Population Density
Automatically places new players where they can find wood, animals, ore, and space to build. Also priority-based login queue, reserved slots for admins, idle boot ONLY when nearly full, entity thinning for lag reduction, and optional limited teleportation. Never again will your players experience a marathon run, spawn room full of portals, or maze of abandoned builds. This is a zero maintenance solution for administrators, and players don't need to learn any commands!
"This is THE plugin for large servers." – Mumblerit of muttsworldmine.com
Looking for a 1.12.2 or earlier-compatible version? Check here.
Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.
This video explains the region post system to new players.
See below for information on administrative features.
Feature Summary
- Assigns starting points for new players so that they can ALWAYS find space to build and beginner resources nearby. Players may be spawned directly there, or you can tell them about a slash command which will take them there.
- Respawns animals, regrows grass, and replants trees in the new player area to guarantee important new player resources.
- Removes idle players ONLY when the server is nearly full.
- Login queue to ensure fairness when your server is full, can prioritize some players over others if you like.
- Reserved slots for administrators.
- Optional teleportation posts which help players socialize and trade, but aren't abuse-able to escape combat or save a lost or hungry player.
- "Thins" extremely-dense crowds of monsters and animals, preventing ridiculous levels of farming or monster grinding from lagging your server.
Overview
Server owners often underestimate the badness in starting a player in a crowded area. Sure seeing builds makes your server look legitimate, but having to explore a long time just to find space to build and beginner resources is a major turn off for players who want to start playing right away. Even when players do find a place to start playing, they're often alone because other new players wandered into different areas.
PopulationDensity is the low-maintenance, easy-for-players answer to all these problems.
It works by automatically locating a region with lots of wood and ore, and then dropping new players in that region until they collect most of the easily accessible ore, cut down most of the trees, or crowd it with builds. Then PopulationDensity finds a new resource-wealthy region for future newbies and starts dropping new players there. If you have a great spawn area built up, you can instead spawn players there, and later tell them to use /HomeRegion when they're ready to start adventuring (or another command you define in commands.yml).
Additionally, optional teleportation commands help players move around quickly to admire builds and socialize while not compromising the game's integrity - players can only teleport from automatically-placed teleportation posts, so teleportation can't be used as an "easy-out" for players who mine or adventure themselves into trouble. That way, players keep the challenge of single player without the "players are too far apart" multiplayer issue.
Finally, if you have a "my server is always full" problem, then congratulations on your successful server! :) With PopulationDensity, you may optionally boot players who are idling so more players can log in and have fun, increasing your feel-good factor (or fattening your wallet, for some). when the server IS full, a login queue guarantees fairness, and administrative slots are set aside to guarantee administrators can always get in.
You can also assign players a queue priority to help them get on the server faster during peak times, to reward them for contributing to the server monetarily or through your community.
Requirements
- v6.0 and higher require Java 21
Setup, Configuration, and Commands documentation
Metrics: Like most other plugins this plugin collects anonymous metrics to see who's actually using this plugin, and this information is used to determine popularity as well as what features matter or not in the grand scheme of things.
Sponsors:

Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.

-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 4, 2013@Blockia
While you wait for bukkit guys to approve my upload, you can download it by clicking on the blue "files" link at the top of the page. :)
@SmoothNanners
Yeah, I spent easily half a day trying to figure out what the problem was. I was so agitated by the time I was done that I didn't feel like trying to explain the issue to the bukkit guys. So they'll have to work it out on their own. :P
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 4, 2013@bigscary
Is there a download anywhere for this update?
Thanks for all your plugins, I use them all on my server and it's been awesome, keep up the good work!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 3, 2013@bigscary
I read that they made a commit changing how certain functions deal with the directions of blocks, but I didn't think it was related to the sign problem. It's definitely very overwhelming for a programmer to pinpoint the cause of an error like this one. Thank you so much, Bigscary.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 3, 20133.6.5 Updates
For anyone interested in the reason for the problem, the Bukkit guys changed the meaning of the compass directions (e.g. what was previously called "north" is now called "west"). This caused my code to fail at sticking the wall signs on correctly, and so they instead were falling to the ground as items. Now when my code tried to fill in those wall sign blocks, they weren't signs... they were air. Of course you can't write text on air, hence the massive log spam. Ugh.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 2, 2013@bigscary
You understand waiting on a bukkit bug is going to take weeks. Use irc and talk to some devs, I do that whenIi need help. Irc is a great place and you are pretty well known with griefprevention, btw.
http://wiki.bukkit.org/IRC
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 1, 2013Still working on this, sorry for the delay everyone.
@grimmie
No, but if you run into the border, that just means you've used up all the available space and/or resources inside the border. So it's time to expand the border, or start a new world.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 1, 2013@bigscary
I think Bigscary is back and working on this, at least I really hope so.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 1, 2013@SmoothNanners
Thanks a ton!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 1, 2013Does this plugin take into account WorldBorder? My server's spawn is starting to get filled, so I am really interested on installing this plugin.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 31, 2012@SmoothNanners
thanks
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 31, 2012Population Density still doesn't work with CraftBukkit 1.4.6 R0.3. I've made a workaround using Bigscary's GitHub source of Population Density 3.6.2 so that you can continue to run your 1.4.6 server without the cast exception errors and signs all over the place.
This workaround isn't a fix to the sign problem, but what I've done is bypassed the creation of the wall signs, so that you can continue to run your 1.4.6 server with blank glowstone posts until an official fix is created. http://ge.tt/9BHW9WU/v/0?c
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 29, 2012@shaitand2
At his other plugin he is saying:
I'm out of town!
I understand you're all very excited about the beta build which is now out. However I'm unable to work on the project because I'm away from my development environment for the rest of the week (until the 2nd). Please continue to use the latest build with any 1.4.6 builds at your peril - I suspect you won't have any major issues. Please remember that errors in the log doesn't mean your world is ending! You should decide whether to shut down your server until a GP build is available or continue rolling with an outdated GP build based on in-game observations. :) Happy Holidays!
Oh, and by the way. If you love Grief Prevention, now's a great time to get into the holiday spirit and spread the word. Everybody likes donations, but truthfully, I prefer that you go to your favorite server administration forums and help me get more servers running Grief Prevention, so there will be more happy players and administrators out there. Please consider it, thanks!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 28, 2012Didn't realize how valuable this mod is was till it stopped working!
I had to disable it after the 1.4.6 update. It causes the server to restart after generating too many exceptions.
Looking forward to an update!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 28, 2012Bigscary has abandoned us. He doesn't love us anymore. :'(
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 28, 2012@YoFuzzy3
Sad thing is his github source are old and not up to date :(
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 27, 2012"java.lang.ClassCastException - Task #someNumber for PopulationDensity v3.6.4 generated an exception"
I assume it's not updated for 1.4.6, is it?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 27, 2012is there an update for 1.4.6?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 26, 2012@bigscary
Got a crash log, you might need it. http://pastebin.com/kRQ2dUdM
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 26, 2012For example, my "Surface" Is layer 126. So is this plugin going to measure the surface of 126, or the surface of 64, which would be oodles of ores, and no wood regardless of the location.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Dec 26, 2012Will this work alright on a custom terrain generator, Terrain Control?
Ill be using a map that generates in 8 bits, 0-256 land mass.