Mystcraft Update Information

[Big Bad]

NOTICE: Until this issue is addressed, FTB and Direwolf20 have decided to roll back Mystcraft versions within our newest pack updates. Infinity 1.3.4 and Direwolf20 1.7 1.2.1 will contain additional mod updates, fixes, etc. sans the latest Mystcraft release.

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ORIGINAL POST:

Over the last few days we’ve been getting some reports of increased lag within some of our major packs. After some initial investigation, we’ve located and identified the cause.

In the newest update of Mystcraft, upon creating a new overworld (ie, a new save file) or the update is added to a pre-existing save, Mystcraft begins a process that profiles the entire game world. This is a one-time check done to increase performance in new worlds (Ages). During this process, the world’s Ticks-Per-Second (or TPS) will occasionally stutter and/or drop, resulting in lag and delays in game responsiveness. This effect is amplified on older machines, creating occasional scenarios in which a user might experience 5-10 TPS for a period of up to 15 minutes. Once the profiler is finished, the TPS will return to normal and the profiler will not be run again for the life of that save file.

Because Mystcraft is included in two of our popular pack updates (Infinity 1.3.3 and Direwolf20 1.7 1.2.0), we wanted to provide users an ample heads-up just in case this event occurs. We suggest simply letting the profiler run uninterrupted and waiting until it finishes.

Beware the Red and Blue Books.

• The FTB Team

 

[mattp_12]

Is it a bug or is it an intended thing to happen?

 

[Big Bad]

Is it a bug or is it an intended thing to happen?

The profiler activating and running is intended. Lag is/was expected, but we wanted to give everyone a head's-up because we know that people play FTB on machines with a wide spectrum of processing power.

 

[williewillus]

Is it a bug or is it an intended thing to happen?

It says "This is a one-time check to increase performance"
So just wait it out for a MC day or so and everything will be back to normal

 

[mattp_12]

The profiler activating and running is intended. Lag is/was expected, but we wanted to give everyone a head's-up because we know that people play FTB on machines with a wide spectrum of processing power.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the reply. I wonder if it's possible for the mystcraft devs to somehow "decrease", so to speak, the amount of lag creating a new age makes, despite the fact it's a one time thing.

 

[Big Bad]

It says "This is a one-time check to increase performance"
So just wait it out for a MC day or so and everything will be back to normal

Correct. Faster machines won't have to wait as long.

 

[Phyroxzenoid]

Psst, I have a slightly irrelevant question: is this in a newer version of Mystcraft? Lately I've been suffering a lot of lag in Mystcraft ages due to the decaying instability, I've never gotten a message about the one time check to increase performance .-.

 

[Big Bad]

Psst, I have a slightly irrelevant question: is this in a newer version of Mystcraft? Lately I've been suffering a lot of lag in Mystcraft ages due to the decaying instability, I've never gotten a message about the one time check to increase performance .-.

Newest build. The described lag occurs right on new save generation or after a game has loaded with the new Mystcraft version installed.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Does this once off hit result in increased performance in other ages though ie: does it work? Cos if it does I'll rather take the hit now when my world is young and can handle it...

 

[radcom123]

Is the only reason not to use the new version is the mystcraft lag or is there a bigger problem as the new profiling stops world instability when using non-standard world gen i.e. the world gen with the pack

 

[keybounce]

The profiling of mystcraft ages is designed to adjust for different ore generations.

In a very popular pack, for example, ore generation is turned up higher than normal, because the tech mods in that pack consume ores at a high rate. Mystcraft, in 0.11.0, had hard-coded assumptions about a vanilla ore distribution, and this resulted in instability in almost every age (at least, every age that had a stone ground and infinite terrain) because the ores were more common than a vanilla overworld clone age.

With the profiling, Mystcraft will now detect what is the "normal" ores for your world, and only "charge" you for ores above your normal config -- those that were added by the mystcraft book specials, in other words.

This is a somewhat simplified description of what is happening. It isn't so much a performance improvement, so much as "allow you to use special configs".

Now, with that said, this is just one of *many* things that were improved in 0.11.1. Seriously, many, many things got better. In particular, symbol rarity is now fixed, and the "booster pack" treasure items now do their job properly. Additionally, the risk of being stuck in an age is far less now than before -- pretty much, if you can reach one library, you can eventually reach another, and the libraries themselves contain everything you need to make new ages, with the exception of three iron to make a book binder -- and that can be obtained from about 300 zombie kills.

Other features, such as a stonemap that matches the 1.7 vanilla stone map, working mesa biomes, etc., are other improvements.

With this said, 0.11.1 does not have performance increases. A dev/test version went out yesterday (and another today) to try to address those issues.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

^^^ two thumbs up!

Ok will just wait until the newer versions are added to the pack then.

 

[keybounce]

And the .2 performance fix has been released.

 

[Gabor Garami]

Just a simple, dumb question: How this profiling can incorporate some special cases such as CoFH specialized worldgen? For example, I playing with Automata modpack, where all ores are banned from overworld except Railcraft poor ores. However, in Mystcraft world all normal ores are allowed. Is this means instability is applies to every generated world because Overworld does not contain any normal ore (even if the Mystcraft Age has ~normal vanilla oregen)?

 

[keybounce]

It samples what is generated in an overworld clone mystcraft age.

It generates an age, that will have dimension id MIN_INT (-2billion or so), or the first higher available dimension if someone else has already generated that dimension. It uses a fixed description, that roughly corresponds to all the biomes in your pack, with standard world, grid-form distribution (the bug-fixed tiled), and normal features (caves, ravines, etc.).

Because it is grid-form, the full height variations of the biomes does not get exposed (grid-form can't vary much from a low biome to a high biome; the variation is basically capped at one Y per X/Z at the boundaries). It accounts for the normal lack of lava in mystcraft cave systems. Each biome gets a chunk generated and sampled 4 times; to deal with the rather odd way that vanilla generates and decorates chunks, mystcraft has to generate an average of 4 chunks to profile one chunk (plus another ... 12 I think at each end). As mineshafts are in the generation, this means dealing with decoration that spans multiple chunks (oh how fun).

Late during testing, while dealing with this, I asked Xcw to come up with a way to identify the profiling age to worldgen, and gave two sample reasons. I use COG to make vein distributions, but mystcraft under-values them (does not give sufficient value to the adjacency factor). Reason one was to make the profiling age look like vanilla ores, so that special worlds with no default ores (dirt, sandstone, obsidian, netherrack, etc as the ground type) would have the same sorts of valuation in my pack as in normal packs. (This was considered acceptable). Reason two was to give all (normal) ages some sort of instability by removing one potion's-worth of ores from the profiling age; this was considered unacceptable. His response was along the lines of "The profiling age should be accurate; if you want all ages to have some instability, that should be a different setting".

 

[Heiðar]

FTB launcher has 1.3.4 as recomended version on Infinity, Curse has 1.3.3, ingame client after starting through curse says 1.3.2...
Really confusing

 

[keybounce]

Actually, I think Xcw will be pushing another release before easter.

 

[keybounce]

So just an update.

Mystcraft has had several updates. The current bugfixing release deals with API improvements (in particular, it's working again).

 

[Shandraya]

This post is quite old now so thought maybe it would be fixed but maybe not..
I am playing in just single player and have only 1 world. The other day I updated the CofHCore mod and related mods. Mystcraft ran a profiling as you described here which I let run, no choice, but since then mystcraft is creating a new "Mystcraft_profiling world" every time I launch the FTB launcher. It is getting annoying!
I get to the load screen where I should select singleplayer but mystcraft is automatically taking control and generating another world.

 

[keybounce]

Which version of Mystcraft are you using? Please do not say "Latest".

Version 0.12.2 has an option to assume vanilla standard settings for your baseline, so it is no longer necessary to generate a profiling age. Technically, it exposes the internal numbers in a text config file you can edit, and fills in the values for the vanilla overworld, so you can adjust if you have more ores.