First server setup - Random questions

I beta tested Minecraft YEARS ago and played it off and on but never multiplayer. So I am pretty familiar with the game and interface just not this community of server have has been created. So please forgive me as I am still learning the lingo

My Nephew has been bothering me for a while to put up a server for him and his friends. But I am having trouble figuring out what is going on with all different builds, plugin, etc.

I was hoping to create a semi-vanilla sever for myself and then something for his friends. I personally love creating gold courses and castles. But then I did like the occasional spelunking for treasure. And then I was hoping to setup some sort of area for my nephew.

So my questions.. in random order

- The server I am setting up will be 15gb, and I have a decent 15/15mbs internet connection. I assume that is good for 20 people?

- I setup a bukkit server (beta build) with no plugin, and then loaded a fresh copy of Minecraft on my Mac. When I tried to log into my server, it gave me an error that my minecraft version was too high for the server. What version is everyone playing? What build of Bukkit is most popular o?

- Can I section off the map / server? Can I make a PVP area? A couple of peaceful golf courses so no one can rip them down? And made a regular adventure area?

- I have been reading random posts, and see that people are getting banned from server for flying. Why is flying so negative to people?

- Can I import other peoples stuff so I don't have to build a spawn point town?


I am sure I'll have many other questions, and I hope this isn't too much for my first post... Any and all help is welcome.

 

Answers in order:

1. That is excellent, if you mean upload and download are 15mbps. Upload is usually much slower and so is the bottleneck to most servers, but if that is 15, you, my friend, have kick-ass internet.
2. You most likely downloaded 1.7.2 or 1.7.5 server, but your minecraft probably updated automatically to 1.7.9, which is not compatible (1.7.2-5 are all compatible w/ each other). Most people will want 1.7.2-5 because of the switch to UUID's that's being tested in 1.7.8 and up. (This is a severe change that will break many bukkit plugins)Your nephew will need to have one of the above mentioned client versions
3. You will most likely want Worldguard Learn how to use it and it should work for sectioning things off.
4. Flying is usually not allowed. Many people hack in order to fly and therefore are banned. Why people don't like flying is because: They only want donors (actual money donators) to fly, they want a survival-type server--survival doesn't involve fly.
5. With permission, someone may be willing to either send you a world file or a .SCHEMATIC file (you and the person sending will need to know how to use WorldEdit excuse me, I mean MCEdit. Sorry about that.). Then again, it is not mandatory to have a spawn if it is a private server

As this looks like a private server, I'd say whitelist it, or only give the IP to the people you want to be able to use it. (To whitelist, add usernames to the whitelist file in your server directory)

I hope you find this useful!

 

ZanderMan9
The internet speed is mega bits. This means you divide it by 8 to get the megabytes.
This trick is often done with ISPs to make their plans seem really fast.

 

Wyl
1. The internet should be good enough for 20 players. If 15GB means 15GB RAM - thats far more than enough, 4GB should be enough as well.
Also, CPU is very important for MC servers - the more power one core has, the better. (Because MC does most of it's work on one core)

2. Bukkit has 3 build types: Recommended, Beta and Development. If you want the latest version, you should use a Development build, however as mentioned above there was a change in 1.7.6 and higher that might bring some problems with plugins.
You should also notice that it can take a while until Bukkit supports a newly released Minecraft version, depending on how big the update was. (1.7 was huge and took a few month and I suspect 1.8 to be about equal big)

But there is nothing wrong with using older versions. You just have to change your version in the launcher.
Just hit Edit Profile and choose the version you want your client to run at.

3. As ZanderMan9's mentioned: WorldGuard.
There should be some more plugins out there that might achieve what you want. Just take a look at dev.bukkit.org or plugin.bukkit.org

4. There is nothing wrong with flying when you're allowed to do so (-> creative mode), but the people who get banned use cheats to fly and have a big advantage over other, fair, players.
This is mostly a problem on servers, where randoms play together in a more or less competitve enviroment.

5. See ZanderMan9


Plo124
No fault of the ISPs, data transfer rates are usually given in bits per second, because you actually tranfer bits, not bytes.

 

You'll be fine with 20 players.

The latest CraftBukkit beta build is 1.7.2. You can play that with Minecraft 1.7.5. The Minecraft launcher allows you to use different versions, so just use 1.7.5.

Multiverse will let you create different worlds. (Use the 2.5 'dev' builds of Multiverse.) WorldGuard will allow you to protect the worlds or areas within them.

 

Bobcat00
I'd say stay away from Multiverse if at all possible. More worlds mean more lag, and for a small server, sectioning off a single world would be more efficient. Also I'd recommend WorldBorder to stop too many chunks from generating.

 

That hasn't been my experience.

 

A single world would make it simpler at any rate. It's a matter of choice I suppose.
Also, I'd recommend getting Essentials. It provides a lot of the basic functionalities you'll need like creation and use of warps, more teleportation commands, colored chat and signs, multiple spawnpoints, kits, and a lot of other great things. You'll need PermissionsEx (you can use another permissions plugin, but in my opinion, PEX is best because of in-game control) too, unless you want everyone to Opped.

 

I built a server FreeNAS rig with 32Gb of ECC ram and quad core Xeon Processor, but decided not to use it for FreeNAS. So I thought i'd try my hand at a Minecraft server. And since I had an extra amount of ram I would allocate a ton of it... But I guess I'll start with 4Gb and see what happens.

What is base cause of Lag? I would assume it's a combination of internet speed and ram allocation.

I didn't really know where to start and get info... Thank you everyone for an amazing amount of help here...