TNTable

Tag: Review

  • TNTable 2025: Year in Review

    TNTable 2025: Year in Review

    This post originally started with 2026 being on the horizon, whoops. Don’t @ me, I know it is Q3 2026 now. I got busy okay? Anyways, here’s the post:

    What a year 2025 has been in the world, but we’re not going to talk about that. Instead we are going to talk about the TNTable servers! 2025 saw quite a bit less activity on the Minecraft servers, but that’s okay! Many things happened in the background which I am feeling good about, and looking forward to.

    Overview

    • Minecraft server updates
    • Hytale servers are available to setup now!
    • Major changes and improvements on the server, both hardware, software, and game play

    Minecraft Updates

    This last year was interesting for updates. Mojang switched to a “drops” style of updates instead of massive changes, which is kind of nice in a way. The game has matured and there are fewer changes to mechanics. This is also the last year where the updates will follow sequential numbering. Starting this year (2026) it is switching. The first update of the year will be 26.1, the next drop will be 26.2 and so-on.

    The server started the year with The Garden Awakens (1.21.4) update from December 2024. We were introduced to the Creaking, as well as the pale garden.

    • March 2025: Spring to Life (1.21.5) brought mob variants that were based on biome temperature.
    • June 2025: Chase the Skies (1.21.6) is arguably one of my favourite updates with the introduction of Happy Ghasts.
    • September 2025: The Copper Age (1.21.9) gave us copper armour, tools, and a little guy who can sort chests for you, albeit very slowly. We also got shelves, finally.
    • Lastly, Mounts of Mayhem (1.21.11) is the final drop of the year bringing us into 2026. We’ve got spears now, netherite horse armour, new underwater mobs, and more.

    SMP Server Updates

    This last year was a big year for changes on the server. We didn’t see much player activity throughout the year, little pockets here and there. But in the background I was hard at work optimizing and improving the server experience.

    Much of this is a result of the massive overhaul of my servers. I get into the details later in this post. This is an overview of the game play and SMP server-related items that have changed or improved over the year.

    • The server map renders live now, integrates with public homes and waypoints, as well as showing the location of online players.
    • Death chests has been switched back to gravestones. This means no time limit on picking up your items.
    • The server render distance has been increased due to improvements in hardware, as well as game optimizations.

    Hardware Updates

    I got two new servers, moved some resources and services around between my servers, and ultimately was able to allocate more resources to game servers. It is also time to say goodbye to the original Borden server, a computer that has been with us for 13 years.

    New hardware

    My server cabinet in my apartment

    In 2025 I bought two new server computers. In April, and November. This brings me to 3 servers in my apartment. Each with its own purpose.

    Laurier is the NAS (Network Attached Storage) server. It has 6 hard drives in it. This holds all of the backups and media for the services I run, including the Minecraft servers.

    Then there is King, it currently runs the Minecraft servers. Though, this is a lie now as I have replaced King in 2026 but that will be for the 2026 year in review.

    Lastly there is new Borden. This server runs all my personal services like cloud storage and photo backups and all that. It also runs the media servers now. More on that in the next section.

    Reallocation of resources

    With the replacement of Borden and addition of Laurier I have been able to reallocate resources to make better use of the computing power available.

    Before this I had two servers, King and Borden. King hosted my media servers and game servers. This meant resources were being shared between media streaming and games. It was inefficient and not optimal. Borden ran my personal services.

    Now I have moved my media servers to Borden since the CPU is optimised for media transcoding tasks. So King is now free to primarily run the game servers. More resources available, and higher priority access to those resources instead of sharing them. I also unloaded media storage to a different server which has had a positive impact for backups and bulk data storage.

    Saying goodbye to an old friend

    OG Borden circa 2016

    Part of these updates means retiring original Borden, a sever that has been with us for the better part of 13 years now. It was a trusty computer, it was the second generation of server computer for our SMP worlds and other game servers. A significant improvement over the old Compaq desktop we had. It is still quite capable today, however it was time to retire it for more powerful & efficient hardware. I donated it to Free Geek Toronto, and OG Borden will live a third life as a desktop computer for those in need.

    Who would have thought that the money we pooled together in grade 9 would have gotten us a computer that lasted this long? I am very happy we were able to acquire it, and am equally happy that it served us for so long and allowed us to keep the Minecraft servers going over the years.

    Software Updates

    On top of hardware changes, the software that underpins all of the server hosting has undergone significant changes. The change of hardware was a perfect opportunity to improve the software side of things too.

    Pelican Panel

    I migrated the server hosting from Pterodactyl Panel to Perlican Panel. Mainly because Pterodactyl had stopped development for a long period of time and is lacking features. Some of the developers ended up creating Pelican Panel as a response to the lack of progress. Pterodactyl has since been revived but I am liking Pelican more. I also migrated server backups to my new NAS.

    BlueMap

    The server map has also been improved. BlueMap is now running on the server as a plugin instead of a separate service that only ran every 2-3 days. This also means deeper integration into the server, features include showing online player locations, and public homes & warps. For the first time ever the nether and end are also rendered on an active SMP world.

    Other software changes

    The Discord music bot has been sunset. It was not being used all that much, and it is easy to spin another one up if the need arises again.

    Additionally, we tried out a new software for our Wiki but ended up sticking with MediaWiki. Bookstack is great but it does not have the best editing flow for us. Thank you to everyone who tried it out and provided feedback.

    Finances

    Let’s go over some costs of running the server. Not much has changed from last year, I only have an estimate since it is a fraction of my actual usage, the server runs with other services as well. I estimate about $80 was spent on the server over the year, which averages $6.67 per month. Costs include the domain name, internet, electricity, web hosting, etc… There were no capital expenses on the server this year.

    Wrapping up, looking ahead

    If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. Also thank you to all the players who enjoyed the server this year, it is a pleasure to continue to provide a place for us to have fun, hang out, and build together. I look forward to what lies ahead, especially with Hytale coming out.

    I will leave you here now and wish everyone a happy 2026.

    David

  • TNTable 2024: Year in Review

    TNTable 2024: Year in Review

    We’ve had quite the year in 2024, a new website, a new SMP world and more. We’re going to look at all the major events from this year together, go over costs to run the server (quite reasonable), and what we are looking forward to in 2025. Thanks for being a part of the community in 2024 and here’s to many more years!

    Noteworthy Events

    Let’s go through the major happenings of 2024, or at least all those I can remember. We started the year pretty quiet, not much activity on the server but there were a few updates.

    New Logo and Datapack Changes

    We left off with a new logo and datapack changes to the server. Okay, this happened at the end of 2023 but close enough. This was a long-overdue update to the logo, and the updates to datapacks were very helpful. These changes have carried forward and many of the enhancements that we voted for have been improved and replaced with mods for better functionality.

    Minecraft: Armoured Paws Update

    We saw the release of the Armoured Paws Update (MC 1.20.5) in April. Notable additions to the game were wolf variations, wolf armour and armadillos. The update went largely unnoticed on the server since activity was pretty low at the time.

    New Website

    I spent 50+ hours designing and building this new website, you can read more about it here. Overall it is a huge improvement compared to the previous website. Part of this involved updating all the map renderings and migrating them to a new version of BlueMap which is more performant and requires less storage space. Exciting stuff.

    Also, the website might be getting an update in the near future, it will remain largely the same but I am going to port it over to ProcessWire. It is another CMS and I much prefer it to Grav after working on a few projects with it. Stay tuned for updates on that, however it won’t be a major redesign this time around.

    Minecraft: Tricky Trials Update

    Then July rolls around and the new update Tricky Trials (MC 1.21.0) is upon us. The conversation about a server reset begins. We discuss and vote for a map reset. The excitement and planning for this new update and world is in high gear. In addition to the new trial chambers in Minecraft we add even more to the server with a datapack called Dungeons and Taverns. This leads us natually into our next topic: the new server world.

    New Server World

    We reset the server world and added a selection of plugins and datapacks to enhance the experience. For the first time the server map was pre-rendered and available viewing before the world launch, and the seed was hand-picked for the best starting area and spawn location among the worlds and seeds sampled. We (Matt) also began publishing a weekly recap of the events and builds from the server when there was plenty of activity. Activity inevitably died down about 4 weeks in, but players hop on occasionally and continue to build and create.

    A few notable bases includes Red Team, check their base out on the server map. If you have time go check it out on the server as well, there is so much to see and explore there. On the other side of the map west of spawn is Megaussy. It isn’t as large as Red Team but it still has character and charm. Admittedly that is where my base is so I may be a little biased.

    Expenses

    How much does it cost to run the server? Not as much as one would think once the hardware is purchased. I run a few other services on the same server so that also helps split up the costs. In total I estimate that it cost $85.24 to run the server for all of 2024. That includes the cost of storing the server renders, electricity, internet and web hosting for the website and wiki. Really not to bad, especially spread out over 12 months. This does not include any money set aside to fund upgrades or new servers in general so it really is just running costs so keep that in mind.

    Looking towards the future

    As we look towards the future I hope that we see some activity on the SMP server again soon. In addition I am planning on launching an Ultra Hardcore Minecraft server, it will be based on a plugin that lets players organize and start games themselves. Also a regular hardcore server again for players wanting additional challenge. As always, if there are any game servers you would like to see let me know and I can spin them up for you.

    Thanks for making it this far in the article, that is all for the 2024 year in review. Happy new year!