[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

This effect is permanent ; the guest cannot "undo" to retrieve their old spawn. The guest should cleanup their old spawn before leaving it. Server admins may wish to allow extended transportable inventory, like bags or ender chests, to facilitate such transitions.

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