Minetest tileserver

Near realtime tileserver for minetest

Overview

A standalone java-based tile-server for minetest. Renders the mapblocks on-demand as an interactive map and displays the current players. As players interact with the map the changed MapBlocks get re-rendered and updated in the web-client (near-realtime, 20 seconds default)

The resulting tiles are cached in a file-backend and served to the client if unchanged.

Development state

• Tested and live with one Production-Instance (see Demo)
• Please file issues/requests in the github issue-tracker

Demo

• See: https://pandorabox.io/map/#-1830.125/426.5/11

Compatibility

Requirements:

• Postgresql Database for minetest backend (existing)
• Java runtime (8+)
• Modern machine with enough (2GB+) RAM and CPU

Testing was done on a fairly new minetest version (0.4.17) There will be failures in the MapBlock Parser if the version found is not met (older minetest-versions).

Please create an issue with minetest-version and MapBlock info in the bug-tracker if that happens to you.

Installing

• Download the jar in the releases section
• Backup your minetest database (THIS IS IMPORTANT!!) as the db schema gets updated (see How it works)
• Configure the database connection according to the Configuration section if they are not default value
• Start the server with: java -jar tileserver.jar

Configuring

The application drwas its configuration from the tileserver.properties file. Key and values should be separated by a = (see Example config)

Example config

Example for a setup with server-name myhost:

#tileserver.properties
minetest.db.url=jdbc:postgresql://myhost:5432/postgres
minetest.db.username=postgres
minetest.db.password=1234

Configuration parameters

http.port

Port to expose http server on

• Default: 8080

tiles.maxy

Max y value for blocks to render (in Mapblocks)

• Default: 10 (Equals 160 blocks)

tiles.miny

Min y value for blocks to render (in Mapblocks)

• Default: -1 (Equals -16 blocks)

tilerenderer.updateinterval

Update interval to check for new tiles (in seconds)

• Default: 20

tilerenderer.initialrendering.enable

Enable initial rendering, renders/caches all tiles on startup and disables the realtime tile-update until restarted with false again. Leaving this to default (false) renders all tiles on-demand

• Default: false

player.updateinterval

Update interval to check for Player movements (in seconds)

• Default: 2

minetest.db.url

Url for DB Connection (jdbc connection string)

• Default: jdbc:postgresql://127.0.0.1:5432/minetest

minetest.db.username

Username for DB Connection

• Default: sa

minetest.db.password

Username for DB Connection

• Default:

minetest.db.driver

Driver for DB Connection (only psql supported for now)

• Default: org.postgresql.Driver

block.parser.poi.enable

Enable parsing of POI blocks, provided with the mod in this repository

• Default: true

block.parser.travelnet.enable

Enable parsing of Travelnet boxes

• Default: true

How it works

The blocks table in the minetest database gets a new column for the modification time. Triggers for insert and update on the table ensure the time gets updated after each change:

alter table blocks add column mtime bigint not null default 0;
create index BLOCKS_TIME on blocks(mtime);

create or replace function on_blocks_change() returns trigger as
$BODY$
BEGIN
    NEW.mtime = floor(EXTRACT(EPOCH from now()) * 1000);
    return NEW;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

create trigger blocks_update
 before insert or update
 on blocks
 for each row
 execute procedure on_blocks_change();

These changes get applied atomatically with the initial DB-Migration, so please create a backup before starting the Tileserver!!

With this information and the modification-time on the created tiles the periodically scheduled Updater-Job removes the stale Tiles in the tile-cache.

On the next access (browsing on the web-interface to the coordinates) the Tile gets re-rendered.

Building

Requirements:

• Java 8+
• Maven 3+

Build, test, install:

mvn clean install

With Docker

• See the Makefile

Contributing

• Issues, recommendations and pull-requests are welcome