7 ms·

PaperMC/Paper: The most widely used, high performance Minecraft server

186 points by notamy 3y ago

freetime2 3y ago
Can this be used with “bedrock edition” of Minecraft? Or only the java version?
- Badbird5907 3y ago
  Only java edition, there is a plugin called Geyser https://geysermc.org/ https://geysermc.org/ that adds protocol compatibility between the two, allowing bedrock clients to connect.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    It works surprisingly well but is a little glitchy
caladin 3y ago
Are there any recommended open source projects for handling the management of a Minecraft server? So maybe some kind of control panel, automated backups, etc.? I specifically mean some kind of all-in-one solution rather than a hodgepodge of tools and bash scripts. Something that gets one close to the Minecraft Java Realms experience + mods, which one can just provision on their EC2 instance or wherever they may run the Minecraft server.
- jallasprit 3y ago
  Yeah, a lot of people setup https://pterodactyl.io/ https://pterodactyl.io/ on their servers and use that to provision and manage game servers.
  - teekert 3y ago
    Looks nice! I have a comprehensive docker compose file with itzg’s image [0] repeated a dozen times. [0] https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server
    - zdwolfe 3y ago
      I use this extensively, it's so wonderful
- ChiptuneIsCool 3y ago
  https://pterodactyl.io/ https://pterodactyl.io/ Something like this maybe?
- ro_bit 3y ago
  Pterodactyl is a commonly used one as the other comments say, but just to give some background, Pterodactyl itself, rather than being a minecraft server hosting software, is actually a generic server hosting software that can be used pretty effectively with a lot of games or even webservers. The base configuration of a pterodactyl managed instance is an egg, which is basically a docker image wrapped in a bunch of configurations[1]. This means you can run any docker container in pterodactyl and manage it all through a fairly slick web panel[2] which allows you to easily tweak things like memory allocation, send commands directly to the console, and share access with other accounts. There's lots of eggs already configured for minecraft and other games like Rust (not the programming language), so a lot of the complexity of setting up a docker container is abstracted away and for a non-advanced user its a pretty nice balance between the ease of use for a realm and the extensibility of a full server. [1] https://pterodactyl.io/community/config/eggs/creating_a_custom_egg.html https://pterodactyl.io/community/config/eggs/creating_a_cust... [2] https://streamable.com/hlscux https://streamable.com/hlscux (an example of a panel for a server I administer)
  - MiguelX413 3y ago
    Holy shit I need to use this now.
eikenberry 3y ago
What are their competitors? Do these unofficial servers work for both the Java edition and the MS C++ addition?
- notamy 3y ago
  Paper is for Java edition only, as it’s a series of patches on top of the official Java edition server.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  They only work for Java Edition. As for competitors...well it is not really a competition -- it just depends on what you are focused on for your player-base. Paper is a performance-focused fork of Spigot which is an, to very loosely describe, "interface" for Bukkit. Bukkit itself is an API for Minecraft that interfaces with plugins/mods. If someone is running "modded" Java Minecraft, they are likely touching one of these, or even a fork of Paper. Paper adds some features/tweaks on-top of Spigot and if your server is having some performance issues or you want a specific feature that Paper offers then you would utilize Paper. If you are fine on Spigot, you use Spigot. Personally I have always used Paper when hosting servers, as performance (less "rubber-banding" with higher player-counts) was my focus in that time. As well Paper offered the configurable option of "per-player" mob spawning, so we did not have a single player that stood above a cave hogging all of the mob spawns.
- mastazi 3y ago
  I have done some research about this topic some time back, these are the links I had gathered back then. I was researching Java edition specifically, however among the ones linked below, at least one (Nukkit) has a Bedrock (C++) edition. Many of these are related, e.g. Paper is based on Spigot which in turn is based on Bukkit. Paper seems to be the most widely used currently. Paper https://papermc.io/ https://papermc.io/ Spigot https://www.spigotmc.org/ https://www.spigotmc.org/ Bukkit https://dev.bukkit.org/ https://dev.bukkit.org/ Nukkit https://cloudburstmc.org/articles/ https://cloudburstmc.org/articles/ Folia (mod for Paper) https://github.com/PaperMC/Folia https://github.com/PaperMC/Folia PaperBin (mod for Paper) https://github.com/x4e/PaperBin https://github.com/x4e/PaperBin
nor-and-or-not 3y ago
So, how compatible is this to the vanilla server? Does anyone have experience with this?
- ro_bit 3y ago
  Paper itself is a series of patches over the official vanilla server implementation. You can convert a vanilla server to a paper server just by replacing the vanilla server.jar file with a paper server.jar one, and converting back to a vanilla server can be done fairly easily (but a bit more difficult than dropping in) It's much, much more performant, and able to handle a lot more players/chunks loaded/etc on the same setup compared to a vanilla server. Along with significant performance improvements out of the box, it also adds more configurations (vanilla has server.properties, but papermc adds paper.yml) which allow you to hand tune optimizations[1], from things like disabling player collisions, disabling block updates for certain laggy blocks, etc. These changes are configurable because they trade off expected vanilla behavior for better performance. The real strength of paper though is that they do all this while also implementing the spigot API, which enables paper server owners to use a wide variety of server mods[2] that can allow you to add things like minigames, anticheat, etc while still being compatible with unmodified clients. [1] https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/guide-server-optimization%E2%9A%A1.283181/ https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/guide-server-optimization%E... (outdated but a bit more succinct) https://paper-chan.moe/paper-optimization/ https://paper-chan.moe/paper-optimization/ (more technical) [2] https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/categories/spigot.4/ https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/categories/spigot.4/
- zdwolfe 3y ago
  I much prefer Fabric server to Paper. Paper has a couple game-breaking differences in advanced redstone, and Fabric in general has more mod compatibility. There are options to disable the redstone differences, but it's a bit annoying.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    I simply restored that redstone functionality. Easy enough.
oldkinglog 3y ago
Paper can't provide binaries as it would infringe Mojang's copyright. Users must "build" the server by downloading the official binary and applying local patches. This is well-automated for users. Licensing wasn't so much a problem in the early days of Minecraft. The first really popular server mod (CraftBukkit) not only provided binaries, but deopfuscated server code on a GitHub repo (since DMCA'd): http://github.com/bukkit/craftbukkit http://github.com/bukkit/craftbukkit. That repository was ostensibly licensed as LGPL, but no one really believed that, given it was derived from Mojang's proprietary binaries. Mojang eventually acquired CraftBukkit and hired their devs. And there's an interesting footnote: for several months, Mojang didn't tell anyone they'd acquired CraftBukkit, and they kept making releases to the public GitHub repository. Given it was Mojang making these pushes, I believe (IANAL) that they are officially-licensed LGPL versions of the Minecraft server, albeit ~10 years out-of-date now.
- ro_bit 3y ago
  Interestingly enough, CB wasn't DMCAed by Mojang, but actually from one of its contributors, who was angry that he had been contributing free labor to a project that was secretly owned by Mojang (there was no CLA so he was legally able to take down the project by not authorizing his contributions to be used). There was a whole lot of drama and conflicting viewpoints around about this, but here's a post about it that I think stays pretty close to just the facts. https://blog.jwf.io/2020/04/open-source-minecraft-bukkit-gpl/ https://blog.jwf.io/2020/04/open-source-minecraft-bukkit-gpl... (not associated with the author)
  - piperswe 3y ago
    > not authorizing his contributions to be used Actually, it's a lot more interesting than that. My understanding was that said contributor realized that since Bukkit is GPL, it can't be legally distributed combined with proprietary Mojang code. His takedown notices were based on GPL violation, not just revoking authorization (which he probably can't do with the GPL?)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tadhunt 3y ago
I run a company that provides Minecraft server hosting for businesses (i.e. after school programs, summer camps, Code Ninjas, E-Sports leagues etc) and produces fun and educational events using Minecraft (i.e. 10-15 elementary school kids in an event space at a library learning physics by building roller coasters in the game). We've switched entirely over to Paper for everything because it works so much better than vanilla, and it also enables us to put it behind a Velocity proxy (Minecraft Java Application layer proxy also developed by the same group that develops Paper) for better scalability, more secure infrastructure, and some cool features like enabling any version of Java edition to join the same server (mad props to the ViaVersion & ViaBackwards plugin teams that make this possible!). This is impossible to do with Vanilla. We do all of our own content development creating the activities the kids do during the events, and the plugin ecosystem that someone else mentioned is hugely helpful for this. I especially want to call out how awesome the Geyser and Floodgate plugins are — they make it possible for Java and Bedrock clients to play together in the same world, which makes our customers lives so much easier. We're hiring part time / contract developers, event hosts, and technical support personnel. If this sounds interesting, please reach out. My contact info is in my profile.
- jbm 3y ago
  Another point for Geyser and Floodgate. I have Minecraft on iOS, as well as two Java licenses. You can have both mixed on the same server if you are using Paper with Floodgate and Geyser. It's great; my younger child can use iOS, while my elder kids can use the java licenses on their computers.
  - siegecraft 3y ago
    Constantly updating geyser to keep it up to date with the most recent bedrock versions is quite a pain. Maybe paper has tools to automate these updates (I use fabric) but it seems unlikely.
    - Badbird5907 3y ago
      Geyser/any third-party plugin isn't by the paper team, so they wouldn't have tools to auto update. (they also generally discourage auto-updating any software/plugins). There are plugins available to update geyser automatically though, here's one: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/geyserupdater.88555/ https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/geyserupdater.88555/

186 points by notamy 3y ago

freetime2 3y ago

Can this be used with “bedrock edition” of Minecraft? Or only the java version?

Badbird5907 3y ago
Only java edition, there is a plugin called Geyser https://geysermc.org/ https://geysermc.org/ that adds protocol compatibility between the two, allowing bedrock clients to connect.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  It works surprisingly well but is a little glitchy

caladin 3y ago

Are there any recommended open source projects for handling the management of a Minecraft server? So maybe some kind of control panel, automated backups, etc.? I specifically mean some kind of all-in-one solution rather than a hodgepodge of tools and bash scripts. Something that gets one close to the Minecraft Java Realms experience + mods, which one can just provision on their EC2 instance or wherever they may run the Minecraft server.

jallasprit 3y ago
Yeah, a lot of people setup https://pterodactyl.io/ https://pterodactyl.io/ on their servers and use that to provision and manage game servers.
- teekert 3y ago
  Looks nice! I have a comprehensive docker compose file with itzg’s image [0] repeated a dozen times. [0] https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server
  - zdwolfe 3y ago
    I use this extensively, it's so wonderful
ChiptuneIsCool 3y ago
https://pterodactyl.io/ https://pterodactyl.io/ Something like this maybe?
ro_bit 3y ago
Pterodactyl is a commonly used one as the other comments say, but just to give some background, Pterodactyl itself, rather than being a minecraft server hosting software, is actually a generic server hosting software that can be used pretty effectively with a lot of games or even webservers. The base configuration of a pterodactyl managed instance is an egg, which is basically a docker image wrapped in a bunch of configurations[1]. This means you can run any docker container in pterodactyl and manage it all through a fairly slick web panel[2] which allows you to easily tweak things like memory allocation, send commands directly to the console, and share access with other accounts. There's lots of eggs already configured for minecraft and other games like Rust (not the programming language), so a lot of the complexity of setting up a docker container is abstracted away and for a non-advanced user its a pretty nice balance between the ease of use for a realm and the extensibility of a full server. [1] https://pterodactyl.io/community/config/eggs/creating_a_custom_egg.html https://pterodactyl.io/community/config/eggs/creating_a_cust... [2] https://streamable.com/hlscux https://streamable.com/hlscux (an example of a panel for a server I administer)
- MiguelX413 3y ago
  Holy shit I need to use this now.

eikenberry 3y ago

What are their competitors? Do these unofficial servers work for both the Java edition and the MS C++ addition?

notamy 3y ago
Paper is for Java edition only, as it’s a series of patches on top of the official Java edition server.
galleywest200 3y ago
They only work for Java Edition. As for competitors...well it is not really a competition -- it just depends on what you are focused on for your player-base. Paper is a performance-focused fork of Spigot which is an, to very loosely describe, "interface" for Bukkit. Bukkit itself is an API for Minecraft that interfaces with plugins/mods. If someone is running "modded" Java Minecraft, they are likely touching one of these, or even a fork of Paper. Paper adds some features/tweaks on-top of Spigot and if your server is having some performance issues or you want a specific feature that Paper offers then you would utilize Paper. If you are fine on Spigot, you use Spigot. Personally I have always used Paper when hosting servers, as performance (less "rubber-banding" with higher player-counts) was my focus in that time. As well Paper offered the configurable option of "per-player" mob spawning, so we did not have a single player that stood above a cave hogging all of the mob spawns.
mastazi 3y ago
I have done some research about this topic some time back, these are the links I had gathered back then. I was researching Java edition specifically, however among the ones linked below, at least one (Nukkit) has a Bedrock (C++) edition. Many of these are related, e.g. Paper is based on Spigot which in turn is based on Bukkit. Paper seems to be the most widely used currently. Paper https://papermc.io/ https://papermc.io/ Spigot https://www.spigotmc.org/ https://www.spigotmc.org/ Bukkit https://dev.bukkit.org/ https://dev.bukkit.org/ Nukkit https://cloudburstmc.org/articles/ https://cloudburstmc.org/articles/ Folia (mod for Paper) https://github.com/PaperMC/Folia https://github.com/PaperMC/Folia PaperBin (mod for Paper) https://github.com/x4e/PaperBin https://github.com/x4e/PaperBin

nor-and-or-not 3y ago

So, how compatible is this to the vanilla server? Does anyone have experience with this?

ro_bit 3y ago
Paper itself is a series of patches over the official vanilla server implementation. You can convert a vanilla server to a paper server just by replacing the vanilla server.jar file with a paper server.jar one, and converting back to a vanilla server can be done fairly easily (but a bit more difficult than dropping in) It's much, much more performant, and able to handle a lot more players/chunks loaded/etc on the same setup compared to a vanilla server. Along with significant performance improvements out of the box, it also adds more configurations (vanilla has server.properties, but papermc adds paper.yml) which allow you to hand tune optimizations[1], from things like disabling player collisions, disabling block updates for certain laggy blocks, etc. These changes are configurable because they trade off expected vanilla behavior for better performance. The real strength of paper though is that they do all this while also implementing the spigot API, which enables paper server owners to use a wide variety of server mods[2] that can allow you to add things like minigames, anticheat, etc while still being compatible with unmodified clients. [1] https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/guide-server-optimization%E2%9A%A1.283181/ https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/guide-server-optimization%E... (outdated but a bit more succinct) https://paper-chan.moe/paper-optimization/ https://paper-chan.moe/paper-optimization/ (more technical) [2] https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/categories/spigot.4/ https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/categories/spigot.4/
zdwolfe 3y ago
I much prefer Fabric server to Paper. Paper has a couple game-breaking differences in advanced redstone, and Fabric in general has more mod compatibility. There are options to disable the redstone differences, but it's a bit annoying.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  I simply restored that redstone functionality. Easy enough.

oldkinglog 3y ago

Paper can't provide binaries as it would infringe Mojang's copyright. Users must "build" the server by downloading the official binary and applying local patches. This is well-automated for users. Licensing wasn't so much a problem in the early days of Minecraft. The first really popular server mod (CraftBukkit) not only provided binaries, but deopfuscated server code on a GitHub repo (since DMCA'd): http://github.com/bukkit/craftbukkit http://github.com/bukkit/craftbukkit. That repository was ostensibly licensed as LGPL, but no one really believed that, given it was derived from Mojang's proprietary binaries. Mojang eventually acquired CraftBukkit and hired their devs. And there's an interesting footnote: for several months, Mojang didn't tell anyone they'd acquired CraftBukkit, and they kept making releases to the public GitHub repository. Given it was Mojang making these pushes, I believe (IANAL) that they are officially-licensed LGPL versions of the Minecraft server, albeit ~10 years out-of-date now.

ro_bit 3y ago
Interestingly enough, CB wasn't DMCAed by Mojang, but actually from one of its contributors, who was angry that he had been contributing free labor to a project that was secretly owned by Mojang (there was no CLA so he was legally able to take down the project by not authorizing his contributions to be used). There was a whole lot of drama and conflicting viewpoints around about this, but here's a post about it that I think stays pretty close to just the facts. https://blog.jwf.io/2020/04/open-source-minecraft-bukkit-gpl/ https://blog.jwf.io/2020/04/open-source-minecraft-bukkit-gpl... (not associated with the author)
- piperswe 3y ago
  > not authorizing his contributions to be used Actually, it's a lot more interesting than that. My understanding was that said contributor realized that since Bukkit is GPL, it can't be legally distributed combined with proprietary Mojang code. His takedown notices were based on GPL violation, not just revoking authorization (which he probably can't do with the GPL?)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tadhunt 3y ago

I run a company that provides Minecraft server hosting for businesses (i.e. after school programs, summer camps, Code Ninjas, E-Sports leagues etc) and produces fun and educational events using Minecraft (i.e. 10-15 elementary school kids in an event space at a library learning physics by building roller coasters in the game). We've switched entirely over to Paper for everything because it works so much better than vanilla, and it also enables us to put it behind a Velocity proxy (Minecraft Java Application layer proxy also developed by the same group that develops Paper) for better scalability, more secure infrastructure, and some cool features like enabling any version of Java edition to join the same server (mad props to the ViaVersion & ViaBackwards plugin teams that make this possible!). This is impossible to do with Vanilla. We do all of our own content development creating the activities the kids do during the events, and the plugin ecosystem that someone else mentioned is hugely helpful for this. I especially want to call out how awesome the Geyser and Floodgate plugins are — they make it possible for Java and Bedrock clients to play together in the same world, which makes our customers lives so much easier. We're hiring part time / contract developers, event hosts, and technical support personnel. If this sounds interesting, please reach out. My contact info is in my profile.

jbm 3y ago
Another point for Geyser and Floodgate. I have Minecraft on iOS, as well as two Java licenses. You can have both mixed on the same server if you are using Paper with Floodgate and Geyser. It's great; my younger child can use iOS, while my elder kids can use the java licenses on their computers.
- siegecraft 3y ago
  Constantly updating geyser to keep it up to date with the most recent bedrock versions is quite a pain. Maybe paper has tools to automate these updates (I use fabric) but it seems unlikely.
  - Badbird5907 3y ago
    Geyser/any third-party plugin isn't by the paper team, so they wouldn't have tools to auto update. (they also generally discourage auto-updating any software/plugins). There are plugins available to update geyser automatically though, here's one: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/geyserupdater.88555/ https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/geyserupdater.88555/