Minecraft currently only processes all information about the server in a single thread on a single CPU. This means that no matter how powerful your computer is, once there are dozens or even hundreds of players in the game, the efficiency and performance of the game will be greatly reduced, and the refresh rate of the server will be reduced to the extent that it cannot be played normally. Currently, the world record for the most players in the same world in Minecraft is 2,622 players, but in this case, these players can’t do anything.
But don’t worry, a mod developed by programmer Jackson Roberts might change all of this! In 2020, he wanted a project that he could do during the quarantine period, so he decided to create a huge Minecraft server that could accommodate thousands of players without delay. The current single-threaded server software of “Minecraft” is obviously not up to the task, so Roberts and collaborator Harvey298 decided that they would study how to build their own server software and called the project Mammoth.
Roberts explained that the first attempt was a proof-of-concept system. It divided the world in Minecraft into 1024 blocks, each of which was run by its own server: the boundary area would be synchronized, and the servers would be between each other. Transfer moving objects between. However, it has too many problems: players cannot see each other across servers, a server down makes this part of the world inaccessible, and if many players gather in a small area, this solution will not solve any problems at all.
After this experience, Roberts set a series of goals for Mammoth, including players must be able to see each other, even in different server processes; when a player places a block or updates a flag, all other players should see it immediately; If a server goes down, the entire world should still be accessible; if necessary, you can add or delete servers at will to suit the number of players.
The idea he put forward is a centralized back-end database, when the Minecraft server appears and disappears, it can communicate between them and constantly pass on information such as player movements. After trying some existing software (such as Redis and SpatialOS), Roberts found that it was not suitable for his purpose, so he decided to build his own software WorldQL, which he described as a real-time, scriptable build for multiplayer games Spatial database, it can replace traditional game servers or be used to balance existing game servers.
Therefore, the new version of the Mammoth mod that will be released on September 8 will be built on World QL, which stores all permanent world changes and transfers real-time player information (such as location) between servers”. Basically, each server continuously reports its data to World QL and then asks other servers based on these reports: if it knows that a player is near another player, and the first player’s server says they have moved, WorldQL will ask what the other is doing.
In Mammoth, no Minecraft server is responsible for storing the world. All block changes from the base seed are stored centrally in WorldQL. These changes are indexed by block coordinates and time, so the Minecraft server can only request what it needs renewing.
Jackson Roberts’ post describes in more detail the other features of the mod, such as real-time block synchronization, message broker, and the future potential of Minecraft mini-games created in the World QL scripting environment. For more details, please check the GitHub page of the Mammoth project.
