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Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

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Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#51

Post by hjkl0 »

velcrovan wrote: post #14

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

Most comments here ignored the kids’ preference to play on the iPad. With that in mind, you may want to check out the Realms offering. I believe you get a 10 user server for ~$7. Note that is also highly fragmented, and there are different realms subscriptions for Java and Bedrock and also different tiers.

Depends on what your goals are with the family server, Realms may not be a good fit at all. But in terms of getting kids playing together simply and quickly, it’s the easiest way to go.

As a side note, I know kids who switched to Java after years of insisting only on Bedrock and sorely regretted not making the move much sooner. This is part of growing up these days.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#52

Post by ChoosesBarbecue »

harrigan wrote: post #27
velcrovan wrote: post #14

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

Minecraft servers are resource hogs even when idle. Enable the built-in idle server shutdown (IDLE_SERVER=true). It automatically stops the server after a few minutes with no players and starts it again when needed. It's not enabled by default.

I'm struggling to find documentation on `IDLE_SERVER`, do you know of any? The only place I see it documented is on ArchWiki [0], but I don't know if that is an Arch distribution specific feature.

I do see `pause-when-empty-seconds` [1] when looking at the wiki, which seems the closest, although I can't find doc on what "paused" means (this is the closest [2]). Looks like a fairly new feature (2024), but it's neat they've thought about it.

[0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Minecraft/Java_Edition_serv...

[1]: https://minecraft.wiki/w/Server.properties

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/admincraft/comments/1k330eg/what_ha...

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#53

Post by syrrim »

ChoosesBarbecue wrote: post #52
harrigan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft servers are resource hogs even when idle. Enable the built-in idle server shutdown (IDLE_SERVER=true). It automatically stops the server after a few minutes with no players and starts it again when needed. It's not enabled by default.

I'm struggling to find documentation on `IDLE_SERVER`, do you know of any? The only place I see it documented is on ArchWiki [0], but I don't know if that is an Arch distribution specific feature. I do see `pause-when-empty-seconds` [1] when looking at the wiki, which seems the closest, although I can't find doc on what "paused" means (this is the closest [2]). Looks like a fairly new feature (2024), but it's neat th…

> I don't know if that is an Arch distribution specific feature.

That's unlikely for two reasons, first because minecraft is closed source, and second because arch packages usually follow upstream very closely.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#54

Post by maccam912 »

velcrovan wrote: post #14

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

I've been on this journey! I am definitely not doing it the easiest way, but I've got it deployed on Kubernetes with https://github.com/itzg/minecraft-server-charts and then use prism launcher on my kids computers to get the versions to match up and stuff. I also use automodpack so I can install some quality of life mods on the server and they'll just sync to the clients.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#56

Post by cogman10 »

velcrovan wrote: post #14

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

My main advice, ignore all advice online about JVM tuning minecraft. It's dated and often just wrong.

The best thing you can do is run on the latest JVM, set your max memory as high as you can tolerate, and use ZGC. That's it.

The JVM tuning guides for minecraft will have you switching and toggling every JVM flag under the sun with extremely dubious "evidence" of the payout for the flags they switch. In some cases, they will set contradictory flags. For example, setting eden size and target pause time. The fine tuning flags disable the heuristic flags like target pause time.

KISS. ZGC has very low latency and the larger the heap you give it the less it'll slow things down (though, do keep it under 32gb. Object header compression works on heaps less than 32gb). And using the latest JVM reduces the memory needed and increases the performance in general of the JVM. Win-win.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#58

Post by flohofwoe »

shakna wrote: post #2

> Known Issues > Exclusive fullscreen mode on Windows may cause the game to crash in certain situations, especially when using multiple monitors > Entering Exclusive fullscreen mode crashes the game on Wayland Those, together, kinda seem like the kind of blocking bug that would usually delay a snapshot... Lets hoping it gets fixed before release lands...

Tbf, exclusive fullscreen is quite exotic nowadays (as opposed to rendering into a fullscreen window). Window managers will typically apply the same optimizations to a frontmost fullscreen window as was done in the past only for exclusive fullscreen.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#59

Post by Night_Thastus »

cogman10 wrote: post #56
velcrovan wrote: post #14

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

My main advice, ignore all advice online about JVM tuning minecraft. It's dated and often just wrong. The best thing you can do is run on the latest JVM, set your max memory as high as you can tolerate, and use ZGC. That's it. The JVM tuning guides for minecraft will have you switching and toggling every JVM flag under the sun with extremely dubious "evidence" of the payout for the flags they switch. In some cases, t…

It did used to be required. Older Java versions performed pretty terrible. However, Java 17+ completely fixed that. Even the heaviest modded setups run buttery smooth, even on older versions which are not well optimized.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#60

Post by repeekad »

mort96 wrote: post #16
shakna wrote: post #2

> Known Issues > Exclusive fullscreen mode on Windows may cause the game to crash in certain situations, especially when using multiple monitors > Entering Exclusive fullscreen mode crashes the game on Wayland Those, together, kinda seem like the kind of blocking bug that would usually delay a snapshot... Lets hoping it gets fixed before release lands...

Delay a release? Sure. But delay a snapshot? Why? By releasing the snapshot in this state, they learn both 1) how big of a problem those known issues are (how often does entering exclusive fullscreen crash the game on Windows? They presumably have telemetry for this), and 2) if there are other, as of yet unknown issues they need to fix before release. The earlier you learn these things, the better. There hasn't ever…

Are snapshots explicitly a beta channel? Or do users get auto updates to them? Testing for bugs in prod shouldn’t be acceptable unless users expect bugs in exchange for getting latest features early in something like a beta channel
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