Bukkit

Config.yml

'Concurrent_postmen' in config.yml controls the route scheduling. Set to 'true' to have all post offices run concurrently. The postmen run their routes continuously, oldest route, next. However, Mailed books are detected when mailed, and preempt the regular routes. Actual mail always takes precedence over general, route walking. A post office with 30 routes will still move the mail along efficiently.

This 'Concurrent_postmen' setting defaults to ‘false’ for conservative reasons. The original intention was to provide a way to dumb down Postal for performance reasons, but frankly, I just haven’t seen performance impacted by having many post offices running simultaneously. I would love to take credit for this, but it goes to the Citizens2 builders, and of course Bukkit & Minecraft. I’m just the messenger… My suggestion is to set it to ‘true’ unless there is another reason besides performance to slow things down. The most noticeable impact of leaving it ‘false’, besides slower mail processing, would be having the postman spend more time in the post office. ‘postal conc’ at the console turns this feature on and off.

The ‘Speed’ setting is an overall speed scaling factor applied to the NPC postmen. The dynamically calculated speed Postal comes up with is multiplied by this factor. The allowed range is 0.5 to 2.0. In other words you can cut the speed in half or double it. Anything outside this range will be discarded, and default to 1.0. This factor may also be experimented with live using ‘postal speed <factor>’ Waypoint spacing is the primary speed control facilitating desired speed variation where needed. Use this setting to make general speed adjustments affecting all post offices. If there are variations in actual speed from system to system, this is a way to compensate for it.

Route Editor

One person may use the route editor at a time. Postal will enforce this, and even tell you who is using the editor if it is occupied.

Route Control

‘postal start/stop’ besides the obvious administrative use, provide what is needed for controlling the route walking schedule. There have been requests for this, but that might be a good job for another scheduler plugin. This provides a way to turn the automatic system on and off. /expedite makes it possible to prioritize routes while retaining the existing, preemptive mail servicing built into Postal. The /openxxx family of commands make it possible to open and close addresses as well as an entire post office and the routes it serves. Mail will still be delivered and held at the post office, it just won't be delivered to the address.

Route Management

/deletelocal will delete a post offices along with all of the addresses it services. /deleteaddr will delete a single address. Current versions of Postal allow this to be don hot, without the need to restart Postal.

Console Monitors

There is a set of console monitors that may be very helpful for troubleshooting. They all default to off. When 'Concurrent_postmen' is true, there is just too much general activity taking place to try to report in general. These monitors allow progress information to be separated, categorically. They can also be mixed and matched any way desired. They are my primary diagnostic tools, even more important than the server log.

‘postal wtalk’ turns the watchdog monitor on. Postal will print console messages about NPC navigation problems as they occur. If you see nothing – congratulations, that is perfect and not unusual. You will see messages when NPC’s have trouble walking their routes. I hate to say it, but it is this monitor that is the first to alert me of griefing, like someone blowing up a city ;-) The NPC’s make quite a fuss when they can’t find their mailboxes or walk paths. It also serves as a very good barometer indicating the Citizens2 navigation performance of a particular build. If there is a navigation issue with a particular build, I will see it here. I won’t even have to enter the game.

If there is ever a mystery concerning why the postman is selecting a particular chest, use ‘postal cstalk’ to monitor the dynamic chest decision making. ‘postal chests’ will give you a live list of post office chest locations. There is no such list for residence mailboxes because the postman has no pre-conceived notion about its location. Residents are constantly making property improvements and relocating their mailboxes. The postman just hopes it is within 10 blocks of the last waypoint.

‘postal qtalk’ turns on the queue monitor. This gives you a waypoint by waypoint breakdown of navigation progress, and queue status with the queue/task queue-pair. As is true for all of these console monitors, this one is much easier to follow when 'Concurrent_postmen' is false.

Use ‘postal mtalk 2’ to broadcast all mail movement. The journey of a letter from pickup to postmaster handling to delivery is announced. Other than diagnostics, this may be desireable on smaller sytems not using address ownership to keep the players informed of mail that might be for them.