[Guide / Mod Approval] Setting client render distance higher than server’s on 1.18

Hello everyone,

1.18 locks the client render distance to be the same as the server’s, as quite a lot of you will probably have already noticed. This is in contrast to the 1.17 behaviour, where the chucks maybe wouldn’t load further than the server, but, as soon as you had them, they wouldn’t get removed from your view until further away than your client set distance, making you able to look over your builds, assuming you had loaded them previously. I think the 1.17 approach is simply objectivly better

Fear not, a mod has been made to solve our troubles. It’s called Bobby, and it’s been out for a while now, going back to 1.16. It doesn’t just keep previously loaded chunks in ram, it also stores them in the game files to make you able to load chunks loaded days prior without having to consult the server, assuming nothing has changed.
In my quick testing on the creative server I usually build on, it works really well, with perfect multi world support.
By default, it never deletes those files, but it can be set up to have it delete all files associated with a server as soon as you log out, making it effectively a 1.17 roll-back.

If you want to install it, it’s a fabric mod. Get some other guide on how to install fabric, and then just throw the .jar in your mods folder. As you can see below, it is now approved.

-

For the people who multi-instance with MultiMC or simmialir. I couldn't get simbolic links to work, meaning every instance had to have its own .bobby folder, unlike saves, which all of my instances share.
If you do figure out how to do that, please share, as I think it can be quite benificial to be able to load everything only once, and see each change every other instance makes. If I understand the mod correctly, the .bobby folder should behave like a databse of chunks, so I think it might be possible in some way...

~ Egeau

Thank you for finding this! I've been looking for something like this forever.

I ditched OptiFine and I have this mod now (I'll still need to download other mods for OptiFine's features, though).

I got everything up and running.

32 chunk with completary shader, get 10fps



Continumm shader with 64 chunk:

Thank you so much for this!

Yay, thank you
I can see clearly now!

Optifine + Optifabric + Bobby works great on my system.

I do notice when I switch SMPs it loads the SMP I was just on then unloads that slowly and loads the new chunks in on the actual SMP I am on.

EDIT: Here is an example. I went from SMP7 spawn to Utopia spawn.

I’ve noticed this, too. The mod creates a file based on the IP that was used to join the server. The best workaround would be to keep SMP1-SMP9, Utopia, and Games in the server list so those worlds can be separate.

Tonight, I’m loading all of SMP8’s town to see what it looks like.

In the .bobby folder I should put all of the servers IPs you are saying?

Fast response

That might not work. After switching SMPs, the mod still thinks you’re on the server you joined at first, so it tries to load a completely different world.

Ohhhh I see, alright. Well I guess I will just suck it up then.

Are you going to disconnect and connect directly to different servers, or will you use Bungeecord?

I'm just gonna move servers using the /smp command,