(Suggestion) For god sake, can we stop with changing the spawn rates.

your chunk + 5 more in each direction, I have a big post i was writing up last night that will answer some questions ill finish when I get home

Ok so let me try to explain the changes EMC has in place as best as I can

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Entity Activation Range
Monsters become "Deactive" at 32 blocks in the wild from a player. This matches exactly with the VANILLA change (as mentioned above, yes it was a change from Mojang) that made mobs barely move at 32 block distance.

However there is a key difference here -- mojangs 32 block check I believe is on a 3d plane, or very least includes Y in the mix.

So, Mojangs 32 block check is the main thing affecting natural spawn grinders.

Our change does not have have a Y check, so if any mob is within 32 blocks of you on the X/Z plane, they will be active.

So our system is less strict, and should only be kicking in when Mojangs would already be kicking in...

Now, I can look into removing Mojangs checks since ours is better anyways, so that they could move 50 blocks above you. I believe that code is a waste of resources anyways as its very ineffecient in implementation... I just have to track it down again to delete it.

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Mob spawning distance
Mojang default spawn range is up to 8 chunks, however we have reduced the range to 5 chunks so its 11x11

If anyone understands code, here is the relevant section:

Code:

                // EMC start - SpawnTickEvent
                SpawnTickEvent event = new SpawnTickEvent(worldserver.getWorld(), spawnRadius, entityhuman.getBukkitEntity());
                Bukkit.getPluginManager().callEvent(event);
                if (event.isCancelled()) {
                    continue;
                }
                b0 = event.getSpawnRadius();
                // EMC end

                for (int l = -b0; l <= b0; ++l) {
                    for (int i1 = -b0; i1 <= b0; ++i1) {
                        boolean flag3 = l == -b0 || l == b0 || i1 == -b0 || i1 == b0;

                        // CraftBukkit start
                        long chunkCoords = LongHash.toLong(l + k, i1 + j);

In vanilla, b0 is either 8 or same as view-distance (which ours is 7), so we are only 2 off from vanilla.

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Mob Spawning Limits
In vanilla, there is a formula for 70 * # of chunks eligible for spawning generated by that above code.

Ideally, this means 70 mobs per player. But note... thats spread out over 8 wide in vanilla (so 17x17 chunks) - MUCH larger area.

However, this count is for natural spawns, and is a world total.

A single user using a spawner grinder will make the world hit the cap, and noone gets natural spawns (remember those days?)

We stopped that by setting our world cap to like 10,000... But w/o extra code that would of killed us.

We implemented 2 checks with the entity limiter.

first: How many mobs are around the player already? If the count is 90 or more, natural spawns will be blocked FOR THAT PLAYER... So a player can not impact another player anymore.

That is done by simply cancelling the SpawnTickEvent, so that users chunks wont even attempt to spawn (improved performance!)

If the player is eligible for natural spawning, then the VANILLA CODE runs...

We do not modify anything dealing with light conditions. The spawning code for distance to player and light level checks are all 100% vanilla as far as I'm aware. I have studied this code, it all looks fine, and spigot nor us has modified it.

If it passes that check, it fires the normal mob spawn event.

This spawn is then checked for density - it looks for other mobs nearby the spawn, counts up the total and if there is already too many mobs in the area, we cancel it.

These density settings are configurable and we can tweak them to find good balance... So please, work with us and remain calm and just inform us when you think it needs tweaking then we can look into it.

It's very hard to get real world spawning setup in testing.

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The lighting / range check change claims

As said above, we have not modified this code. There is no way a monster can spawn within 23 blocks of you.

Now, as for light levels, I mentioned to Jack I think its a Spigot issue...

Spigot does make modifications to the lighting system of Minecraft, and delays light updates.

For a while we ran with the random light updates disabled as it improves performance, but I noticed how much it sucked with the black spots and turned it back on.

The only real thing I can see is that chunks have invalid light data, and mobs are spawning when they shouldnt be.

Considering I can't find anyn way to reproduce this, which is required in order to fix said problem, and that its pretty rare to happen... noone really has the time to spend trying to look into such a thing. Im sure everyone would much rather me work towards Dragon Tombs instead of spending a week on a rare fluke bug.

As for claims of AI changes for ranges - none of that has been changed.

AI is all still vanilla behavior (until we change the stop moving even at 32 Y)

I will look into items in water... but that should be fixed. ive heard no complaints till now and they worked fine in testing too.