[rspawn] Randomized Spawning for Minetest

Causes players to receive a spawn point anywhere on the map. Players will likely spawn very far from eachother into prisitine areas.

Features

• Player is assigned randomized spawnpoint on joining
  • New players will not spawn into protected areas
• Player will respawn at their spawnpoint if they die.
  • If beds spawning is active, then beds can be used to set players' re-spawn point (they still go to their main spawnpoint on invoking /spawn).
• Commands
  • Players can return to their spawn point with the /spawn command if they have spawn privilege.
    • Players can invite other players to join their spawn - see "Spawn guests" below
    • Players can allow any other player to visit their spawn - see "Town hosting" below
  • Players can request a new spawn point by typing /newspawn if they have the newspawn privilege.
  • Players can set their spawn point by typing /setspawn if they have the setspawn privelege.
  • Moderator players can assign a new random spawn for another player using /playerspawn if they have the spawnadmin privilege.

KNOWN ISSUE - Any player not yet registered with a spawn point will be given a spawn point anywhere in the world. If applying retroactively to a server, this will cause existing players to be re-spawned once.

Spawn guests

Randomized spawning typically causes players to spawn far from eachother. If players wish to share a single spawn point, a player can add another to join their spawn position.

The player issuing the invite (host) must typically pay a levvy when adding another player.

• /spawn add <player> - allow another player to visit your spawn directly (levvy must be paid), or lift their exile (no levvy to pay)
• /spawn kick <targetplayer>
  • revoke rights to visit you
  • if the exiled player gets close to your spawn, they are kicked back to their own spawn
• /spawn visit <player> - visit a player's spawn
• /spawn guests - see who you have added to your spawn
• /spawn hosts - see whose spawns you may visit

Guests can help the spawn owner manage bans on their town.

Town hosting

You can host a town from your spawn if you wish. Hosting a town means that any player who connects to the server will be able to visit your spawn. You can still /spawn kick <playername> individually in this mode. If you switch off town hosting, only allowed guests in your normal guestlist can visit.

There is no levvy on hosting a town.

• /spawn town { open | close } - switch town hosting on or off.
• /spawn town { ban | unban } <playername> [<town>] - ban or unban a player from a town
  • Town owners can use this, as well as unexiled guests of the town owner

Explicit guests can ban/unban other players from a town.

Town owner can forcibly ban a player by first adding the player to their guest list, and then exiling them. Guests cannot override this.

Settings

Note that the spawn generation is performed in the background on a timer, allowing storing a collection of random spawn points to be generated ahead of time.

Generic settings used

• name - used for knowing the server admin's name
• water_level - Spawns are always set above water level, default 1
• static_spawnpoint - main position the player will start at, default {0,0,0}
• enable_bed_respawn - from beds mod - if active, then respawning will happen at beds, instead of randomized spawnpoint

rspawn-specific settings

• Settings related to spawn generation
  • rspawn.max_pregen - maximum number of spawn points to pre-generate, default 20
  • rspawn.search_radius - lateral radius around random point, within which a spawn point will be sought, default 32
  • rspawn.gen_frequency - how frequently (in seconds) to generate a new spawn point, default 30, increase this on slower servers
• rspawn.spawn_anywhere - whether to spawn anywhere in the world at sea level
  • default true
  • if false, will randomize around the static spawn point
• rspawn.cooldown_time - how many seconds between two uses of /newspawn, per player
• rspawn.kick_on_fail - whether to kick the player if a randomized spawn cannot be set, default false
• rspawn.spawn_block - place this custom block under the user's spawn point
• Guestlist and town related settings
  • rspawn.levvy_name - name of the block to use as levvy charge on the player issuing an invitation, default default:cobble
  • rspawn.levvy_qtty - number of blocks to levvy from the player who issued the invitation, default 10
  • rspawn.kick_period - how frequently to check if exiled players are too near their locus of exile, default 3 (seconds)
  • rspawn.exile_distance - distance from exile locus at which player gets bounced back to their own spawn, default 64 (nodes)
• rspawn.debug - whether to print debugging messages, default false
• Bounds limiting - you can limit the random spawning search area to a given subsection of the global map if you wish:
  • rspawn.min_x, rspawn.max_x, rspawn.min_z, rspawn.max_z as expected

Troubleshooting

As admin, you will receive notifications of inability to generate spawns when players join without being set a spawn.

You can turn on rspawn.debug = true to see debug in logs.

Spawn generation uses a temporary forceload to read the blocks in the area ; it then releases the forceload after operating, so should not depend on the max_forceloaded_blocks setting.

If the generation log shows 0 air nodes found within <x> on more than 2-3 consecutive tries, you may want to check that another mod is not forceloading blocks and then not subsequently clearing them.

You may also find some mods do permanent forceloads by design (though this should be rare). In your world folder ~/.minetest/worlds/<yourworld> there should eb a force_loaded.txt - see that its contents are simply return {}; if there is data in the table, then something else is forceloading blocks with permanence.

Resolutions in order of best to worst:

• identify the mod and have it clear them properly (ideal)
  • on UNIX/Linux you should be able to run grep -rl forceload ~/.minetest/mods/ to see all mod files where forceloading is being done
• increase the max number of forceloaded blocks
  • (not great - you will effectively be simply mitigating a forceloaded-blocks-related memory leak)
• Stop minetest, delete the force_loaded.txt file, and start it again
  • (bad - some things in the mods using the forceload mechanism may break)

Single Player Mode

This mod is mainly intended for use on servers with multiple players.

It is also suitable for single player sessions too - if you want a new location to start a creative build, but don't want to go through creating another, separate world for it, just grab yourself a new spawnpoint!

You may want to tune the mod to suit your computer's capabilities ; to this end, the following may be helpful:

• Add rspawn to your world
  • Go to the Advanced Settings area of Minetest, look for mods > rspawn
  • Change the frequency of pregeneration as required
    • Good CPUs, enough RAM and SSD hard drives might get away with a frequency of 20sec (!)
    • If you find your game immediately lagging due to excessive map generation, switch the frequency to say 120
  • Change the Cooldown time - default is 300 seconds (5 minutes) between uses of /newspawn
  • Optionally, change the maximum pregen to the desired number of spawnpoints to pregenerate and hold
• Start the game session; Wait around 1 minute or so as the initial spawn point gets generated and is assigned to you
• Jump around! (with /newspawn)
  • Until you exhaust your pregens :-P

License

(C) 2017 Tai "DuCake" Kedzierski

Provided under the terms of the LGPL v3.0