So I've been running a lot of tests, and getting some rather strange behavior on the 360 version over the PC version. Here is what I've done.
First and formost is that i tried to mark out 'exactly' how big a spawn chunk is in the 360 version. Now doing this on the PC 'without' a mod, is rather simple, you kill yourself without a set bed, and where you respawn should be within a 'spawn' chunk.
Next using the same rules as the PC, you begin moving off either north, south, east or west, dropping a trail of blocks behind you in a long path, and quickly move away a good distance from your blocks. Now if you wait 5 minutes and return to where you stopped dropping items, the items on the ground should 'still' be there. Following them you should eventually come to where the no longer exist and this marks the border of where your spawn chunk is.
However items are ALWAYS gone, suggesting that there is no 'chunk' unloading taking place, or suggesting that items are handled totally differently then on the PC.
So I'm curious if the spawn chunk for the 360 has the same attributes and handling as the PC. It would be really nice if we could know the 'major' differences between the two.
My primary reason for attempting to find the spawn chunks is that when we do have iron golems, I really want to do a Iron golem trench, as featured here I don't think it would be too complex for the 360 as its not piston heavy. Obviously the redstone would be MUCH more complex as we don't have comparators. As well we don't have hoppers so would require manual collecting of the iron but with that much iron flowing in one really wouldn't care. Again I know the redstone will require alot more work but i'm upto that challenge, in fact I've been working hard on the redstone work and while it requires an additional 2 floors of redstoneI have managed to get all of phase 1 working. As villagers do no breed yet I have no way of knowing if it is functional or not.
So i'm curious does anyone know what version that chunk unloading saves 'items' came into play, was this in the anvil update? Is our spawn chunk as big as the PC (64x64)?
It's common knowledge that chunks load and stay loaded on the Xbox 360 Edition. Once you generate a chunk, it stays loaded until you exit the game.
I believe NoseJobCowboy found this out while testing Redstone.
Items have despawned on the PC for a very long time. Even during Beta, possibly Alpha. As for our spawn, it is 20x20 (I think) with a 32x32 protected area that stops players from placing lava. There is also more than one spawn area on some worlds.
still comparing the pc version to the 360 version ?
LOOK, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I'M NOT 'COMPARING, BUT MORE SO ATTEMPTING TO FIGURE OUT THE DIFFERENCES, SO I CAN TRY AND FIND A SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM, IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO CONTRIBUTE PLEASE DON'T POST STUPID AND EMBARRASSING REMARKS.
It's common knowledge that chunks load and stay loaded on the Xbox 360 Edition. Once you generate a chunk, it stays loaded until you exit the game.
I believe NoseJobCowboy found this out while testing Redstone.
Items have despawned on the PC for a very long time. Even during Beta, possibly Alpha. As for our spawn, it is 20x20 (I think) with a 32x32 protected area that stops players from placing lava. There is also more than one spawn area on some worlds.
For the entire map? Damn no wonder things bog down badly, I wonder if they will change that when anvil format arrives.
You are right that items do despawn on the PC, but not if you send them to an unloaded chunk or if the chunk unloads while the items are on the ground. This was changed a few versions back can't recall the exact version.
Well on the plus side this makes things a bit easier as more or less the entire map is a spawn chunk, kinda sorta. The main bonus to a spawn chunk is that they are always loaded, but it would be good to know if this is going to change in upcoming versions.
Anyhow once again thanks for clearing up some grey's for me, appreciate it.
i made a post a long time ago with all the exact mesurements of everything. view distance render distance spawn area protected area the works. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1332460-reference-minecraft-xbla-size-info/#entry16248673 there is link I haven't updated in a while but last I seen they are correct. but as they said once a client receives a chunk its not unloaded only updated. This is a downfall but only if there is major changes. Its less data to send If the chunks don't change much but when you change a lot of chunks its gonna lag you for updates. for example the superflat I can walk the whole thing and then I will always ssee the green and it will load rather quickly. if you are running behind me destroying blocks I will only be sent the changes not the whole chunk. Kinda like repository. if you have the base code not process the list of updates and get you to the current version. kinda
i made a post a long time ago with all the exact mesurements of everything. view distance render distance spawn area protected area the works. http://www.minecraft.../#entry16248673 there is link I haven't updated in a while but last I seen they are correct. but as they said once a client receives a chunk its not unloaded only updated. This is a downfall but only if there is major changes. Its less data to send If the chunks don't change much but when you change a lot of chunks its gonna lag you for updates. for example the superflat I can walk the whole thing and then I will always ssee the green and it will load rather quickly. if you are running behind me destroying blocks I will only be sent the changes not the whole chunk. Kinda like repository. if you have the base code not process the list of updates and get you to the current version. kinda
In all this yammering about about chunk loading and world size and lag, this is the first post I've seen that mentions this relationship... and it makes perfect sense to me. If all the information about a chunk unloads, then all that information needs to reload every single time the player moves back into range of that chunk. This means that a lot more data has to transfer in and out of memory continuously than if some of the information about the chunk stays uploaded. I would think, then, that unloading and reloading everything would increase lag significantly rather than decrease it.
A friend of mine who plays on the PC monitors his connection continually and tells me that MC transfers the most data back and forth over the connection of any game he plays. In addition, the Live system comes into the picture on the Xbox. We know it screens text in the game, so it might be severely limiting the amount of data the game can upload and download at any given point in time.
silentjoker, I read your post on distances with great interest. I do think that at least the view distance has been shortened significantly since you made your measurements... probably in an effort to keep lag to a minimum even as more "stuff" has been added to the game over time.
Nose_job had a post that I added to awhile back that might be of interest here. You can find it here. My findings back up what silentjoker is saying and I think sj is right on with the explanation. I believe the only way to "unload" a chunk after you've been in it is to move out of render distance and then save/exit and then renter the world. When you load the world it appears to only load within the render distance of your character.
If I'm understanding the iron golem farm correctly, this mechanic of the xbox might actually help you. You can place the farm anywhere then just be sure to travel in or through that area when you first load the world. After that the farm will be producing no matter what you're doing or where you are since it will not unload.
I am not sure that the xbox overworld unloads when you go to another dimension like the video says happens on the computer. I haven't tested this, but that's my hunch from some things I've experienced. I'm also not sure the other dimensions unload when you leave them. I was working in the End last night and my enderman farm accumulated quite a bit of endermen which was causing some lag. When I returned to the overworld, the lag continued which makes me think the End was still loaded in memory. Again, just a hunch.
There is a difference in view distance between splitscreen and normal as well plus the shortened view distance from splitscreen is not reset when all the additional players have left.
I realize this, but I am mentally comparing view distance in single-player offline when I first purchased the game with single-player offline currently. To me, it seems to have gotten progressively tighter and less detailed as updates have been added to the game. Some difference also may be attributable to sprint modes being added (i.e. making the player faster and causing the player to overrun the scenery due to some lag); but I don't think that accounts for all of it either.
The issue with splitscreen really isn't one in our household since, when players want to leave the splitscreen, our practice is, more often than not, to save and exit the game and reload it from scratch. Usually, if a single player wants to continue playing Minecraft, they want to load up a completely different world of their own anyway. Shutting down the console and restarting it just seems to go a lot easier than signing out the various players and turning off their controllers individually.
As soon as I saw the OP mention dropping blocks to find spawn chunks I thought Tango Tek Iron Trench...scroll down and bam lol. Just hope they don't introduce (if they already haven't) zombie hordes for villages. The way XBox works will be a double edged sword. Allowing the chunks to stay loaded to keep the villages together, but also allowing zombie hordes to spawn in potentially breaking your doors. Hordes actually ignore all normal spawn conditions ie: airblocks adjacent, light level, solid blocks etc..(except for the night/day condition) I've seen a horde of zombies spawn in a pile of halfslabs before and onto of glowstone. So I feel the doors might be at a greater risk of being destroyed (and as such your villages) on the XBox with the chunks staying loaded.
I will tell you this farm is all sorts of awesome though I built one on PC iron for days.
It's not a major issue but it sure is annoying, we play just one world either together or alone... Easily fixed with a reload but sometimes the nuisance of the signs getting rerererererereapproved is not worth it.
Doesn't the creator/owner of the world always have to be in the world for it to be played by others even on the same Xbox? That's why we have wound up having multiple worlds since if it is A's world, it doesn't appear as an available game if A isn't signed in as Player 1.
When A is signed in as Player 1, then he/she loads up one of his/her worlds and, if others want to play they can sign in and join. When A wants to quit playing, we save A's world, back out of Minecraft and we shut off the console rather than shut off indiivudal controllers, etc.. Then if B wants to still play, he/she restarts the console, signs in as Player 1 and selects a world from his/her own list. Then any other people who want to play can sign in and join that world. The only time the draw distance thing would be an extra issue would be if A (Player 1) was the only player who wanted to continue to play alone in the world they had been playing with others. Then, yeah, it an extra save and exit and reload of the world. That usually doesn't happen enough times in a weekend to even really be an annoyance though. Sometimes deciding who gets to be Player 1 and choose a world is the bigger annoyance... but we're learning to share better all the time.
Chunks should be serialized and thus even if unloaded or updated should be rather 'trival' in respects to transference. However I don't remember this far back how a chunk was transfered. I know in later versions serious improvements where made. Hopefully before 4J go thier own way these improvements will make thier way to xbox for a much less laggy game.
I can see some pros and cons to this. The biggest being that no matter where you are in the world things will continue to grow, and function as normal, however theres quite a few cons to this as well; biggest being lag, its no wonder as worlds develop that the game begins to lag, farms, and growth data alone in scattered locations once loaded would produce some serious overhead. Personally I hope that once anvil format arrives chunk handling is improved to 'unload' unused chunks.
ok calm down dude, i was mearly remarking that too many ppl on here compare the xbox version to the pc version, and as already stated they work differently, nothing embarrassing about it !!
and its an open forum so i will comment to what i feel like commenting too so chill !!
I'm perfectly calm....however its rather annoying when the first response to the thread I see is negative with little help at all and more or less a flame. I took your comment as ignorance and as a bash, if you had fully read the OP you would have probably figured out that it wasn't a compare at all but more so as a 'I was looking for the differences' between the two. No harm done either way.
Once again appreciate all the info and help. Some really good posts here as well as linked.. We really need a sticky with a FAQ and INFO.
Chunks should be serialized and thus even if unloaded or updated should be rather 'trival' in respects to transference. However I don't remember this far back how a chunk was transfered. I know in later versions serious improvements where made. Hopefully before 4J go thier own way these improvements will make thier way to xbox for a much less laggy game.
I can see some pros and cons to this. The biggest being that no matter where you are in the world things will continue to grow, and function as normal, however theres quite a few cons to this as well; biggest being lag, its no wonder as worlds develop that the game begins to lag, farms, and growth data alone in scattered locations once loaded would produce some serious overhead. Personally I hope that once anvil format arrives chunk handling is improved to 'unload' unused chunks.
I'm perfectly calm....however its rather annoying when the first response to the thread I see is negative with little help at all and more or less a flame. I took your comment as ignorance and as a bash, if you had fully read the OP you would have probably figured out that it wasn't a compare at all but more so as a 'I was looking for the differences' between the two. No harm done either way.
Once again appreciate all the info and help. Some really good posts here as well as linked.. We really need a sticky with a FAQ and INFO.
I think, though, that there is a tendency for people to view the unloading and downloading of chunks and the Anvil format as a blanket solution for all that ails Minecraft on the Xbox. They feel that it should automatically free up enough RAM and processing power to have everything the PC has in it AND infinite worlds without upgrading the console itself or even, perhaps, revamping Live to handle the flow of information among consoles differently. However, we can't whip in more RAM or change out our graphics cards to reduce the lag or get away from using "Live" as our host network.... so, we probably do have to just accept that nomatter how hard we pressure 4J, we may just have to "live with" a game that will probably always have the limitations it has (world size, spawn caps, etc.). The Xbox, in this case, is well and truly a box.
It should also be noted that lag is a very common complaint among Minecraft PC players. It DOES lag and lags horribly on many PCs that have a lot more RAM, newer graphics cards and more powerful processors than the Xbox 360.
So I've been running a lot of tests, and getting some rather strange behavior on the 360 version over the PC version. Here is what I've done.
First and formost is that i tried to mark out 'exactly' how big a spawn chunk is in the 360 version. Now doing this on the PC 'without' a mod, is rather simple, you kill yourself without a set bed, and where you respawn should be within a 'spawn' chunk.
Next using the same rules as the PC, you begin moving off either north, south, east or west, dropping a trail of blocks behind you in a long path, and quickly move away a good distance from your blocks. Now if you wait 5 minutes and return to where you stopped dropping items, the items on the ground should 'still' be there. Following them you should eventually come to where the no longer exist and this marks the border of where your spawn chunk is.
However items are ALWAYS gone, suggesting that there is no 'chunk' unloading taking place, or suggesting that items are handled totally differently then on the PC.
So I'm curious if the spawn chunk for the 360 has the same attributes and handling as the PC. It would be really nice if we could know the 'major' differences between the two.
My primary reason for attempting to find the spawn chunks is that when we do have iron golems, I really want to do a Iron golem trench, as featured here don't think it would be too complex for the 360 as its not piston heavy. Obviously the redstone would be MUCH more complex as we don't have comparators. As well we don't have hoppers so would require manual collecting of the iron but with that much iron flowing in one really wouldn't care. Again I know the redstone will require alot more work but i'm upto that challenge, in fact I've been working hard on the redstone work and while it requires an additional 2 floors of redstoneI have managed to get all of phase 1 working. As villagers do no breed yet I have no way of knowing if it is functional or not.
So i'm curious does anyone know what version that chunk unloading saves 'items' came into play, was this in the anvil update? Is our spawn chunk as big as the PC (64x64)?
I may be overanalyzing this question a bit but are you trying to figure out how big, or the dimensions of the spawn chunk? If so, use a bucket of lava. You can not place a bucket of lava in a spawn chunk therefore the first block where you can place a bucket is the border. I have done this in all my worlds because I like making everyone spawn at the top of the map and having them jump down to a pool at bedrock, Sadly minecraft corrupted my world but that's another story.
its funny i was just watching that golem farm video.
Ive seen a few strange quirks. what i mean is. if you place a mine cart on a rail. and let it run and then leave the chunk and save and quit.. it will still be working. my night and day sensor works just fine when i leave the chunk and save. but my sphere with water flowing over it, that can be cut on and off. will generate random water source blocks when i leave the chunk and save while the water is flowing. also theres the well known redstone hanging glitch where repeaters will be stuck with a high signal.
you should probably have a mechanism to de-power any mechanism that may hang. but anything physical should still flow and work well. as long as you dont need to cut water on and off in any cycle.
also there is a 200 loose item limit so that should be taken in to consideration. so even if the items don't de-spawn only 200 can drop. this will limit the iron farms production.
the chunks in my world are mostly unaltered. aside from a few large projects. but on another friends server it is almost entirely altered this seems to make the map take forever to load. especially for those not hosting the game. and when i switch on the lights in the main building the entire server lags for quite a while. and there are only 5 lights hooked up to it.
but basically what it comes down to and to answer your question. it seems that other than the spawn zones lava exclusion it shares basically the same characteristics as the rest of the chunks.
also the spawn area is 20x20 with a 32x32 safe area where lava cannot be placed. the 20x20 area is centered there.
Well as currently we keep chunks loaded, I don't really need a 'spawn chunk', so thats pretty much solved. I'm rather curious as to why 4J didn't touch on using virtual memory and chunk handling ie loading/unloading, but i'm sure they have thier reasons.
Anyhow I never have any issues with redstone to be honest, but its good to know how chunks are handled. I'm going to move the entire build to a new map and restrict team access to certain chunks to attempt to keep memory constructs down.
As to PC lag, dunno when the last time you played but I haven't really bumped into any serious lag, granted sure you get the occasional hickup but NOTHING like on the 360. The 360 version is absolute crap for networking, we all know it, hell you can't even 'game chat' without everyone's voices breaking up like crazy, and end up going to party chat. I've been on PC servers with more then 100 users online at once and though you get the occasional block lag, its still quite playable, not like the 360 where you need to 'leave/come back'. Hell some of the team i swear spends more time relogging then actual playing, especially as the map takes on deeper and deeper changes.
Well as currently we keep chunks loaded, I don't really need a 'spawn chunk', so thats pretty much solved. I'm rather curious as to why 4J didn't touch on using virtual memory and chunk handling ie loading/unloading, but i'm sure they have thier reasons.
Anyhow I never have any issues with redstone to be honest, but its good to know how chunks are handled. I'm going to move the entire build to a new map and restrict team access to certain chunks to attempt to keep memory constructs down.
As to PC lag, dunno when the last time you played but I haven't really bumped into any serious lag, granted sure you get the occasional hickup but NOTHING like on the 360. The 360 version is absolute crap for networking, we all know it, hell you can't even 'game chat' without everyone's voices breaking up like crazy, and end up going to party chat. I've been on PC servers with more then 100 users online at once and though you get the occasional block lag, its still quite playable, not like the 360 where you need to 'leave/come back'. Hell some of the team i swear spends more time relogging then actual playing, especially as the map takes on deeper and deeper changes.
i imagine the change is due to the xboxs limitations. as much as love the xbox. and minecraft xbox edition its definetly got some serious limitations built in and microsoft knows it.
That really doesn't explain 'why' virtual ram wasn't used, even the PC uses it for its version of MC, kinda makes no since at all that they would 'load' the entire map into memory, just because they 'can', or its the easy way. Perhaps live arcade versions are restricted from using virtual ram? But it does all make since now in respects to 'map size limits'.
I'm sure they have their reasons, and I'm not about to take a stab at 4J, as they are one of the best IMHO when it comes to 'porting' games. Its truly sad however that we can't participate in 'beta/snapshot' builds to help iron out bugs like the PC version does, and I realize that this isn't 4J, but more so a M$ stipulation imposed from the start to help protect xbox service from having issues, anyhow getting off topic.
At least I have a better understanding of how chunks are handled on the 360 version, not real happy about how its done, it does in a way make my job alot easier. I hope that villages are created and handled the same way as on the PC, otherwise this will all be moot in the long run.
A potential explanation for the design of not using virtual memory is that it would not be applicable to all storage devices. As such additional overhead code has to be written and checked as to what storage devices are available (there is a command to enum them) and then which are usable for caching.
There are a lot of technical aspects to implementing VM on the 360 architecture, especially with the certification requirements and the fact you have to be able to run on a base xbox 360 that has enough storage to contain the game. You can offer those improvements and better performance when an HDD or other devices are attached, but the game/program is still supposed to be able to run on the lowest base level unit with enough storage to fit the program (either on the disc if a shipped game, or MU/USBMU/INTMU/HDD for Live downloads).
The storage units needed to check are varied (especially now with USBMU) and their performance characteristic may also need to be checked (after all caching/swapping physical to virtual ram on disk to a super slow USB device wouldn't help and would make for very poor performing application).
Further, the code (should already be doing this for save devices) to check the state and availability of any storage device. There is a more overhead once you start adding in VM caching since now you'll need error handling and code should such a device be removed while being used as the caching device.
Overall the choice to keep chunks in memory is a quicker and easier 'to market' design decision.
EDIT: here is the TCR for requiring to run on the most basic level of console. Notice they are not allowed to force/specify the user has an HDD, only that they have some type of storage device for saving:
Quote from Microsoft Xbox360 SDK Documentation > Technical Certification Requirements »
TCR # 002 BAS Basic Console Support
Requirement Titles must be playable on the most basic retail console configuration.
Remarks
A title may provide additional functionality and optimizations—for example, faster loading, career modes, and in-game saved pictures—when additional components are available.
Titles are permitted to depend on the presence of a storage device to be playable. However, titles are not permitted to depend on the type of storage devices. For example, titles must be playable when only a memory unit is available. Titles are permitted to require a profile in order to enter gameplay.
Exemption Titles are allowed to require the Kinect Sensor.
Intent The Xbox 360 program provides choices to console purchasers, including the choice to purchase entry-level systems. Consumers expect that games on Xbox 360 will work regardless of what components are attached to the console.
Which basically boils down to 'The easier path'. In all honesty here because its a 'arcade title', limits what they could and could not do, which was probably why Virtual memory was scrapped, and map size restrictions. Its a shame really.
First and formost is that i tried to mark out 'exactly' how big a spawn chunk is in the 360 version. Now doing this on the PC 'without' a mod, is rather simple, you kill yourself without a set bed, and where you respawn should be within a 'spawn' chunk.
Next using the same rules as the PC, you begin moving off either north, south, east or west, dropping a trail of blocks behind you in a long path, and quickly move away a good distance from your blocks. Now if you wait 5 minutes and return to where you stopped dropping items, the items on the ground should 'still' be there. Following them you should eventually come to where the no longer exist and this marks the border of where your spawn chunk is.
However items are ALWAYS gone, suggesting that there is no 'chunk' unloading taking place, or suggesting that items are handled totally differently then on the PC.
So I'm curious if the spawn chunk for the 360 has the same attributes and handling as the PC. It would be really nice if we could know the 'major' differences between the two.
My primary reason for attempting to find the spawn chunks is that when we do have iron golems, I really want to do a Iron golem trench, as featured here I don't think it would be too complex for the 360 as its not piston heavy. Obviously the redstone would be MUCH more complex as we don't have comparators. As well we don't have hoppers so would require manual collecting of the iron but with that much iron flowing in one really wouldn't care. Again I know the redstone will require alot more work but i'm upto that challenge, in fact I've been working hard on the redstone work and while it requires an additional 2 floors of redstoneI have managed to get all of phase 1 working. As villagers do no breed yet I have no way of knowing if it is functional or not.
So i'm curious does anyone know what version that chunk unloading saves 'items' came into play, was this in the anvil update? Is our spawn chunk as big as the PC (64x64)?
I believe NoseJobCowboy found this out while testing Redstone.
Items have despawned on the PC for a very long time. Even during Beta, possibly Alpha. As for our spawn, it is 20x20 (I think) with a 32x32 protected area that stops players from placing lava. There is also more than one spawn area on some worlds.
LOOK, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I'M NOT 'COMPARING, BUT MORE SO ATTEMPTING TO FIGURE OUT THE DIFFERENCES, SO I CAN TRY AND FIND A SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM, IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO CONTRIBUTE PLEASE DON'T POST STUPID AND EMBARRASSING REMARKS.
For the entire map? Damn no wonder things bog down badly, I wonder if they will change that when anvil format arrives.
You are right that items do despawn on the PC, but not if you send them to an unloaded chunk or if the chunk unloads while the items are on the ground. This was changed a few versions back can't recall the exact version.
Well on the plus side this makes things a bit easier as more or less the entire map is a spawn chunk, kinda sorta. The main bonus to a spawn chunk is that they are always loaded, but it would be good to know if this is going to change in upcoming versions.
Anyhow once again thanks for clearing up some grey's for me, appreciate it.
In all this yammering about about chunk loading and world size and lag, this is the first post I've seen that mentions this relationship... and it makes perfect sense to me. If all the information about a chunk unloads, then all that information needs to reload every single time the player moves back into range of that chunk. This means that a lot more data has to transfer in and out of memory continuously than if some of the information about the chunk stays uploaded. I would think, then, that unloading and reloading everything would increase lag significantly rather than decrease it.
A friend of mine who plays on the PC monitors his connection continually and tells me that MC transfers the most data back and forth over the connection of any game he plays. In addition, the Live system comes into the picture on the Xbox. We know it screens text in the game, so it might be severely limiting the amount of data the game can upload and download at any given point in time.
silentjoker, I read your post on distances with great interest. I do think that at least the view distance has been shortened significantly since you made your measurements... probably in an effort to keep lag to a minimum even as more "stuff" has been added to the game over time.
If I'm understanding the iron golem farm correctly, this mechanic of the xbox might actually help you. You can place the farm anywhere then just be sure to travel in or through that area when you first load the world. After that the farm will be producing no matter what you're doing or where you are since it will not unload.
I am not sure that the xbox overworld unloads when you go to another dimension like the video says happens on the computer. I haven't tested this, but that's my hunch from some things I've experienced. I'm also not sure the other dimensions unload when you leave them. I was working in the End last night and my enderman farm accumulated quite a bit of endermen which was causing some lag. When I returned to the overworld, the lag continued which makes me think the End was still loaded in memory. Again, just a hunch.
I realize this, but I am mentally comparing view distance in single-player offline when I first purchased the game with single-player offline currently. To me, it seems to have gotten progressively tighter and less detailed as updates have been added to the game. Some difference also may be attributable to sprint modes being added (i.e. making the player faster and causing the player to overrun the scenery due to some lag); but I don't think that accounts for all of it either.
The issue with splitscreen really isn't one in our household since, when players want to leave the splitscreen, our practice is, more often than not, to save and exit the game and reload it from scratch. Usually, if a single player wants to continue playing Minecraft, they want to load up a completely different world of their own anyway. Shutting down the console and restarting it just seems to go a lot easier than signing out the various players and turning off their controllers individually.
I will tell you this farm is all sorts of awesome though I built one on PC iron for days.
Doesn't the creator/owner of the world always have to be in the world for it to be played by others even on the same Xbox? That's why we have wound up having multiple worlds since if it is A's world, it doesn't appear as an available game if A isn't signed in as Player 1.
When A is signed in as Player 1, then he/she loads up one of his/her worlds and, if others want to play they can sign in and join. When A wants to quit playing, we save A's world, back out of Minecraft and we shut off the console rather than shut off indiivudal controllers, etc.. Then if B wants to still play, he/she restarts the console, signs in as Player 1 and selects a world from his/her own list. Then any other people who want to play can sign in and join that world. The only time the draw distance thing would be an extra issue would be if A (Player 1) was the only player who wanted to continue to play alone in the world they had been playing with others. Then, yeah, it an extra save and exit and reload of the world. That usually doesn't happen enough times in a weekend to even really be an annoyance though. Sometimes deciding who gets to be Player 1 and choose a world is the bigger annoyance... but we're learning to share better all the time.
I can see some pros and cons to this. The biggest being that no matter where you are in the world things will continue to grow, and function as normal, however theres quite a few cons to this as well; biggest being lag, its no wonder as worlds develop that the game begins to lag, farms, and growth data alone in scattered locations once loaded would produce some serious overhead. Personally I hope that once anvil format arrives chunk handling is improved to 'unload' unused chunks.
I'm perfectly calm....however its rather annoying when the first response to the thread I see is negative with little help at all and more or less a flame. I took your comment as ignorance and as a bash, if you had fully read the OP you would have probably figured out that it wasn't a compare at all but more so as a 'I was looking for the differences' between the two. No harm done either way.
Once again appreciate all the info and help. Some really good posts here as well as linked.. We really need a sticky with a FAQ and INFO.
I think, though, that there is a tendency for people to view the unloading and downloading of chunks and the Anvil format as a blanket solution for all that ails Minecraft on the Xbox. They feel that it should automatically free up enough RAM and processing power to have everything the PC has in it AND infinite worlds without upgrading the console itself or even, perhaps, revamping Live to handle the flow of information among consoles differently. However, we can't whip in more RAM or change out our graphics cards to reduce the lag or get away from using "Live" as our host network.... so, we probably do have to just accept that nomatter how hard we pressure 4J, we may just have to "live with" a game that will probably always have the limitations it has (world size, spawn caps, etc.). The Xbox, in this case, is well and truly a box.
It should also be noted that lag is a very common complaint among Minecraft PC players. It DOES lag and lags horribly on many PCs that have a lot more RAM, newer graphics cards and more powerful processors than the Xbox 360.
I may be overanalyzing this question a bit but are you trying to figure out how big, or the dimensions of the spawn chunk? If so, use a bucket of lava. You can not place a bucket of lava in a spawn chunk therefore the first block where you can place a bucket is the border. I have done this in all my worlds because I like making everyone spawn at the top of the map and having them jump down to a pool at bedrock, Sadly minecraft corrupted my world but that's another story.
Ive seen a few strange quirks. what i mean is. if you place a mine cart on a rail. and let it run and then leave the chunk and save and quit.. it will still be working. my night and day sensor works just fine when i leave the chunk and save. but my sphere with water flowing over it, that can be cut on and off. will generate random water source blocks when i leave the chunk and save while the water is flowing. also theres the well known redstone hanging glitch where repeaters will be stuck with a high signal.
you should probably have a mechanism to de-power any mechanism that may hang. but anything physical should still flow and work well. as long as you dont need to cut water on and off in any cycle.
also there is a 200 loose item limit so that should be taken in to consideration. so even if the items don't de-spawn only 200 can drop. this will limit the iron farms production.
the chunks in my world are mostly unaltered. aside from a few large projects. but on another friends server it is almost entirely altered this seems to make the map take forever to load. especially for those not hosting the game. and when i switch on the lights in the main building the entire server lags for quite a while. and there are only 5 lights hooked up to it.
but basically what it comes down to and to answer your question. it seems that other than the spawn zones lava exclusion it shares basically the same characteristics as the rest of the chunks.
also the spawn area is 20x20 with a 32x32 safe area where lava cannot be placed. the 20x20 area is centered there.
Anyhow I never have any issues with redstone to be honest, but its good to know how chunks are handled. I'm going to move the entire build to a new map and restrict team access to certain chunks to attempt to keep memory constructs down.
As to PC lag, dunno when the last time you played but I haven't really bumped into any serious lag, granted sure you get the occasional hickup but NOTHING like on the 360. The 360 version is absolute crap for networking, we all know it, hell you can't even 'game chat' without everyone's voices breaking up like crazy, and end up going to party chat. I've been on PC servers with more then 100 users online at once and though you get the occasional block lag, its still quite playable, not like the 360 where you need to 'leave/come back'. Hell some of the team i swear spends more time relogging then actual playing, especially as the map takes on deeper and deeper changes.
i imagine the change is due to the xboxs limitations. as much as love the xbox. and minecraft xbox edition its definetly got some serious limitations built in and microsoft knows it.
I'm sure they have their reasons, and I'm not about to take a stab at 4J, as they are one of the best IMHO when it comes to 'porting' games. Its truly sad however that we can't participate in 'beta/snapshot' builds to help iron out bugs like the PC version does, and I realize that this isn't 4J, but more so a M$ stipulation imposed from the start to help protect xbox service from having issues, anyhow getting off topic.
At least I have a better understanding of how chunks are handled on the 360 version, not real happy about how its done, it does in a way make my job alot easier. I hope that villages are created and handled the same way as on the PC, otherwise this will all be moot in the long run.
There are a lot of technical aspects to implementing VM on the 360 architecture, especially with the certification requirements and the fact you have to be able to run on a base xbox 360 that has enough storage to contain the game. You can offer those improvements and better performance when an HDD or other devices are attached, but the game/program is still supposed to be able to run on the lowest base level unit with enough storage to fit the program (either on the disc if a shipped game, or MU/USBMU/INTMU/HDD for Live downloads).
The storage units needed to check are varied (especially now with USBMU) and their performance characteristic may also need to be checked (after all caching/swapping physical to virtual ram on disk to a super slow USB device wouldn't help and would make for very poor performing application).
Further, the code (should already be doing this for save devices) to check the state and availability of any storage device. There is a more overhead once you start adding in VM caching since now you'll need error handling and code should such a device be removed while being used as the caching device.
Overall the choice to keep chunks in memory is a quicker and easier 'to market' design decision.
EDIT: here is the TCR for requiring to run on the most basic level of console. Notice they are not allowed to force/specify the user has an HDD, only that they have some type of storage device for saving: