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 25, 2013@Shybella
I wanted to know the same thing, as the latest Population Density isn't compatible with the most recent Tekkit, Tekkit being still on 1.2.5
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 23, 2013What version would be recommended for Tekkit 3.1.2 and 3.1.3? I'm using this along side with Grief Prevention.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 23, 2013@bigscary
Okay, I will just have to live with a hole :D
But I have set them to spawn at their home region when they first join the server, but they spawn at the city region. I don't understand why..
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 23, 2013@SyncCraft
When pop density teleports a player to a post (or respawns at a post), it places them on the highest block at that location. So that's why they land on the roof. Consider poking a hole in it. Maybe a architecturally pleasing hole. :)
But you shouldn't have that problem for the /cityregion teleport, or default spawning at the world spawn, because it's an exact X, Y, Z location.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 22, 2013@bigscary
Okay that's no problem. I've removed multiverse now anyway :P I've set Essentials spawning to highest, but for some reason on first join they're not spawning in the home region, or the spawn. They're spawning like 50-60 blocks higher than the defined point (on the roof of spawn). Any ideas?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 21, 2013@jakimfett
I think you need to set it to essentials to highest priority. I know it seems backward, but that's that way Bukkit does it.
@SyncCraft
Sorry no, it would require me to rewrite almost all of the code. Also no, cityregion only works from the posts when you don't have teleportanywhere enabled, and there are no posts in the non-managed worlds. Apologies for the disappointment, but my design prevents me from handling multiple managed worlds.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 21, 2013@bigscary
Okay, I thought so. Is it possible for you to add support for multiple worlds? And can I somehow allow /cityregion to be used from a different world than the supported world, without enabling them to teleport from anywhere?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 20, 2013I'm running the default config, and when I (as OP) run "/HomeRegion", I get a "command not found" error.Edit: Nevermind, I did something stupid.
I'm running Essentials on the same server with Population Density, is there any way to force Population Density to handle respawning? I've already set "respawn-listener-priority: lowest" in the Essentials config.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 20, 2013@SyncCraft
That's right, only one world. Sorry about the confusion.
@Eelviny
Read the admin details page carefully. Basically, a higher number allows for more player blocks to be placed before the plugin moves on to another region.
@xclucky
It's telling you that for just a few ticks while some chunks were loading, population density did a little work. There are 20 ticks in a second, so this is not noticeable lag. Noticeable lag is under 10 ticks per second for at least 10 seconds straight.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 20, 2013Judging by the nolagg examine, this plugin is using far too many resources than it should:
http://www.worldofclucky.net/errors/PopulationDensity/desktop.png
Here are the examine files in case you need to further examine:
http://www.worldofclucky.net/errors/PopulationDesnity/PopulationDensity.zip
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 19, 2013I don't really get what the DensityRatio number means. Is it to do with how many players can inhabit one region? Because I would really like to be able to have about 5 people in each. Is there a way to do that?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 19, 2013@bigscary
I have read it, but all I saw was that you could change which world it supports, but not have multiple worlds at the same time.
Also, I disabled multiverse's forcespawn option, and made population density spawn players in the home region, but they seemed to spawn in the essentials spawnpoint. Is there a way to stop this?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 18, 2013@Marenwynn
It would skip regions where players would have to swim from the post, but those regions are often rich in natural resources. Note that a region which is almost entirely water doesn't have reachable resources, and does get skipped. The complaints come due to the gray area between.
@SyncCraft
Yep. Read the administrative details page.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 18, 2013Hey, does this work with Multiverse? For instance, I am planning to have a Survival world, and a creative world, both running Pop. Density. But then I am having a separate world which will contain the main Spawn, which I don't want running Population Density.
If it does work, how? And if not, is there a better way to do it?
Thanks :)
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 17, 2013@bigscary
Would counting water at sea level and skipping regions with a large percentage of water work?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 17, 2013@baffle
It does scan for that, but figuring out which direction to send the bridge would be really hard. So yes in your case, the bridge would go to the mooshroom island because it's closest, not to the area with resources.
I know it sounds simple, but removing a post and never using it again would actually be very difficult for me to build into the plugin. :\ Due to earlier design decisions which are now baked into the core of the whole thing.
If you're up for a manual step anyway, then just do /addregion. :) Equally good solution, and already coded.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 17, 2013@bigscary
That would be an interesting solution, with the bridge. But the problem was, the closest land mass was the mooshrorom island, and the closest land with wood was a very far swim. So would the bridge go to the mooshroom island or to an island with wood? I just thought it was gonna give access to wood, coal, and iron cause it does the scans for that?
The only solution I can think of is a command or just the ability to destroy the post and from then on it won't use that area anymore. I know it's suppose to be zero maintenance, but I'd like to remove areas that aren't in good spots (like the mooshroom one).
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 16, 2013@baffle
No sorry, the reason it works the way it does today is to avoid creating a performance problem. Having the posts exactly 400 blocks apart makes the math work out just right so that I can take processing shortcuts that I couldn't if posts were less predictably placed.
Like you, I dislike when the post is out in the water, forcing players to swim to shore when they first join the server. I just haven't come up with a solution that doesn't create other problems.
What would you think if I automatically generated a bridge to the closest land mass? It would not be protected from breakage by players, but I could build it for you. Like the posts, its appearance (the materials used in its construction) would not be customizable.
@tomaste
Not with this plugin. You can use another plugin to set your world's spawn point (which is the destination of /cityregion).
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 16, 2013Hi!
Somehow my world's spawn point has shifted by 100 blocks or so, and this has caused everyone using the /cityregion command to spawn out in a forest instead of at the original spawn. I'm still troubleshooting what did this.
Is there any way to set the center of the /cityregion?
Thanks!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jan 15, 2013@bigscary
Do you ever plan on letting us have more control on where it places these regions? Because just today a player showed me it put a region post right off the coast of a mooshroom island (and the post is actually in the water). There's no wood or anything there and the closest land to actually get wood and such requires you to swim a pretty good distance.