Minecraft dynamic map

[Miss.Murder]

Yeah, thanks, we realise it's down, it was taken down to see if it would stop any lag and funnily enough it seems to have worked.

[s34ny8]

please tell me this wont be a permanent change, that map is worth the little lag it puts in the game. is there any alternative to just having it off? can it be updated less or not be a live stream for chat and movements, surely there can be alternatives or compromises before we go this far.

[tsunami_australia]

I reckon be gone with it, we survived without it. The only benefit we saw from it was biomes near us when first setting up (if the bloody thing managed to keep up on a fresh map) and for checking worldguard regions around us.

[Hydra]

It takes quite a bit of grunt to run the dynamic map, and it only seems to use one CPU core to do the rendering no matter what we try.

Performance is considerably better without it, I just wish Minecraft better utilised the other cores.

[Mekon]

T'would be a shame to lose it permanently, I enjoy browsing the map and it comes in handy for working out how close I am to the WorldGuard boundary when mining underground. Ah well.

[ScruffyNerf]

T'would be a shame to lose it permanently, I enjoy browsing the map and it comes in handy for working out how close I am to the WorldGuard boundary when mining underground. Ah well.

Give yourself a welcome/exit message in your zone and that'll indicate when you cross your worldguard boundary.

[s34ny8]

It takes quite a bit of grunt to run the dynamic map, and it only seems to use one CPU core to do the rendering no matter what we try.

Performance is considerably better without it, I just wish Minecraft better utilised the other cores.

Hey Hydra,
i Understand that it requires alot of resources, but does the maps program require the same resources as the minecraft server and why was it causing the lag, is there a way to reduce this, either minimizing the maps viewable or the rate it updates to daily. i just think that its an extreme step to just shut it off completely for the "lag" it gave. i cant say that any of the lag i experienced ever bothered me because it was so rare. was it a majority of the servers populace that were experiencing the problem?

[monotonehell]

The map plugin lives inside Bukkit, and shares its resources. And so it can't be apportioned resources separately. The only part that can be separated is the built in web service can be disabled and the map files can written to a path that another web service can see. Hydra's probably already done that.

It's all part of the one-thread-ed-ness of Minecraft that Bukkit has inherited. Some plugins manage to run extra threads, but not many.

[PirateEggs]

The map plugin lives inside Bukkit, and shares its resources. And so it can't be apportioned resources separately.

Well, yes, and no. It can be given its own resources, just requires a lot more effort on the devs behalf that what he's put into it.

Now, with Minecraft 1.3 there is multi-threading, so it will run a lot better. Just have to wait close to a month from now for it to be completely released and updated. Yeah, I know 1.3 is being released on the 1st, but you'd be crazy to think Bukkit will be updated inside 2 weeks, then you need the plugins to be completed. All of which will be ~3 weeks. Although with most of the Bukkit team working on Vanilla, a recommended Bukkit release may come a lot sooner than you'd think, still wouldn't hold my breath though.

Instead of completely shutting off the map, make it update every hour. For 'new' members (or well, old members joining the new world) it's helpful to see what areas are unclaimed instead of running around for hours trying to find a suitable area to build in.

[monotonehell]

Well, yes, and no. It can be given its own resources, just requires a lot more effort on the devs behalf that what he's put into it.

There's a big difference between what Hydra can do for us and what the Dynmap devs could do. Even with what DB is attempting with multithreading (so far he's separated the chat from the rest of the engine) there's a long way to go before Minecraft is properly multi-threaded. And the way Bukkit is fashioned there would need to be some major re-factoring and a LOT of rewriting to get it to multi-thread.

Instead of completely shutting off the map, make it update every hour. For 'new' members (or well, old members joining the new world) it's helpful to see what areas are unclaimed instead of running around for hours trying to find a suitable area to build in.

Dynmap uses in-game events to draw the map, so it's very tied into Bukkit. An admin can specifically ask it to render an area. This is only recommended to initialise a new map with no players online as it does lag the server a fair bit while it's happening. Asking it to not update the map, except once an hour is not how Dynmap is meant to work and would cause more trouble than it's worth.

What can be done instead is to use a different stand alone map maker outside of Bukkit altogether and set that to run periodically on its own resources. I used to run Pigmap until my main world became too big to render in a timely manner. Now I'm switching to Dynmap, but only specific areas and worlds (eg not for the PvP world so players can't use it to find each other).

BUT that requires another process and another set of resources. Not sure how far the GoN guys are prepared to go.

[tacitus42]

I've noticed that the map isn't updating the terrain anymore.
Is this only happening to me?

[swarmski]

Not updating for me either...all changes since i started have not reflected on the map?

[Hydra]

I've fixed the map, but it has to render from scratch again sadly.

Once 1.5 comes around it'll get wiped again.

[Mekon]

Fantastic, thank you!

I also noticed that you've added the WorldGuard layer option back in (seemed to go missing a while back). Perfect.

[Mekon]

Any chance we could get the map re-enabled? Or is it waiting on a mod update?