Interesting new development

"Since the most recent weekly snapshot, Singleplayer games run a local multiplayer server. To make this change even better, Mojang wants to make multiplayer servers feel more like how singleplayer games used to feel."

When I saw this topic I thought it was about Futurecraft.



*sigh*

The term for this model is thin client, and the goal is to make multiplayer and single player development function identically by making single player essentially multiplayer with a fast server connection.

I think this is a mistake.

While I am not familiar with the Bukkit team developers, I am familiar with Mojang's way of dealing with multiplayer and they can't handle this.
Before SMP was first released, minecarts were solid. You could stand on top of them and when you pushed them it would bounce off you in a response manner, sort of hard to describe if you weren't there. When SMP rolled around, minecarts lost their solid hitbox, and instead you have to walk inside of the cart to get it to move. It was stupid and I couldn't figure out why Notch made the change until I re-enabled the old code in multiplayer. You just couldn't push the minecart anymore, because you pushing the cart is a server-side action, but the cart pushing you is client-side, and therefore much more responsive. As a result you get pushed back by the cart, and by the time the server registers your proximity, you are no longer in contact with the cart hitbox.

The proper solution would be to allow the client to have proper entity interaction, and just report back the situation to the server for verification and to pass it on to the other clients. However, that wouldn't work in their "server does everything that's not the player" model. So instead of fixing the model to make it more responsive and robust, Notch disables the push-back on minecarts and calls it a day. That's been the way of things ever since: allow compromises to the feel and performance of the game to avoid reworking the engine.

That's not an isolated occurrence, either. Mojang has never cared about multiplayer performance beyond making it run, and there's only so much the Bukkit team can do with that unless they intend to rebuild it from the transport layer on up.

The way it looks right now, though, is that single player will run identically to multiplayer on a localhost server, which is still damn near unplayable.
The more they put on the server-side, the clunkier interactions will become because the server is incapable of being a client on a fundamental level. It will never match the client unless they intend to move everything save rendering to the server-side (in which case it really will just be the client and nothing will have changed).

It would be great if I am wrong, and the Bukkit team have a plan for revolutionizing multiplayer, and single player performance won't be harmed in the process. But I'm not holding my breath.

Well hopefully Bukkit will change some things, but if what you say is true I hope this idea stays in the snapshots and isn't released. Though it would make developing much easier. Only would have to make one version of a mod, the server version.

Danice123 wrote:

Well hopefully Bukkit will change some things, but if what you say is true I hope this idea stays in the snapshots and isn't released. Though it would make developing much easier. Only would have to make one version of a mod, the server version.

No, still both.

Sir Tielton wrote:

When I saw this topic I thought it was about Futurecraft.



*sigh*

me as well my British friend....

kinda happy, kinda sad.

what, noone want to post after me?

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

-snip-

Um I'm confused now, are you saying that the server host takes all of the "load" and we just play around with little to no memory usage? if not please use laymans terms...

That might be the case if you were not running the server yourself.

Let's put it this way. Imagine you made a local server on your own pc and played minecraft of it. Your client is doing really little as far as ticks and terrain generation is concerned, but since your pc has to run the server as well, you are not really gaining any performance. That's what this is, only more formalized. If multiplayer played like single-player you wouldn't see any difference in single player gameplay, but multiplayer sucks and now they intend to bring that suck to singleplayer.

It's possible I'm just overly critical of it because it's going to be my job to fix the protocol for this mod; I'm too familiar with its shortcomings to trust it with more responsibility. But ultimately it will be up to the individual as to whether it will be an improvement or not.

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

That might be the case if you were not running the server yourself.

Let's put it this way. Imagine you made a local server on your own pc and played minecraft of it. Your client is doing really little as far as ticks and terrain generation is concerned, but since your pc has to run the server as well, you are not really gaining any performance. That's what this is, only more formalized. If multiplayer played like single-player you wouldn't see any difference in single player gameplay, but multiplayer sucks and now they intend to bring that suck to singleplayer.

It's possible I'm just overly critical of it because it's going to be my job to fix the protocol for this mod; I'm too familiar with its shortcomings to trust it with more responsibility. But ultimately it will be up to the individual as to whether it will be an improvement or not.

Frost, do you have a formal list of these shortcomings somewhere? I'm curious to see what problems you have with the server. I remember you posting something about this before.

I like refusing dumb updates. I also like how Xbox Minecraft is set in beta 1.6



Reminds me of the good times.

Danice123 wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

That might be the case if you were not running the server yourself.

Let's put it this way. Imagine you made a local server on your own pc and played minecraft of it. Your client is doing really little as far as ticks and terrain generation is concerned, but since your pc has to run the server as well, you are not really gaining any performance. That's what this is, only more formalized. If multiplayer played like single-player you wouldn't see any difference in single player gameplay, but multiplayer sucks and now they intend to bring that suck to singleplayer.

It's possible I'm just overly critical of it because it's going to be my job to fix the protocol for this mod; I'm too familiar with its shortcomings to trust it with more responsibility. But ultimately it will be up to the individual as to whether it will be an improvement or not.

Frost, do you have a formal list of these shortcomings somewhere? I'm curious to see what problems you have with the server. I remember you posting something about this before.

A formal list? No.
I've posted a ton of information in both this board and on the Minecraft forums, but I can't find it anymore because our search engine is crap, and I don't remember the topics. I'll probably end up having to write it all up again somewhere.

Also, it's possible a the whole thing will work completely different by the time the Bukkit team is finished, so I'm not in a big rush to mess with that right now.

True that

ACH0225 wrote:

I like refusing dumb updates. I also like how Xbox Minecraft is set in beta 1.6



Reminds me of the good times.

Really want to play Alpha again :[

ACH0225 wrote:

I like refusing dumb updates. I also like how Xbox Minecraft is set in beta 1.6

Found out a bit about that a few days ago. Apparently, games on XBLA normally aren't allowed to give out free updates (no reason for it but greed, far as I can tell), and the only reason Minecraft gets them at all is due to an impressive amount of arm-twisting by the devs. The compromise, though, is that they have a limit to how many releases they can put out, meaning they can't go posting updates every week like Mojang can.

Given a choice, I would chop out hunger, the End, experience, enchanting, bow pullbacks, new terrain generation, animal AI's, strongholds, ravines, towns, and plenty more...

The new terrain generation is rather bland.

When I go from one mountains biome to another, they are very close to identical. It used to be crazy and everything was different, but now its pre-set and pre-generated. AND THEY GOT RID OF GARGAMEL!!!

ACH0225 wrote:

Given a choice, I would chop out hunger, the End, experience, enchanting, bow pullbacks, new terrain generation, animal AI's, strongholds, ravines, towns, and plenty more...

Hunger, leave. Dragons (in general), leave. End, remove. Experience, make useful. Enchanting, keep. Bow pullbacks, while more realistic, aren't as much fun. Alpha terrain generation, with updated parts, of course. Animal AI's, DEFINITELY keep. Strongholds, keep. Ravines, keep. Towns, put people in. Jungles, keep. New lighting, keep.

In general, the feeling of Minecraft has gone from lighthearted, to sinister, back to lighthearted, and back to sinister again. Currently, it feels sinister (when on survival, with a decent graphical capability).

How is enchanting kept?

"Oh, yeah theres magic but also rockits"

Then I want development of the magic until I can use it in space.

Keon wrote:

How is enchanting kept?

"Oh, yeah theres magic but also rockits"

Then I want development of the magic until I can use it in space.

Why can't magic and technology go together? Look at some of your favourite sci-fi races, they have telekinetic or psychic abilities, so why can't we?

Since when were telekinetic or psycic abilities magic?

Lord Mackeroth wrote:

Keon wrote:

How is enchanting kept?

"Oh, yeah theres magic but also rockits"

Then I want development of the magic until I can use it in space.

Why can't magic and technology go together? Look at some of your favourite sci-fi races, they have telekinetic or psychic abilities, so why can't we?

I am fine with that, but if they have magic, they would refine it until they can use Psi-Storm or something.

ACH0225 wrote:

Since when were telekinetic or psycic abilities magic?

I don´t know.
But it is certainly as much magic for us as a giant spaceship would be for a medieval knight.