It has been a while since I truthfully saw a plugin so innovative :D

3.3.1 Fixes!

• The flood of animals in the open region has been reduced to a trickle, and there's also a limit to prevent them from accumulating too much when they're not being killed off.

@MinecraftDad83

Sorry this would actually be very difficult to pull off. :\ But since your players have /homeregion to go to the wilderness and /cityregion to pop back to the city, it's almost like they're always close to the city.

On my server, I have a city which is very far away from the current new player starting region. I just set my server spawn (you have to use another plugin to set it) to my city, and I built my own glowstone post there with /homeregion signs on it to tell players what to do, then I disabled the "new players spawn in home region".

The result is that new players pop into the city where they see a sign telling him to do /homeregion when they're ready to start adventuring. They can either explore the city (a good option at night time, to avoid monsters), or go immediately to the wilderness. :)

Thank you VERY much for the donation! You can also help by going to your favorite server administration forums and just telling people about your good experiences. Players will have a lot more fun if more admins use the best tools available.

@Desertive

That's strange. I will check on it for you. It's just a few blocks up, not way up in the sky?

Yes, I'm aware of the cowmageddon. I will be releasing an update soon to limit the total number of animals spawned in the open region. :)

@CharlesWCrete

You can change the desnity setting to make it lower (try reducing to .9 or .8). This doesn't change how much ore or wood is required, but it will close regions earlier due to the number of player blocks.

@EDawg878

Install the GriefPrevention plugin. It will prevent all spawn camping. If anti spawn camp is the ONLY feature you want from GriefPrevention, though, you'll want to update its config file to turn off other features like land claims and anti spam.

@bigscary

Can you please implement a way to stop spawn killing while near the region post?

Ryan, how can you make a region so if like it need min 800 wood, and 800 iron and it changes region very quick? (Having less people in each region)

Kudos on the new additions Bigscary , definitely bookmarked!

3.3 Updates!

• To combat the very frustrating lack of animals (important for food early in a player's experience) that plagues popular servers, animals will now rapidly respawn ONLY in the open (newest) region. They will only spawn on the surface and in grassy un-civilized areas, and only at night. You can disable this in the config.

• To combat the near-instant deforestation of the open (newest) region on popular servers, saplings left on the ground will plant themselves instead of despawning, helping to restore some of those vital starter materials. This can also be disabled in the config. Like the above, it only applies to the open (newest) region.

• Region posts will now rebuild themselves as chunks load, which means region posts will always be available, even in deep wilderness. This will also repair any posts which were built with the wrong sign on top by a previous bug.

The version I released for the dev build seems to be working fine on the recommended build, so go ahead and use it. :) I have some features/fixes in mind, and will release a version for the recommended build once I have some or all of those in place.

3.2 Released for DEV Build 2311

I recommend very strongly against running ANY dev build on a live server. However the Bukkit guys have told us that they will no longer guarantee any level of quality, even for the builds they label "recommended". Since there's no way for us to tell, then, which builds are good except by trying them ourselves, I understand if you feel you want to go ahead and update. IF YOU DO, BE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR WORLD.

Okay I'm off my soap box. There are no changes in this version, except that it was compiled against a 3.1 bukkit build. I tested it briefly with Dev build 2311, and it appears to be working. Good luck, please tell me if you have difficulty - however be advised that unless you're on 2311, I reserve the option to not investigate your issue. 2311 is the build I'm "officially" supporting.

I just read some patch notes, and I see that books now require leather. This sucks, because as you know, in SMP, animals are often very difficult for new players to find, due to a combination of killing, hoarding, natural despawning, and an almost complete lack of respawns.

I will be updating this plugin to spawn animals when monsters spawn (on the surface) at a small ratio. This will replace the current feature to update the animal spawn ticks, which seems not to have a noticeable impact.

Tell me if you have any objections to the design. :) Otherwise, I will publish a future version with an experimental ratio to see how it goes.

@mumblerit

Yessir, thanks for the details there, some may well find them very helpful. As long as you don't build something overtop the region post, you won't experience any issues, I think. However if you build something above the stone platform, there's a good chance the post will "rebuild" itself, clearing the area above the platform.

For anyone listening without WorldEdit, you can also raise or lower the post by digging down from the center, or building up from the center, then using /addregionpost. This will generate a region post on the highest non air block at the post's coordinates, complete with all the usual instructional and referential signs.