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Let's talk about spawn chunks!

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The spawn chunks are an area of the Overworld located at the world spawn which are always loaded in memory. These are useful for some players but use more of your computer’s resources and make the game load and run more slowly. (You can read more about spawn chunks at the community wiki!) 

In this snapshot (24w03a) we made the size of the spawn chunks configurable by adding a new gamerule: `spawnChunkRadius`. 

The new default setting is 2 (which creates a 48x48 block area). This is 98% smaller than the previous area and will result in a noticeable performance improvement for most players. 

If you would like to keep your spawn chunks working like they did before, you can use the game rule to change the spawn chunk radius value to 10. This will make your spawn chunks work the same as they did before, but you will miss out on the performance gains. 

We're interested in hearing your feedback on this change and how the new default setting affects you. 

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  • 175
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    Please, give us options. I understand why this change is positive for most players but this is forcing part of the community to either give up on 98 % of the spawn chunks—which are used in many technical contraptions— or use commands—which doesn't go well with the idea of a survival world. It would be great if old words could stay just as they were before when converting to 1.21, or if a converting-world screen would prompt us to choose between the old spawn chunks and the new optimized ones. Thanks for giving us the chance to provide feedback in such a gameplay-altering issue.

  • 46
    Registered User commented
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    The option to modify the size of the Spawn Chunks is amazing! The fact that the size is reduced by default and there is no way to avoid it is not :(

    Some people wish and choose to play without using commands, for those people, I would love if there was SOME prompt or way to not modify the default, without having to use commands.

    Maybe as you try to update the world, or before updating you get a small button on the side that opens a small prompt that says "Would you like to keep the Spawn Chunk size as before?", not obtrusive for players who don't understand it, or maybe something like CTRL click the world and you get the prompt.

    In summary, a way to avoid modifying old worlds' default Spawn Chunk size without commands would make this change amazing.

  • 44
    Registered User commented
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    It would be ideal if only new worlds were affected by this change. And all existing worlds keep the 10 radius value unless changed manually.
    This could help avoid issues when upgrading (especially if you build things specifically for them to stay loaded)

  • 31
    Registered User commented
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    I like the idea, but I think a slide for the Spawn chunks (something similar to our rendering distance slide) would be more useful for us who want to use this mechanic. Mostly this is because many players don't like to use commands on their world (me included). Also sorry if there's some spelling mistake this is not my native language :D

  • 18
    Registered User commented
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    I think it would make more sense to follow the `view-distance` and `simulation-distance` properties centered around world spawn - _especially_ for multiplayer servers.  That way when a new player drops in, the server already has those chunks ready.  It's also a smaller change from a "I want this farm/sorter/etc. to always run" standpoint.

    Making the Spawn radii configurable separately but defaulting to those properties if not set would be my personal ideal.

  • 12
    Registered User commented
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    The mechanics seem perfect to me but the way to add it is the worst, it would be good if the spawn chunks can be modified without using the gamerule and you can put a lock on it as to the difficulty,
    For the technical players, they put it at 10 as it has always been and block it.

    For normal players, they won't even know what they changed it to and those who do know what it is and don't use it, put it at 0 so as not to affect performance.

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    This should be configurable without having to run commands. Every hardcore world that uses spawn for farms would possibly be forced to chunkload hundreds of chunks or ... run a command and have gone into cheats. Neither of those answers is realistic for 100s and 100s of us. It's a good change but pls consider other implementations. 

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    Please, give us options. I understand why this change is positive for most players but this is forcing part of the community to either give up on 98 % of the spawn chunks—which are used in many technical contraptions— or use commands—which doesn't go well with the idea of a survival world. It would be great if old words could stay just as they were before when converting to 1.21, or if a converting-world screen would prompt us to choose between the old spawn chunks and the new optimized ones. Thanks for giving us the chance to provide feedback in such a gameplay-altering issue.

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    Please, give us options. I understand why this change is positive for most players but this is forcing part of the community to either give up on 98 % of the spawn chunks—which are used in many technical contraptions— or use commands—which doesn't go well with the idea of a survival world. It would be great if old words could stay just as they were before when converting to 1.21, or if a converting-world screen would prompt us to choose between the old spawn chunks and the new optimized ones. Thanks for giving us the chance to provide feedback in such a gameplay-altering issue.

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    This seems like a great change, as long as the ability for entities passing through nether portals to load chunks is kept.

    Generally, for lag reasons the best way to use the spawn chunks was to use them as a starting point to allow nether-portal chunkloaders to activate after server restart or world reload, so that the permanent loading effect can be toggled on and off. And you needed at least one portal loader to keep the spawn chunks working when visiting other dimensions anyways.

    The reduced lag is good, and this will hopefully reduce the weirdness with passive mob spawns caused by the spawn chunks.

    The worst case scenario here either requires the player to build a few portal chunkloaders, or to just change the game rule.

    And I would expect the number of players making any intentional use of the spawn chunks would be very small, compared to the number just suffering from the extra lag or wondering why their items despawned even though they weren't anywhere close.

    I thank you for not fully removing the spawn chunks, though.

     

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    The only problem I see is that you need to use a command to put the old spawnchuncks, since vanilla players do not use commands because we consider it cheating, please add the option in the escape menu as well as the rendering options.

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    I like the change; I think it makes sense from a product point of view, BUT, as a technical Minecraft player, this will hurt my game experience and the experience of other technical minecraft players.

    As others have commented, we need options that don't involve running commands or altering configuration files.

    Vanilla Minecraft should give players a way to keep parts of their world working while they're not around, call it chunk loading or not, but as a player, if leave a bunch of furnaces processing items in my base and then go explore my world, I would like to find all my items processed when I'm back.

    Same can be said about crops (which depend on random ticks, and require player presence), if I need sugarcane to create some books to enchant, I want to be able to go fight some mobs, the nether, or far away with an elytra knowing that when I'm back I'll have a bunch of sugarcane to enchant books with the experience I gathered while traveling.

    Ideas for solving this:

    New blocks to allow chunks not to unload:
    - A special lamp to allow close crops to grow without a player nearby
    - A very expensive block (could use nether stars) to mark a "zone" (chunks) to not unload. Could be obtained with End resources + then it requires some kind of fuel to function. Imagine a craft of Ender pearls + Nether Star to load a small zone for 24h.

    Please, don't make the excuse of "this block can be overused and that might lead to reduced performance". People already do crazy stuff in MC, let them use it.

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    Spawn chunks are very important for technical players, I would like them to think about them and give an option to change the spawn chunks but for it not to be something by default.
    or appear as an important option in the creation menu with the options normal (the number of current chunks), reduced (2 chunks) and disabled (0 chunks).
    I think that with an option like this all players would be happy based on the issue of spawn chunks, technical players could play as usual and players who do not use this function could disable it, thank you for your attention.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    In the most respectfull way, I think we need an Option Screen so in the moment you update your world to 1.21, you can choose if you want or not the new spawnchunk settings, and in the Creating Worl Screen you can customize the spawnpoint size you want.

    This way the technical players would be satisfied that they don't have to use any command on their survival world.

    Thanks for think in the community and see options to optimize our worlds while giving us the chance to provide feedback.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    I like the idea of resizing spawnchunks to reduce lag and all that stuff.  But spawnchunks are an essential thing in all technical worlds.  It would be great if you could choose when entering the world whether or not to change the size of the spawchunks in your world.  I wouldn't like to have to use commands in my survival world :/
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    Let us decide if we want the optimized version or the legacy option (normal spawn chunks)! This could be a world creation setting.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    Honestly, I don't really think that this is the main problem of Minecraft's performance. We all know minecraft java edition doesn't run well, and I have already got used to it. This game is not optimized the way it should, and removing a feature that opens so many doors and allows players to do so many cool things is not fair. I would be cool with the idea of letting players change the amount of spawn chunks they want at the world create menu but forcing players to lose 98% of the most precious chunks in their world is going too far. 
    

    This is not the first time that idea of limiting and nerfing the players comes up: the nerf to the elytra that was proposed some time ago had the same argument of making the game run better and we all knew that it was an excuse so that you didn't have to deal with the poorly loading chunks.
    

    Please, if you want to optimize the game I would be into it but not if you are taking out essential features of the game for it:
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    I just don't like this.
    I'm a hardcore player (so I CAN'T reset chunks to default using cheats), and I rely heavily upon spawn chunks to keep my various farms running all the time. I would much rather have the opportunity to decrease spawn chunk size if my frames are hurting rather than being automatically deprived of ticking area.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    It would be great if there was an option that asks you if you want to reduce your spawn chunks or keep the old ones when you update the world. Otherwise, many players would see their worlds damaged because they don't want commands in survival mode.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    Please Mojang, obviously this change is good for game performance but please don’t change the value of old worlds when update because it will be bad for old important builds in the world.
    


    We appreciate your hard work on improving the game’s performance but please don’t make it more harder for old worlds when update.
    


    Thanks for reading! :)
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    It is good to have the option to alter the spawn chunks size but to reduce the old size is not. Keep them the way they are or give an option to decide their size when you uptade/create a world
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    I think it is a bad decision to make the spawnchunk so small, at least for the majority of worlds that have already been created and there are constructions in the spawnchunk, there could be before entering the world an option of how many spawnchunk you want to have in your world
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    I think it would be better if the distance of the spawnchunks were something that could be modified from the world creation options, just as one can modify the size of the biome between "normal" or "extended biome" it would also be good to add an option to set the size of the spawnchunks, where 10 is the default size, and the user, when creating their world, decides what size they want the spawnchunks, Because yes, it is true that there are people who prefer to play Minecraft more casually and are not at all interested in the size of the spawnchunks, and instead, they prefer performance either because they have a very bad PC, or because they like having a smoother experience, but the vast majority of players have lived their entire lives with spawnchunks with the distance they have always been, so I prefer not modify it and that the default value remains 10, and that in world creation one has the freedom to change it 
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    The idea is good, but having to use commands...not so much.
    I would feel better if when opening an old world it gave me the option of leaving the spawnchunks as they are or modifying them.
    And also that when opening a new world you get the option to put more or less spawnchunks and indicating an estimate of how much it could affect performance.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    I think this change is "acceptable", but is has not been delivered in the proper way. This change is terrible for vanilla survival players, there should be a more survival friendly way of changing the radius. Some decent options include a spawn chunks loading toggle included in the world generation options, leaving it as it is right now for old worlds, and having an in game warning when you update to 1.21 that allows you to choose between the old and the new radius, or  being able to change it in the menu settings like you do with render distance, which would also allow non-technical players to totally remove them if they will. 

    If this change is applied with no further tweaks, a lot of people's builds and farms will be affected and even broken. Many players use the spawn chunks for iron farms, furnace arrays, and keeping many other kinds of contraptions loaded without the need of a chunk loader, which comes with a lot of downsides. And a lot of those players don't want to be forced to resort to altering gamerules to keep their worlds functioning.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    Cool! I dig the spawn chunks change. Being able to set that gamerule on the fly is going to make it a lot easier to optimize minigames/maps that have a lobby separate from the levels that players actually play in. For example you can tell Minecraft to un-load stuff at worldspawn (most importantly the entities there) to improve performance when the lobby in some minigame isn't being used. Having lots of entities at worldspawn is a performance drain that a lot of mapmakers overlook. And for SMPs and single-player the small default radius is clearly the right call imo.
    

    This change will definitely break some maps that were designed with the assumption that spawnChunkRadius was previously 10 (most of my maps... :melting_face:), but fixing this is really easy.
    

    Some people seem worried that you can only do this with commands, but I assume this will be configurable in the "create world" menu which lets you set all the gamerules, which seems good enough to me.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    Hello Mojang Team, Honestly, it seems like a good change to me, but we need a vanilla option without commands to change the spawnchunks for survival, would be excellent since this change hurts veteran players, however an option to activate and deactivate would be excellent for all players :D
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    instead of forcing all players to reduce their spawnchunks they should add one more window in the world creation options to choose what margin of spawnchunks you want, as well as the rendering options and that, apart from being options, they are also adjustable to the player's needs to create the world, perhaps it is a lot of work but it would make the community happy, Thanks in advance for reading and greetings. :)
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    This is a great idea and I think it's long overdue. Spawn chunks are completely irrelevant to the vast majority of players and it doesn't make sense to leave them lying around.
    

    The default should be 0 - custom maps can always use /forceload. To avoid breaking old maps too much, maybe the default for upgraded worlds should be 10.
    

    This is far too obscure to add as an options menu slider. The options menu is already way too cluttered.
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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    It is super important for users (players in this case) to have options. Ignoring that some players know what is happening is not considering them, and we all love spending time in Minecraft.
    Some players have shared here options so we all can play the game we want. Hopefully, this is something that we all can achieve. 
    
                                        
    
                                    
    
                            
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