[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
• 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 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, or lift their exile
• /spawn kick <player> - revoke rights to visit you, and if they are in your space, returns them 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 who has added you to their spawn

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.cooldown_time - how many seconds between two uses of /newspawn, per player
• 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_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
• Bounds limiting - you can limit the random spawning to a given area if you wish:
  • rspawn.min_x, rspawn.max_x, rspawn.min_z, rspawn.max_z as expected

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)

Singple 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