Are Mystcraft/RFTools Still Dedicated Server destroyers/ massive lag soruces

[GantradiesDracos]

ever since i started playing minecraft, ive been hearing stories about Mystcraft either outright breaking servers, or gradually degrading them to the point a fresh start is required to get a decent tps.(something about even unstable ages never removing the extra dimensions/ random blocks/chunks getting permanently loaded i THINK) are the concerns my server admin's have still current/unfixable? i included RFTools because as far as i can tell both mods have the same basic function (creating extra dimensions) and as far as i know, use similar/identical methods to do so.

judging by the admins vehement response to anyone suggesting using mystcraft even lightly, im guessing something bad happened to one of their servers before i picked up MC ( i literally started out playing modded MC on Techworld 2), but i never remember to ask when they are around >.<

 

[McJty]

Dimensions are (IMHO) not as bad as people think they are. One thing that takes a lot of performance is the actual creation of the dimension itself but once it is there it should be mostly fine. However, RFTools has several things it can do to help manage server owners. You can (for example) specify that only void dimensions are allowed (and void dimensions are actually good for servers as they cause very little lag). Also you can limit the number of dimensions per player. More information here:

https://github.com/McJty/RFTools/wiki/RFTools-Servers

 

[GreenZombie]

ever since i started playing minecraft, ive been hearing stories about Mystcraft either outright breaking servers, or gradually degrading them to the point a fresh start is required to get a decent tps.(something about even unstable ages never removing the extra dimensions/ random blocks/chunks getting permanently loaded i THINK) are the concerns my server admin's have still current/unfixable? i included RFTools because as far as i can tell both mods have the same basic function (creating extra dimensions) and as far as i know, use similar/identical methods to do so.

judging by the admins vehement response to anyone suggesting using mystcraft even lightly, im guessing something bad happened to one of their servers before i picked up MC ( i literally started out playing modded MC on Techworld 2), but i never remember to ask when they are around >.<

As a server admin, my objections to mystcraft are this:
1. disk space usage. The mod encourages the creation of ages for players to get pages to finally make the ages they want. This leads to a lot of age spam in save folder, that is very VERY difficult to audit. RFTools offers more tools for admins here, and requires a lot less exploration / trial age creation for players to get the dimlets they want.
2. Performance issues when new dimensions are created / When a server is first started. The less said about the age profiling mechanism the better. I do not believe it is appropriate to say bad things of mod authors who have, after all, given freely of their time. But I cannot find anything nice to say about this at all.

All that said - once the terrain is generated, and the profiling is done - mystcraft ages (And RFTools dimensions) impose no ongoing tps cost. Unless things like chunk loaders are being used by players. And the cost is not particularly larger than players just using chunkloaders in the overworld, and its quite easy to configure chunk loaders to simply not load-on-startup in dimensions so its arguably better for server performance.

Personally, I find the extra custmizations possible in both mods rather dull, and question why players would come to a server and hide their builds away. I would rather, if players wanted a sky-islands / other "epic" terrain option be available for builds, that it by provided by the server admin as a shared resource.

Because, no way in hell, am I adding mystcraft, or RFTools, dimensions to my backup lists.

 

[McJty]

As a server admin, my objections to mystcraft are this:
1. disk space usage. The mod encourages the creation of ages for players to get pages to finally make the ages they want. This leads to a lot of age spam in save folder, that is very VERY difficult to audit. RFTools offers more tools for admins here, and requires a lot less exploration / trial age creation for players to get the dimlets they want.
2. Performance issues when new dimensions are created / When a server is first started. The less said about the age profiling mechanism the better. I do not believe it is appropriate to say bad things of mod authors who have, after all, given freely of their time. But I cannot find anything nice to say about this at all.

All that said - once the terrain is generated, and the profiling is done - mystcraft ages (And RFTools dimensions) impose no ongoing tps cost. Unless things like chunk loaders are being used by players. And the cost is not particularly larger than players just using chunkloaders in the overworld, and its quite easy to configure chunk loaders to simply not load-on-startup in dimensions so its arguably better for server performance.

Personally, I find the extra custmizations possible in both mods rather dull, and question why players would come to a server and hide their builds away. I would rather, if players wanted a sky-islands / other "epic" terrain option be available for builds, that it by provided by the server admin as a shared resource.

Because, no way in hell, am I adding mystcraft, or RFTools, dimensions to my backup lists.

Well on a server it is actually good if players create bases in void dimensions. Without void dimensions what you typically see is players spread out over a large area in the overworld and thus also causing a lot of (relatively expensive) chunks to be loaded. With void dimensions you will not get less loaded chunks but they will typically be lighter since most of them will be void.

So I believe that a server owner worried about memory usage (loaded chunks) should actually consider void dimensions as opposed to straight banning dimensions.

 

[Inaeo]

Particularly on non-whitelisted servers, ages are veiwed as a way to protect your build from griefing. This may not actually be true, but the illusion of safety is often more calming than safety itself.

The biggest problem our group encountered was the fact that Mystcraft ages don't get deleted by any mechanic ingame, leading to tons of disk space being clogged with wasted one-off dimensions.

We adopted an honor system of telling the server admin which ages are unused and thus ripe for deletion. Our method was a chest at his base, which the Age Book of unwanted dimensions was placed (and wiped upon each manual server backup). Due to the random nature of Mystcraft ave generation, it took a few tries to get the landscapes we wanted without any penalties, so it made his life hell searching for the right ones to prune, while making sure he didn't clip an entire base by accident. After people got settled, there was no reason to keep creating more (we did make a one-off age to fight the Wither, then kept it around as a dedicated age in which to do so). Our group was six regulars and a few ghosts/visitors of friends. I can't imagine trying to manage this for 10-20 strangers.

 

[Someone Else 37]

Particularly on non-whitelisted servers, ages are veiwed as a way to protect your build from griefing. This may not actually be true, but the illusion of safety is often more calming than safety itself.

The biggest problem our group encountered was the fact that Mystcraft ages don't get deleted by any mechanic ingame, leading to tons of disk space being clogged with wasted one-off dimensions.

We adopted an honor system of telling the server admin which ages are unused and thus ripe for deletion. Our method was a chest at his base, which the Age Book of unwanted dimensions was placed (and wiped upon each manual server backup). Due to the random nature of Mystcraft ave generation, it took a few tries to get the landscapes we wanted without any penalties, so it made his life hell searching for the right ones to prune, while making sure he didn't clip an entire base by accident. After people got settled, there was no reason to keep creating more (we did make a one-off age to fight the Wither, then kept it around as a dedicated age in which to do so). Our group was six regulars and a few ghosts/visitors of friends. I can't imagine trying to manage this for 10-20 strangers.

Worth mentioning: RFTools has an admin command (/rfdim safedel, if I remember correctly) that removes all references to that dimension from RFTools blocks and the mod's matter receiver list, and then (as of a fairly recent update) deletes the dimension's files entirely.

McJty's done a lot of work to make RFTools as server-admin-friendly as possible.

 

[Mikhaila666]

It vastly depends on what type of server you play on.
-Small whitelisted server with a finite amount of people, active admin, and responsible players: Should be fine. Set the rules, and trust people to abide by them.

-Open server where anyone can join, and no rules about the mods: Some players will make ages over and over just to see what they get, many rarely bother to learn mystcraft fully and try for stable ages. They just look for ages with double ores, seas of liquid ender, etc. I've had one player make over 60 dimensions in a day. Having lots of players making lots of ages will lead to problems.

There are people who's attitude about game play leads to excess in everything. Mystcraft and RFtools can both be used by these people to cause problems for servers.

There is also a question admin have to ask themselves about what type of server they want to run. Worlds with plentiful resources, especially things like seas of liquid iron, defeat a lot of the small challenges in a modpack.

For protection from griefing I'd rather just add Mytown2 and let each player have a protected area, than have each one have a dimension to build in.