mcloady
mcloady is a lightweight python script used to pre-generate Minecraft terrain using MCRcon and carpet mod (optional). Inspired by Pre-Generating A Minecraft World (Hermitcraft Season Seven) by Xisumavoid.
Has this ever happened to you? You are about to open your Minecraft server to the public but you need to pre-generate the terrain to avoid any lag issues when 20 people connect all at the same time to the server and start travelling in different direction. You would love to use pre-generating mods such as Chunky but they’re not available for the version of Minecraft you want to play yet!
Fear no more, you don’t need a dedicated Minecraft mod for it, just a player in a world, flying and looking around.
Usage
Download the python file (you will need to have python 3 installed on your machine) or the compiled exe file. Fill in the config.ini file. If you have carpet installed on your server you do not need to spawn a player. If you don’t have carpet in your server, you need to spawn a player and leave it logged on in the world.
Make sure RCON is enabled in your server.properties file by setting these parameters:
rcon.port=25575
enable-rcon=true
rcon.password=setyourownpassword
Once that is done you can execute the script and leave it running until it finishes. You can stop it at any time and continue afterwards, the script will remember where it stopped and continue from there.
How does it work
The script uses a player for loading areas in the world. It puts the player into spectator mode and it moves it around in increments, drawing a grid. You can use carpet mod if you don’t want to have a Minecraft client open.
If stopped at any time and started again, it will start from the last saved position (which it does automatically).
Depending on the area you want to load and the time increments you’re using, it can take a long time to pregenerate it. An area of 10000×10000 will take around 17 hours with the default parameters in the configuration file. If you want to reduce the time and your server can handle loading the terrain in less time than specified in the configuration file, you can lower the ‘first_wait’ and ‘second_wait’ parameters to make it shorter.
Configuration parameters
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| server_ip | This is yoru server IP |
| password | The password you’ve set in rcon.password in your server.properties file |
| name | The player name you want to use. If you’re not using carpet, that has to be your player and it must be logged on and have op permissions |
| use_carpet | In case carpet is available and you don’t want to spawn your player into the world, you can use carpet to spawn a bot for you so you don’t need to have the Minecraft client open. |
| last_tp | This is the name of the file where the last teleport will be saved in case the program is interrupted. If it is interrupted it will start again from where it last stopped. |
| radius | This is the radius from the spawn of the world that you would like to generate. |
| altitude | You can change this parameter if you want. You don’t need to. |
| increments | The increments in which the teleports will occur. For a render distance of 12 chunks (196 blocks), an increment of 200 is good. For render distance of 10 chunks, you can set it to increments of 150. |
| first_wait | When the first teleport to a new part of the world occurs, the program will wait this time until starting to turn the player around. |
| second_wait | After the first turn of the player has occurred, the program will wait this time to turn the player around. |
Dependencies
Python dependencies:
- mcrcon (required), a python library that implements the rcon communication protocol
- configparser (required), a python library that implements a basic configuration language
Minecraft dependencies:
- carpet mod (optional), used in this context to spawn a bot into a world
Improving execution time and resource usage
If carpet mod is available for the version you want to pregenerate, I strongly suggest you use it. This way you don’t need to have a minecraft client open and a player logged on. Using carpet is also good to prevent connection issues, if your Minecraft player disconnects the program will fail.
The script uses next to none resources of your computer. I suggest running it on a raspberry pi if you have one available. I ran this script for a server with a raspberry pi 0w with no problems.
Future improvements
- Error Handing: Right now the program does not do any error handling. If an error occurs the user will not know why and the program may not stop.
- Spiraling moving algorithm: An algorithm that pregenerates the terrain in a spiral instead of just iterating rows and columns in a grid is a priority improvement. This would mean that the program would start from the middle and start moving outwards. If the program has not reached the radius border, the world is still playable.
- Singleplayer pregenerating: Whether it’s for a singleplayer or to later upload to a server, the program should have an option to run it in singleplayer without using rcon.
- Graphical Interface: This would help less experienced server admins to use the program.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome.
