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.
Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.
Any chance of Updating the Commands & Permissions page? Its missing some (like .lag for example)
Which is actually why I'm here, I totally forgot that players would get a message in chat informing them of server performance, using the trigger word "lag". Totally cool with this feature, but it has filled my chat with players saying "lag" every 20 seconds whenever they have a bad connection. Is there a way to cancel the chat send event so it doesn't seem like players are just spamming? For now I have just disabled the perm altogether so people will stop using it
In reply to Spoon_r:
The lag message should be canceled, or at least I kinda recall that being the case... but maybe not.
Otherwise idk if there's anything else missing, nothing much has changed and I think that was one of the more recent things big_scary added shortly before handing it over.
In reply to Spoon_r:
Ya, it should only appear for the player who says it. https://github.com/MLG-Fortress/PopulationDensity/blob/209633cba1d1dd9c86c4bf1b227ee8d3418e3770/src/me/ryanhamshire/PopulationDensity/PlayerEventHandler.java#L389
This is a great plugin! Thank you. I hope you continue to do your work.
I think I have notifications fixed so I will see the updates posted here again.
Hello! Absolutely love this plugin. Perfect way to add in teleportation to vanilla, and to spread people out while keeping them connected. I have one question, albeit a mildly insignificant one. How can I change the help URL that is presented when punching a sign? The one given is rather annoying. I still want it to link to the video it currently links to. But the uploader had the audacity to link it into a playlist with clickbait terrible content that has nothing to do with helping to understand region poles. So anytime anyone uses that link they have a chance to watch their other videos. I find that reprehensible and would like to edit the URL to only link the helpful video in question.
Edit: Also is there a way to edit commands? I swear I used to be able to do /home without having to type out post at the end.
Thanks!
In reply to Luxiem:
In reply to The_PC_Tech_Guy:
Changing the message in messages.yml does nothing to the actual spam URL provided and commands .yml has nothing in it for PopulationDensity. I'm assuming I need to somehow manually tell it to reinterpret /homepost to /home somehow?
In reply to Luxiem:
In reply to The_PC_Tech_Guy:
If you are upgrading to 1.13 (PopulationDensity v5.11), Your config will need to be changed. I recommend making a copy, deleting the old one, and let PopulationDensity generate a new one. Then make changes to the new one as necessary.
Hey all, a 1.13 compatible build of PopulationDensity has been released! Make sure you report any bugs at the issue tracker, or let us know in the comments if it's working well! (removed link so nobody gets an old beta build).
Hi.
There's an error in the documentation - you need permission 'nameregion' to use the nameregion command, not 'addregion' as specified.
Thanks.
In reply to TheLecturer:
Hi!
I noticed that naming a region post also sets it as the new default region. Is there any way to not have the behavior?
For example, someone made an ocean temple mob farm near a region post. Its not really suitable for new players to spawn there, but when I named it, it because the new spawn point for new players joining.
In reply to tomaste:
In reply to rodneymillerpca:
Hi @The_PC_Tech_Guy
I have a problem, (running on latest spigot 1.11.2 version) when I update your plugin to the newest version(coming from 5.1.1) The players will be teleporting far above the region pole.. they are falling dead.. that isn't quitte nice for them xd...
Do you know a solution?
Thanks!
In reply to Drobberz:
how does one lower a region pole