Information and Suggestions from a technical player

Server Discussions / Feedback Survival
1

Background

Hello everyone, my name is Ares_theFox, and I’ve been playing on munchy survival for a few months now after migrating from a different SMP. I really enjoy Munchy Survival and wanted to contribute some of my knowledge to the community and offer some feedback about possible improvements to the game. As a more technical player I use a lot of redstone and game mechanic knowledge in my builds and have tested how different things work on the server compared to vanilla survival. As a result I have a few suggestions that could help optimize the server or make it more fun. But I’ll begin with information that I’ve gathered which people might find helpful.

I. Information

  • A. Hostile Mob Spawning

    • 1. Despawn Zone

The normal radius for hostile mob spawning/despawning is 128 blocks. On the server that range appears to have been reduced to 96. For despawns this appears to apply regardless of whether the chunk is within render distance or processing block updates. Mobs do not despawn if (1) they are in boats or minecarts, (2) they are nametagged, or (3) they are holding a dropped item (such as a zombie that picks up something). I do not know if this applies to naturally-spawned trident-holding Drowned but I expect it does not. Nametagged mobs do not apply to the local per-player limit.

    • 2. Mob Cap

As I gathered from this forum post, hostile mob spawning is per-player and limited to 3 (which also limits pack spawns). If this is implemented the way I think, it means at maximum only 3 hostile mobs can spawn within 96 blocks of a single player. This is different from a global mob cap where hostile mobs can spawn around the player until the cap is filled–for example, 5 mobs could spawn near Player 1 and 1 could spawn near Player 2. This means that natural-mob farms are much more difficult. Spawn-proofing all blocks outside the farm, and providing as many valid spawn areas within that range, and killing the mobs as soon as possible, are all critical. Item clear is somewhat of an issue since central collection will cause the loss of some drops but individualized collection is overall less efficient.

However, with a lot of effort a hostile mob farm is still possible. Personally I have a large creeper farm spanning 128 x 128 blocks that attempts to balance dig effort, maximize spawn area, minimize non-mob entities, collection time and mob-life.

    • 3. Lazy Chunks

I put this under Hostile Mob Spawning because it’s relevant to a mob farm: I’ve been unable to determine whether chunks are actually lazy-loaded or not. Blocks outside of render distance appear to immediately stop block entity processing as well as block updates, yet hostile mobs can still despawn. (I’ve encountered some quirks testing this so take it with a grain of salt.) It’s possible that mobs outside of render distance are “lazy” in that they’ll spawn but won’t despawn (despite being >32 blocks away), thus filling the local per-player mob cap. Again, I’m not sure this is the case, but if you want to build a mob farm be sure to spawn-proof everything outside the farm.

    • 4. Spawn Cycle

I’ve had difficulty pinning this one down. I’ve killed 3 mobs and had 3 more almost immediately spawn, suggesting the spawn cycle is unchanged (every tick). However, I’ve also gone 5-10 minutes without having any mob spawns. This suggests either the cycle is changed, or mob spawning is not entirely player-based. I tested this in the End to avoid neglecting valid spawn area, but I have a few more things to try to shed light on the changes.

  • B. Hostile Mob Spawners

    • 1. Quirks

There are a lot of quirks to hostile mob spawners that I won’t go into here–I hardly use them and can’t say definitively how the quirks work or precisely what they are. Examples include mob clear, local spawner-mob limit, and hostile-mob AI changes.

    • 2. Bypassed Vanilla Delimiters

Spawner-mobs bypass vanilla delimiting mechanisms such as using nametags on hostile mobs. For example, mobs will not spawn from a spawner when near too many other hostile mobs of a singular type regardless of whether they’re nametagged or not. Most people don’t have to worry about delimiters but if you do, you need to test all of them.

    • 3. Local non-spawner mobs limiting spawner mobs

Having too many mobs near a spawner will prevent it from spawning. The way this applies is a little unclear, but it’s important enough in some circumstances that it deserves its own section. For example, having 21 wither skeletons within 32 blocks of a skeleton spawner will prevent skeletons from spawning. However, 10 wither skeletons + many other hostile mobs (e.g. zombies) within 32 blocks of a skeleton spawner will not stop it from spawning. I expect this is because wither skeletons are a skeleton variant (side note, “Strays” are not skeleton-variants) and the local check that spawners do on this server sees them as a limiting factor. Alternatively (and less likely), there could be a quirk where too many mobs of a single type within the vicinity of a spawner cause it to not spawn.

  • C. Passive Mob Breeding

I haven’t done much testing on passive mobs except for breeding. There’s clearly a local limit (~15 or so) that prevents baby-passive mobs from spawning. You’ll still get everything else (e.g. xp orb; chicken egg-laying sound) but the baby just won’t spawn. There’s a margin for error for this but it appears that mobs need to be about 32 blocks away from 15+ mobs in order to spawn more babies. The practical effect is, for example, an automatic chicken farm could be stacked vertically with different egg-laying-chicken stations 32 blocks apart, and multiple egg-dispensing stations to allow chicks to grow up (also 32 blocks apart).

  • D. Redstone

Thankfully, redstone is generally reliable and is not limited by annoying plugins (this is one of the reasons I moved to this server). The only quirk is that droppers and dispensers are unable to drop/dispense arrows, water, or lava. Water dispensers can be substituted with waterlogged trapdoors, but these limits do make drop-collection of arrows difficult in some setups as you can’t drop them into water streams.

  • E. Gadgets

Gadgets seem to have a higher chance of breaking when they (1) change player inventory (e.g. dropping it from 1 player to another), and (2) interact with tile entities (such as chests or /ec or /backpack). This is not a guarantee (e.g. I’ve had blegs break while I was wearing them).

II. Suggestions/Bugs

  • A. Achievements

    • 1. Phantoms

At present it is impossible to complete the Adventure achievement page because two of the achievements (Monsters Hunted, and Two Birds, One Arrow) require phantoms. Overall I think disabling phantoms on an SMP is a good idea. However, I would like to be able to complete all the achievements. To solve this, phantom spawning could be changed to only be (1) during thunderstorms, (2) in the mining world, and/or (3) by spawn egg. In order to complete the latter achievement two phantoms are necessary.

    • 2. Bullseye

I’ve been unable to get this achievement, but I’m not sure why. Sniper Duel works if you kill a skeleton in the mining world, but I’ve gotten bullseyes in several worlds but haven’t gotten the achievement. I had someone stand up close to the target block to check for proper arrow placement to verify my shooting, but it’s still possible I’m messing this one up.

  • B. Nether Portals

    • 1. World-caching

All nether portals (outside of the mining nether) cache to the mining nether. This is intuitively a little strange since you’d expect a nether portal in the underworld (which is a “nether”) to cache to the overworld (or mining world).

    • 2. Mobs unable to enter overworld portals

Mobs in the mining world and the underworld are able to enter nether portals and go to the mining nether. However, I’ve been unable to transport mobs to the mining nether from the overworld. They just sit inside the portal (even on minecarts). It’s possible to transport mobs/villagers via boat + fishing rod + fly (actually it can be very fast), but it requires precise timing (and ++ rank), whereas in vanilla minecraft you could use the nether.

  • C. Claim Blocks

I have >140k claim blocks but not enough Claims to use them (or even an area I want to claim). Being able to sell/transfer them to other players–or even convent them into something else–would be welcome.

  • D. Droppers/Dispensers

These devices are unable to drop/dispense arrows and water. This makes certain item collection/distribution systems difficult, and certain farm setups much less efficient since trapdoors take up an additional block.

  • E. TNT in Overworld Claims

This would make clearing out areas for farms and storage so so so much easier. On another SMP I played on, TNT was allowed within someone’s claim. Explosions on the border of that claim would only break blocks within the actual claim.

  • F. Warp Shops within Mall Shops

This might not be a popular one, but I’d like to have the ability to put a beacon inside a mall shop that warps people to a non-mall shop (not a list of non-mall shops, but specifically my own shop). Essentially, a mall shop could have a link to one other specific place somewhere else in the overworld. In practice, this would look like a beacon (on obby or something) in a mall shop (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter), and if you right click it it instantly teleports you to that player’s non-mall shop.

  • G. Carpet Mod / Scarpet Apps

Gnembon has an amazing mod called Carpet which allows for custom applications that can serve the same function as Gadgets. I won’t go into a lot of detail here, but non-vanilla mechanics could be easily made (and made more reliable) through scarpet. Here’s an example.

Conclusion

Let me know what y’all think. I really enjoy this server and only hope to make it better.

6 Likes
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Hey! This is a really great post - you clearly put a lot of thought and effort into it.

I have >140k claim blocks but not enough Claims to use them (or even an area I want to claim). Being able to sell/transfer them to other players–or even convent them into something else–would be welcome.

I definitely like the idea of being able to transfer claim blocks; it would be useful for when players want to have joint claims, or so that players can quickly buy a claim blocks in bulk from other players. I think it would add a new and interesting dynamic to the economy. On the other hand, there would be even less of a motivation for players to purchase claim blocks via the store, or do irl deals for them. I don’t particularly think that this would be an issue or take money from Munchy, however - if anything, players might be more inclined to buy claim blocks with the intention of selling them off, like some people have done with crate keys in the past.

These devices are unable to drop/dispense arrows and water. This makes certain item collection/distribution systems difficult, and certain farm setups much less efficient since trapdoors take up an additional block.

I agree with this sentiment completely, especially with the idea of dispensing water. I think that players should be able to at least dispense water on their claims. Tankuu made a post about this topic quite recently - Dispensing Water - and quite a few people expressed similar views.

This would make clearing out areas for farms and storage so so so much easier. On another SMP I played on, TNT was allowed within someone’s claim. Explosions on the border of that claim would only break blocks within the actual claim.

There is an obvious risk that a change like this could be abused to grief another player’s claim. However, only a player who was added to a claim would have the permissions to do so - in which case they could grief the claim with or without TNT. I think that, on balance, this would make clearing land easier, could potentially facilitate some new types of events, and would overall be a good feature.

This might not be a popular one, but I’d like to have the ability to put a beacon inside a mall shop that warps people to a non-mall shop (not a list of non-mall shops, but specifically my own shop). Essentially, a mall shop could have a link to one other specific place somewhere else in the overworld. In practice, this would look like a beacon (on obby or something) in a mall shop (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter), and if you right click it it instantly teleports you to that player’s non-mall shop.

This is really interesting! It would be a sort of auto-teleporter to link between the two locations. Although, there would be nothing to stop someone from linking it to a non-shop location, and I’m not sure exactly how the whole thing would be implemented, I do really like the concept.

Thanks for taking the time to write this! :D

2 Likes
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Ares, I agree with most of these conclusions! I think the work is great and you’ve put a ton of effort, but there are some I dot agree with, mainly being phantoms and Warp Shops from Mall.
Warp Shop from Mall
Making a warp shop teleport from inside the mall is plain useless, there is already a warp totem right next to spawn which can be accessed by anyone with /spawn. This is just taking away from the already small number of mall shops <100.
Phantoms
I like the idea of phantom eggs because I feel that it wouldn’t cause as much lag as the thunderstorm idea. With an SMP server being up almost 24/7 there must be a couple of thunderstorms that people just miss because they are busy doing something else. This is going to cause a lot of lag due to the phantoms spawn rates and the number of players on at all times 50-80. I feel they would have to lower the cap of phantoms more if they wanted to implement this idea.

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Thanks for your responses @toccataski and @anon52013798!

Toccataski, you’re right about TNT being a risk. I can think of a few ways this could be mitigated in theory but I lack the programming know-how to suggest an implementation. But I think most people on munchy are pretty cool; compared to the last SMP I was on there are hardly no toxic players, griefers or cheaters/dupers here. Maybe TNT could be allowed on a trial basis to see how it goes?

Iron, Phantoms are hostile mobs that would be included in the per-player hostile mob cap. Enabling phantoms in, say, the mining world wouldn’t increase (or decrease) lag since one hostile mob would be replaced with another.

As for shop-specific warp totems, I see where you’re coming from. This may come down to whether it’s better to promote mall shops or non-mall shops. IMO non-mall shops are preferable because of the overwhelming number of tile entities in the mall causing massive FPS drops and contributing to lag, especially with people in there all the time loading those chunks but not going to those shops. For example, item frames are update frequently regardless of whether they’re “used” or not. Almost all active mall shops have a few item frames and get loaded when someone is in the mall. In contrast, non-mall shops are loaded less often since they’re by themselves. So, theoretically while the number of item frames (and signs with text, and chests, all major sources of lag) could go up, the number and amount of time they stay in loaded chunks would go down. Additionally, players could focus more on building a big, cool shop instead of having to cram a bunch of stuff into a small mall space.

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Thank you very much for your research results.

I C
Can you spawn them outside the 32 blocks and then move them into the stack, or do they die on the border?
Is it cubic or spherical? (32x32x32 or 64x64x64 or d=32 or r=32)

II A 2
It’s possible to create a very long way for an arrow to go through to hit a fixated skeleton.
You will need a lot of water and soul sand. First, make the topwater go forward in 8 blocks descending fashion and then put bubble streams underneath.
If it still doesn’t work, then there is something broken.
Also, a target block gives a signal strength of 15 for a bullseye, hook it up to a redstone lamp and you can say bye to your friend.

II C
Sounds very P2W to me.
To be exactly like the failed platform from ~2000. It is the prime example of a failed economy studied today in economics classes.
For six or eight years, it went smoothly, but the owners weren’t able to keep it running, so they sold it to another private person.
He invented the auto-gold-generator. It was very expensive, but with enough money, at hand, it was able to buy itself.
The price to buy gold sunk rapidly, everything became very expensive in the shop, old rich users that went off for a few months became dirt poor.
After some years of this garbage, the old owners bought it back and fixed everything by introducing a new currency, which the old currency could be exchanged by the rate of 1.000.000:1.
Just like plus-plus generating 100 claim blocks an hour, did 1 gold-generator make 100 gold an hour.
It may look welcome, but it destroys more than it can help.
Sauce: A random youtube video I watched like a year ago that was recommended after I watched why Habbo is full of teenage scammers and young criminals.

II G
Gnembon says “without modding the game”, so I don’t think Scarpet is a modification as you state it, more like a Datapack.

When I make a farm, I think about how to use redstone efficiently, even when it just saves 1 redstone dust, but the reactions on using waterlogged trapdoors are absurd, it’s like “how can I get 1% more wheat profit out of my farm?” I say, just build another layer. Where is the use of complaining about ONE BLOCK?

TNT Damage: (switch|(user)|(claim-member-list)|true|false)
(switch is a useful “if”, it takes the value and compares it to each second value, one can picture it like this: (switch|value1|value2|then|value2|then|value2|then|else))

And why not use the warp totem for external shops?

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Thanks for your reply @KittenKatja!
I C
You can spawn them outside and then move them inside the 32-area; they won’t die (unless they’re in the same 1x1 area and are greater than 10 since max entity cramming is 10 here).
I don’t know if it’s a cuboid or a sphere (my money is on the latter). 32 is the radius.
Dispensing Water
There are a couple reasons to preferring dispensable water to waterlogged trap doors. (A loss in output is not one of them since you can just build a bigger farm to make up for the lost area.) Most of them are not a big deal in a server this size but if it grows it will be worth considering. For now the primary reason to prefer is lowering the build and design effort for players. For example, a crop farm with a water-harvest mechanism would have to be 12.5% bigger to incorporate waterlogged trapdoors instead of dispensers with water. Overall it’s not a big issue, it’s a quality of life change that could be easily implemented.
Warp Totem
Having a single warp totem is a viable solution to all the problems I listed above. Like I said, I don’t think my suggestion will be popular since there’s not a pressing need for it. I prefer multiple player-specific warp stations to allow users the convenience of creating and using larger and more customizable non-mall shops that don’t require multiple interactions with the server (e.g. /warp mall *click totem *scroll to find shop *click shop) as opposed to teleporting to the exact shop in 1-2 actions (including a command alternative).

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I see waterlogged trapdoors already as a quality of life change from Mojang because you no longer need to waste so many bows for crafting dispensers, instead, you have trapdoors that are even cheaper to get. Of course, it requires a lever instead of a button now.

But with a warp totem, you can create your own mall or a shop in the size of the mall with more features than a mall allows.
Your solution would make warp totems become obsolete and too expensive to place.
Would only make sense, when the mall-warps lead to another dimension where all shops are inside a cuboid of bedrock with each shop being 16 chunks away from each other.