[rspawn] Randomized Spawning for Minetest

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

Features

• Player is assigned randomized spawnpoint on joining
• Player will respawn at their spawnpoint if they die.
  • If beds spawning is active, then beds can be used to reset the players' spawn point.
• Players will not spawn in spaces that are protected by any other player than the Server Admin.
• 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 invites" 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 invites

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

The player issuing the invite (host) must typically pay a levvy when the other player (guest) accepts.

When the guest accepts:

• The host will pay the levvy from their inventory
• The guest's spawn will be set to the host's spawn position
• The guest will be transported to their new spawn immediately

The guest can return to their original spawn by running /spawn original ; they will themselves be charged the same levvy.

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 - on servers, sets the name of the admin, players can spawn in areas protected by the admin.
• 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 5
  • rspawn.search_radius - lateral radius around random point, within which a spawn poitn will be sought, default 32
  • rspawn.gen_frequency - how frequently (in seconds) to generate a new spawn point, default 30
• 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.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 99
• 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
• rspawn.debug - whether to print debugging messages, default false

Troubleshooting

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

If the generation log shows 0 air nodes found within <x> on more than 2-3 consecutive tries, you may want to check the max number of forceloaded blocks configured - see max_forceloaded_blocks.

This should be at least 2*(rspawn.search_radius^3) / (16^3), so with the default rspawn.search_radius = 32, you should have at least max_forceloaded_blocks = 8

Also check that another mod is not forceloading blocks and not clearing them.

You may also find some mods (rarely) do permanent forceloads. 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.

Resolutions in order of best to worst:

• identify the mod and have it clear them properly (ideal)
• 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)

License

(C) 2017 Tai "DuCake" Kedzierski

Provided under the terms of the LGPL v3.0