The Preservation of PPX history is centered around the preservation and cataloguing of the Wellstowne series of Minecraft worlds, although other preservation efforts have also taken place and other aspects of the PPX community have had preservation efforts, including elements of this wiki.

Minecraft Worlds

The preservation of Minecraft worlds has multiple aspects. First and foremost is ensuring copies of the world files themselves are maintained. Correlated but secondary is ensuring the worlds are playable in modern versions of Minecraft, which requires periodic updates, and is complicated by a combination of server mod use and Minecraft save format changes. Also important is actually cataloguing and documenting the contents of those worlds, which includes creating detailed pages on this wiki as well as producing accurate overviewer maps. Related to the worlds themselves is the preservation of screenshots and video from members.

Processes and Difficulties

Given the less than straight forward process involved in preserving minecraft worlds, these are some of the difficulties and systems needed to ensure future preservation of the Wellstowne worlds.

Original World Files

The most basic step is to ensure original world files are kept in pristine condition, preferably archived in a zip file. This is unfortunately not the case for many Wellstowne worlds. Also important is to ensure that a copy of the final state of a world is preserved, which has been a challenge in some cases. The modification of original world saves, including loading them in newer versions of Minecraft, introduces the possibility of irreparable damage if some part of the world is corrupted in the process. Any time a world is loaded or used in an auxilliary program like Overviewer or a chunk viewer, it should be performed on a copy of the original. This is true even for worlds that have been updated to new world formats, copies should always be used.

Upgrading Worlds through Minecraft World Formats

Minecraft world formats have changed many times, with the earliest Wellstowne worlds on the "Region Format" which began in Minecraft Beta 1.3. This was superseded by the "Anvil Format" in Minecraft 1.2.1, which required a full conversion of previous worlds. The Anvil format has been in use since that time, but other changes have introduces issues in some situations. Particularly important changes were introduced in Minecraft 1.13 and Minecraft 1.18, with changes to block id's and generation including world height, respectively.

Important to Wellstowne worlds is affects modded servers had on world format, particular Bukkit/Spigot. Bugs in Bukkit/Spigot lead to corruption of pre-1.13 worlds opened in 1.13 or later, and a bug in Lithium leads to corruption in pre 1.18 worlds opened in 1.18 or later, unless properly accounted for.

Other issues with upgrading worlds have been noticed, including the changing of biomes, the corruption of sign text and chest inventories, and the loss of player data. At this time no known fix addresses those issues. Also an issue with many old worlds is the nether and end, which due primarily to the use of Bukkit are in many cases missing or at minimum nether portals are not connected.

Bukkit and Spigot Issues

Several Wellstowne worlds were run on Bukkit or Spigot servers for the purposes of running anti-greifing and server moderation plugins. This leads to two primary issues.

Firstly, worlds running on Bukkit between Minecraft 1.7 and Minecraft 1.12.2 run into a potential chunk corruption issue when loaded in vanilla Minecraft versions 1.13 and later. This is due to the incorrect value being assigned to the "lightPopulated" tag in chunk data. Pre 1.7 chunks don't have this tag and open fine, and vanilla chunks have the correct value, but versions 1.13 and later use this tag to check if a chunk has been fully generated, and some chunks have the incorrect tag if loaded on a Bukkit server. This leads to chunks being replaced with new generation (or being merged with new generation) if opened in Minecraft 1.13 or later. The only known fixes are to load every chunk in vanilla Minecraft 1.12.2 (or other version pre-1.13 and post 1.7), or to open the world in Spigot for 1.13.2 (or later) with the `--forceUpgrade` launch parameter, which forced Spigot to check every chunk. After this the world can be loaded in vanilla Minecraft 1.13 or later without corruption.

Second, Bukkit and Spigot (and Paper) store alternate dimensions differently from vanilla Minecraft. If not manually moved into the vanilla folders, nether and end world data is not included when opening a world in vanilla Minecraft that was formerly loaded in Bukkit or Spigot. This also splits out player data, so maintaining accurate player data is impossible when moving from Bukkit to vanilla, although this only affects players who were in the nether or end when the world was saved. A side effect of this seems to be that nether portals are extinguished or at minimum disconnected from their counterparts in the nether, even when the world files are manually moved to vanilla locations.

Other issues which may be due to Bukkit or may be related to the versions of Minecraft itself in which the worlds were originally played on is the partial corruption of sign text, and the partial corruption of chests and other inventories, although the latter is rare.

Player data is further messed up by old player data not being recognized Spigot 1.13.2 and requiring deletion in order to fix pre-1.13.2 worlds for vanilla.

Lithium Issues

Only one known issue exists with the use of the lithium performance optimization mod. The mod is built for the Fabric modloader, which is fully compatible with vanilla minecraft so the world saves are fully compatible with vanilla minecraft, however due to a minor bug, worlds using Lithium 0.7.4 or previous are corrupted when loaded in Minecraft 1.18. The fix is straightforward, open the world with Lithium 0.7.5 and the launch parameter `--forceUpgrade=true` on a server or run "Optimize World" in singleplayer. This is believed to have only affected Boogaloo, Paramount, and Anniversary.

Player Data

Player data is both difficult to access and in many cases completely lost due to continual changes in how player data is stored and how player id's are managed, as well as issues related to Bukkit/Spigot. When opened in singleplayer players tend to either have no inventory or the inventory of Burrowdizzy or some other player, potentially because Burrowdizzy or another player opened the world in singleplayer first. This mostly means that player inventories and enderchests are all but lost, especially for older worlds.

Modded Worlds

Status: Active

Preservation Status of Other Worlds

Battle of Tonytown PTF

Status: Partially Preserved

Oldest Backup: Zip file containing 'battleoftonytown_PTF' last modified February 21, 2012. Likely Original.

Additional Backups: 1.17.1

Known Issues: Original guns mod lost, modded blocks replaced by flower pots and command blocks.

FTB Map

Status: Lost

Minepit

Status: Partially Preserved

Oldest Backup: rar file containing 'minepit' last modified July 28, 2014. Likely not original.

Additional Backups:

Known Issues: Original guns mod lost, modded blocks replaced by flower pots and command blocks.

Wellstowne Metropolis Finale

Metropolis split timelines for the scripted finale. This represents that version, both pre and post finale.

Status: Not Preserved

Brady or Brodie may have copies of the finale before it occurred, unclear if any copy exists of Metropolis following the finale occurring.

Preservation

Contents

Minecraft Worlds

Processes and Difficulties

Original World Files

Upgrading Worlds through Minecraft World Formats

Bukkit and Spigot Issues

Lithium Issues

Player Data

Modded Worlds

Preservation Status of Wellstowne Worlds

Wellstowne Classic

Wellstowne Frontier

New Wellstowne

Wellstowne Metropolis

Wellstowne Homestead

Wellstowne Odyssey

Wellstowne Monolith

Wellstowne Renaissance

Wellstowne Civilization

Wellstowne Whoppage

Wellstowne Rebirth

Wellstowne Reloaded

Wellstowne Boogaloo

Wellstowne Paramount

Wellstowne Anniversary

Preservation Status of Other Worlds

Battle of Tonytown PTF

FTB Map

Minepit

Wellstowne Metropolis Finale

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