Paster Plugin Makes Giant Holes; Requires Rejoin [SOLVED]

Hello again, all. I have another question for you all.

I'm working on a save/paste plugin that I like to call DupeBox (will probably be releasing that later). It pretty much just saves out cuboid sections of a world to a file, then loads that file in later and pastes it in a new location. It all works fine in the long run, performance-wise as well.

My problem is that, while pasting, it tends to leave giant, client-side holes in the creation where blocks do not update to the clients until they rejoin. Sometimes, this even applies to the entire paste, making it invisible to everyone until they rejoin. Note, the players CAN actually "collide" with the paste (as in, they get bounced back by the server), but the blocks themselves are not updated.

I've tried several different methods in updating the chunks to the clients: having the applyPhysics boolean in Block.setTypeIdAndData() set to true, running over the entire creation post-paste and enabling all the physics, and even using World.refreshChunk() on the affected chunks with varying degrees of failure. The first didn't do anything, the second only updated a couple of the nearby chunks to the player, and the last one outright crashed the server with a "TickNextTick out of synch" error until I added in a Thread.sleep(500) in between each chunk, in which it did the same as the first option.

I MUST be missing something here, anyone care to help?

Relevant code in spoiler:

code (open) code (close)

Code:java

 
//Load and paste blocks from serial data
                //NOTE: This might get a tad expensive if you have a lot of
                //        plugins watching block placement or large pastes!
                //        Slightly mitigated by the thing being Runnable and
                //        having sleep()s here and there.
                for(int x = 0; x < xLength; x++)
                {
                    for(int y = 0; y < yLength; y++)
                    {
                        for(int z = 0; z < zLength; z++)
                        {
                            double blockData = file.readDouble();
                            int typeID = (int) Math.floor(blockData);
                            byte data = (byte) Math.round((blockData - typeID) * 100);
 
                            //Get position for this block
                            Location blockLoc = new Location(pasteCenter.getWorld(),pasteCenter.getX(),pasteCenter.getY(),pasteCenter.getZ());
                            blockLoc.setX(blockLoc.getX() + x);
                            blockLoc.setY(blockLoc.getY() + y);
                            blockLoc.setZ(blockLoc.getZ() + z);
 
                            //If this block depends on another block to not break, add
                            //to the populator list
                            if(hookBlocks.contains(Material.getMaterial(typeID)))
                            {
                                //Extra sign data
                                if(typeID == 63 || typeID == 68)
                                {
                                    String dataString = file.readString();
                                    DupeBoxPopulatorBlock pop = new DupeBoxPopulatorBlock(blockLoc,typeID,data,dataString);
                                    hookBlockPopulator.add(pop);
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                    DupeBoxPopulatorBlock pop = new DupeBoxPopulatorBlock(blockLoc,typeID,data);
                                    hookBlockPopulator.add(pop);
                                }
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                pasteBlock(blockLoc, ply, typeID, data);
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
[...]
 
//Populate all "hookblocks" now that every other block is here
                for(DupeBoxPopulatorBlock block : hookBlockPopulator)
                {
                    pasteBlock(block.blockLoc, ply, block.type, block.data);
 
                    //Sign text data
                    if(block.type == 63 || block.type == 68)
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            try{Thread.sleep(10);} catch (InterruptedException e){} //lolformatting
                            String[] signData = util.explode(block.extraData, '\n');
                            Sign sign = (Sign) block.blockLoc.getBlock().getState();
                            sign.setLine(0, signData[0]);
                            sign.setLine(1, signData[1]);
                            sign.setLine(2, signData[2]);
                            sign.setLine(3, signData[3]);
                        }
                        catch(ClassCastException e)
                        {
                            System.out.println("[DupeBox] - WARNING: Could not get sign for text, moving on!");
                        }
                    }
                }
 
                //Activate everything to properly update
                Location pasteEnd = new Location(pasteCenter.getWorld(), pasteCenter.getX(), pasteCenter.getY(), pasteCenter.getZ());
                activateRange(pasteCenter, pasteEnd);
                ply.sendMessage(ChatColor.GREEN + "[DupeBox] - Paste complete!");
 

Code:java

 
//Helper function to place blocks and do all
    //the hook checks and whatever else
    private static void pasteBlock(Location blockLoc, Player ply, int typeId, byte data)
    {
        //Setup place event and collect data
        Block block = blockLoc.getBlock();
        BlockState state = block.getState();
        block.setTypeId(typeId, false);
        block.setData(data, false);
        Block placeAgainst = block.getRelative(0, 0, 0);
        ItemStack inHand = new ItemStack(Material.AIR);
 
        //Call and check event
        BlockPlaceEvent event = new BlockPlaceEvent(block, state, placeAgainst, inHand, ply, true);
        Bukkit.getServer().getPluginManager().callEvent(event);
        if(event.isCancelled())
        {
            block.setTypeIdAndData(state.getTypeId(), state.getRawData(), false);
        }
    }
 

Code:java

 
//Refresh all the chunks within a range in order to send to clients
    private static void activateRange(Location start, Location end)
    {
        LinkedList<Chunk> chunkList = new LinkedList<Chunk>();
        World world = start.getWorld();
 
        //Get all chunks in here
        for(int x = (int) start.getX(); x < end.getX(); x++)
        {
            for(int z = (int) start.getZ(); z < end.getZ(); z++)
            {
                Chunk thisChunk = new Location(world,x,start.getY(),z).getChunk();
                if(!chunkList.contains(thisChunk))
                {
                    chunkList.add(thisChunk);
                }
            }
        }
 
        //Refresh chunks
        for(Chunk chunk : chunkList)
        {
            world.refreshChunk(chunk.getX(), chunk.getZ());
            try{Thread.sleep(500);} catch (InterruptedException e){} //lolformatting
        }
    }
 

 

Are you running this inside of an asynchronous thread? If so, then that's probably your issue. Running block changes outside of the main server thread is a major no-no. If not, then your Thread.sleep() calls are just freezing up the server's processing for a few moments, but aren't really helping the server to keep up.

 

Well, it's either I run it in a thread, or have everyone drop from the server on large pastes.

 

Or you run it in a sync task and do the paste in chunks. You really can't do this with an async thread, you'll run into all sorts of problems.

 

Well, off to rewrite the paster for the third time, then. Well, at least I learned a little about Java threads this time through.

 

Maybe just resend the chunk's?

 

I mentioned trying that in the OP, World.refreshChunk() doesn't do much of anything under the current system. Although I guess I could do all the refreshing in a DelayedSyncTask if I want to do it the lazy way (if it works, of course).

 

Chunks with <= 9 changes to them wont pass a chunk refresh. Make sure you manually flag the entire region for a refresh.

 

Mind specifying how?

 

Steeveeo see this

If you want to alter chunk data:

 

Thumbs up for the good read there, bergerkiller. I will be toying with this for a bit today.

 

Might as well update on my progress, just in case someone else comes across this thread in search. Thanks to bergerkiller my DupeBox pasting is now freaking BLAZING fast, compared to what it was. However, I had to separate out the light-emitting blocks like torches and glowstone from the normal block geometry and paste them AFTER recalculating the chunk lighting using the Bukkit block type set functions, as chunk.initLighting() doesn't seem to add the light from those blocks when called manually (not sure how they generate properly in that case).

I have a fort I work on regularly that I call Fort Sonora, and I've been using it as a base for testing this plugin, and it's about 70x40x80 in dimension. In version 0.25 of DupeBox, it took about a minute and a half to paste everything, now it takes on the order of 10 seconds, and I tend to like performance increases like this factor of 9 improvement!