Minetest 0.4.15

[Wuzzy]

Yes, I'm pretty these blocks are only for decorative purposes, to make nice floor tilings and whatnot.
No, they can NOT be crafted or cooked back to their original form. Because the developers said so. xD

Maybe an interesting (and unintentional) side effect is that mobs added by mob mods won't spawn on these, compared to their original form (e.g. stone monsters spawn on stone, but not stone blocks).

[Sergey]

I just intalled v0.4.15.

First question. Why don't I see till the horizon? In 0.4.14 I could. Button "R" -- enable full vew range -- is pressed.

[Sergey]

Second question. Where are privileges I had in singleplayer? In particular, teleport and home. Now I have only basic: interact and shout (very useful in singleplayer, yeah).

[cHyper]

Second question. Where are privileges I had in singleplayer? In particular, teleport and home. Now I have only basic: interact and shout (very useful in singleplayer, yeah).

chat-command for singleplayer:

/grantme all

[Sergey]

Second question. Where are privileges I had in singleplayer? In particular, teleport and home. Now I have only basic: interact and shout (very useful in singleplayer, yeah).

chat-command for singleplayer:

/grantme all

Okay, what about viewing range?

[Wuzzy]

I was responsible for the privilege changes. Here's the rationale: Teleport and home (and some other) privileges were disabled by default for singleplayer because they are considered to be “cheaty” and also caused troubles with mods which heavily depend on privileges, like Unified Inventory. Unified Inventory, for instance, made it WAY too easy to teleport, set the time and even give yourself free stuff in singleplayer (even outside of Creative Mode), basically cheating enabled by default. Now there are way less default privileges, and the Unified Inventory now finally a sane default behaviour. “Cheating” is still possible by using the aforementioned command.

You can change the minimum viewing range with the plus and minus keys. Far view “only” shows everything which has been loaded so far. To my knowledge, it does not affect how new areas are loaded. But changing the viewing range does. Hopefully. Don't take my word for it.

[rubenwardy]

I just intalled v0.4.15.

First question. Why don't I see till the horizon? In 0.4.14 I could. Button "R" -- enable full vew range -- is pressed.

That area hasn't yet loaded. You need to go there to make it load, and then it will be visible.
Alternatively, there's a setting that makes the range of things to load longer, I forget its name though

[Sergey]

I just intalled v0.4.15.

First question. Why don't I see till the horizon? In 0.4.14 I could. Button "R" -- enable full vew range -- is pressed.

That area hasn't yet loaded. You need to go there to make it load, and then it will be visible.
Alternatively, there's a setting that makes the range of things to load longer, I forget its name though

Man, I explored that area completely! Only something 1km away could not be explored! As I said, in 0.4.14 I saw everything till horizon (every tree on far shore!). As you can see, now minimap (in top right corner) shows black area around home! Around damn home, Carl! As if player became very nearsighted!

[ExeterDad]

It you see black on your minimap it is not loaded. Doesn't matter if it's been explored in the past or not. You need to visit that area during the current session for the map info to be loaded into your ram.

[Sergey]

I was responsible for the privilege changes. Here's the rationale: Teleport and home (and some other) privileges were disabled by default for singleplayer because they are considered to be “cheaty” and also caused troubles with mods which heavily depend on privileges, like Unified Inventory. Unified Inventory, for instance, made it WAY too easy to teleport, set the time and even give yourself free stuff in singleplayer (even outside of Creative Mode), basically cheating enabled by default. Now there are way less default privileges, and the Unified Inventory now finally a sane default behaviour. “Cheating” is still possible by using the aforementioned command.

You can change the minimum viewing range with the plus and minus keys. Far view “only” shows everything which has been loaded so far. To my knowledge, it does not affect how new areas are loaded. But changing the viewing range does. Hopefully. Don't take my word for it.

On servers with many players it could be "cheating". But not in singleplayer mode, I think.

I hope you will keep that aforementioned command and will not remove it in future.

[Sergey]

It you see black on your minimap it is not loaded. Doesn't matter if it's been explored in the past or not. You need to visit that area during the current session for the map info to be loaded into your ram.

Before and after MT update, the world is the same and was explored thoroughly. In both cases, full viewing range is enabled ("R" button). In v0.4.14 I saw far objects, in v0.4.15 I don't. Why? Why "full viewing range" became not so full if it is less than was before?

So, despite I explore the length and breadth of the world (which is reflected in big size of database file in world's folder), I will not see far objects just because the data is not loaded into RAM but not because there is already information about them in database on harddisk. Am I right?

If so, why such changes were made in MT? MT is now memory saving? Well, memory saving is a good idea, but everything should be reasonable. If I already know that there IS mountain in front of me, but I DON'T SEE IT, because I don't walk too close to it to render, then... I have no words. Memory saving is suitable when I am physically UNABLE to see something, for example, lake behind that mountain. That's the case!

For me it is bad direction of MT development.

[Wuzzy]

On servers with many players it could be "cheating". But not in singleplayer mode, I think.

Well, the idea is, cheating should not be the default. I hate it when games give Godly Cheating Powers to players by default, or, what's even worse, it makes it easy for players to accidentally cheat. For instance, it seems a bit odd you have the ability to teleport in a, let's say, horror survival subgame such as Aftermath. Cheating is of course not a big deal in singleplayer, so it's still “allowed”, but it requires a tiny little extra effort from the player.

I hope you will keep that aforementioned command and will not remove it in future.

grantme or grant? Yes, of course! It is out of question those commands will stay.

[Sergey]

grantme or grant?

I am not savvy in privileges.

[Wuzzy]

grantme and grant are commands, not privileges.
With these you can grant yourself or another player a privilege.

E.g. “/grantme fly” grants yourself the fly privilege, which allows you to fly with the fly key.
“/grant Peter fast” grants Peter the fast privilege, which allows Peter to move fast with the “Use” key [E].
And so on.

To learn more, read the wiki:
http://wiki.minetest.net/Privileges
http://wiki.minetest.net/Server commands

If you still don't understand how this works, post a new thread in General Discussion because we get too off-topic in this thread.

[Sergey]

I made a little investigation.

I understood that viewing range by default is low and equal to 100. Pressing [R] button (enabling full viewing range) shows far objects only when they are loaded into RAM. Until something is loaded into RAM, pressing [R] button does not help.

You can increase viewing range by pressing [+] button. And indeed more objects will appear. But only until viewing range reaches 150. Increasing more than 150 will not add more objects.

It seems that not so much data loaded to RAM initially (about range 150) but rendered — even less (range is 100 by default).

Since that moment you have to move towards objects in order to render and load them into RAM.

Now I show you some screenshots to make things clear.
All screenshots can be opened in full size.

1) I start the game, load the world, approach the water and look into the distance.


Full viewing range is enabled as you can see

In this screenshot I see ocean ahead, and my crosshair points to one of islands. Viewing range is 150 and nothing will appear if I keep pressing [+] button.

2) Now I teleport myself from the place I stand to that island. What will I see?



I see steep mountain in front of me. No ocean at all.

3) Now I teleport myself back to the place I started "admiring the scenery". What will I see?



TADA! I see that island is not an island at all but the shore of steep mountain. And there is no ocean. And everything is located in a lake.

Now I see all this because not only starting place is loaded into RAM but some distant place as well.

4) Now I exit this world…



… and start it again



5) What now?



The same view like in point 1. Everything is unloaded from RAM.

And it does not matter whether you explored the world or not, whether you were in the area of your home or not, whether database size of your world is about 500MB or you just started newly generated world. All this does not matter. I will always see this damn ocean around while there is no ocean at all. And vice versa, I will not see near objects while they really exist. And I have to guess "Oh, there must be a sand pit I plan to dig... or maybe it is over there". I suppose that if I find myself in a desert I will see ocean around as a mirage because when something is not loaded it looks blue as sky or water.

I want to conclude that there were no such things in previous v0.4.14. If I explored some place IT WILL BE RENDERED if I am in the area of it. From the start of the game, I will immediately see the picture like in point 3. And I will not have to go/swim/teleport to that mountain in order to see it in the further.

It's a pity MT was made like this.

[taikedz]

This is behaving exactly as it always has Sergey.

Imagine if you explored vast areas of the world. Would it really make sense to load ALL of that into ram when you start a new play session? No it wouldnt.

It is actually a known thing to stop and start a game, or disconnect and reconnect to a server, when you have been playing a long time and need to free some ram. This has been the case ever since i started, which is admittedly only sine 0.4.12 but certainly was already there in 0.4.14

[Wuzzy]

It is actually a known thing to stop and start a game, or disconnect and reconnect to a server, when you have been playing a long time and need to free some ram.

This is news to me. @Core developers: Is this known to you? Is this a memory leak?

[taikedz]

It is actually a known thing to stop and start a game, or disconnect and reconnect to a server, when you have been playing a long time and need to free some ram.

This is news to me. @Core developers: Is this known to you? Is this a memory leak?

I would have thought it was generally known...

Well it's known for a number of players on the Axinite; as for me, I've flown around new building areas to force load map chunks into my client to take aerial photos, and to restore a normal RAM level and stop my fans whirring, I've just disconnected/reconnected.

I wonder if players on creative servers do this more ?

(of course, I am speaking specifically of client-side RAM alleviation here...)

At any rate, it's consistent with what I'm aware of - teleporting around and then activating full range view shows me those far-away areas, they don't get unloaded from the client RAM even when far away...

[rubenwardy]

There was a fix that's in 0.4.15 that stops this memory leak. Maybe that's causing this issue

[Sergey]

There was a fix that's in 0.4.15 that stops this memory leak. Maybe that's causing this issue

Where can I learn complete changelog from 0.4.14 to 0.4.15?

[ShadMOrdre]

Wuzzy and rubenwardy,

To those with high powered computers with lots of RAM and dedicated high performance GPUs, this probably isn't an issue. On my low powered machines, if I have explored vase areas of the map, then yes, I will restart Minetest, since it naturally begins to slow. I would NOT identify this as a bug, but simply as a result of my using 10 year old computers, that were already lowend then.

I have noticed a SIGNIFICANT improvement in performance from v0414 to v0415.

I do have a seperate XEON based server, that hosts the MT world, while my lower end PC provides the client. BUT, even if I play locally, there is a big improvement from v0414 to v0415.

I would recommend one thing. For all others using low end PCs, such as myself, here is a simple trick to help you get marginally better performance.

Most of us just start Minetest, and start a game right there. A better solution, is to run a local server instance separately from the client. Then use the client to connect to said server. By moving the server side processing
into a separately running instance of Minetest, you will increase the performance of both the server and the client. Why, because they no longer share memory in the same process. This gives the server a separate set of threads on which to run mapgen and lua mods. Because you then only use the "client" for connecting to the server, you should also see improved performance in the "client" thread, because it is not consumed by server processes, and allows more of this process thread to be devoted to rendering.

Sergey,

I've been using Minetest since version 0.4.10, and this is the way it is. It is neither desirable or feasible to load an entire database into RAM at runtime. If your database exceeds so many 100s of megabytes, you'll essentially lock your PC up, waiting on something to load, and because there aren't enough resources available to load it all, your PC will devolve into swapping space to load everything. This is, and has always been, a very common thing in PCs. Even on the highest end PC with the highest specs not yet available, when you enter into a virtual world space, the computer has to calculate and then render an ENORMOUS amount of data, and that all that data may not be readily available.

Shad MOrdre

[Robsoie]

On my system that does not have enormous amount of ram, "only" 3gb i have always observed that if i explore a -very- lot of my generated worlds (taking a very long time), the game will -always- crash after some point, i assume that's at the point there are so much chunks loaded in memory that it simply go overboard (as if i press R i can see everything i have already explored) and the code drop dead.

Is there then a way to have Minetest limit the max amount of chunks allowed to be loaded in memory at any point of time ? so if it has to load a new one above the set limit, the game will delete from memory the oldest (or longer distant) one ?
Could be an alternative to having to quit and relaunch to free the memory.

I guess having a rather low
map_generation_limit =
in the minetest.conf may help, as it means your cube world will be limited in size , meaning less chunks will compose it and so will have to be loaded if you want to explore your world.
(by default map_generation_limit = 31000)

But is there a specific max chunk setting so you could play with those absurdly gigantic default map limit instead of having to shorten them a lot ?

edit : typical, after posting that question i found the answer, client_mapblock_limit , given already to one of my past questions by paramat in another thread, getting old does not help my memory :D :

RAM use is mostly due to the client storing the visual meshes for the mapblocks (16^3 nodes), the max memory use is controlled by this setting:

# Maximum number of mapblocks for client to be kept in memory.
# Set to -1 for unlimited amount.
# type: int
# client_mapblock_limit = 5000

5000 mapblocks tends to use around 1-2GB so you can reduce this number to limit RAM use.
World size has no effect on RAM use, only on total world database size on your harddisc.

[paramat]

> It is actually a known thing to stop and start a game, or disconnect and reconnect to a server, when you have been playing a long time and need to free some ram.

This is not a memory leak, it's mapblock mesh data building up in the client, it's limited to 5000 mapblocks by default which is 1-2 GB, then after that limit RAM use will level off.

> First question. Why don't I see till the horizon? In 0.4.14 I could. Button "R" -- enable full vew range -- is pressed.

There have been changes to how mapblocks are sent to the client, they used to be sent for a square area around the player of radius 'view range', now they are sent for a circle around the player of radius 'view range'. So for the maximum view range of 160 the corners of the square are no longer seen and you get a circular shape on the minimap.

This is why you are seeing less, however you are still seeing everyhting within 160 nodes, it's just that the corners further than 160 nodes away are no longer seen. This actually improves server performance. If you want to see everything you saw before you need to increase the setting 'max block send distance' from 10 to 14.

The PR that did this is https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/4724

[Sergey]

> First question. Why don't I see till the horizon? In 0.4.14 I could. Button "R" -- enable full vew range -- is pressed.

There have been changes to how mapblocks are sent to the client, they used to be sent for a square area around the player of radius 'view range', now they are sent for a circle around the player of radius 'view range'. So for the maximum view range of 160 the corners of the square are no longer seen and you get a circular shape on the minimap.

This is why you are seeing less, however you are still seeing everyhting within 160 nodes, it's just that the corners further than 160 nodes away are no longer seen. This actually improves server performance. If you want to see everything you saw before you need to increase the setting 'max block send distance' from 10 to 14.

The PR that did this is https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/4724

Thank you very much, paramat.
At last, the competent sentence from developer!
Meanwhile they say "it always been like that", "you must be confused"! I know in v0.4.14 things were different and I saw more. My own eyes and memory can not lie.

I opened my settings. Now "Max block send distance" is 9 (not 10). If I increase that value, I will just increase radius of sphere around me, whose block will be send to me and rendered?

[BBmine]

Here is my Minetest 0.4.15 changelog featuring interesting parts (from older to newer)

[snip]

You..... used a picture from my favorite server, just test. *Nostagia*

[GreenDimond]

By the time they finish the 0.4.15 changelog, 0.4.16 will be out.

[Sergey]

Here is my Minetest 0.4.15 changelog featuring interesting parts (from older to newer)

[snip]

You..... used a picture from my favorite server, just test. *Nostagia*

I saw changelog here. Why was it deleted?

[sfan5]

Here is my Minetest 0.4.15 changelog featuring interesting parts (from older to newer)

[snip]

You..... used a picture from my favorite server, just test. *Nostagia*

I saw changelog here. Why was it deleted?

It's an useless waste of space to quote it in full.

[Sergey]

It's an useless waste of space to quote it in full.

Where can I read it then?

[sfan5]

It's an useless waste of space to quote it in full.

Where can I read it then?

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