Pre-Generated World

[Wizard Veneficus]

Hey! First time poster here. I just discovered MC-server a few days ago. Super cool project! So, I ran into the problem that a lot of people have run into, I'm sure. My Raspberry Pi has trouble generating chunks on the fly when I am exploring the world. To solve this, my thought was to pre-generate chunks by setting "pregenerateDistance" in the "World.ini" file to 100 instead of the default 20. This causes 10,000 bits to be generated on the start of the server (hopefully this works as i think it does). But, this method takes FOREVER to generate those bits, because the Pi isnt a powerhouse.

So, really my question is: How can I pre-generate a large world so that the Pi wont be bogged down while my friends and I are playing on it?

I did find a tool on Windows that will pre-generate a world. But, every time I would transfer the world over to the Pi, it didnt work. (I followed the steps where you replace the files in the "region" folder with the ones from the new world. But, it never seemed to work). Maybe I am doing something completely wrong. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Wizard V.

[NiLSPACE]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

Perhaps the tool you're using to generate the world doesn't use the Anvil scheme. What file extension do the files it generates have?

[Wizard Veneficus]

What file extension do the files it generates have?

They were .mca, which I believe is the Anvil scheme.

I was using the Minecraft Land Generator to create the world. But, when I would replace the region files in the MCserver with the ones from the world I generated, the server would always act as if there were no files in the region folder and generate new chunks. I did make sure to change the spawn point in the world.ini file.

-Thanks!

[xoft]

That's weird. Just to be sure, did you place the .mca files in the right place, where the original .mca files had been generated by MCS? You should have needed to overwrite a few of them.
Also note that changing the spawn point in the world.ini file after a player has logged in doesn't affect that player anymore - they have their position saved in the player data file. Check that you spawn at the expected coords, if not, teleport to the right ones.

[Wizard Veneficus]

Ah, I was deleting the old .mca files, not overwriting them. So, I should overwrite them, not delete and replace them?
I did change the coordinates before logging into the server.

[xoft]

I mentioned overwriting just so that we're absolutely sure that the files are in the right place, it doesn't really matter if you delete them beforehands or overwrite while copying the new world.
Just a quick idea, how are you copying the mca files to the RasPi? If using WinSCP or a similar tool, make sure you select "binary" mode for transfer, otherwise it will corrupt the files (it does a CRLF <-> LF conversion for text files between Linux and Windows).

[Wizard Veneficus]

I was just plugging a flash drive into the Pi and copying the .mca files over to the region folder.

[xoft]

That should have worked. Can you verify that the mca file coords are for the specified spawn point / player pos?

Oh, one thing just occurred to me, did you set the PregenerateDistance back to its original value, or is it still set high? Upon startup, MCS tries to touch ( = load / generate) all chunks within the pregenerate distance, so it could be that you're mistaking this process with the actual generator process. When you have pregenerated the world, there's no point in setting it to anything more than 1.

[Wizard Veneficus]

I deleted the old world on the server to start from scratch. I just created a new test world with minecraft and moved it over to the server. There coords are the same and I set the pregenerate distance to 2 (with 1 the server didnt startup). Then when I dropped in to the world, I just started generating chunks. It wasnt the test world I created.

[Wizard Veneficus]

Well, I didnt figure out what I did wrong.
However, I formatted the SD card (backing up before, of course). Then I reloaded Rasperian on it and downloaded a new Cuberite file from the website. Then went through the process of loading a pregenerated world. It worked!

Thanks!