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.

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Posted Jan 9, 2014I am pretty sure I did something wrong, since it is 4AM, but please have a look. http://pastebin.com/CL3rkA68
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Posted Jan 9, 2014@Luficer
Will this interfere with the Essentials Reserved Slots?
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Posted Jan 6, 2014@Smac3223
Can't say that I'm familiar with some of those. I can say that Anti X-ray doesn't. As far as I know, GriefPrevention doesn't either. Last I used SimplyVanish (been a while), it didn't, and can't see why it would. Between NoCheat+ and ConsoleScheduler, I can't see that fitting into their functionality much. You may have just removed a plugin that handled /home.
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Posted Jan 6, 2014@Luficer
Never had Essentials. My lineup has usually always been..
Population Density, Grief Prevention, Anti X-ray, NoCheatplus, SimplyVanish, PermissionsBukkit, ConsoleScheduler
Think any of those would be responsible?
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Posted Jan 5, 2014@Smac3223
/home was never handled by PD. Essentials generally handles that if you've used it, as well as a plethora of other plugins.
@WsupPanda
Eventually I'll add an option to disable startup scans, but there's nothing else I can do about the performance drop as it needs to scan thousands of blocks
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Posted Jan 5, 2014So does /home not work anymore? Seems only /homeregion will send people to their regions. Is there a way to edit that or is it by design?
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Posted Jan 5, 2014It looks like this plugin is causing my server lots of lag every time it restarts, many times crashing the server due to all the strain it gets put through. How can I make it so that it doesn't crash the server and lag it so immensely? Would more RAM help, or what is the problem that makes my server crash.. After its done scanning resources the server is ok afterwards and without lag. But during the process it lags very badly and many times crashes while it is doing it. I really love this plugin though, I wouldn't want to have to remove it.. :(
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Posted Jan 1, 2014@Smac3223
Don't think the command will generate posts if post generation is turned off either, but that's something I might work out later as well. Sounds like a neat idea.
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Posted Jan 1, 2014@Luficer
Theoretically...could I not turn off post generation and simply use the command to add a new regions in the meantime?
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Posted Jan 1, 2014@Smac3223
Not yet. I only updated PD to account for the new blocks in 1.7 using version of PD that you could've downloaded before, so there were no other changes. I intend to work in that option later, but there is a rather persistent bug in the version of PD I'm working on.
@xbenas
Thanks, good to know it's working alright. I have nothing to do with GriefPrevention though XD
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Posted Dec 31, 2013I know I brought it up a while ago but is there any way yet to make it so there's no posts in the wilderness yet? That a post will only appear if someone moves into the region?
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Posted Dec 31, 2013@Luficer
Just love it how everything is thought out for the future with this plugin (and GriefPrevention too)!
Works flawlessly with 1.7.2 too! It's those simple things that make the game better!
Diamonds to You!
P.S. Happy new year!
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Posted Dec 31, 2013@xbenas
The plugin will search for the top block at coordinates in specific intervals (about every 400 blocks), and then adjust it if it's below a minimum level, and then allow it to fall through certain types of blocks, including those that the region posts are made of, which allows the post to not generate on top of itself. The posts also generate about 10 seconds after their chunk is loaded to stay updated, and if they don't generate on top of themselves then, then they shouldn't when the plugin's data is reset (uses the same procedure to generate posts each time)
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Posted Dec 31, 2013@Luficer
Damn.
Anyway, if I were to delete all the RegionData and PlayerData files (since I messed up with naming everything), will the glowstone posts be generated on top of the already generated glowstone posts? Or will the plugin detect it? How does the plugin detect the post?
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Posted Dec 30, 2013@xbenas
The names list hasn't been externalized yet, meaning you need to edit the plugin and re-compile it to change it, but if you want to do that, it's in the DataStore class, starting on line 857 (in the latest release, it'll change later if I can sort out the next release). But, at that point, I'll have the names list externalized and using a completely different list of default names, and editable.
I somewhat doubt that renaming a region will cause it to be active. WIthout the plugin scanning it for resources, I doubt it would be able to mark it as active.
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Posted Dec 30, 2013Where can I edit the name list?
Can't seem to find it anywhere...
Also, can you clarify some things for me?
Will the new players be forced to an unnamed (Wilderness) region or will they be put in Bye next time?
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Posted Dec 23, 2013So I'm going to upload a slightly modified version of PD that I started with to address the new blocks, but there are currently no other new features as my newer version I'm working on isn't working for some mysterious reason.
@MegaNarwhal I'll probably add an option for it, but not currently.
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Posted Dec 22, 2013Is it possible to disable the message telling you that you're building outside your home region?
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Posted Dec 21, 2013"or you can tell them about a slash command which will take them there."
What is the command that I would tell them about to get there?
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Posted Dec 20, 2013@Pixiyo @Smac3223
I can't quite update due to a sign cast exception error that I can't seem to work out at all. Been working it out for a week or two, and it's rather frustrating. So no ETA at the moment.