FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Would a Raspberry Pi work since it's not actually rendering anything? I also have an old Apple iBook G4 with a more than 1GHZ CPU and 1GB of RAM which is running Debian Linux, if that would work.

Depends. I would think that unless you are running a vanilla Minetest, using a pi as the server for more than 3 connected players would be stretching it. The iBook would be ok, IMO. Just make sure you don't install mods that are heavy, such as mobf, or mesecons.

A Raspberry Pi is too slow, a Apple iBook G4 would work. You would however need to compile Minetest yourself because it uses a PowerPC processor but that's not a big deal.

I wonder how well a creative, flat world like that on ShadowNinjas server would work on a Raspberry pi. The flat world would make mapgen a lot less ressource intensive, and the creative part - as long as no WorldEdit is involved - would prevent people from digging around a lot in order to gather ressources.

grey wrote:Would a Raspberry Pi work since it's not actually rendering anything? I also have an old Apple iBook G4 with a more than 1GHZ CPU and 1GB of RAM which is running Debian Linux, if that would work.

A Raspberry Pi will do ok for up to 8 players using a well tuned game based on minetest minimal. I'm making such a game and testing it on my creative server. https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9158

The iBook will do pretty nice for up to 15 user I think, if you don't use things like mesecons, mobs or piperworks.

Sokomine wrote:I wonder how well a creative, flat world like that on ShadowNinjas server would work on a Raspberry pi. The flat world would make mapgen a lot less ressource intensive, and the creative part - as long as no WorldEdit is involved - would prevent people from digging around a lot in order to gather ressources.

Hi Sokomine, I just reopened my Raspberry Pi server, this time is a creative server.

https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9158

Feel free to ask anything you want about it.

i apologize for posting in this thread, but this question was never answered propperly. so far all i got is that vanilla works on raspberypi

i am playing "listen" server with me and one other player however it doesn't matter if i play single player i sitll get the lag on server mashcine... vanila or mods also doesn't seem to make much difference.
Client has
Celeron E3300 dual core
1,25 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 256 MB
Kubuntu 64 bit

Here the game runs fine. except that once in a while the computer has total crash/freeze. neither REISUB, nor soft reset or any of the virtual consoles can be used. only hard reboot.

The server maschine that has the extreeme lag:
Athlon 3800+ 2,4Ghz single core
4 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 3650 512 MB
Windows XP SP3 Home (32bit)

What is on in settings is:
Fancy trees
3D clouds
Preload Items visuals
Enable Particles

nothing else.

Mods used:
3D armor
animals modpack (with vombie turned off)
bedrock
carts
factions
hud
inventory_plus
jeija (mesecons)
modmenu
moreores
shields
skins
tnt
wieldview

i've read mesecons can bring in the load, but i don't think they are a problme in this case since on a similary powerful mashcine with much weaker GPU all is fluent.
i've just added these mods to make it more similar to minecraft.

but lag is so big on this server mashicne. even if i turn of all the mods the lag is still quite big. any ideas? i mean if it works on minecraft surely it would work on this a lot more powerful single core maschine.

gregor3000 wrote:Athlon 3800+ 2,4Ghz single core
4 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 3650 512 MB
Windows XP SP3 Home (32bit)

I think there could be your problem.

@gregor3000

Open minetest.conf in the minetest folder of the server. Search and replace (or add):

Should decrease the serversided lag

EDIT: Hint: Do not feed "Windows gtfo"-trolls.

hmh will try that.

i know nothing is wrong with Windows XP (aside long boot time and nonexistant MS support).

there is a bit of improvement after adding that command. though sitll a bit slow compared to the other maschine.

FPS is between 18 and 30 (single player). :-O


---

separate question: what is the limit for pure server then? would it run well on an older computer (like 1,2Ghz Athlon with 224 MB ram and 32MB GPU)?

mobf is pretty expensive as far as cpu ressources go - especially if they have to spawn in newly generated areas. Having them just running around is usually less of a problem. Also try latest git - some bugs regarding multiplayer where fixed there that are not part of the "official" 0.4.9 yet.

Try playing on an existing server on the Internet. Then your older hardware only has to render the game and not handle the game mechanics (especially mapgen) at the same time. It's also much more fun!

hmm the part that i do not understand is that a computer with weaker GPU and less ram performs better.

it seems the CPU over there is so much stronger than this single core... about 50% at least. I should have bought a better one when they were still selling them for this mobo. oh well...

We have 0.4.7 server on IBM xServer 230, 1GHz (Pentium 3), 2.5GB RAM @ 133MHz. Our game is based on older technic game, with more than 4k items in it. This machine can handle 4 players quite well.. Only things what is causing lag sometimes are mapgen and moving of huge mass of water/lava.

Edit:
Server is running debian wheezy.

what mods are loaded if any?

so i am correct that my maschine should kind of handle the game reasonably at least with various graphics stuff turned off? i mean here even in the single player the FPS drops quite frequently.

i never saw any lag in minecraft and i used to play it with much less ram. atually the only lag i had there was when i loaded a large number of TNT and triggered them. but here just standing there is a bit laggy. so something must be wrong with my game configuration if it works well on others with lower specs..

gregor3000 wrote:so i am correct that my maschine should kind of handle the game reasonably at least with various graphics stuff turned off? i mean here even in the single player the FPS drops quite frequently.

Server doesn't need any video card.. It just serve game data to the client..

Lag is different thing than low FPS/framedrops.. Lag is caused by slow server/network connection and low FPS/Framedrops by poor video card on machine running client.

gregor3000 wrote:what mods are loaded if any?

As I wrote before, modified older technic game: https://github.com/Pitriss/classic_technic_game

indeed a classic server only servers. listen server also plays.

the technica mod looks interesting.

as i wrote the GPU used in client is weaker than i use in "server" yet when i play on "server" PC (even) in single player mode everything is a lot slower than on the other PC. after a bit more testing it doesn't seem it maters if there is an additional user added on listen server or just ran as single player result is the same. i can only conldue the issue is the CPU (or game code is using CPU instead of GPU?!).

i saw this on an even older mashcine with GPU but that is another matter since for some reason the radeon driver doesn't utilise the GPU (despite it having full support).

i guess i need to take a few pics.