@zathrus_writer

Eww, why did you pick that host? :) So many very affordable hosts offer a web console. Anyway, I will add it as an option.

Chunk regeneration is incredibly risky, because limiting its reach (so that it fits around claims) is very complicated and difficult to maintain without breaking stuff from server patch to server patch. That's why restorenature doesn't actually regenerate chunks, it just repairs areas as best it can. I have looked at worldedit's code, which is what made me decide to run away from chunk regeneration entirely. Their code is already broken for worlds updated from 1.1, and will surely one day break in a way that damages players' builds and loses their container contents.

@bigscary

my first thought would be that some admins with hosting on shared servers do not get access to the console at all... at best, the server log is updated every 5-10 minutes, so they can see it in retrospect... this is my case as well, thus my auto-cleanup idea came to life :)

also, I have never done chunk or area regeneration and I have not reviewed your code to see how you do it... but I'd say it shouldn't be too complicated, taking into consideration for how long WorlEdit is flawlessly using the concept - maybe you can get inspiration from that project?

@zathrus_writer

I was actually thinking about that, but I'm unsure. I decided to leave it at boot time for now so that admins could see who's claims are expiring and would have an opportunity to create an admin claim around the newly vulnerable build if they want to save it. My other concern is that sometimes /restorenature does leave a hole, especially when the player has carved out a big basement.

Thoughts?

Also just to be clear, my second message there with the 4 new rules points isn't implemented, yet. I'm interested to hear your opinion on those changes.

@DrFusion

Sounds like a bug. I'd fixed that thoroughly before, but I'll check it again. Maybe I broke it somehow along the way.

glitch/suggestion

stop pistons from pushing blocks into a protected claim some dude is pushing block onto my road using a piston pushing blocks from his plot

@zathrus_writer

+1

altho make it optional, some may rather the cleanup not be done, griefed old buildings make great abandoned houses/ruins ;)

@bigscary

nice update there, good job! I don't quite get why claims only expire during boot time? A scheduled repeated task that would run this cleanup in another thread would work perfectly well here I guess. You wouldn't be using Bukkit functions if you created the cleanup task as a new thread and everything should be safe.

On the other hand, I'd like to suggest the possibility to clean up the abandoned area automatically (regenerate), which would make sense during boot time. Like you said, such abandoned claim would be with great probability griefed in no time. If this area, however was cleared up, we'd have one more space for new players to build on and no bad griefed map spots to clean up manually :)

So today, a mostly failed griefing attempt on my test server (how dumb can you be, trying to grief the GP creator's server? do you want me to close even more of your grief opportunities on servers everywhere?). The worst they could do was dig a hole and dump water on some grass, haha.

Anyway it was like 5 minutes of cleanup with /restorenature, which I think is still too much trouble, and players shouldn't have to live with the minor mess while I'm not online to fix it. So new rules are coming! Please tell me what you think:

1. The rule about waiting an hour before dumping lava in your claim will be changed to impact water dumping (and water will not be dumpable above sea level outside of claims, just like lava is today). Due to the spread of water, it's easy to make a large mess with only a little effort, so this change mostly closes that opportunity.

2. The one hour rule for lava will go away, but a claim which includes surface lava can't be deleted or made smaller until the surface lava is cleaned up. With rule 3 below, this will guarantee nobody makes a lava mess, at least not bigger than the area they can claim, and they will have signed their name on it (because the area must be claimed).

3. Fluids won't flow out of claims, unless they're flowing into an adjacent claim where the owner of the source claim has build permission. So if you ahve two claims right next to each other, fluids can still flow between them.

4. TNT won't destroy blocks near or above the surface, same as creepers today. TNT is fine for mining underground, but making a giant crater in the surface is probably intended as a grief (and if you're not making a giant hole, you can manage that with standard tools). A very few players may be disappointed if they're seriously working on a big project that involves an enormous hole in the surface. I dunno about you guys, but I treat any project like that with suspicion and skepticism. :)

Notice that you can still use water to eliminate lava hazards underground, and you can still use lava to kill monsters while mining underground. Most players won't even notice the difference, but this will result in less wilderness cleanup for you to deal with. The only unfortunate side effect of these changes that I can see is that players who like to tote water for gardening purposes (watering crops) will have to wait an hour after creating or resizing their claims (and will get an explanatory message).

3.9 Updates!

• Added a confirmation process for deleting top level claims which have subdivisions.

• Added an option to automatically expire any claim when its owner hasn't been online for X days. The default is zero, which means no expiration. Use this with caution!!! If somebody builds something amazingly cool on your server and then the claim expires, that wonderful build could be griefed before you realize the claim is gone. Note that claims are only expired during boot and reload, so if you're watching your console, you will get a heads-up about each claim expiration.

• Interacting with blocks that have a "null" type will require access permissions. This is kind of a technical change, but I'm told that Tekkit servers need it, so I'm mentioning it here. It should have zero impact on non-Tekkit servers. If you don't know what any of this means, just ignore this bullet because it's not impacting you. :)

• Cleaned up the /trapped command's log entry to make it more readable and less spammy.

I hope you'll all be happy to hear that I've added two new to-do list items which have been heavily requested recently. :) Also some of the minor feedback I've received recently is on an unpublished to-do list for the next version.

Please try to be patient - I'm juggling maintaining a test server, starting a new creative-mode test server, creating a new demo video, adding new features, and servicing minor requests.

@Feaelin

"Damn-Near Vanilla". It's listed on planetminecraft.

@bigscary

@Bigscary: Thanks for the rundown! That answers my questions. :). Okay, except one. What's your server called? :)

@Machinimatt

Are you running a creative server? If so, there's a new feature. Just set your creative rules worlds. See the admin details page for specifics. Under that rule set, nobody can build outside of their claims. The griefprevention.ignoreclaims permission will allow them to build in the wilderness with /ignoreclaims, but that will also allow them to build in other players' claims (so it's probably not what you want).

@botg_smp

Currently, only automatic chest claims expire. I'll add an option to delete any claim when the player has been gone for X days.

Hey, what if you disabled claims in the nether? The only loss is lack of a way to protect netherwart crops, which is really only useful for somebody trying to kill the dragon (and yours is probably already dead?).

@Feaelin

I wouldn't be opposed to folks mentioning their server info here, as long as they're running grief prevention. :) I did get some responses to that, but it's been a long time and that information is probably outdated.

Yes, I'm using NoCheatPlus. Since I'm a non-PvP server, I don't see blocking cheating as part of preventing grief. But I think that anyone running a PvP server should also run NoCheat or some variant because many would consider cheating to win PvP combat as a grief. I run NoCheatPlus on my server even though it's non-PvP because I figure that cheaters are likely griefers, or at least asshats who won't play well with others.

Similarly, I recommend using Orebfuscator on any server to ensure there will be diamonds for your players to find legitimately, and especially on PvP servers to prevent players from unfairly getting unlimited diamond armor and swords. Unfortunately though, running Oreb is risky. It may crash your server by running you out of memory (it doesn't manage its memory consumption well - instead of cutting its consumption when memory is low, it crashes your server).

My full plugin list is GP, PD, NoCheatPlus, ConsoleScheduler, SimplyVanish. I consider GP and PD as essentials because I'm the only administrator,and they're low-maintenance solutions to inevitable grief attempts and overcrowding. The others are "not necessary, but too good to pass up". I would also run Oreb if I could, but I've tried several versions over the past months and all of them crash me. :)

There was some mention in the early comments of servers who are using Grief Prevention Posting themselves in a comment. I wondered if any had. I skimmed through some of the 1,474 comments, but didn't note any. I'm curious to see it in action across different configurations. :)

Also, you're using Grief Prevention and Population Density on your server, but I was wondering if you're also employing something like NoCheatPlus?

@mrcheesete0

Delete? No. Abandon, yes. :) I will extend that confirmation to the /deleteclaim command.

@botg_smp

Not planning to add it. Why not just reduce the max claim blocks? It will do the same thing pretty much, just not by world. If players are claiming to get resources rather than to protect their builds, then they have way too many claim blocks, so many that they're looking for ways to use them. You can fix that. :)

@zathrus_writer

Actually, I had no idea. I'm seriously doing it backward all this time. :) Thanks for the tip.

@jmcgee611

Thanks for following up. It seems to me that with all that power, you shouldn't have any problems even with so many plugins, but I don't know the details of all those. Maybe some are very heavyweight versus their value proposition. Do you believe that's the case with GP?

It does surprise me that when you run into a performance problem, you opt to drop protection for player creations rather than something else. Of course I'm biased because I'm the developer, but I can't imagine anything more important than preventing griefers from picking on my players. Do you have another way to combat griefers that has less performance impact? Maybe I can learn a trick or two from another plugin.

@shutka

[Replying to the second paragraph]
+1