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.
Comments
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RoboMWM Owner
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_ForgeUser6348675 Contributor
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_ForgeUser7461846 Contributor
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_ForgeUser7828330 Former Author
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Forge_User_62037315 Author
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OffLuffy Contributor
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Spoon_r Tester
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Timelordm1 Contributor
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Posted Sep 29, 2013@Smac3223
Ah, I do intend to have options to toggle either post type seperately. If you start the server just long enough to edit the config, it should only generate one post. Wilderness posts will only generate when a player loads the chunk which it's in, so you won't need to worry about removing them.
On the second note, I've been contemplating a feature, but I think it may become a negative feature of PD if I do it. The feature would prevent the use of wilderness regions, via building/mining, etc. I'm not currently inclined to, but it's open to debate. If it's added, it'd be optional of course.
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Posted Sep 29, 2013I guess I failed to clarify XD (Or just worded my previous post badly)
Posts in the wilderness by default I feel are good for those just getting this plugin but I'm hoping to have the option to change it. Basically I'm hoping to be able to generate a world, install the plugin and simply turn them off in efforts to not have everyone and their mum want to leave to go off into the wilderness.
I mean I understand the want to have your own land and area around you to yourself since many players are constantly improving upon their designs but I just feel it would not only be good for the map size to stay on the smaller side but for players to interact with each other more rather than feel like they're playing Single Player but with Chat, lol.
Anyway here's hoping 1.7 and this plugin come swiftly =p Can't wait, lol
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Posted Sep 24, 2013@bigscary
I haven't actually updated it yet, I've rather been contemplating some other features, but I'd like to have options for enabling posts seperated by wilderness and named regions, as for defaults, I'd think it best to have them enabled for the reason you say, and only inclination to having it disabled being that admins would need to remove the posts manually after disabling them if they'd rather not have posts (not a huge problem, plenty of time to edit the config) Also, in the absence of posts, I've noticed a rather confusing arrangement of messages about teleporting which I may work on a bit so it seems a bit more understandable.
Not a problem! It quite amuses me XD
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Posted Sep 24, 2013I hope you will reconsider having region posts spawn by default - it was added because players wander out into the wilderness, and there are no posts to help them return home. Also, those players would like to know where the region posts will be BEFORE deciding to move into a region, because some players prefer to have their houses near the posts, where others prefer to have them away from the posts. If you won't put it back by default, maybe just an option in the config file to turn it on? :)
Thanks for maintaining my plugin! I'm very glad to see it's still alive and well.
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Posted Sep 23, 2013So it turns out, it would seem that PD is working on 1.6.4. Presumably since I recently joined a server which was using it and was updated, so I don't think it'll be to necessary to rush this update since 1.6.4 has deprecated certain methods that makes me not want to push an update until they have settled on thier material/data altering methods. For the curious, this aforementioned server is forest.jsurvival.co, looks promising!
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Posted Sep 22, 2013@TheyStoleMyPiggy
Can't honestly say. Not unless you attempted to delete the map while the server was running or somehow re-merged old region data with the new map or somehow there's another plugin generating them, which seems unlikely.
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Posted Sep 22, 2013I'm not sure why, but the wilderness/region posts are still appearing, even though I've long since removed the plugin and started a completely new map. None of the commands or mechanics work, and the plugin isn't listed. What's going on?
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Posted Sep 21, 2013May take a bit longer than expected. It would seem that Bukkit hasn't quite compensated for deprecated methods yet that I've been able to find. Sorry for the wait!
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Posted Sep 21, 2013@Pixiyo
I'll give it a quick test run on Bukkit's 1.6.4, and if it doesn't quite cooperate, I'll try to put out a build that'll work for ya. -EDIT- Confirmed, there are some issues, but it may take a bit to work them out, also noting that it may not be just an issue with rolling over to 1.6.4, and since I've got a few other things on my plate including classes, this won't happen immediately. I may also push a few new features while I'm doing this update.
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Posted Sep 20, 2013Updateeee please
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Posted Sep 17, 2013Thanks very much Lucifer.
I remember when BigScary(Ryan) changed it so they were every 400 blocks he mentioned he COULD change it back but all the posts that have already generated in the wild would remain since they already generated. So I'm guessing it'll be the same case here so we'll be waiting for that update before we reset the server.
Here's hoping it's not too long a wait =p
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Posted Sep 17, 2013@Smac3223
I can probably do the optional posts for the next release. Shouldn't take long to do I'd imagine. I may be able to use GriefPrevention and just check for a version before creating claims. If all that works out, I may be able to put out a release soon. May consider it a dev release since I've rewritten quite a lot and may need to be tested more first.
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Posted Sep 17, 2013Documentation site is down for maintenance, lol
Anyway any idea how long it'd be for optional wilderness posts to be implemented? Server has world corruption and we're looking to restart so the sooner the better, lol. Also I didn't realize he ever took it out completely. I thought he had just changed some option to force them every 400 blocks.
However reason being for this is even with Population Density players will spawn and simply wander out into the wild 1000's of blocks to build a home. Back when BigScary was running the server and the default was only named regions as I described people actually lived somewhat close to one another. You could easily run to someones place at night or even see them from looking out your front door/window. There was much more player interaction and people actually helped one another out instead of treating it as a single player game with chat options and the occasional trading/bartering.
But anyway thanks for the quick response and here's hoping to see optional wilderness posts soon! :D (Could even update the version so people stop asking if it's compatible, lol)
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Posted Sep 17, 2013@Smac3223
I think I can re-implement optional wilderness posts, sounds simple enough. As for an update, I don't quite have an ETA yet. I was hoping to implement some features that worked hand-in-hand with GriefPrevention, but Tux is still doing dev runs on it, so I'm sorta waiting for its API to kinda settle, mostly the method to create claims for post protection. You can see some planned features in the tickets as well. Also, there's a partial change log here: GitHub Repo
Here's a link to the help documentation that will come with the next update, may have changes to it later. Documentation v3.9
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Posted Sep 16, 2013Huge fan of the plugin and have been using it since the days of BigScary being author. I'm actually running his original test server for Population Density and Grief Prevention that he handed down to me for being one of the longest remaining players on his server who was basically a guinea pig for him in making these plugins, lol. That and I tried my best to help the community and get players to see how great the plugins work in unison.
That being said I'm just wondering if there's going to be an update any time soon for Population Density. The "Recent Files" shows the version is still for 1.5.1. I know it's compatible with the latest version of Minecraft but I'm simply curious. If there is, any ETA? Also are there any planned changes or new features that will be in it?
Unfortunately my server has been seeing some world corruption and according to my hosting providers support team I should do my best to just start a new world entirely before it's too late. As such I was hoping to change a certain option about Population Density. Back when Big Scary first started it the default was that there was no Region Posts in the "The Wilderness". Only posts that generated with a name. The only posts out the in wild that existed were ones that players forced to generate when they did /movein out in the wilderness. In time he changed it so there'd be posts every 400 blocks regardless. How would I go about changing it back to the original way he had it?
Any info or help you can provide will be appreciated ^_^
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Posted Sep 4, 2013@TheLecturer
I believe the first region will be at the first 400x400 region closest to x0,z0, but the post itself will be in the center of that (ie, about x200,z200), then region posts will be in 400 block intervals in any give direction. The post coordinates should always be the same and cannot be repositioned currently.
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Posted Sep 4, 2013Hi - what determines location of the region posts when you activate Population Density on a map, and can I manipulate it? Is it the map's default spawn location?
Reason? I am migrating a Population Density map from one server to another. I have copied the map data (which includes the region posts) to the new server and need to update the Population Density config on the new server with the name of the new map - this will, as far as I know, re-create the region post data and populate the map with posts. So - I want the new posts to sit exactly on top of the old ones.
The map being transferred is fairly new and had not yet created a 2nd region.
Or is there a better way? Thanks.
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Posted Aug 30, 2013@TheLecturer
BigScary was the original dev of both of those plugins, and he's no longer maintaining either afaik, although, I wouldn't think that EHM would affect PD much, although new regions may not open as often due to it.
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Posted Aug 30, 2013Hi - nice plugin, thanks.
I'm using it on my new server which is also running "Extra Hard Mode" (IP is hardminecraft.com in case you're interested).
Just wondering if you have any recommendation or experience on reducing the value of "DensityRatio" due to the "Extra Hard Mode" plugin making valuable resources so much harder to get hold of...?
I've only been running a short while and only have a handful of players so it's difficult to tell when a new region is due to be opened.
Thanks.
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Posted Aug 28, 2013@Normalius
Currently there is no config option to disable protection. I may add this as an option later. As for those other options, I think I can go over them a bit, they can be confusing. GrassRegrows will replace some dirt blocks with grass blocks when animals spawn on them. AnimalsRespawn will spawn an or some animals when a mob spawns. TreesRegrow will attempt to replant a sapling if a sapling drop despawns on dirt/grass. ThinOvercrowded... will count how many entities exist on the map during region scans and remove 'excessive' entities, which I will be changing a bit on the next release to have it's own scan with configurable scan intervals and entity limit options.
Lastly, as for the landmarker issue, I may just need to put a ticket it for it. FTB is rather monstrous, so it's somewhat hard to pinpoint the issue. May take some time to implement decent support for MCPC and modpacks.