Minecraft (online Lego essentially)

Hi,

I have been running a server at home (plain vanilla) for myself and my son to use and have noticed that I am getting lots of lag entering new areas after playing for a while, even if playing alone. Now I understand that people are getting lag but the machine hosting is an i5 (processor never seems to go beyond 10% or so), 8GB 7.2k disk space, 8 GB ram. Again, it happens even if I am the only one using it but it seems to be when going in to unexplored areas. It also shows the new areas as missing the surface textures (can see the underground lava, some rock and tunnels).

I suspect is the slowdown as it is working out and writing the new areas to disk and I hope moving it to a ramdisk will help resolve it.

How do people set about exploring new areas without loosing everything. We went to have a look around a bit and ended up in a mine far away from home where we encountered our first monster spawner and got stuck unable to get out. Needless to say we lost all our items which was a pretty massive blow considering how long it took to find that iron. How do others minimise the risk ?. Bring chests and leave them before going mine exploring ?. Build temp homes along the way ?. Build up infrastructure and only explore as your empire grows ?.

I am loving the game, much to my surprise, and so are the kids (12 & 3.5). I may make the server available on-line middle after my FTTD install next month if I can get the basics ironed out.

RB
 
When I used to do single player I'd leave chests as I go yeah. and a line of torches to find my way. If I was doing a new cave in a mine I was building I'd leave a minecart track and periodically send full carts back up the line. As for mp, theres numerous features you can use but mainly on bukkit servers.
As for your loading area problem, its also an issue online. On the server I use theres a plugin which you can use. It sets a border at a distance you say, like 2k out, then theres an option for it to render all the terrain within that area. You can set it to do this at any speed, slow so people can still play, or fast for an overnight when its empty. But once its done it cuts down on loading lag a whole lot :p
 
oxygene said:
When I used to do single player I'd leave chests as I go yeah. and a line of torches to find my way. If I was doing a new cave in a mine I was building I'd leave a minecart track and periodically send full carts back up the line. As for mp, theres numerous features you can use but mainly on bukkit servers.
As for your loading area problem, its also an issue online. On the server I use theres a plugin which you can use. It sets a border at a distance you say, like 2k out, then theres an option for it to render all the terrain within that area. You can set it to do this at any speed, slow so people can still play, or fast for an overnight when its empty. But once its done it cuts down on loading lag a whole lot :p
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Thanks for that. I may do towers (stone column, spiral staircase, platform at the top with a bed and a door to stop the zombies). Sleep there at night and then put torches at the top as I move on. Maybe buried chests are a good way to go with marker stones to make sure death does not loose everything :D.

I got the server running on a 256MB ramdisk with 2.5GB allocated to it (CentOS VM). I also upped the mem for my running client from 2GB to 5GB and received no lag at all. I may put a small SSD in the server to save the hassle of the ramdisk and making regular backups. A 60GB Vertex 3 is fairly cheap now.

I did find a cherry mine the other day with a few monsters but lots of minerals out in the open including diamonds. I flagged it out with torches, and moved on only to get blown up from behind by a creeper. Calling it a night, I rsynced the ramdisk to the backup directory only to discover I had been playing on the backup copy and so had just deleted all the new areas including the cherry mine :(. I have now written and tested the sync more robustly for keeping the ramdisk and backup area in line so it shouldn't happen again.

RB
 
minecraft uses very little cpu at all according to my graphs

I run a quad core xeon , 8gb ram on an umlimited 100mbit line.

even with 50-60 users it rarely goes over 20% cpu, its the ram that limits it

work on 125mb ram and 25kbps upload per user
 
RimBlock said:
Thanks for that. I may do towers (stone column, spiral staircase, platform at the top with a bed and a door to stop the zombies). Sleep there at night and then put torches at the top as I move on. Maybe buried chests are a good way to go with marker stones to make sure death does not loose everything :D.

I got the server running on a 256MB ramdisk with 2.5GB allocated to it (CentOS VM). I also upped the mem for my running client from 2GB to 5GB and received no lag at all. I may put a small SSD in the server to save the hassle of the ramdisk and making regular backups. A 60GB Vertex 3 is fairly cheap now.

I did find a cherry mine the other day with a few monsters but lots of minerals out in the open including diamonds. I flagged it out with torches, and moved on only to get blown up from behind by a creeper. Calling it a night, I rsynced the ramdisk to the backup directory only to discover I had been playing on the backup copy and so had just deleted all the new areas including the cherry mine :(. I have now written and tested the sync more robustly for keeping the ramdisk and backup area in line so it shouldn't happen again.

RB
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I like to waste my pebbles on building stone stairs and place them within the dungeon on my main routes. That way, I know that i made the route and allows quicker travel up/down the route. Also, build small rooms and place chests, workbench and furnace. It saves running back to your home to smelt/build tools. Finally, just carry the bare essentials incase you get killed, especially near lava (you will lose your gear in the lava).
 
shaggyd said:
I like to waste my pebbles on building stone stairs and place them within the dungeon on my main routes. That way, I know that i made the route and allows quicker travel up/down the route. Also, build small rooms and place chests, workbench and furnace. It saves running back to your home to smelt/build tools. Finally, just carry the bare essentials incase you get killed, especially near lava (you will lose your gear in the lava).
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Thanks, good tips.

I think I will have to build the telegraph road (for the older folks around here).

I guess there is no way to put your own music in the game ?. Some travelling music would be good for exploring :D.

Still getting the hang of vanilla before I take a look at Bukkit. Not too keen on plugin devs being able to access my server and run code if I put the server on the net either....

RB
 
You're welcome to drop into my server and see what bukkit has to offer if you like. We have more plugins then most cause I'm a kid in a sweet shop with those plugin releases lol.
 
oxygene said:
You're welcome to drop into my server and see what bukkit has to offer if you like. We have more plugins then most cause I'm a kid in a sweet shop with those plugin releases lol.
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Very kind. I fear it may be a bit quiet on your server when I can get to login though what with the + 7 hours time difference (or populated by students :D).

Not sure what the lag would be like either but would be interested to have a look around. Emailing me the details easiest for you ?.

Cheers
RB
 
RimBlock said:
Thanks, good tips.

I think I will have to build the telegraph road (for the older folks around here).

I guess there is no way to put your own music in the game ?. Some travelling music would be good for exploring :D.

Still getting the hang of vanilla before I take a look at Bukkit. Not too keen on plugin devs being able to access my server and run code if I put the server on the net either....

RB
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It has generally been safe (with one plugin exception iirc). As you're running in a VM you could lock it down pretty tight, even within your own network.

As you're using it as a private server you also have way more options in regards to client-side mods. Industrial Craft and Mo's Creatures are two that I've heard are really good. There are also music mods, though I don't know the names of any off the top of my head.
 
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RimBlock said:
Very kind. I fear it may be a bit quiet on your server when I can get to login though what with the + 7 hours time difference (or populated by students :D).

Not sure what the lag would be like either but would be interested to have a look around. Emailing me the details easiest for you ?.

Cheers
RB
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Not to worry, we have some americans on it atm. They tend to be around when we're not and havent complained about lag lol.
 
That weekend 'buy one get one free' offer was great, worked out cheaper than buying Minecraft when it was in an Alpha. :)

I recently calculated that Minecraft's revenue went past 40 million euros already. And most of it was probably swallowed by horrendous Swedish taxes.
 
FrenchTart said:
It has generally been safe (with one plugin exception iirc). As you're running in a VM you could lock it down pretty tight, even within your own network.
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Yeah, although having the possibility there is not too comforting. Yep locking down is pretty much a given, luckily CentOS 6 minimal is pretty...err.... minimal to the point I had to install Perl in order to install the ESXi tools.

FrenchTart said:
As you're using it as a private server you also have way more options in regards to client-side mods. Industrial Craft and Mo's Creatures are two that I've heard are really good. There are also music mods, though I don't know the names of any off the top of my head.
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Yeah, I am looking at having 4 or so VPSs running with different environments for a bit of variety. Will probably beef up the storage to SSDs in raid 1 as each VPS is only 8GB and Vertex 2s are only around 110USD a piece now. That will free up the ram rather than using some of it for a ramdisk and having to constantly backup.

It is a bit difficult to get time to play as my 3yo is quite hooked on it and gets very upset when told to stop so we tend not to play when he is still up. New baby too so pretty busy when I get home.....which reminds me.... home time :D.

Thanks
RB
 
RimBlock said:
Yeah, although having the possibility there is not too comforting. Yep locking down is pretty much a given, luckily CentOS 6 minimal is pretty...err.... minimal to the point I had to install Perl in order to install the ESXi tools.
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I believe there's a vm image (probably ubuntu based) that is supposedly already set up for MC server hosting, along with bukkit. It could be worth looking into. I believe it may also have several of the admin tools pre-configured, too.

I'm running the OcUK server just straight on the host OS of a dedi I rent from kimsufi. I probably should stick it in a vm but I'm too lazy to set it up and until recently ram was a concern (the MC server uses about 4-6GB and I'm just about to start running it in a 2GB ram disk too). The physical machine runs several other games servers and websites so it tends to get a little crowded on there :p

RimBlock said:
Yeah, I am looking at having 4 or so VPSs running with different environments for a bit of variety. Will probably beef up the storage to SSDs in raid 1 as each VPS is only 8GB and Vertex 2s are only around 110USD a piece now. That will free up the ram rather than using some of it for a ramdisk and having to constantly backup.
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Nice...damn american prices :p I've found the ramdisk issue to be fairly fire-and-forget. I've just got a simple bash script cron'd that rsync's it to a permanent store every 20-30 minutes. I've got another script that runs once per night to make an archive of the map files and a final script (currently disabled) that ftp'd the archives to another of the MC server admins to prepare cartographs and upload these to zoom.it. I really need to automate the cartograph creation some time, actually.

RimBlock said:
It is a bit difficult to get time to play as my 3yo is quite hooked on it and gets very upset when told to stop so we tend not to play when he is still up. New baby too so pretty busy when I get home.....which reminds me.... home time :D.

Thanks
RB
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Children are somewhat time-consuming, yeah. I imagine it's worth it though :)
 
FrenchTart said:
I believe there's a vm image (probably ubuntu based) that is supposedly already set up for MC server hosting, along with bukkit. It could be worth looking into. I believe it may also have several of the admin tools pre-configured, too.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I will take a look. I much prefer the REHL derivatives but I have been known to 'dabble' in Ubuntu waters ;).

FrenchTart said:
I'm running the OcUK server just straight on the host OS of a dedi I rent from kimsufi. I probably should stick it in a vm but I'm too lazy to set it up and until recently ram was a concern (the MC server uses about 4-6GB and I'm just about to start running it in a 2GB ram disk too). The physical machine runs several other games servers and websites so it tends to get a little crowded on there :p
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I was running MC on WHS 2011 but wanted to move it to Linux to make it much easier for scripting (I work on Solaris day in and out). Linux wouldn't run on my hardware so went ESXi in the end on recommendations from people here. As long as the hardware you are running on is supported then it seems pretty good. I have also played with OpenVM, Xen and Proxmox in the past. I was looking at an OVH server, probably the EG-SSD but that would depend on if the community could support it if I choose to that route. Out of interest, what is the uptime like in your experience ?. Luckily I held on to my UK credit card when I moved out here which is registered to my folks address back in London ;). I originally was looking at just renting out VPS's but didn't get a chance to progress it.

FrenchTart said:
Nice...damn american prices :p I've found the ramdisk issue to be fairly fire-and-forget. I've just got a simple bash script cron'd that rsync's it to a permanent store every 20-30 minutes. I've got another script that runs once per night to make an archive of the map files and a final script (currently disabled) that ftp'd the archives to another of the MC server admins to prepare cartographs and upload these to zoom.it. I really need to automate the cartograph creation some time, actually.
Click to expand...

Prices over here are also very expensive but Citibank have a local mailbox system which gets preferred DHL shipping so it works out fairly good sometimes to chip from one of the big US on-line retailers. I am currently having a look at SAS raid controllers in the Servers and Enterprise forum (Virtulization thread).

FrenchTart said:
Children are somewhat time-consuming, yeah. I imagine it's worth it though :)
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So they keep telling me, usually just before asking for a new toy ;) :D.

RB
 
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