If I’d had a blog while building our family Minecraft server, I could have documented the entire process while it was fresh in my mind. This may have actually been useful to someone.

This project started in the summer of 2019. I envisioned the a perfect Minecraft server where the hubster and I could play together or separately, in multiple worlds as the mood dictated. As many Minecraft players know, you can open your world to your LAN to play with others, but when the player who owns the host computer is not around, the other players either play in a different world, commandeer that host computer, or wait. Waiting seems almost un-American so I did some research and found out that I could build a Spigot server with the Multiverse plugin. Sounded perfect!

I found a killer deal on a refurbished computer on Amazon, and behold, it was very good. I was anxious to get started.

Well, this project turned out to be waaay more complicated than expected. I’ve worked with file servers, ftp servers and web servers but nothing prepared me for the can of worms that is a Multiverse server.

This project may have been much easier to pull off in 2012, which apparently was the heyday of Java Minecraft plugin development and innovation, but in 2019 during the great 1.13/1.14 “Update Aquatic” / “Village and Pillage” revolution, many developers seemed to be hold, waiting to see what would happen next with Minecraft. Some developers had not dropped out of the plugin game completely. Frankly, I’m not sure why anyone develops game plugins when players expect everything for free.

I did finally get it working, and the Multiverse capability was cool. I set up a pretty lobby world with portals to all of our most significant worlds, and it was fun to travel easily between worlds. Aside from the occasional problem of losing all your inventory in the transitions, or the fact that Multiverse Nethers were broken, it was everything I’d hoped for — for a while. Turns out, in addition to being difficult to configure, the server could be a nightmare to keep updated and functional. Stuff was always glitching. Fortunately, I’m patient and it always worked out eventually.

Fast forward: my Multiverse server eventually evolved into a vanilla Mojang server which was much easier to maintain. John and I would play together in our common world, and just play our own worlds locally on our laptops. So, yeah, I guess I failed in my original goal, but ultimately, I found AMP, a cool utility that allows you to run multiple instances of game servers, and has automatic backup features. Backups are very important to me. I’m kind of a cheater – sometimes when something goes wrong in my world, I go back to my last save and try it all again. If only real life was like this!

I am a latecomer to video gaming. Aside from playing a few old-school arcade games in my youth, the two Mysts in the 90’s, and Tetris, I haven’t played much of anything. I discovered Minecraft in February 2017 at the recommendation of a friend and within a few days I was hooked.

Naturally, I’d talk to John about my new obsession, and he’d politely act like he cared. As April approached, when he asked what I wanted for my birthday, my only request was that he download this game so we could play together, and that worked. I’m [mostly] happy to report that he became a hardcore Minecraft addict, even way more than I ever was. He’s even killed the Ender Dragon! (Update 08-23-20: he’s now a Minecraft Dungeons addict.) (Update 10-25-20: he’s now a Diablo addict.)

The timing for this was also pretty perfect for a jilted San Diego Chargers season ticket holder. The sounds of NFL is not heard within our walls anymore, but the sound of furious mouse clicking definitely is.

Unfortunately, I get pretty severe motion sickness from Minecraft these days so I’m unable to play for long stretches, but I still love it and play as time and stomach permits. My first goal in any Minecraft world is to make a cool place to live. Results vary of course, but I’ve included a couple of my favorite houses here (always built in survival mode).

My second goal now is to find a skeleton spawner, which greatly improves one’s quality of Minecraft life. Arrows and XP! Here’s my go-to YouTube video on that: TheStickz6 – Mob Spawner XP Farm (NO REDSTONE).