quixol - Tumblr blog

quixol · 2 years

Text

Important information for everyone who plays Minecraft (Java Edition) multiplayer:

There is a very serious exploit that has recently been found in Minecraft (as of Dec 9 2021) that affects nearly every version of the game, both modded and vanilla.

You should avoid playing on public Minecraft servers until this vulnerability is patched on the respective Minecraft version you play on. Mojang has not yet addressed this at time of posting, it is unknown if they will retroactively patch older MC versions or not. (I suspect they will, but that cannot be guaranteed yet.)

The exploit in question allows for RCE by means of sending a malicious chat message. Yes, you read that right- a chat message. This means that a malicious actor could steal your passwords/session tokens from ram, install viruses etc on your computer. It's real bad.

Both Clients and Servers alike are affected by this.

Fortunately, modern versions of minecraft (since 1.16 - 1.18) are spared the worst effects of this exploit from what I know. There is still a chance that malicious actors could lag your game/servers on these versions, but for the most part playing on these versions should be OK. [EDIT: Disregard this whole paragraph! It's wrong!!! Your client/server are only safe if you receive a software patch to update this, and only on versions 1.17+ at that! AND only if both the client and server it's connected to have both received this patch!]

This exploit is known to exploit all versions of Minecraft 1.12.2 up to Minecraft 1.15.2 [EDIT: actually up to 1.18], regardless of vanilla/modded status, on both the server and client. If you play on these minecraft versions, ABSOLUTELY AVOID PLAYING ON ANY PUBLIC SERVERS, as your computer and personal information could be at risk. It is possible that older versions of Minecraft could be affected as well, essentially any version of minecraft which uses Java 8 could potentially be affected. [EDIT: There have been reports of this exploit affecting version 1.7, 1.8, etc. The java version is irrelevant.]

A band-aid fix you can apply is to add the following startup flags to Minecraft when launching the game:

-Dlog4j2.formatMsgNoLookups=true

But I wouldn't recommend relying on this, as the server you connect to could still be vulnerable itself.

Again, I recommend not playing multiplayer at all until mojang delivers some kind of patch to all clients, even then be wary about servers on older versions (1.16.5 and older).

I will update this post as more information becomes available. Stay safe, everyone.

EDIT 1 (6:26 pm): The jvm flag workaround only applies to Minecraft 1.17 and later. This contradicts things I've seen reading the papermc discord server, but it comes from a reliable source (the fabric modloader developers).

[image ID: Discord message that reads: "Update: The above workarounds only cover Minecraft 1.17 and later, avoid running servers or connecting to servers for earlier versions!" end ID]

It is possible that some misinformation is being spread on this, perhaps to curb the amount of people using this exploit via obfuscation. I don't want to give the impression that you could be safe when I'm not sure, so for now don't even try to play on any server below Minecraft 1.17 at all (or connect to any server using a minecraft client below version 1.17).

EDIT 2 (7:00 pm): I am seeing a lot of people saying that the JVM flag workaround doesn't help at all, or that it only helps for minecraft versions 1.17+. For the time being, just avoid playing minecraft multiplayer entirely, unless you are certain that both the client you are using and server you are playing on has patched this issue. THE JAVA VERSION YOU USE DOES NOT MATTER!!! I'VE CROSSED OUT THE INFORMATION IN THE INITIAL POST THAT IS NOW KNOWN TO BE INCORRECT. I apologize for spreading information before I knew more.

As far as I am aware, if you are playing minecraft 1.17+, there is a patch available to the fabric modloader that fixes this exploit. The latest version of the fabric modloader (0.12.9) patches the exploit on both the client and server end (only for versions 1.17+). Again, you have to be certain that the server you are playing on is patched to be reasonably sure of anything- don't connect/play otherwise. Paper 1.17.1 build #398, and Paper 1.18 build #64 should patch this vulnerability as well, but there is still a lot of information coming out very quickly so nothing is certain at the moment.

EDIT 3 (8:10 pm): Mojang has pushed a patch out to all vanilla clients, versions 1.12.2 and up. Close your game, open the launcher & start the game again to receive the patch from the launcher (assuming you are using the launcher provided by Mojang/Microsoft!).

[Image ID: Tweets from @\slicedlime on twitter. The first tweet reads: "A critical security issue has been found that affects Minecraft. If you have the game running, please shut down all running instances of the game and Launcher and restart - your Launcher will automatically download the fix." The second tweet reads: "I'd advice you to not play versions of Minecraft earlier than 1.12 right now." end ID]

Although the vanilla game may be patched for 1.12+, I'd still recommend against considering it "Safe" to join any multiplayer servers just yet. If you use any sort of mods, especially in a heavily modded environment, your client still may not be safe- there's no guarantee that 3rd party minecraft launchers will automatically patch the game for you, for example. Not to mention that any mods/plugins you use may, themselves, be vulnerable to the exploit independent of the base game!

However, that being said, if you play on a completely vanilla client, on a completely vanilla server (such as realms), and you've restarted each of them & ensured they're properly updated, you should be safe. But if you use any mods or plugins, or play on a server that uses any mods or plugins, it may not be safe. Update. Update. Update!!!

And, as stated by slicedlime, versions below 1.12 are completely vulnerable. Do not play these versions in multiplayer at all.

EDIT 4 (8:45 pm): not to be outdone, slicedlime has clarified that the patched vanilla .jars will only fix the exploit in Minecraft versions 1.17+. Anything older than Minecraft 1.17 should still be considered vulnerable.

EDIT 5 (10:20 AM, Dec 10th): I slept for a little bit, seems like Mojang have been taking this very seriously which is good to see. For one thing: they just released Minecraft 1.18.1, which patches this exploit on client & server alike. They've published a blog post explaining how to patch your clients & servers to alleviate this issue: (x).

The only major version that currently has no proper fix available (server-side) is Minecraft 1.8.x and Minecraft 1.9.x (the version with the old pvp, and the update immediately following that one). There are some fixes available for this version, but for now, avoid any server that runs on Minecraft 1.8. That version is so old, it's bound to have other security vulnerabilities as well. (Hypixel is exempt from this, they've implemented their own mitigations to this issue independently according to this forum post: (x). Other pvp/minigames servers running 1.8, you will have to check with the server admins/forums/etc.).

Instructions for ensuring your client & server are secured from this exploit are detailed below;

Launchers:

First-party launcher(s):

Microsoft's Launcher (All versions): Simply close any instances of the game that are running, close the minecraft launcher if it's open, and re-open the launcher.

Mojang's launcher (All versions) (the one that also has Minecraft Dungeons, that keeps yelling at you to install the newer launcher because microsoft said so): Same as above, as this launcher is still officially supported by mojang. (This is the launcher I use, so I can personally confirm this)

Older Minecraft launchers: These will probably still work, but you should probably just update your launcher- AFAIK, only the "Microsoft launcher" and "Mojang launcher" have support for Microsoft accounts. (Come next year or so, you won't be able to launch the game if you have not migrated your account to a Microsoft account, so using an older launcher that does not have support for these kind of accounts is problematic).

Optifine: If you use optifine at all, please keep scrolling for instructions on how to ensure your optifine installation is safe, regardless of the launcher you use or any other mods.

Third-party launchers:

Optifine: If you use optifine at all, please keep scrolling for instructions on how to ensure your optifine installation is safe, regardless of the launcher you use or any other mods.

MultiMC (all affected versions): I don't have a lot of experience with it but according to this github issue (x), MultiMC has patched this for all clients using any modpacks. Make sure you have updated to the latest version of MultiMC available (0.6.14 at time of writing) to ensure the fix is applied properly. Just close the launcher and re-open it.

Curseforge Launcher: I have no idea. I don't use this and it doesn't seem to be open-source.

ATLauncher: I don't know and can't be bothered to figure out, but this launcher does at least seem to be maintained unlike the next one on the list. Keep your launcher up to date and read any news about this, consider switching to MultiMC or just the vanilla launcher if you're uncertain.

Technic Launcher: I don't know much about tekkit or the technic launcher, I just remember this being one of the only non-mojang launchers I've used before. It appears this launcher has not been updated since 2017. Do not launch your game using Technic launcher, you may not be safe from this exploit. If you're just playing modpacks in singleplayer, you should be OK, though. Sidenote: This launcher also doesn't have support for Microsoft accounts, which will make it unusable in a multiplayer setting anyway (unless you run offline mode, which is just asking for trouble). Use MultiMC or some other launcher.

Lunar Client: I installed lunar client just to write this post. I hope you're happy. Their website is so unclear about so many important things that I wasn't even sure if lunar client operated as its own launcher or not, but after installing it, it appears it does. Anyhow, the launcher seems to grab the .jar files from Mojang directly- however, I have no idea if these will be retroactively applied to existing lunar client installations. Someone who uses lunar client, please let me know. I also don't know if they are patching optifine in such a way that it'll automatically apply the patch to Minecraft that fixes this exploit. I've read in some discord servers that lunar client apparently updated to fix this exploit, but I can't find anything on their website or any sort of changelogs to corroborate this. All in all this just made me dislike lunar client even more than I already did. I guess if you really need to use lunar client, it seems to be actively maintained, so it's probably safe. maybe. Maybe? I don't know. Someone who knows stuff about lunar client, please message me if you know more. I am a minecraft boomer and I don't know how these fancy one-click install clients work and I don't want to. I don't trust third party clients that aren't open source to handle my minecraft/microsoft login credentials!

Any other launcher: This is the part where I say "I don't know" again. I don't have much experience with modded minecraft, so I'm not even sure what launcher(s) people use for big modpacks and the like. Rule of thumb, if it hasn't received an update in years, consider it unsafe out of caution. Please let me know if I should add info on any major launchers that I missed here, and I can update this post.

Client (Optifine):

I don't use Optifine anymore (I use Sodium + Starlight + other client-side fabric mods), but from what I know of when I did use Optifine: Optifine's installer will find the Minecraft .jar for the version of Minecraft you're installing optifine for. It then applies the Optifine patches on top of this vanilla .jar file, and saves the modified .jar as its own file, separate from the vanilla game. As such,

If you use optifine at all, you NEED to launch the vanilla game again for the respective version of optifine you want to play on, so that you receive the patched vanilla .jar files from Mojang. (Follow the instructions listed above in the "launchers" section). After this, you need to run the appropriate (latest!) optifine installer for your minecraft version of choice. This will apply the optifine patches on top of Mojang's patched .jar file, and everything should (hopefully) work after this. Then, if you use optifine as part of a modpack, you need to move the newly-patched optifine .jar file into your mods folder (for forge) or select the newly patched optifine .jar from within the launcher (playing w/o other mods, or other mod loaders).

Client (Modded/Modpacks):

This will depend a bit on the mods you're using, how they modify the game, which modloader they make use of, as well as which launcher you use to launch the game. I'll cover the main ones that I know about.

Fabric Modloader: Fabric is the best modloader (extremely biased). It's also completely independent of the Forge ecosystem of mods, so it's not used as much, particularly in larger modpacks (save for All of Fabric, which, you guessed it, uses fabric). But I highly recommend it if you're someone who primarily plays vanilla or vanilla-lite type of minecraft. Anyway, Fabric supports Minecraft versions from 1.14 onward. To quote one of the main developers, "When using Fabric on the client, restarting the Minecraft launcher will be enough to automatically fix the security issue for all Minecraft versions". I also recommend updating your fabric loader version to version 0.12.10 or later (this is the latest at time of writing), as this release of fabric patches the exploit. If you use a third-party launcher, please see the "launchers" section for information on your specific launcher, but as long as you're using fabric loader 0.12.10 or later, you should be safe.

Forge Modloader: The big one. Nearly every big modpack you've ever heard of relies on the Forge modloader. As of time of writing, you will need to update your forge installation to the latest version of Forge for the respective Minecraft version you play to be safe from this exploit. So far, at time of writing, Forge has provided updates to every major version from 1.12.2 onwards to patch this exploit. Unsure of when/if they will provide patches for previous versions (1.7.10 anybody?). If you are using the latest release of Forge for any minecraft version 1.12+, you should be safe from this exploit. If you use a third-party launcher, please see the "launchers" section for information on your specific launcher, but so long as you're using the latest available version of Forge for your minecraft version on 1.12 onwards, you should be safe.

Other modloaders: do these even exist idk lol. I guess there's Rift for 1.13, but I sincerely doubt anyone is still playing on 1.13... right? right...? Message me if there's some noteworthy modloader aside from the big 2 out there right now, but I think these are the only ones worth noting for client-side mods/modpacks. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Servers (Vanilla):

Please follow the instructions in Mojang's blog post: (x). They explain it better than I could.

Realms:

Realms are always automatically updated to the latest Minecraft version. As the latest vanilla minecraft version is 1.18.1 where this is patched, you should have nothing to worry about.

Servers (Craftbukkit/Spigot/Paper/etc):

Craftbukkit/Spigot: Don't use craftbukkit in 2021. Use spigot or Paper instead. Spigot has released patched .jar files for every Spigot version since 1.8.8 onwards in response to this exploit. Please follow the instructions from Spigot's forum post on this if you use Bukkit/Spigot: (x). However, I would not recommend using these Spigot releases for any version older than ~1.15+ or so, because older versions have known vulnerabilities aside from this one, and those likely did not get patched- you'll need to use alternative methods to correctly patch your older servers, or update your fork of choice to the latest release available (i don't know of any prominent public forks of spigot supporting old mc versions, let me know if there's any I should mention). Also, consider using Paper.

Paper/Purpur/Tuinity: Tuinity merged with the Paper project recently, if you're using modern MC versions, please switch from Tuinity to Paper as it has all the features from Tuinity baked in already. Purpur, I'm not sure about, but they've probably released a patch for this exploit. For Paper servers, the Paper devs have released patches for every major version from Minecraft 1.16.5 onwards. If you are using Paper for an older Minecraft version, a moderator in the Paper community has graciously provided files you can drop into your server folder to patch this exploit (currently in the pinned comments in the PaperMC discord, in the #paper-help channel). File to download, by Minecraft version: For 1.10: (x) For 1.11: (x) For 1.12: (x) For 1.13: (x) For 1.14: (x) For 1.15: (x) After downloading the file for your respective Minecraft version, place it in the main directory (where your paper.jar is) and add the following jvm flag to your startup script: -Dlog4j.configurationFile=log4j2.xml Make sure to put this flag BEFORE the -jar part of the startup script. If your server provider does not allow you to modify your java startup flags, you'll have to submit a ticket to them requesting they change your server's startup flags to include this flag. Although, it is possible that certain server providers may automatically implement their own patches for servers (this sounds kind of nightmarish to implement depending on certain things but hey what do I know). If you don't know what java flags are, and you're running a minecraft server, please learn. Consider reading this post by one of the main developers for the Paper project: (x).

Cauldron: Do people still use this? It was last updated for Minecraft 1.7.10 ... This probably isn't safe to use unless you whitelist your server to trusted friends only.

hMod: You are still living in 2010, living the high of beta Minecraft. You probably don't care how many viruses your computer gets.

Other Bukkit/Spigot/Paper forks: I'm not sure of any prominent ones aside from those I listed. Check the latest releases to see if they have a fix for this exploit. If you're using the latest Minecraft version (1.18.1 at time of writing), it's already patched in the vanilla game though.

Servers (Fabric):

For versions 1.14 - 1.18, you need to update your fabric version to 0.12.10 or later to patch this exploit. For 1.18.1 and later, this is already patched in vanilla. If there's fabric versions for older versions than 1.14, they're not supported afaik (fabric was originally released for 1.14).

Servers (Forge):

This may depend on the kind of modpack you're using, but I assume that if you are using the latest Forge version for 1.12 onwards, you should be OK.

Servers (Sponge):

Sponge Vanilla: I can't find any information on whether this exploit happens on Sponge, but I assume it probably does. Wait for an update.

Sponge Forge: Read above section about forge.

"What about X modpack / server / client?":

Modpacks: RLcraft: Uses forge 1.12.2. Update forge. Pixelmon Modpack: Uses forge 1.12.2. Update forge. Hexxit Updated: Uses forge 1.12.2. Update forge. Skyfactory 4: Uses forge 1.12.2. Update forge. Enigmatica 6: Uses forge 1.16.5. Update forge. Tekkit: Uses old forge versions. Unsafe for multiplayer. Other forge modpacks: Update forge. If it's not on Minecraft 1.12.2 or later, it's unsafe for multiplayer. All of Fabric: Uses fabric. Update fabric. Fabulously optimized: Uses fabric. Update fabric.

Servers: Hypixel: Should be safe if your client is. Cubecraft: Should be safe if your client is. Minehut: I don't understand what minehut is. Is it its own server? Is it a server host?? Once again I feel like a minecraft boomer. I'm not sure. Massivecraft: Unsure. EmpireMinecraft: Probably ok, they use Paper and one of the lead developers is also a lead developer on the Paper project.

Clients: Lunar Client: I don't know. Update it anyways. Consider just joining your fav servers from vanilla (& vanilla launcher) for the time being. Badlion Client: I don't know. Their website isn't working for me. People seem to prefer lunar client these days, anyway. Nodus: You are still living in 2010. Please look outside. Also, don't use hacked clients unless you're prepared to get hacked yourself.

Anything else:

This only affects Minecraft: Java edition.

I think I covered every major client/launcher/server software for Minecraft??? Probably?! Other than hacked clients or cracked minecraft launchers. Assume these will always give you a million viruses when you download them. Just buy the game or borrow someone else's account, it's fairly cheap.

If I've missed any major client/servers, please let me know. I may publish a more formal blog post on the update/mitigation process, perhaps in a github gist or something, for people to reference without having to go to my tumblr blog. For now, though, I hope this helped you, and feel free to ask me any questions! (My tumblr inbox is always open.)

#long post

6K notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

Important information for everyone who plays Minecraft (Java Edition) multiplayer:

There is a very serious exploit that has recently been found in Minecraft (as of Dec 9 2021) that affects nearly every version of the game, both modded and vanilla.

Both Clients and Servers alike are affected by this.

This exploit is known to exploit all versions of Minecraft 1.12.2 up to Minecraft 1.15.2, regardless of vanilla/modded status, on both the server and client. If you play on these minecraft versions, ABSOLUTELY AVOID PLAYING ON ANY PUBLIC SERVERS, as your computer and personal information could be at risk. It is possible that older versions of Minecraft could be affected as well, essentially any version of minecraft which uses Java 8 could potentially be affected.

A band-aid fix you can apply is to add the following startup flags to Minecraft when launching the game:

-Dlog4j2.formatMsgNoLookups=true

But I wouldn't recommend relying on this, as the server you connect to could still be vulnerable itself.

Again, I recommend not playing multiplayer at all until mojang delivers some kind of patch to all clients, even then be wary about servers on older versions (1.15.2 and older).

I will update this post as more information becomes available. Stay safe, everyone.

[image ID: Discord message that reads: "Update: The above workarounds only cover Minecraft 1.17 and later, avoid running servers or connecting to servers for earlier versions!" end ID]

6K notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

The tour of Chroma Park is set to begin soon. As usual, you can connect to the server using mc.quixol.net, versions 1.15.2 - 1.18.

This tour will be recorded so try not to say anything too weird!!

#Quixol

4 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

Thanks everyone who made it out to the previous world tour. The recording is now up if you'd like to watch it:

youtube

As you may have heard from previous posts, Quixol will be shutting down effective December 12th this year. We're doing these impromptu server tours to serve as a way to memorialize Quixol before it's gone for good... Sure, you can download an archive of the world, but it's different seeing it while it's still online and functioning the way it's meant to.

There will be another server tour held on December 2nd at 2:30pm (PST). This will be an in-depth tour of Chroma Park, as well as some other prominent player-built structures.

This tour will be recorded as well, so make sure to be mindful of that when saying stuff in the chat. You can join us on mc.quixol.net as always, anyone is welcome to attend.

In addition, there are some vague plans of making a more youtube-friendly tour of the server, i.e. a guided tour that's easier to watch along with. Stay tuned for more info on that.

That's all for now, thanks for reading. See you around. -Admin Vivi

#Quixol #Youtube

7 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

Starting soon!

This tour will be recorded, so make sure you behave in the chat unless you want your hooliganry to be immortalized forever.

Today is Quixol's 6-year anniversary!

As you may have heard by now, though, Quixol will be shutting down next month... It's a sad truth, but our time has come.

Before we close the server for good, though, Admin Vivian is doing a few impromptu server tours, to relive all the good memories we made over the years on Quixol.

In about an hour, we will be doing another world tour, this time of the world Ghalea, which was started Nov. 10th, 2018 (3 years ago!).

The server tour should start around 2:30 pm (PST). As always, you can connect using mc.quixol.net, versions 1.15.2+.

In addition, there will be another world tour later on, possibly a few days or a week before the server shuts down on December 12th. This server tour will go over some of the most prominent/noteworthy player-built structures, as well as an exhaustive tour of the Chroma Park build on the server. If you'd like your base/structure to be covered by the server tour, get in contact with admin Vivian (or just send an ask to this blog). You can even elect someone else's build to be a part of it.

---

It doesn't matter if you haven't been active in years, or hell, even if you were banned at some point. Speaking personally (admin Vivian), I am not one to hold onto grudges of the past. Seeing as this is a matter of preserving digital history, I think it's important to go over stuff that others built even if I am not necessarily in their good graces (or vice-versa). Of course, there will be a world download, but more people may get to experience it this way!

Thank you for reading, hopefully you all will enjoy this trip down memory lane! -Admin Vivian

9 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

Today is Quixol's 6-year anniversary!

As you may have heard by now, though, Quixol will be shutting down next month... It's a sad truth, but our time has come.

Before we close the server for good, though, Admin Vivian is doing a few impromptu server tours, to relive all the good memories we made over the years on Quixol.

In about an hour, we will be doing another world tour, this time of the world Ghalea, which was started Nov. 10th, 2018 (3 years ago!).

The server tour should start around 2:30 pm (PST). As always, you can connect using mc.quixol.net, versions 1.15.2+.

---

Thank you for reading, hopefully you all will enjoy this trip down memory lane! -Admin Vivian

#Quixol #QuixolMC

9 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

starting now!

in roughly ~1 hour, admin Vivian will be hosting a tour of the world Protos on the server.

Come online if you'd like to relive all those memories from 2017-2018 Quixol! (ip is mc.quixol.net as always, connect using 1.15.2+)

The tour will begin at /warp protos:oldorsus , and will mostly involve walking around server destinations as Vivian rambles in the text chat. There will be a kit you may receive at old orsus so you aren't without any items in this world.

In addition, there will be another world tour tomorrow, at around the same time. (2:30 PST) This tour will cover the current world, Ghalea, which was started in late 2018.

Hope to see you then!

6 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

in roughly ~1 hour, admin Vivian will be hosting a tour of the world Protos on the server.

Come online if you'd like to relive all those memories from 2017-2018 Quixol! (ip is mc.quixol.net as always, connect using 1.15.2+)

In addition, there will be another world tour tomorrow, at around the same time. (2:30 PST) This tour will cover the current world, Ghalea, which was started in late 2018.

Hope to see you then!

#Quixol

6 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Note

Hold on, I just realized you may not have meant specifically the custom scripts we used. Perhaps you just wanted to know what all plugins we use on the server, custom or not?

In that case, yes, I can certainly publish a list of all the plugins we used. However, again, I cannot guarantee this will allow you to recreate the conditions on the server with much ease- there are many cases where we used very specific forks or re-releases of certain plugins, where they were modified from the original to add additional features, or to support later versions of Minecraft.

In a few cases, a lot of really crucial plugins that are kind of at the core of how we set up Quixol simply do not support the latest versions of Minecraft very well. One of the biggest examples is the Factions plugin- we had to use a poorly maintained fork that had myriad bugs just to continue using Factions at all on 1.13+. There were some major, major bugs in this release of factions, many of which still aren't fixed!

In a lot of cases, I had to file bug reports myself to get some of the most egregious issues patched in some of the plugins (or even server software) we use. And, most minecraft plugins are just developed by 1 person in their spare time. People can't be expected to drop everything and fix a bug for you on old projects. So it was a bit of a struggle keeping plugins up-to-date, and not breaking everything in the process.

There was really a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure updating the server was as seamless as possible, without removing or changing too many server features that you all may have grown accustomed to.

It was stuff like this that really held us back from updating the server right away... Perhaps you all would not have cared so much if the update process weren't that seamless, but. It's a standard I began to hold myself (and, perhaps, the other staff) to after a certain point.

Anyhow, I'm rambling again- yes, I can release the full list of plugins we use on Quixol. However, many of them may be old or outdated, and some of them you may have to go digging for. There's at least one plugin on the server that was literally removed from the internet as far as I can tell! Others are obscure forks that were released in like, discord servers or on peoples' github pages. So it won't be easy tracking down versions that work well with one another. But I hope this gave some more insight.

- Admin Vivi

Will y'all post the mods n stuff you had in the server once it goes down? Some of the stuff you said was specifically for quixol and I will miss it along with the rest of the server :(((

Good question... I sure can do that, but I can't guarantee it will be of much use to you. Most of the custom stuff written for the server is barely hanging on by a thread, a patch job upon a patch job upon a patch job.

I used a plugin called "Skript" to code most of the custom "plugins" on the server. Skript is its own little programming language, that is solely for writing little plugins for your minecraft server. There are also many Skript addons, some of which I used to make certain features functional.

However, Skript is a very niche plugin. It's really only meant for very small, simple applications, and the fact that I coded the entire chat system for Quixol using it means that there are many points of failure where a little update here or there, a plugin that isn't updated properly there, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

I could not update the Viaversion plugin to allow 1.17+ clients to join the server, until i found a fork of one of these Skript addons that fixed a crash that occurred alongside that plugin. I had to literally dig through forks of that add-on on github to find a build that addressed that specific crash, because that specific add-on was no longer maintained by the author.

Hopefully this gives some insight into how the entire host of custom scripts written for the server was no more than a bunch of toothpicks glued together!

I am still proud of what I accomplished, though, so I may find some way of publishing these skripts for people who are curious. Possibly just on github or something. But I will not provide any kind of support for them, or even help you to figure out installing them- it's just far too much effort to maintain.

One of my biggest regrets is that I never sat down and learned Java properly for Quixol... I struggled too much with it, and just wanted to see results now. So I picked up Skript, and made everything with that. It just led to a bunch more headaches down the road, though.

Anyhow, thank you for the question, I hope this helped! Sorry for rambling, I just can't be bothered to answer in a stilted "official" way honestly.

- Admin Vivian

9 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Note

Will y'all post the mods n stuff you had in the server once it goes down? Some of the stuff you said was specifically for quixol and I will miss it along with the rest of the server :(((

Hopefully this gives some insight into how the entire host of custom scripts written for the server was no more than a bunch of toothpicks glued together!

Anyhow, thank you for the question, I hope this helped! Sorry for rambling, I just can't be bothered to answer in a stilted "official" way honestly.

- Admin Vivian

#asks #anonymous

9 notes · View notes

quixol · 2 years

Text

Message from Admin Vivian

As I type this to you all now, I'm listening to some of the new music by Lena Raine that was just revealed in the latest Minecraft snapshot. They fill me with a sense of eerie calm, of finality. I'm not sure why, but these haunting piano refrains are just what I needed to finally work up the courage to type this post...

I'm sure many of you have noticed by now, but Quixol isn't what it used to be. It hasn't been for a long, long time. And for over a year, now, the server has been completely stagnant... No updates, rarely ever any staff or other players online... Just long periods of no activity whatsoever. You may have also noticed that the staff in our discord server are missing quite a few names. That is no coincidence.

I could try to explain to you the interpersonal drama that led to this conclusion, but, really, it doesn't matter- not for the sake of this post, anyway. I'm just one person, and Quixol has always been more than the sum of its parts. The fact is, most of us have outgrown this place. By this time, even the youngest of Quixol's progeny are most likely adults- many attending college, busy with jobs, relationships, life.

The pandemic really hit us hard, sure... But, to tell you the truth, the seeds of Quixol's demise were planted long before any of that. Perhaps it's all my fault, or perhaps it's in the fault of the culture promoted by the prominent members/staff of the server... Perhaps the blame lies somewhere in between. But, I think, more than any of our faults, I want to spend this post talking about what a special place Quixol has been to me, and so many others.

Quixol introduced me to countless friends- expanded my social horizons far, far beyond what I ever dreamed possible. For a long time, it was pretty much the only way I met new people. And I was OK with that. Because it was something I devoted my life to- no exaggeration. Quixol was my passion, my reason for waking up in the morning. In between all of the headaches, stressful parties/events, bickering about how the rules should be enforced... There was a real sense of community, to me. Like I finally belonged somewhere. It was great.

And... it will always be great. I know there are many others who can say they met their close friends, partners, loved ones through Quixol. In the 6 long years the server has been up, it's touched over 1000 souls out there- in a really unique way. And I couldn't be prouder of that.

---

After six long years, Quixol will finally be closing its gates for good.

It's taken a lot of courage to type this- I'm not ready to see it go. But it's time to say good-bye... I'm ready to finally close this chapter of my life. The remaining staff agree with me on this point, as well.

On December 12th, 2021, Quixol will be formally shut down.

You have until then to log in, take screenshots, take backups of the world using mods, or what have you. If you know somebody who played on Quixol, show them this post so they're made aware- you never know, maybe they will have something they want to do one last time.

The discord server will likely remain up, because that costs nothing for me to maintain, and people rarely talk there as it is now, anyway. It can stay as a remnant of the past.

I plan on archiving the world files used on Quixol, once I can figure out where/how to store them online, in a way that is easily accessible to anyone. I will share details on my plans for this in the coming days, as well as any other relevant info you may want/need to know before Quixol properly shuts down.

It's been a good run, everyone. Thank you, for everything, from the bottom of my heart.

I'll see you around... For whatever comes next in life.

- Vivian

#Quixol

39 notes · View notes

quixol · 4 years

Text

Aaaaaand we're back, everyone! QuixolMC is now updated to minecraft Java Edition 1.15.2, paving the way for a potential 1.16 update in the future. This means everything in 1.15.2 is now available - like bees!

Some notable changes:

QuixolMC now has a "no-tick view distance" of 12 chunks in the overworld, 10 in the nether/end. This means you can see farther than the "normal" view distance. Technical details of this will be explained later.

We have removed the 'novice' rank, the rank given when first joining Quixol (not scout). New players will now simply be the default rank. They should have the same permissions that novices had prior, so this shouldn’t affect too much.

Phantoms now only attack players who haven't slept, instead of showing no preference between well-slept and poorly-slept players.

Jobs: Players with the explorer job will no longer be paid for exploring while gliding with elytra.

Mob heads: The mob heads datapack has gotten an update, and many of the mob head textures were modified/improved. There are also a few new mob head variants. We will update the loot tables page later with the updated info.

This update is just a small stepping stone towards a larger, more exciting update to minecraft 1.16 (the Nether Update). This update will mean a new nether dimension, and an expanded world border! You can read some of the details of our plans in our previous blog post here: (x)

You can now connect to QuixolMC with either 1.15.2 or 1.16+ clients. We hope to see you ingame soon!

- Quixol staff

#Quixol #QuixolMC #Quixol update #1.15

9 notes · View notes

quixol · 4 years

Text

Hi everyone! QuixolMC is going down for maintenance, starting right now. When it is back up, we will be playing on minecraft version 1.15.2! This will be the start of our gradual move towards 1.16. We expect the server to be back on July 3rd. See you all in 1.15.2!

#Quixol #QuixolMC

3 notes · View notes

quixol · 4 years

Text

Update plans: 1.15 and beyond

QuixolMC has been sitting on the stale old version of 1.14.4 for quite some time now. Despite how minor of an update 1.15 is, we just never got around to it! It’s a shame, really- we generally try to stay on top of the latest minecraft updates. Alas, we’ve been on hiatus these past few months, and gotten very little work done towards updating the server. We’re hoping to change that soon, though- much sooner than you might expect!

Because we’ve taken such a long time to update, the mojang team has been working away at the brand-new 1.16 Nether Update. In fact, it’s available RIGHT NOW! Yep, it just released earlier today. The 1.16 update is a major overhaul to the game, particularly in regards to the nether dimension. You can see an overview of some of the new features on this page: (x). With this in mind, we’d like to share our preliminary plans for both updates with you all!

Before jumping in: all dates discussed in this post are not final. We’re taking things a bit slower since we’re just coming back from hiatus, and want to make sure we don’t just contribute to more burnout for our staff. If one of these “deadlines” is putting too much strain on us, we’ll scale things back until we’re more prepared.

---

Minecraft ver. 1.15.2

It is currently our plan to update the server to 1.15.2 ASAP. We’ve already begun some preliminary tests to make sure our plugins are functioning on the latest mc version, and things look promising- no surprise, it’s a relatively minor update.

You can hopefully expect to see QuixolMC updated to minecraft Java Edition 1.15.2 by Friday, July 3rd!

The server will go down for maintenance on Tuesday, June 30th. During this time, we’ll be updating the server, plugins, etc. and making sure everything is prepared for you all to join again by Friday. There shouldn’t be too much new stuff, but we may have a few surprises lined up!

We previously announced that we would expand the world border for the 1.15 update, however, we have since re-evaluated this decision and decided to hold this off until later.

Our update to Minecraft 1.15.2 will primarily be a stability update, focused on improving server performance and stability. The most you can expect from us updating is having our current plugins/datapacks supporting the new features added in 1.15, as well as, potentially, some changes to ranks on the server- more on this later. Beyond that, there will be no major features introduced with this update, aside from mojang’s introduction of bees.

Minecraft ver. 1.16+

Mojang has been hard at work on a new update to minecraft, dubbed the Nether Update. It just released today, and it’s unclear when any of the plugins we currently use will even be ready to use on this version, let alone if the version is stable enough for use on QuixolMC. On top of that, we simply aren’t prepared for such a large server update at the current time.

Given the large scale changes to the nether in this update, we currently plan to completely reset the entire Nether dimension for the world “ghalea” when we update to this version.

This will mean that anything that is currently built in the nether on our primary world will be completely gone from the server after this update. This may be surprising and upsetting to those who have made structures and mob farms inside the nether, and we understand how this may negatively affect some players’ experiences. If you’re one of these players, keep reading, as we have a “backup plan” for those of you who have structures you don’t want to lose after the update.

In the coming weeks, we will be contacting as many people as we can about the upcoming nether reset, with information about how & why we are resetting the nether world. We intend to extend the offer to anyone who has built major structures in the nether the opportunity to save a back-up of your build so that you will not lose it. We can work out the details of these back-ups individually with each player we contact, so as to help you transition smoothly through this reset. You’re also free to come to us yourself with questions about this, as there are likely some significant nether builds we don’t know of.

Due to the nature of the Nether Update, most of the backups taken will be completely mismatched with the surrounding terrain in the nether, and many mob farms will be completely busted. It will be up to you to “fix” the area surrounding your build so that it blends in with the new terrain, should you choose to do so.

In addition to resetting the nether, we also plan to expand Ghalea’s world border to 32,000 x 32,000 blocks with this update. The current world border is 24,000 x 24,000 blocks. This will translate to the border expanding 4000 blocks in each direction, to a “radius” of 16k blocks. If those numbers confused you, take a look at this image hastily made in mspaint:

If you’re still confused, just know that the world will be bigger, and it will have newly generated stuff beyond where our current world border is located- this will include the new villages from 1.14, bee nests from 1.15, and some minor tweaks to structure generation as well as ruined nether portals from 1.16.

These are all incredibly preliminary plans, and are subject to change. We will provide you with more up-to-date information as the time draws nearer for this update.

With all of that in mind, we will give an extremely vague and unclear “deadline” for this update: We will hopefully be able to update the server to minecraft version 1.16 before October this year. Again, these plans are very rough, and very subject to change- it could come sooner, or it could come later. We don’t know yet.

---

There will likely be more content bundled into each minecraft update we do, particularly the later planned 1.16 update. We will make sure to provide more details as they come, but for now this should be a rough overview of what to expect of QuixolMC in the coming months.

If you have any questions, particularly about the nether reset, or anything else- feel free to ask us! Thanks for reading, cya soon! - Quixol Staff

#Quixol #QuixolMC #Quixol update

11 notes · View notes