Minetest Forums

What would it take to make the entire minetest world ('The world is a cube of side length 61840') continuously active? In other words, rather than a territory chunk rendering into existence only due to the player's observation/presence, how could time and events continue in all areas of the world even when not viewed?
Could multiple computers be linked together to do this? Or several graphics cards?
Does anyone have any idea what it would take?
Thanks

you mean like a rendering farm?

Here's some information (old but still relevant I think)
I think it would take quite a bit though, to achieve what you describe.

by PilzAdam » Mon May 13, 2013 05:10
This article from the dev wiki describes the usage of threads in Minetest: http://dev.minetest.net/Engine_structure#Threads
Note that you can change some etting in minetest.conf to use more threads:

Code: Select all
# This specifies the number of threads used for world generation
num_emerge_threads = 1
# And this how many threads are used to download media from a server that uses cURL
media_fetch_threads = 8

Way too much, because what it really means is that all ABMs (by definition I think LBMs wouldn't make sense anymore) are active everywhere. Which would often mean, in turn, megatons of active entities (mobs).

If making the entire world were a real project, one would have to look for ways to optimize things by skipping the parts of the world where nothing can change. This would mean either removing ABMs from the engine, or providing a way to define them more precisely (for instance min and max altitude) so that the engine could use this data to skip areas where no ABM is active.

Then remains mainly (there's also node timers) entities, because they can change the world too (fireballs that set things on fire for instance). So entities should have to be treated like players.

This seems possible, as long as the game doesn't spawn too many entities/mobs.

There is an API function to keep a chunk loaded : minetest.forceload_block, but always keep in mind that it may take much CPU and RAM.
That's what was done on MinetestForFun Classic server on a few dozen of chunks around mesecons factories (by the mesecons mod itself), and the lag was already noticeable.