Best Posts in Thread: An Update Regarding Updates

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since a public forums update has been posted. However today I'd like to discuss one of the most frequently asked questions I see: When are we updated to 1.13.x or 1.14.x?

The short answer is: We're not. As hard of a decision as it is to not update the server to the latest Minecraft versions, the administration team has made this decision with server gameplay as the best reason not to update. I'll be frank and say that while Mojang has many good ideas and concepts that they've implemented in newer versions, they're honestly broken, bug-ridden messes. Now, I don't think it's fair to say that without backing it up, so here's some actual data on the situation.

Random Ticks
This test was done by running the game as fast as possible using the tickwarp command in Carpet mod on grass blocks in a superflat world with mob spawning turned off to simply test random tick speed game impact. (If you are unfamiliar with carpet mod, it is a vanilla enhancement modification for the game that allows more data to be displayed such as exact game ticks per second and making the game run faster.) Here are the results:



Entire Game
When running a test that tickwarps an entire minecraft day as fast as the game possibly allows in a normal world with no changes or interaction from the player inside a Savannah biome, we get these results:


Pistons
This test was run with shaking pistons in the following setup.

These pistons will constantly fire when the levers are pulled as a toggle. Here are the results of a tickwarp:


Redstone Dust
For those familiar with the game's internal workings, you will know redstone dust is actually one of the worst redstone components you can use. With that said, kudos to Mojang for actually improving on this one:


Entity Collision
Another one with credit to Mojang on working on thanks to 1.14's new collision engine, 400 hopper minecarts in one block produces this result:


Villagers
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for villagers. Due to 1.14's expanded processing for villagers, having 100 villages encased in glass (to prevent pathing from causing lag) produces this result:


Beacons
Typically beacons have little to no impact on server performance, but somehow even this was changed in newer versions. Having 2204 beacons in a superflat world with all spawning turned off produces this result:


Lighting
Light updates have always been the absolute laggiest part of minecraft. A new lighting engine was implemented in 1.14 that dramatically improves the game. This was tested with a flying machine pushing a cobblestone roof over an empty world. This is easily the most compelling reason to support an update to 1.14:


Raids
In case you are unaware of the new raid mechanic present in 1.14, allow me to quote the Minecraft Wiki, "A raid is an in-game event in which waves of illagers spawn in a village when a player with the Bad Omen status effect enters. Upon entering a village with the Bad Omen, the effect immediately disappears and a bossbar labeled "Raid" appears. Once the bar finishes charging, its charge decreases for every mob killed, showing the number of mobs still alive when there are less than three remaining. A horn sounds at the start of each wave and during the raid, centered on an illager or witch, and the village bell rings while the bossbar charges (In Java Edition, a villager rings the bell, while In Bedrock Edition it rings by itself). Each subsequent wave is larger, with more illagers (and witches), and more types of illagers." The mechanic also allows nearby mobs to join, and you cannot trade with villagers while a raid is ongoing. Sounds fun, right? Unfortunately, this is affected by multiple major issues. One of the biggest involves villager trading. See, when creating the raid system, Mojang implemented it globally rather than isolating it to the local village. This means while a raid is ongoing, nobody on the server would be allowed to trade with villagers. Additionally, all mobs that could join the raid within 40,000+ blocks are summoned towards that location. This means every valid mob in the towny world would suddenly drop what it was doing and walk towards whoever set off a raid. As you can imagine, this generates incredible amounts of lag.

Dropped Items
Later testing in 1.14 discovered that dropped items produce nearly six times as much lag as in 1.12 (1.13 was not tested against).

Hoppers
Servers have always had issues with hoppers, given they are a component which generates lag simply by existing in the world. Testing 1.14 found that hoppers generate 4x as much lag even when they are not collecting as many items.

Chunk Loading
As of 1.14, the game cannot keep up with a player moving more than 20 blocks per second (which is slower than an elytra) and you will have to slow down simply for the chunks to be able to generate below you to see where you are going. In 1.14, the game also keeps an additional 11 chunks loaded beyond your set render distance. Assuming you use the default Minecraft render distance of 12, this will keep 23 chunks loaded behind you at all times, while only loading 12 chunks in every other direction.

Spawn Chunks
Spawn chunks inside of minecraft are the chunks around the world spawnpoint in the Overworld. The spawn chunks are special due because they are an area that is never unloaded as long as a player is in the overworld. In minecraft 1.12, the spawn chunks consisted of about 2x2 chunks that were kept loaded in memory at all times, with 2 chunks around them in every direction being loaded as "lazy chunks." If you are unfamiliar with lazy chunks, they are chunks kept somewhat loaded in memory, but don't behave the same way. They do not process entities or most redstone, but they do keep track of the number of mobs in them and count towards the world mob cap. Spawn chunks have been used by vanilla players as a place to build farms as they will always be running even if you are not nearby. In Minecraft 1.14, this was changed so that the spawn chunks consist of a 3x3 chunk area, with an additional 2 lazy chunks loaded in every direction. This means that more chunks are loaded than in 1.12 at all times, therefore generating more lag. Additionally, a bug exists where if a player visits the spawn chunks, the game loads an additional 3 chunks out from the lazy chunks and keeps them all loaded as lazy chunks. This means the spawn region becomes 3x3 permanently loaded chunks, with a total area of 11x11 chunks due to having a radius of 5 lazy chunks in all directions.

Mob Cap
In Minecraft 1.14, villagers and iron golems were changed to count towards the peaceful mobcap. This seems reasonable enough if you do not understand how Minecraft's mob caps work. Generally, there are two main types of mob caps: hostile and peaceful. The hostile mob cap sets a serverwide cap on how many monsters can spawn in order to prevent players from being overwhelmed by large numbers of monsters, as well as preventing lag. The mobcap is only affected by mobs in loaded chunks. The game also despawns hostile monsters that are more than 128 blocks from a player if chunks are loaded, the mob is not named, and is not a special entity type such as Withers, Ender Dragons, and Shulkers. The peaceful mobcap applies the same concept except the mobs do not naturally despawn. In 1.12, this counts pigs, sheep, horses, etc. Due to the change to villagers in 1.14, having villagers and iron golems loaded prevents actual peaceful mobs from spawning.

Spigot
Meepcraft's internal servers run on the Spigot minecraft server software at their core. This has been the case for numerous years. The development team at spigot has been at work for many years and are quite familiar with Minecraft development. They've had major issues with 1.13 and 1.14 as well. From the main developer of Spigot upon 1.13's release, he advised "The safest route at this point in time is to not carry over any data from 1.12.2. Of course migration of old data is possible and is worth testing for the benefit of future owners, but keep in mind that even the Vanilla world migration may introduce subtle irreparable destruction to your world that may not be immediately obvious." This post was made when discussing 1.14.1, 1.14.2, and 1.14.3:
"In particular, it is often still asked "when will Spigot 1.14 be released?". The simple answer to this question is that it is already available for public access. The more nuanced answer is that it is available as a "development build". The characteristics of a development build include the following:

• It is not the default version available. You are required to use the --rev argument to BuildTools to retrieve it.
• It is aimed primarily at developers and experienced server owners.
• There is a higher than usual chance that running such a version may cause irreparable damage to your map. Even if the damage is not irreparable, it is unlikely that attempts to fix such damage will be made - you must restore from a backup.
• The usual API stability guarantees do not apply. A previously valid plugin using new API features may be broken from one build to the next.
• Similarly a previously valid server configuration may not be valid in a later build.
  • eg the current requirement that all world names be lower case
• Updates are very frequent, usually several versions a day.

The followup question is usually "well when will it not be a development build?". In 1.13.x we tried a graduated colour system of stability, but for various reasons this did not work out. Instead for 1.14.x we suggest that you take a look at the Spigot (and to a lesser extent Mojang) issue trackers to decide when the build is right for you, keeping in mind the above points." In essence, this means despite having come out in April of 2019, we are now 3 months out from 1.14's initial release and it is still not considered a stable version to run servers on, with 1.13 barely working for most people and generally requiring a complete data reset.


What does this mean for the server going forward?
For these reasons and others, the Meepcraft administration team has decided we will not be updating past Minecraft 1.12 at this time, or ever, until a newer version has the performance and stability to ensure the best possible gameplay experience for you as the player. Just recently, a snapshot released by Mojang caused a memory leak in any world opened with it that caused permanent damage to the world file (1.14.4 pre-release 3). To prevent loss of player data and support the work everyone here has dedicated to Meepcraft in the last 2 and a half years, we feel it is the best choice to remain in 1.12 to ensure your hard work is not damaged. Essentially, we will support players connecting with newer versions of Minecraft if they choose to use them for their client. We currently support all minecraft versions between our native 1.12 and the latest release of 1.14.3 at the time of writing this. If you have any questions, feel free to ask below! Thanks!

Sources for information: ilmango, __Methodzz__, and gnembon
Image link in case these break in the future: 1.14 Lag

 

An update regarding updates regarding updates!

Minecraft 1.16 is showing promising signs of improved mechanics and game performance over the current versions at a level that ppears to be acceptable, so we are considering moving to this version after the update has released and testing conducted.