fisher2760 wrote:i like this but how big is the world? and about peoples buildings and stuff pass the world border
Zurvival's world inside the border is circular with a diameter of 40,000 blocks. Players have been informed of this impending border for quite a while. They've known the date for 3-4 months, as the warnings spamming their chat whilst building out there would have informed them. Prior to that a warning spammed the chat for around a little less than a year informing them of a the border's proposed boundaries (and a date, which admittedly passed and went). Players with builds past the border had fair warning to move inside, I helped with this where I could.
RYucuis wrote:This is just straight up curiosity, why is the world border needed? Does it reduce server side resource usages, lower lag, help with mob caps, is a nessasary part of 1.8?
The main reason which sparked the decision was to reduce the size of, and have some control over, the ever increasing world file size. The Zurvival directory currently, including plugins and the three dimensions, sits at 64GB. I used to house Zurvival on an SSD, but a few surprise jumps in the size of the world led to the server crashing due to a lack of free space (The drive could store 120GB only). I have since moved to a larger HDD, but I would like to be able to go back to that speedy SSD performance. Being on a HDD means reading, saving chunks can be slow if there's a lot of it going on at once. In particular, generating new chunks under the feet of a travelling player can be very taxing and ends up slowing the entire server down. A single player travelling in one direction out to crazy distances of 100k out can bring about the dreaded lag for all, especially on a HDD. Multiple players travelling in straight lines, generating new chunks? Poor server. Being able to limit the world to a certain size and shape allows me to pre-generate all chunks within that radius, so there won't be unexpected strain from players generating lots of new chunks; I can just generate them all during quiet hours without affecting anyone's play. Backup storage is also a concern, yes.
I additionally reasoned it would improve everyone's experience on new Minecraft version releases. Some content can only be found in new chunks, or is atleast much easier to find there. New biomes, new blocks, new mobs. Zedlings have historically gone travelling very, very far in random directions in search of the fabled new Minecraft. Don't always know how far out you need to travel, perhaps another player already came this way and travelled up to 200k blocks out. Being able to definitively know that 1.7 chunks end at 20k out, then 1.8 chunks go on til 22k, 1.9 until 24k etc. would make this search much, much easier.
The change is nothing to do with 1.8; coincidentally fell following our update to this version. The border has been planned for a very long time.