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Great work, but...Java? Is this for compatibility with mods? One of the biggest pain points with running a Minecraft server is the onerous memory requirements.

Great work, but...Java? Is this for compatibility with mods? One of the biggest pain points with running a Minecraft server is the onerous memory requirements. Java needs a ton of memory to get out of bed, and after that it's not always pretty with how the allocator works. That's fine on an enterprise server with 64GB of memory, but not cool when you're paying $10/mo. per GB of memory for what should be an inexpensive hobby.

swrh 9y ago
I'd love to play with the code of a C/C++ Minecraft server. Is there any yet?
- oxguy3 9y ago
  Someone else just linked to this: https://cuberite.org/ https://cuberite.org/
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Have you ever played Minecraft on a server without mods? It’s impossible to administer past 5 people. For that using realms is an alternative . Every other server needs mods to function.
- throwaway76543 9y ago
  You may not have paused to consider that an open source minecraft server is free to implement a better administration system. It is not necessary to have mod compatibility in order to provide an extensible, powerful alternative.
oxguy3 9y ago
Yeah, most likely. It says it supports Bukkit and Sponge plugins, both of which are built in Java (dunno much about Sponge, but Bukkit plugins are literally just .JAR files)
- SpaceManiac 9y ago
  This was the original reason for the language choice: native compatibility with Bukkit plugins.
tylerhou 9y ago
$10 per GB? That’s insane -- basically what high end DDR4 costs upfront.
- mort96 9y ago
  It's basically what Digital Ocean's droplets cost: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/ https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/ $5/mo for 0.5G, $10/mo for 1G, $20/mo for 2G. All the standard droplets, except for the 3G for $15/mo one, make you pay $10 more per gigabyte. Both Vultr and Linode seem to offer twice the amount of RAM per dollar though.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheRealPomax 9y ago
    They just added a $15/mo 6G plan, though, which is mighty nice.
    - mort96 9y ago
      No, it's just 3G for $15/month, so that one particular plan takes $5 per gigabyte like Vultr and Linode. That isn't to say it isn't a nice deal though.
  - franga2000 9y ago
    I have yet to find a better $/RAM value than Contabo. 7€/month for a dual core 6GB RAM VPS. And the value only gets better the higher you go: https://contabo.com/?show=vps https://contabo.com/?show=vps
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    Digital Ocean do a really good value base VPS, but once you're spending $20/mo with them, there's much better options with more traditional VPS providers. They're priced to compete with an EC2 box, while not providing the value-add to go with it, IMO.
- 9y ago
mort96 9y ago
I imagine most people interested in hosting their own minecraft server has some old laptop or desktop lying around. It's a very inexpensive hobby to just install linux on them and run a minecraft server there. If the power bill is a concern, the computer wouldn't even have to be on 24/7; if it's just a server you and friends play on, it would be perfectly acceptable to just boot the computer whenever you want to play together.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I looked at using a droplet on DigitalOcean, it worked fine but there's quite a lot to consider in running a server. You can keep an image of the droplet and just boot when required. By that point my kids had moved on to Robocraft, and now Garrys Mod, and so it wasn't worth me maintaining a server for the occasional use it was getting.
iscoelho 9y ago
Memory has never been a problem for MC servers. Speaking as someone who's personally been involved in some of the larger servers -- Pain point has always been CPU usage on a single threaded level. Nowadays servers are optimized to the point where we squeeze all of the performance out of the CPU and run multiple instances of MC in order to accomplish that on a multi-threaded level. You can easily hold 500 players concurrent with zero lag on as little as 16GB of RAM and an E3v3 processor. You might say this is a lot of resources, but compare it with other FPS games and how many players they hold on single instances, and you'll realize Minecraft is in it's own league. Also, due to how much CPU is a bottleneck for MC, Cloud providers are avoided at all costs. 2.2ghz (AWS) is not acceptable at all for the use case. Minecraft servers are extremely optimized nowadays -- I have no clue where the rumor started that Java was the pain point.
- RenegadeEagle 9y ago
  hi buddy
- astrodust 9y ago
  My point is 16GB of memory isn't a whole lot if you've already got server hardware and a place to host it, that's really low-end these days, but it's a small fortune if you need to pony up $5-10/GB. per month for hosting services. I've been able to host Minecraft instances on my own hardware over a cable modem feed, and on a VM provisioned within a machine I fully control, but it's just not economical to do cloud-wise. I do miss the days when the server component of a multi-player game was pretty lean and non-intrusive so you could run it as a background process on pretty much anything that had good bandwidth.
  - Teckla 9y ago
    Perhaps you use a cloud VPS provider that over-provisions customers. Until recently, I ran a Minecraft server on a $10/month DigitalOcean Linux VPS. (I consider $10/month dirt cheap.) It ran very smooth. No lag or performance hiccups.

swrh 9y ago

I'd love to play with the code of a C/C++ Minecraft server. Is there any yet?

oxguy3 9y ago
Someone else just linked to this: https://cuberite.org/ https://cuberite.org/

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Have you ever played Minecraft on a server without mods? It’s impossible to administer past 5 people. For that using realms is an alternative . Every other server needs mods to function.

throwaway76543 9y ago
You may not have paused to consider that an open source minecraft server is free to implement a better administration system. It is not necessary to have mod compatibility in order to provide an extensible, powerful alternative.

oxguy3 9y ago

Yeah, most likely. It says it supports Bukkit and Sponge plugins, both of which are built in Java (dunno much about Sponge, but Bukkit plugins are literally just .JAR files)

SpaceManiac 9y ago
This was the original reason for the language choice: native compatibility with Bukkit plugins.

tylerhou 9y ago

$10 per GB? That’s insane -- basically what high end DDR4 costs upfront.

mort96 9y ago
It's basically what Digital Ocean's droplets cost: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/ https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/ $5/mo for 0.5G, $10/mo for 1G, $20/mo for 2G. All the standard droplets, except for the 3G for $15/mo one, make you pay $10 more per gigabyte. Both Vultr and Linode seem to offer twice the amount of RAM per dollar though.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  They just added a $15/mo 6G plan, though, which is mighty nice.
  - mort96 9y ago
    No, it's just 3G for $15/month, so that one particular plan takes $5 per gigabyte like Vultr and Linode. That isn't to say it isn't a nice deal though.
- franga2000 9y ago
  I have yet to find a better $/RAM value than Contabo. 7€/month for a dual core 6GB RAM VPS. And the value only gets better the higher you go: https://contabo.com/?show=vps https://contabo.com/?show=vps
- vertex-four 9y ago
  Digital Ocean do a really good value base VPS, but once you're spending $20/mo with them, there's much better options with more traditional VPS providers. They're priced to compete with an EC2 box, while not providing the value-add to go with it, IMO.
9y ago

mort96 9y ago

I imagine most people interested in hosting their own minecraft server has some old laptop or desktop lying around. It's a very inexpensive hobby to just install linux on them and run a minecraft server there. If the power bill is a concern, the computer wouldn't even have to be on 24/7; if it's just a server you and friends play on, it would be perfectly acceptable to just boot the computer whenever you want to play together.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
I looked at using a droplet on DigitalOcean, it worked fine but there's quite a lot to consider in running a server. You can keep an image of the droplet and just boot when required. By that point my kids had moved on to Robocraft, and now Garrys Mod, and so it wasn't worth me maintaining a server for the occasional use it was getting.

iscoelho 9y ago

Memory has never been a problem for MC servers. Speaking as someone who's personally been involved in some of the larger servers -- Pain point has always been CPU usage on a single threaded level. Nowadays servers are optimized to the point where we squeeze all of the performance out of the CPU and run multiple instances of MC in order to accomplish that on a multi-threaded level. You can easily hold 500 players concurrent with zero lag on as little as 16GB of RAM and an E3v3 processor. You might say this is a lot of resources, but compare it with other FPS games and how many players they hold on single instances, and you'll realize Minecraft is in it's own league. Also, due to how much CPU is a bottleneck for MC, Cloud providers are avoided at all costs. 2.2ghz (AWS) is not acceptable at all for the use case. Minecraft servers are extremely optimized nowadays -- I have no clue where the rumor started that Java was the pain point.

RenegadeEagle 9y ago
hi buddy
astrodust 9y ago
My point is 16GB of memory isn't a whole lot if you've already got server hardware and a place to host it, that's really low-end these days, but it's a small fortune if you need to pony up $5-10/GB. per month for hosting services. I've been able to host Minecraft instances on my own hardware over a cable modem feed, and on a VM provisioned within a machine I fully control, but it's just not economical to do cloud-wise. I do miss the days when the server component of a multi-player game was pretty lean and non-intrusive so you could run it as a background process on pretty much anything that had good bandwidth.
- Teckla 9y ago
  Perhaps you use a cloud VPS provider that over-provisions customers. Until recently, I ran a Minecraft server on a $10/month DigitalOcean Linux VPS. (I consider $10/month dirt cheap.) It ran very smooth. No lag or performance hiccups.