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 | We finally recovered a Retail Beta client! | Friday, 24th of May, 2024 | hey everyone - this is moreso Blockland Archive news rather than B4v21, but I felt like it would be appreciated being posted here also.
we have just recovered a real blockland beta client! 8 whole months before retail release - dated June 1st 2006. it is beta version 7 (beta used a whole different versioning system). on the 21st, I held a livestream event in our discord where me and some friends all dived into the client together. you can find a full livestream upload here, though be warned that it is very long and drawn-out (I apologise for that!): https://youtu.be/_cMSko4Hov0
a very important note: this beta client does not have singleplayer or server capability, as it was designed to rely on a specific dedicated server that badspot hosted at the time. (and we've always known this during our search to recover a beta client.) we did try to get this client to boot into any sort of game, but it turns out that in the exe the fundamental method "packUpdate" on all classes have been completely blanked out in this build of the engine, which means that the server is never able to send data over to connected clients on its own server. (even in singleplayer!) so ultimately, all this client has for us are all the client scripts, GUIs, and all the game assets needed to join a beta server at the time. that's still super cool to have recovered!
this newly recovered beta client has been uploaded on the Blockland Archive here: https://bl.kenko.dev/Versions/Retail%20Beta/
we may end up writing proper documentation on as many differences as possible between this beta and v1... but no promises on how complete it will be. its an absolutely gigantic task so it feels likely we will burnout before finishing writing all the documentation for that. but it would be a fantastic way for y'all to read about the cool stuff about this beta without having to sit through a really long slow stream recording. I'll update this news post if this does end up happening. | | by Kenko | |
| Introducing: Blockland Rebuilt | Sunday, 16th of July, 2023 | hello all! we have just released Blockland Rebuilt - a fully decompiled and reverse-engineered version of Blockland where both v20 and v21 are merged into one game, with brand new features the game has never seen before. yes, we have implemented v21 shaders back into v20 maps. and we're gonna do more than that.
this has just changed B4v21 forever. we are no longer focused on "old blockland" - we are now making the best blockland we possibly can.
watch this video Right Now to see what this all means and how you can start playing Rebuilt today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py-_Ec6xot8 | | by Kenko | |
| Key recovery made easy! | Tuesday, 21st of February, 2023 | Hey, everyone -- Big news! We have made the decision to phase out e-mail based key recovery from the website. In its place, we have implemented a much easier method where the user can just find their B4v21 key in their account details on the website. Gone are the days of diving into your inbox to look for that pesky recovery email!
This new recovery system is very simple. All you need to do is go into your 'Edit Account' page (located on your B4v21 profile) and click 'Recover My Authentication Key'. After this, you follow the instructions on the page, and voila -- You've got your authentication key back!
As you may have guessed, this also means we will no longer be storing users' e-mail addresses, as we have no use for them anymore. We may decide to reinstate the e-mail system in the future, but as of right now, we're simply going to disable it and wipe all e-mails from our records.
We expect that users will have an easier time returning to B4v21 without having to ask a member of our staff to recover their key for them. Now it's all up to YOU! | | by Clay Hanson | |
| New website update! | Wednesday, 25th of January, 2023 | Hi all! We (well, pretty much just Clay Hanson) have redesigned the entire B4v21 website! For years now this website had been in a weird state where most pages had the old 2017 layout/style, but the add-on repository specifically featured an old RTB website theme. Now, we have fully transitioned to this 'new' RTB theme, giving the website a consistent look throughout.
Also, we have transitioned the site to force https. We should've probably done that years ago, really. APIs will continue on http for compatibility with Blockland.
Let us know if you encounter any issues, and thank you for your continued support! | | by Kenko | |
| New B4v21 CDN! | Wednesday, 13th of July, 2022 | Today we have launched our own CDN (content delivery network) for v20 to use to download files much faster. v20 was previously using Blockland's own CDN but that lacks a decent percentage of files (including all v20-specific files), that otherwise have to be downloaded extremely slowly through the game server. With Kenko's Freebuild with Map Rotation, joining on a new client used to take 10 minutes for me to download all of the files, but now it takes only 2 minutes!
This should make joining new servers far less annoying and slow, and I will update the CDN continuously overtime to include as many files as possible. | | by Kenko | |
| Account Recovery System Migration | Wednesday, 12th of August, 2020 | Hey everyone,
We have decided to switch from the flawed 'Key Recovery Secret' system to recover accounts, and are instead opting to use E-Mails as the main recovery method.
Effective today, everyone's key recovery secrets are invalid, as they are not used anymore. To ensure your account can be recovered in the future, visit http://b4v21.block.land/rtb/index.php?a=viewProfile&act=Edit%20Account whilst logged in to edit your account details, including account name & recovery email.
We strongly recommend that you do not use low-security email services such as mailinator, temporary e-mail providers, etc. to secure your account. This is obviously very insecure, and the chances that your account gets stolen becomes way more likely.
For privacy's sake, e-mails are not publicly displayed anywhere, nor are they used for anything other than account recovery.
Thanks for understanding. | | by Clay Hanson | |
| RTB Connect Revival! | Friday, 10th of July, 2020 | You thought we were done at reviving RTB, huh? Not yet! After restoring the add-on services and other RTB3 functionality, we have decided to finally throw out the IRC system that had been causing us issues throughout its use, and replace it with a revival of a better, custom-made service, originally known as RTB Connect.
For those not around when RTB was still alive, RTB Connect replaced the single IRC chat room with a custom-made chat service that actually authenticates with the game, allows for use of multiple chat rooms, and even has an entire friends and pm system, all on a nice overlay you can pull up mid-game.
We've now revived all of these services, and added them all in a new B4v21-RTB update for all to use! To get started, launch v20 and update your RTB. (If no prompt automatically appears, go to the RTB options, tick all the settings there and restart.) After updating, just press shift+tab to open the overlay any time. (keybind is rebindable in the RTB options!) | | by Kenko | |
| New RTB Revival and Add-on Repository! | Saturday, 4th of July, 2020 | Hello again! We've been quite hard at work recently (well, mostly clay has) to revive something major for B4v21 that had been completely broken and ignored until now - RTB.
The previous news post had announced the creation of the Files section. It was fairly basic and only allowed B4v21 admins to submit files. We then had considered making an in-game viewer and downloader for these files.. but quickly realised such functionality already existed in RTB. The project then shifted focus from being just a files section, to being an entire revival of almost all of RTB's functions.
The files system has been worked on majorly to support all the features old RTB did, such as adding screenshots, description formatting, versioning, along with users being able to rate and comment on add-ons. These add-ons are also auto-updated in-game too!
Users can also now upload add-ons to the site! Feel free to upload any add-ons you have made for v20 (specifically v20!!), and also feel free to upload older add-ons made by others! It would be super helpful if people could upload all of the add-ons they find useful, essential and/or fun to the new system. Please make sure to include screenshots and a detailed description with your upload! (you can even just copy+paste them directly from the old rtb site if you want!)
See the new add-ons website here: http://b4v21.block.land/rtb/
You can also view and download add-ons directly in-game through the MOD Manager!
We hope you enjoy the new add-on repository! We hope that providing this service gives further ease in being able to find add-ons to use in B4v21. Any help in submitting content is appreciated and, of course, feel free to report and issues and/or bugs you encounter with the service. Thanks for playing! | | by Kenko | |
| New B4v21 Files Page! | Tuesday, 16th of June, 2020 | Hey all! Thanks for your continued support with B4v21. We had noticed that a huge deterrent of new users hosting servers is the amount of add-ons that require fixing up for use in v20. To help with this, we have finally launched a new files section on our website!
This new section will be the home to all of the add-ons that our community have helped fix up for all to use, new add-ons created by the community for B4v21, and other various add-ons that are useful for use in these old versions.
Huge thanks to everyone who have created fixes for v21 add-ons over the years! I hope that with continued effort of fixing these add-ons and providing support for them, it will enable more people to host more servers for B4v21, increasing activity. Right now only admins can submit add-ons, so let us know if you have any more suggestions for add-ons to add to the site.
See the new page here: http://b4v21.block.land/?a=files&c=4 | | by Kenko | |
| B4v21's New Authentication System! | Friday, 22nd of May, 2020 | Hello again! Badspot has now pushed out steam-only authentication for v21, and as a side-effect, our steam auth for v20 no longer works. We could try to fix the steam auth dll to once again function for just v20, but we thought we'd do better then that for you all.
From now on to authenticate on retail B4v21 versions, users now must register on our website through Steam, and then receive a brand new authentication key. With our patched B4v21 clients, you can use this authentication key to continue playing online on these versions.
This isn't a way of pirating Blockland, keep in mind. We verify that you actually own the BLID you type in with Blockland's real auth servers. Right now only one BLID can be entered for each steam account, but multiple BLIDs per steam account will be implemented Soon™.
** Note also that you are given a Key Recovery Secret alongside your key. If you ever then lose your key, you can contact a B4v21 admin and give them this secret to verify your identity, to then recover your key once again. Keep this secret safe and secure, for potential use later.
Thanks for being patient with us as we take our time to implement this new authentication system and these client fixes. As of this post only v20 has been patched with this new auth system, but we will release patches for the other B4v21 clients Soon™. | | by Kenko | | | |
