Xanadu Server

[Texan]

I have the most recent Minetest daily update. It seemed to fix what was wrong.

I have enabled my local map saving so that I can have hard copy of all loaded areas in Xanadu. :) I will miss current version.

I also heard of some kind of race for land on new map. What's going on there? Although, maybe I misunderstood.

[kaadmy]

It seems that the owner of the Samson's world server might be coming back with a new server soon ;)

[firefox]

I have the most recent Minetest daily update. It seemed to fix what was wrong.

I have enabled my local map saving so that I can have hard copy of all loaded areas in Xanadu. :) I will miss current version.

I also heard of some kind of race for land on new map. What's going on there? Although, maybe I misunderstood.

*updating minetest version*

i heard nothing about the new map. i don't even know what everyone voted for...
can you explain a little more?

EDIT: update complete - it works, yay! =(^.^)=

It seems that the owner of the Samson's world server might be coming back with a new server soon ;)

when we steal players from other servers, we never give them back. :P
you have no chance against Xanadu.

[Texan]

That is all I saw for a split second. Didn't understand what was going on, that is why I asked.

when we steal players from other servers, we never give them back :P

I agree. hehe

[firefox]

i guess he meant that you have to run before everyone slams their protectors on the map.
whoever finds a nice spot first can protect it.
if he really uses only a single protector at spawn, then whoever gets there first can reserve the spawn land and gain the privilege/burden to build the main roads.

[Texan]

I guess that makes better sense. haha
Thank you.

[IceAgeComing]

i guess he meant that you have to run before everyone slams their protectors on the map.
whoever finds a nice spot first can protect it.
if he really uses only a single protector at spawn, then whoever gets there first can reserve the spawn land and gain the privilege/burden to build the main roads.

I wouldn't like that area.
Person who protects the land might not be interested in making road, maybe he wants to just build dirt house, play few days and move on to new server. :P
Also there would be big chance every path would end up having ugly messy cobble roads.

Which is quite unfair, since we have so many awesome pro builders who would love to take the job of building beautiful roads for the community.

[firefox]

i heard that there will be a voting to select who will build the spawn. (i vote for iska)
and i think we should do the same for the main roads.

[IceAgeComing]

i heard that there will be a voting to select who will build the spawn. (i vote for iska)
and i think we should do the same for the main roads.

I absolutly agree.
I vote for Iska for building spawn too.

[Dragonop]

I vote for iska too (?)
Btw, what if iska doesn't wants to... it's a lot of work

[Kilarin]

I'm certain everyone will have a lot of fun on the new server, but I still find the whole thing terribly depressing. Xanadu is a community, but it is also a place with history. So many wonderful builds, so many long hours of work. I'm going to miss all of those wonderful and interesting places.
1114, 572, -442 : Sky City with Xanthin's Queen of Steam, Neon's millennium Falcon, xXRaizelXx's ice tower, and many other nice builds.
100, 0, 100 : Neon's Space Station
1952, 2, -1062 : xXRaizelXx's city
1625, 5, -486 : Xanthin's Carivansi
678, -13, -6 : firegryph_'s underwater city
460, 1, -7 : Neato's Football Stadium
-1020, 2, -447 : pixel art of Keira Knightley by Hal2
8965, 2, 19109 : neri2's dock beautiful canyon
-17422, 2,-21825 : Kelena's hockey rink
1231, 3, -158 : Big3's Megaplex
17492, 7,-20325 : neozerosv's sphinx
11028, 31, 16576 : ice castle
-811, 68, 327 : Skrote's house

just to list a few.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Klingon Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Neon's space station. I watched Mese wings glitter in the dark near the Ice Stargate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.

[Fixerol]

make archived copy, available via torrent?

[Dragonop]

Fixerol is right, I bet some people will seed.

[Zen]

Hm.

So do all the servers have to restart over to take advantage of the new features in the 4.14 release in a few days?

[firefox]

I vote for iska too (?)
Btw, what if iska doesn't wants to... it's a lot of work

then we just make him want to do it :P

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.

there are methods to save those moments. ;)
keeping everything also means keeping the griefed, abandoned areas and the map corruption.
i once lost everything because of the map corruption ...

So do all the servers have to restart over to take advantage of the new features in the 4.14 release in a few days?

no idea. but the new mapgen is completely different.
i guess the main reason here is the data corruption in the save files, so other servers who didn't have that problem could keep their maps.

[auouymous]

If player files don't get imported to new map, will passwords at least be preserved for players? Or will there also be players grabbing up other player's names?

[Neon]

Unlikely, auouymous.
With the last map wipe, no player information was kept (which means those people trying to store things up in their bags are out of luck). This also means that each person will have to log in with a fresh password to "lock in" their username for their exclusive future use.

It would be possible for someone else to get your username (if they are faster than you are in logging in the first time.) As a server admin, I would not attempt to arbitrate the situations where that happened, because it would be very difficult to establish who "owns" a given username and that the person raising the stink is really the right person. Therefore the proper fix for this situation is to:
A) Be the first person to log in with that username
B) Failing that, find a different username
C) Allow the "imposter" establish themselves as the imposter because their building style is not the same as your (presumably well known) building style and their builds are not at the same quality as yours. The community will recognize your new username and honor you for it, if the community would have recognized builds with your (previous) username on them.

I would like to re-iterate (for our younger builders) that moaning or complaining about lost usernames are not likely to get much nice, positive attention. It is likely to be treated like much of the other moaning and complaining is treated by people who come to the server to have fun. Don't be someone who complains, or you might get more to complain about.

[Kilarin]

Much as I hate the wipe, since it's going to happen, I'll give my advice. And that would be for there to be a period of at least several days to a week when Shinjin and Ten allow only a preselected group of builders access to protect areas where spawn and the main roads will be. Actual building can be done once everyone else arrives on the server.

While we are discussing roads, I have a question about how they will work with the new protectors. It will certainly be MUCH easier to protect a large area when protectors have a radius of 10 instead of 5 nodes. BUT, it's going to make roads a bit impractical isn't it? If you place your protectors in the middle of the road, and make your road even a whopping 9 nodes wide, it will still be 6 nodes past the curb before anyone can build. That's pretty far. How should we deal with roads and the new protector width?

[auouymous]

While we are discussing roads, I have a question about how they will work with the new protectors. It will certainly be MUCH easier to protect a large area when protectors have a radius of 10 instead of 5 nodes. BUT, it's going to make roads a bit impractical isn't it? If you place your protectors in the middle of the road, and make your road even a whopping 9 nodes wide, it will still be 6 nodes past the curb before anyone can build. That's pretty far. How should we deal with roads and the new protector width?

It would be easy to create small(5) and large(10) radius protectors in the mod. The recipe for large protector could use 8 small protectors since it covers 8 times the area. Could also use fewer than 8 if it should be cheaper, but require at least 2 smalls.

[Kilarin]

It would be easy to create small(5) and large(10) radius protectors in the mod. The recipe for large protector could use 8 small protectors since it covers 8 times the area. Could also use fewer than 8 if it should be cheaper, but require at least 2 smalls.

I had suggested different sized protectors once before, and Ten pointed out to me that it would slow down the mod. Currently the protector mod must check to see if a node is within a standard preset distance (10 in this case) of any existing protector. If we add, say, one small protector with a radius of 3, then we now have to have TWO lists of protectors, and do TWO checks to see if the node is within a distance of 3 from a protector on the small list, and if not, THEN we have to check if it is within a distance of 10 from a large protector. thereby doubling the number of checks required for every interaction with a node on the server.

if that doubling would not be a major problem, then having a smaller protector would be GREAT. But if not, I don't know if adding lag is likely to be accepted.

[auouymous]

I had suggested different sized protectors once before, and Ten pointed out to me that it would slow down the mod. Currently the protector mod must check to see if a node is within a standard preset distance (10 in this case) of any existing protector. If we add, say, one small protector with a radius of 3, then we now have to have TWO lists of protectors, and do TWO checks to see if the node is within a distance of 3 from a protector on the small list, and if not, THEN we have to check if it is within a distance of 10 from a large protector. thereby doubling the number of checks required for every interaction with a node on the server.

That's not entirely true. The code must check 9261 blocks for radius 10 but only 343 blocks for radius 3. If the code were to perform the radius 3 test first and found a small or large protector, it would eliminate the need to perform the more costly radius 10 test. If no protector is found in the radius 3 test it would only increase the work by 4%, no where near double. A radius 5 protector would check 1331 blocks and adding a radius 3 check on top of that would be a 26% increase in work, still not double but enough to be noticable. But with radius 10 protectors the radius 3 protector adds almost nothing and has the potential to boost performance.

A player digging in the wild would cause both checks to happen. A player building a road with small protectors would only cause the much faster radius 3 checks. A player building inside their radius 10 protected base would cause both checks unless within 3 blocks from the protector. So in most cases both checks would happen. But any action that only triggers the radius 3 check would be 27 times faster!

The new radius 10 checks are 7 times slower than the old radius 5 checks. In the worst case, adding on a second radius 3 check would only make it a measly 7.2 times slower. ;)

[Kilarin]

The new radius 10 checks are 7 times slower than the old radius 5 checks. In the worst case, adding on a second radius 3 check would only make it a measly 7.2 times slower. ;)

Well, that analysis sounds very promising!

[auouymous]

Well, that analysis sounds very promising!

The new map being 7 times slower (with or without radius 3 protectors) doesn't sound promising...

[Kilarin]

I must have misunderstood how the protector mod worked. I assumed there was a list/database of protectors which was searched for protectors near to a node. I guess I need to pull the code and dig through it sometime.

[auouymous]

I must have misunderstood how the protector mod worked. I assumed there was a list/database of protectors which was searched for protectors near to a node. I guess I need to pull the code and dig through it sometime.

Storing all loaded protectors in an octree would probably be faster than checking 9200 blocks, but it would require a little bit of memory and some overhead when loading and unloading areas. Each action would result in 1-20 lookups into the octree and return 0-8 lists of protectors in a 32x32x32 area around the target block. The code then iterates the lists and checks if each protector is in range of the block, based on the given protector's radius.

In the wild, the check would abort before doing 13 lookups and nothing else would need to be done. When near any protectors, it would do all 20 lookups and then iterate over what it found.

This assumes a -32k to +32k world, for worlds with -65k to +65k (max size of minetest worlds) it requires one additional lookup.

--

A flat list of protectors would also use memory (but not as much as an octree, whch isn't much more) and also have overhead when loading and unloading areas. Every action would need to iterate over the entire list (only once, no matter how many sizes of protectors) and do the same range check as the octree would do, but the octree only does the range check for the blocks in the 32x32x32 area around the target block, the flat list does it for all blocks in the list. If only a few protectors were visible by all players then a flat list would be faster than an octree. But the octree becomes much faster once the number of visible protectors increases.

[firefox]

A flat list of protectors would also use memory (but not as much as an octree, whch isn't much more) and also have overhead when loading and unloading areas. Every action would need to iterate over the entire list (only once, no matter how many sizes of protectors) and do the same range check as the octree would do, but the octree only does the range check for the blocks in the 32x32x32 area around the target block, the flat list does it for all blocks in the list. If only a few protectors were visible by all players then a flat list would be faster than an octree. But the octree becomes much faster once the number of visible protectors increases.

ist it possible to use both methods?
so that the large protectors (where there should be less visible pieces around) use the old method,
and the small protectors (where there would be many) use the faster octree method.
or does that create conflicts when both protector types are used in one area?

[auouymous]

ist it possible to use both methods?
so that the large protectors (where there should be less visible pieces around) use the old method,
and the small protectors (where there would be many) use the faster octree method.
or does that create conflicts when both protector types are used in one area?

The octree has the same overhead if used for one or both. The old (current) method gets magnitudes slower with each increase of the protector radius. If the overhead for octree is acceptable, it should be used for all protector sizes, the whole point of the octree is to speed up the very slow radius 10 checks.

A 64bit server with 32 players each in a different area and each player able to see 1000 protectors in their area would require about 3MB of memory on the server.

[IceAgeComing]

Made some new friends today. :D
And yes, they were naturally spawned.

[neri2]

Gee! And I thought booneh was the wrong crowd to hang wiff chu got us beat there iceypop xD

[auouymous]

It appears that minetest might not have the ability to notify the mod when a node is loaded into memory. This means the octree can't be done. :(

I added large and small protectors to the mod at http://mt.qzx.com/protector/ and did some benchmarks. But the optimization of scanning radius 3 first and then only scanning radius 10 if no radius 3 protectors where found can't be done because a radius 10 might prohibit the player even though the radius 3 allowed it.

These are average times on my machine in microseconds for comparison purposes only. "Old" is the current mod on Xanadu with only one size protector, "new" is the mod with large and small protectors.

Small radius 3 protectors don't matter when digging, placing or accessing nodes, only the size of the largest protector.

- dig/place/access with radius 5: old=80 new=90
- dig/place/access with radius 10: old=450 new=500

So having small and large protectors will be about 11% slower.

- placing a small radius 3 protector: new=1000
- placing a radius 5 protector: old=450
- placing a radius 10 protector: old=3100 new=3100

Placing a large protector on either mod is same speed, about 7 times slower than placing a radius 5 protector on current Xanadu map. But placing the small protector would only be 2 times slower. Good reason to make large protectors cost more to craft, if implemented.

If wanted, just drop the two files into the current mod and maybe add new textures for small protectors.