Mojang MineCraft SMP is a bad optimised gameserver ?

Just to confirm with my personal experience, and to help me to understand.

I tried to host Minecraft SMP and I quickly fall into the problem of high CPU usage...

The hardware of my dedicated servers is :
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, 8 cores with 12 gigas of DDR3
- Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L3426 @ 1.87GHz, 8 cores with 16 gigas of DD3
Both are into Debian Linux 5.0 x64 ...

High CPU usage, hosting minecraft SMP is a shame in comparaison to other games hosting ...

I was, and still hosting, some of those games :
Counter Strike, Counter Strike Source, World Of Warcraft Mangos, Lineage L2J, Call of Duty 4, Battlefield 2142, ...

So, with allllllllllllll thoses games, multiplayers gameservers never put my CPU to 100%, and some of those game hosting require reallly many more power like Lineage L2J and World Of Warcraft Mangos, but in allllllll those case, including with a huge sql usage, there is no problem to host 100+ players online without having a 100% CPU usage.

I tried to understand if that's because of my JAVA, or a miss configuration, and I check after many solution in the numerous post on this forum, but the road of my conclusion point me to this point :

MineCraft SMP vanilla is not optimised and bad coded ?

One of this point is Mojang don't do a Multithread usage, a shame when we know all hardware including for poor client computer and mobile device, are using multicore ...
Apple do it at less into their product so when Mojang will include that into the MineCraft SMP ??

Another thing is, with a CraftBukkit server, I must revert from 612 to 526 to be able to host arround 50 peoples.

The fact is prooved, into the 612, I was unable to stand more than 15-20 people, and with the sames plugins, same world, same players, same hardware offcourse, I reach 50 players online more stable than the 15-20 before. But that's not the heaven since 50 that's look like really low comparated to other type of gameserver

So my thread here is to try to understand if I'm wrong or not ?

And if CraftBukkit team can be a messie to help in optimising MineCraft SMP since their know how word into the source of the gameserver.

Another reply including other theory are welcome, since our goal is the same, we like MineCraft and we will like it better after reach a decent Multiplayer gameserver support

PS : Sorry for my poor english , and thanks for the work of the Bukkit Team Keep the good work

 

Sry, but do you feelllll better now?

 

My goal is to have other user's feedback so what's your feedback instead of replying to tell that ?

 

You realize that Minecraft is a beta, right? Betas are typically not too optimized.

 

The lag you're getting on craftbukkit 612+ is here for EVERYONE, and it's not bukkit's fault. Yes, I agree that the server seems to be badly code but its coded in java, which isn't really meant to run a server. On your CPU issues, though, what plugins do you use?

 

I know "beta" mean that's need more time for that.

And I'm the first to want this game grow and grow more

But really, with powerfull dedicated modern server and with experience on another games hosting, I think actually this beta version need much optimisations to be a final product to host

About lags I agree, that's look like to be in relation with the recent build of officiel Minecraft server, perhaps the "stats" implementation.

But I know, and I used powerfull gameserver coded in java, just check L2J project, emulator for Lineage2 game ...

About my CPU problem, that's not in relation with plugin since I tried with a vanilla version of the gameserver, so without any plugin activated

 

welcome to mojang/minecraft lol

 

I have no lag at all on cb #617.
cpu use is around 25% (i7 930) with 15 people online.

 

I will probably try soon this 617 recommanded build ...

But you know, 25% of an i7 processor for only 15 players, that's too much I think

 

I run more on it then a minecraft server
some sites, teamspeak servers, tf2 server, map rendering...

 

25 % is the charge of an unique core ?

 

all cores and the 25% is not average but the top use when there is much going on

 

Server need support of multi cores...

 

true and client ofc 2

 

Vanilla server is laggy, and get laggyer with every update. Actually, I dont remember any update that fixed resources issues. I probably it will not be fixed until nobody can host it anymore.
The multi core support is a need, and I dont think that if mojang is the one to solve it, that we will see this any time soon. I bet game comes out of beta before we see it.
I reallize that is pretty fucking hard to make vanilla server run multicored, I do reallize that it would take much time and effort on doing this, but I really think bukkit guys should at least begin working on this. Right now, with 100% CPU usage, every minimal load we can take out of the single core will mean a lot.

Look the usage of the single core minecraft is running. I use 14% of my cpu, then I look each core individually, 100% core usage on the one minecraft is running.

 

Where can i find it?

 

If you are in linux, use htop. If you are in windows, task manager shows it.

 

I am on windows server 2008, where under task manager? at processes java.exe is at 10% now.

 

Both client and server are horribly optimized.

And i doubt that much is going to change

 

I agree with @matejdro . I believe Notch isn't going to do much more optimizing.. infact rather than optimizing he's adding in more code for pointless stuff. Who needs achievements? I guarantee it will only add more of a headache for future Minecraft SMP server hosters.

I don't think Notch really works on the game anymore, he's too focused on his new game. Mojang, Jebs are the ones running the show IMO.

I wonder if when they get the mod-api done, it would integrate Bukkit? Perhaps making things run better?

 

The general practice for software development is to optimize the code for readability first. This makes changes and additions easier. Optimizing code for performance generally comes at the end when the game is "feature complete." If this is the case for minecraft is anyone's guess.

 

Yeh, they need to do something.

The path they are going down, is driving this game straight into the ground.

 

(not so much at you croxis as the implication) Minecraft has been a living production game for quite some time. Holding up a "It's beta!" flag is not a valid excuse to ignore optimization requirements. This is especially true if you are charging money and promising free updates for a product. At this point you don't get the luxury of saying "Hey we're very busy here!" that open source communities do. You are a business, and you need to run it effectively.

 

I agree with all the complaints, and add a few more:

1 - Server is not only "not optimized", but SLOW and single threaded. The more users you add, the more they wait for a single packet. Add this to the fact you need to send huge data chunks everytime a user walks a few meters and, depending on the user configured sight, there are DOZENS of Block Chunks to be sent!!!! For each user in a single line waiting for their piece of attention, there are huge transfers needed to be done for each one. IMHO, since the first time world generation is based on a mathematical formulae, the parameters for this formulae should be sent to the user, to generate the chunks himself, at a version 0. Everytime a chunk is changed, the user should receive ONLY the differences from the version he had. So, a few clientside reprocessing, a little offline persistance and the network layer is SOLVED. Also, there are a lot of Network Libraries in Java (on I like a lot is Apache MINA @ mina.apache.org) that are multithreaded, can work with UDP instead of TCP, so the network bottleneck can be even smaller...
2 - I know Java3D is a stinky pile of poop, but there are really good games using it that doesn't consume 1/10 of CPU or memory... My laptop's processor fries everytime I play MC... There should be a real deal on optimizing the render objects tree, to make it lighter and less consumist. No, I won't complain by not been able to change client side since it is a business option.

I love MC, I have huge plugins for my server and I plan to buy at least 30 more accounts just to make my NPCs looks nicer... I have no problem with MC business model at all, I even support it, but I can't accept, as a server admin and a java enthusiast, to let this things still happens... Is it lack of time to re-work it? Call for community support! There are plenty of good Java coders that will gladly help to make the game better. I used offshore coding for a project of mine once and had a great response with a really fair price. Why not do the same, while working on the new idea internally?

So, just letting it out, just my $0,02...

 

I agree, and I like !

 

Yeah, I love Minecraft, too, but if you'd like a more stable server (from what I can hear), Mineserver.be is a custom C++ beta server that works, but doesn't have all the bukkit mods. I would LOVE to see the server optimized by Mojang, though.

 

@csma-cd AMEN!

 

@csma-cd good post.

Can anyone send this thread to notch or someone else from mojang? It's no point if we rant here for nothing. At least they should see this if not fixing it.

 

They way it is going, nobody will be able to host.

I mean we have top of the line machines out there, running with insane connections and hardware, yet can hold less and less people with each update. Pretty bad...add dogs and decrease and mash the game up by 80%.

 

Guys from GreenCubes.ru are developing a Minecraft SMP server, but it's a closed project
They did a multithreading, multicore support, new system of saving in background, and some more good stuff.
http://blog.greencubes.ru/
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I hope, that would be a multithreading and multicore support in a Bukkit..