated to new version, removed all classes, everyone is rewarded for building, your book will now have multiple spells! Huge change but with many benefits to the game, obtaining items no longer requires shop classes to be performing repetitive time consuming tasks, and instead everyone receives items as they build, including rare items.

26/06/2012

  • Zombie sacrifice option added. Zombies can now use their suicide pill (Ghast tear) while standing on the shrine, if they don't get interrupted by taking damage, they have a chance of moving the spawn location of all monsters to the shrine.

01/07/2012

  • New Shrines! Thanks to our community for showing an interest in designing our new shrines, currently we are testing, so please feedback to help get them right.

05/07/2012

  • New Rare item! invisibility cloak, for a short time dwarves can disappear, they cannot attack while invisible so use it wisely.

16/07/2012

  • New Rare item! an area effect weapon, with the Flail you can attack multiple enemies and fill the screen with death spam!

25/07/2012

  • New Shrine! Big thanks to bburgdan1 for his continued contributions to the game, hes build almost all the buildings with use in the game.

10/08/2012

  • New Rare item! Another great area effect weapon, the Force of nature acts like a turret, and will give damage to near by enemies at a cost of mana. /info items.

13/08/2012

  • New Rare item! This time its an instant kill Land mine, monsters who step on the stone pressure plate will be instant killed.

15/08/2012

  • New Shrine! Hes done it again, we now have a huge new shrine/end area to the game.. Big thanks once again to bburgdan1.

19/08/2012

  • Updated to Minecraft 1.3.2! We have moved to disguise craft as mobdisguise is not working, its not as good but the we can play and hopefully someone will update mobdisguise to Minecraft version 1.3.2.

30/08/2012

  • New Spawn! A community member named whoelie329 has build us a new spawn, it includes some parkour for those waiting. Please read about who has helped us out by reading in-game /credits

05/09/2012

  • Teleporting! All dwarves spawn with a enchanted pickaxe which will allow them to teleport through walls made of certain blocks /info dwarf

10/09/2012

  • Starting items! I'm work on a new reward system for those who help within the community. Get involved, read about how to /donate your time in game.

25/09/2012

  • Vote! Thanks to vote4craft.net for creating a great voting service! Players can now vote to gain the benefits of a VIP player for one game a day. Read more about how to vote in game /info vote

15/10/2012

  • Automation! I'm working on making the game as automated as possible, if i can get to a point where no access to the server control panel is required, i can let those i trust run games for me. This would mean people from different time zones could help out and make the game times more often.

01/11/2012

  • Updated to Minecraft 1.4! Due to disguise craft not working well with pvp we have decided to outsource some plugin work and raise the cost of upgrading mobdisguise. We will use the chipin website to allow those who can spare it a opportunity to donate.

03/11/2012

  • MobDisguise update! Thanks to our community support, we have raised the money to have a mobdisguise updated to work with 1.4. The largest contributor was our existing well known member whoelie329 please find the time to thank him, we wouldn't be playing DvZ in 1.4 without him!

10/11/2012

  • In game voting! A few days ago i noticed a problem with the vote4craft.net website, nobody could vote for us due to minecraft.net changing the verification code. I reported the error to the vote4craft team expecting a reply we know and working on it, but instead they quickly fixed the issue and gave use a chargeable service for free which allows players to /vote in game. Read more about voting in game /info vote

14/11/2012

  • 1.4.4 update! a update that didn't break everything YAY, i really like the way arrows stick to players they hit. Running early dev builds of Bukkit can make the game unstable i will continue to get the latest build each day.

01/12/2012

  • Christmas theme! Our community member Jaminister has recreated his final shrine area to a Christmas theme.

10/12/2012

  • New spawn! Working on presenting information about the game in different ways. Thanks to Jaminister for the design.

15/12/2012

  • Automation! Finally i have worked out how to automated the game, and this means people who where not able to make the games due to time zones can now join us.

21/12/2012

2013

  • Updared to 1.4.6! the game is now working as expected in the latest version. Some features like breaking ladders with the Dwarven bow is not possible till a plugin is updated.09/01/2013
  • Minecraft update! 1.4.7 is now out and players with both 1.4.6 and the new 1.4.7 client should have no trouble getting on the server.

19/01/2013

  • Item names! For a long time i have been meaning to add descriptions to each item, please put your mouse over the item to read the tool tip information.

03/02/2013

  • Random end areas! The game will now randomly decide a final shrine end area. We welcome users to design these areas and if they are used in the game the reward of VIP will be given. read more about this in game /info build

15/03/2013

  • 1.5 Minecraft update! We are all updated and ready for 1.5 players to join.

18/03/2013

  • Dwarf classes are back! While choosing your VIP starting item you can also start the game as a Dwarf class, I have only implemented two classes so far but more are to come. These classes are not like the old version where they rely on the others classes to provide materials to complete your task. Instead the classes are self contained and once they have completed their task they will be rewarded with a buff or upgrade. I hope to create a system these upgrades can be shared with other dwarves, I have plan to introduce a currency so all players can earn upgrades. 

21/03/2013

  • 1.5.1 Minecraft update! We are all updated and ready for 1.5.1 players to join, thanks to spigot for making the protocol patch.

23/03/2013

  • Gravity! For a year now we have had a problem with players hiding in sky towers. I have put together a plugin that will increase the difficulty for these cheating hiders. The /rules clearly state anyone that builds something a monster cannot climb will be banned for 10 days.

05/04/2013

  • Lumberjack. The new classes system appears to be well received and I decided to add another class to our existing Alchemist and Blacksmith. The Lumberjack has a free roaming job and doesn't require a shop. His reward will be bow upgrades, and once he has his he will be ready to upgrade yours if you have enough Dwarven gems.

10/04/2013

  • VIP just got better. All VIP members will now enjoy a new perk of a higher chance of getting rare Monster classes.

23/04/2013

  • Try out VIP multiple times a day. We have have the option to /vote once a day to try out VIP for while now. It was limited to once a day due to the voting site we used. Now I have improved the system to include major voting sites. This means I can add as many voting sites as I seem fit, and you can enjoy the VIP perks multiple times a day. I will only be adding my server to respectable voting sites, so please be patient while I research where I am advertising.

03/05/2013

  • Update to Minecraft 1.5.2 All done, enjoy!

04/05/2013

  • More end areas! It's great to see the community getting behind our VIP reward system, we have had a lot of interest and some really great maps submitted.

30/05/2013

  • Tailor. This class has been suggested a few times now, at first the plan was for this class to upgrade all your armor. This however would mean our random enchantment system would have to go, and I like to keep as much of the game random, so instead the tailor will upgrade the most useful piece of armor the chest plate.

05/06/2013

  • Bugfixes. With the snapshots of new Minecraft version coming out so often I want to fix up the game ready for the next update.

08/06/2013

  • Hub Server We have had a hub server working for while now, I take my hat off to the developer md5 for his work on the spigot and bungeecord projects.

11/06/2013

  • New Hardware. My current dedicated hosting company has some datacenter stability issues. I have place orders with two new companies, one of which hosts for shotbow.net

22/06/2013

  • New locations. The server are now live on new hardware, we have moved location which might effect you /ping The previous locations where France and Canada, we are now in England and Chicago.

01/07/2013

  • Minecraft 1.6.1 is out. It's here and we will upgrade the server as soon as possible. I have noticed one multiplayer bugs that could degrade PVP style servers like ours

08/07/2013

  • Minecraft 1.6.2 is out. Looks like a good version with many of the bugs out the way. I will start working on updating the server over the next few days.

13/07/2013

  • Updated to Minecraft 1.6.2 Sorry for the delay, our game has alot of plugins and some took a little longer to be 1.6.2 ready.

14/07/2013

  • New Mob. With the Minecraft updates out the way its time to add new content to the game. I have been working on the Dwarves a lot lately and the poor Monsters have been neglected. I decided to add a mob which I spotted on the Original author Rob's DvZ server. Regular Spider class, with the special ability to carry other mobs, like a spider jockey. The mount option is currently missing so for now I added a web nest option that surrounds dwarves in webs.

16/07/2013

  • Endermen. Some people are going to be mad at me ;) For along time people have said "LihP please add Endermen to the game" and I always said they are too glitchy, they don't like liquids or arrows. Turns that was the past, the current Disguise system we use appears to handle their crazy phobias really well. The Endermen from the past would create portals and move the monster spawn point, that role is now in the hands of the pigman and the Endermen will be a stealth class.

21/07/2013

  • Two new maps. The community is very active at the moment and a lot of new content for the game is being sent to me. Thanks to Baddeee, cyrille27 and zebigboss_72 for their final shrine areas. Please check what /map your playing and /credits to see all the authors. We now have 10 final shrine areas which is great, thank you all again for your support.

22/07/2013

  • Balance. Due to the changes in the recent Minecraft 1.6 update regeneration potions got their speed nerfed. This has a huge effect on the Monsters. Thanks to a forum post today I was reminded about this change and the monsters now have their heal buffs back to normal. I also added a night time buff that gives the Monsters 4 extra hearts of life.
  • Void. Recently I have noticed a growing number of wimp dwarves hiding in the lava while the Monster win the game. They seem to not understand that if your alive and they capture the final shrine you lose, those who die defending are winning dwarves. Anyway to solve this problem I have removed the lava, there where two reasons for adding lava, one it reduced the time you have to warp and two the old disguise plugin would crash the server when mobs in the void where spawned.

26/07/2013

  • Removed Void. Turns out the bug is still present, if players are disguised in the void it can randomly causing server crashes, so its been removed again.
  • The Witch is back. I removed the Witch class a few weeks ago to rework the class and determine the cause of repeated death message, the cause has been found and patched to some extent.

05/08/2013

  • Baby Zombies! Decided to add an additional zombie class, they can capture the shrines but not destroy walls and instead have a smaller hit box and speed 2.
  • Skeleton Horses! I finally worked out how to fix the Bukkit issues regarding teleporting while mounted. So I decided to add a horse class, this is really a support class, it can kick Dwarves and carry a monster into battle.

23/08/2013

  • Removed Skeleton Horses. For a few weeks now I have noticed random server crashes, after debugging the issue and blaming many plugins it turns out its related to the horse mount. I will add the horse class back once I can replicate the cause of the crashing and patch it.
  • Right click. Some existing items in the game can now be activated with right click, for example every potion will now function with either a left or right click and the speed potion can now be shared.

28/08/2013

  • Classes. Anyone can now be a Tailor or a Lumberjack, bone meal will drop when collecting gems and planks will fall from trees. This means you have more chances to use up your gems.
  • New map. Recently a new team of builders have started making some amazing maps for us, please learn from them if your interested in building for us, check out /map 12 and 13.

02/09/2013

  • More slots! Recently we have had a huge growth of players due to some popular Brazilian YouTuber's and each of them have been rewarded with VIP for sharing our server with others. This did cause some problem's for players trying to connect, our USA server is often full so I have bought a second dedicated server and increased the slot count from 3 game server of 80 players (240) to 3 game servers of 123 player (369). I am not sure of our new max limit but we will find out over the next week. Thanks for your patience and support, our server equipment costs have now increased to £270.00 ($420.00) per month.

07/09/2013

  • New map. Another map added to the game, we have room for 33 maps and currenty only have 15, so if your interesred in making a map please read how to donate your time!
  • Timer. For some time now we have had the possibility of dwarves winning if they hold the shrine for a set time. Now you can see how long with the on screen timer.

11/09/2013

  • Horse class. This class was removed due to a bug, it been back in the game for a few days now and I have not seen any issues.
  • Two new maps. Big thanks to the community for helping out, we have another two final areas to play on, give us a total of 17 final shrine areas for the game to randomize through.

12/09/2013

  • Updated health indication. For along time before minecraft supported coloured name tags we have been using name plates as a indication of the dwarves level of health. The old method of changing the players name plate colour would sometime cause the player to glitch into the ground of face a different direction. We are now using the minecraft scoreboard teams to colour names without any glitches. The trade off is that death messages will show the team colour and for that reason I am removing all colour from death message.

29/09/2013

  • Dynamic Event. The code that decides what event will happen before the monsters are released was written along time ago. To improve the game and ensure we have enough monsters at the start of the game I have rewritten the event code to deal with percentages. As a bonus I also decided to add dragon ranks based on how many dwarves are in the game and how many monsters we need. When updating the servers with this new feature I made a mistake on EU2 and US2 which has now been fixed, sorry to any who where playing while this was bugged.

30/09/2013

  • Blacksmith VIP only. I planned on making blacksmith more interactive than just mining sand, but no ideas have come to mind. For now I have make the class only accessible to VIP, if you want to be a Blacksmith and you are not VIP try /vote.

02/10/2013

  • First shrine area changes. Recently I have noticed that too many new players are getting stuck in our Dwarf spawn box. The box was added way before we had a hub and was designed to teach players to use the teleport tool instead of mining through walls. We now have the tool in the hub and I have added some partial obsidian walls to encourage players to use the teleport tool or build over and reduce the people who mine through.
  • Voting system improvements. To often I see people saying the reward did not work, and this is either due to them typing /reward just seconds after the vote which can take 10 seconds to reregister that you have voted. Or they try to claim the reward after they have become a dwarf. So I made it possible to claim the reward at any point before the first night and updated the no vote found message to include information regarding the delay between submit your vote on website and our vote database.

04/10/2013

  • SilverFish Class. - Decided to add a pure support class, has a very weak attack but a very destructive if used correctly.
  • Share food! - It can be hard to find time to eat in the end game when many dwarves are in close quarters defending the final shrine. So now when you use the heal potion the ender peal will not not only heal others but feed them a little, this means when you heal its in your best interest to hit another with the ender peal and hope they do the same.

26/10/2013

  • 1.7.2 is out! - A huge update, Mojang has changed so many lines of code on both the client and server. I have already seen and tested protocol hack versions of spigot and they work with 90% of our setup. Part of the 10% that is broken involves the Monster disguises, and I think playing DvZ without disguises is not the same. So for now I will continue to run 1.6.4 and thankfully Minecraft clients now have a easy way to switch between versions. Each day I am checking for solutions to get the server upgraded to 1.7 and when I can we will.

2014

09/01/2014

  • Blacksmith - There will always be a blacksmith, Iron Bars will be found around the shrine, these can be used to become a blacksmith.

04/02/2014

  • Shrine Power - In an effort to establish the cause of a random crash the Server can suffer from, I am re-writing old code thats been in the game since I started making DvZ. The Shrine capture has always been done via the plugin MagicSpells and I wanted to replace this with my own plugin. From now on Zombies will no longer be the only Monster to capture the Shrines, the Game will now check how many Monsters and Dwarves are at the Shrine and increase or decrease the Shrine power depending on who has the majority. If no monsters are at the Shrine, the power will restore at the amount (Dwarves at the Shrine + 1) if  Monsters are at the Shrine but the Dwarves out number them, the Shrine will restore 10 Power. If Monsters are at the Shrine and they out number the Dwarves the Shrine power will decrease at the amount (Monsters at the Shrine)/2 and if no Dwarves are at the Shrine 10 power will be taken.
  • Creeper - I have been removing and updating some of the games features to determine the cause of the random crashes. Creeper, blaze and silverfish are my suspects for the cause so I will remove them all and add them back once I know they are not the cause.

04-March-2014

  • Dynamic Balance - With so many Classes, different armor and weapons DvZ can be a challenge to balance. What makes it worse us the ratio of players on the teams at the start and end of the game. So I have been working on a system helps keep the game balanced. The first change is only the Worriors get Strength Potions, BlackSmith's can now upgrade your Sword a second time giving sharpness 2 (Double-edge Sword). The Wither Worrior now gets new items, including a Soul Blade Sword. This provide a new advantage to the Dwarves and they should keep their Worriors alive to win the game. In order to maintain the balance the Monsters are given a resistance buff until they out number the Dwarves, this means they become weaker towards the end of the game when they out number the Dwarves 4:1 and a good proc is needed to clear the shrine.
  • Creeper Crash - After my investigations into the random crashes, it turns out the Creeper class caused the troubles. I cannot replicate the cause but since we removed the class we have not crashed (2 Weeks). Once I can replicate it I will add it back in, but for now I have doubled the chance of spawning with TNT as a Zombie.

10-March-2014

  • New join system - For a long time the Game has required players to click a Gold Nugget in order to join. This seems simple and once you have worked it out it is, but for new people sometimes they do not read or due to language barriers understand what they need to do. Over the next week I will be making a new system that scans players and decides depending on the stage of the Game which team or class they will be.
  • Assassin - Many times I have seen people in chat wishing they where the Assassin or wishing they weren't. So as the Game starts to choose random people to be Assassin it will also allow people to volunteer, you will see a broadcast and a command to type to become an Assassin. The game will limit how many can be made based on the percentage dead, so be quick!

21-March-2014

  • Random Terrain - Spend hours re-writing the game to use disposable worlds for the first part of the game. So now a new world with a random seed is generated using custom terrain generator from dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/terrain-control/ I have to paste the shrine and spawn locations and pre-generate the Chunks so the game is smooth with no client upsets. I wanted to put a wall around the Shrine like I have been doing for a while now but if I use a Schematic it will always be the same. Instead I want to create a random Wall with some code, for now the games I have seen without the Wall appear interesting and I think it's due to the unique Terrain each game. Just a reminder until the wall returns, Iron Ore drops Iron Bars.

11-April-2014

  • Various bug fixes - Lots of back end changes and code clean ups to improve performance.
  • Minecraft 1.7 updates - Mojang have released a number of new 1.7 versions, we will update once they stop.

16-May-2014

  • 1.7.9 Ready - Sorry for the wait, we have alot of changes to make and we didn't want to update early and give people a bad experience. You can currently join with any 1.7 client so enjoy!

19-June-2014

  • New Monsters - It's about time we add some crazy fun classes to the game. These new Monsters will be considered support classes in which you will find it hard to get kills with but with your support the others classes will dominate. The Chicken class will enable you to almost fly and have the ability to sneak up on Dwarves and knock them from the walls. They also dissolve the Dwarves defenses with acidic eggs. The second new class will be Ocelot, an old retired class from years ago thats been redesigned to suit the current game. The Ocelot class can steal items (the item can only be picked up by the player who dropped it) and cause the Dwarves to feel hungry which can make it hard for them to heal.

25-June-2014

  • Spend tokens on Monsters - Since VIP tokens where added to the game you have only been able to spend them on VIP Dwarf items or classes. From now on if you claim /reward after the Monsters have been released your token will increase your chance of rare Monster classes the next time you click the Nether wart. To learn how to earn reward tokens please read our donation page

10-July-2014

  • See who is who - Dwarf classes have been sometimes difficult to locate once battle begins and people stop wearing the leather that helps indicate they can upgrade you. So I spend time creating a dynamic systems that uses the scoreboard to attach symbols to the end of your name above your head. The Warrior classes also have a symbol so its clear who they are.

12-July-2014

  • Boss Rewards - Warrior classes have always been rewarded to the player who dealt the last hit, which was kinda random but easy to implement. The suggestion to make it reward the player who dealt the most damage has been on my list for along time and I finally got around to writing it up in code. I added a few extra features, once the boss is killed the game will display the top 3 and their damage, 1st place will be rewarded with a warrior class.