Sure. I'll try that soon and let you know. I don't think that would cause world to unload. I've found the phrases when you save and load to be more interesting now. It says "preparing chunks" when you save which I believe means it is saving all the data from explored chunks. That's why the save takes longer if you explored more of the world since you loaded. When you load a world, it says "preparing spawn area" which I believe means it is loading those chunks within a 170 or so block radius from your spawn point. On a save without exiting or auto save, there is no "preparing spawn area" note so I think the world remains loaded.
What got me thinking about the autosave possibly triggering a memory dump without data loss was DMSiafu's test below:
not true, i've tested in creative w/ a full set of diamond tools/armor, went to the opposite side of the map from my spawn point (about 20+ chunks away), flew up to build limit saved and loaded in survival. i fell to my death (obviously), let the game sit un-paused until the controller auto shut down (15 min, tested it before this, over an argument w/ a family member) then i went back, and still got all the items.
If the game autosaved within 5 minutes of the death and then would not autosave again before the controller turned off, then items still being at the place of death 15 minutes after the death would be explained under a scenario where your thought about them despawning after 5 minutes could also be true. I think that an interim or autosave would be an opportunity for the game to dump and free up some RAM temporarily since it wouldn't have to keep track of changes made in those chunks after they were saved to the hard drive UNTiL they were re-entered by a player still in the game. Doing the post-save memory dump might have the drawback of slowing down re-rendeering of that area whenever the player decided to re-enter, but their building, mining or other changes wouldn't be lost... if that makes any sense.
Don't know if was ever mentioned, but does the fact that the initial save when creating a world count. As that saves 1/9th of a map. Divide the map into 9 sections, the center section would be roughly the size or range that would be technically in memory or at least put into a file, assuming character is in middle of map.
Only reason I know this is quite a few of the 1.7.3 maps that I have that I just created and left for 1.8.2 to do borders ended up that way. As in the ones that had spawn in center of map the new chunk border was basically at that range.
So would this mean that possibly that would be what is in memory? or just a reference file? Obviously I am not too keen on the subject but this is from my observation when creating maps from past to present.
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My First World, always getting back to is a pleasure I enjoy with each new update that brings in more things to add in.
UpUp: I did a quick test and I do not believe that chunks unload when the game saves without an exit. I traveled around my redstone line, tested it to be sure it was working, and then did a save without exiting. When it came back the line still worked fine telling me that all the chunks were still loaded. I also flew around the entire world so that every chunk should have loaded, then I carefully flew back to the beginning of my redstone line in such a way that I wouldn't not have reloaded the entire line if it had unloaded. I tested again and it worked fine. This tells me that the xbox does not unload chunks as you travel.
Tamorr: This is an interesting bit of information and I believe it fits. By my calculations, blocks within a 150 -170 or so radius from you are loaded when you spawn which is roughly what you are saying about 1/9th of the map. I would assume that when the game is first created and saved it loads this area around your spawn point. This means it would have to generate the landscape based on the seed and the version number. When you reloaded in the newer version and traveled, it started loading those new chunks and had to generate them based on the seed and the new version number which is why you got the sharp divisions.
UpUp: I did a quick test and I do not believe that chunks unload when the game saves without an exit. I traveled around my redstone line, tested it to be sure it was working, and then did a save without exiting. When it came back the line still worked fine telling me that all the chunks were still loaded. I also flew around the entire world so that every chunk should have loaded, then I carefully flew back to the beginning of my redstone line in such a way that I wouldn't not have reloaded the entire line if it had unloaded. I tested again and it worked fine. This tells me that the xbox does not unload chunks as you travel.
Interesting. I agree, the chunks do not unload as you travel. IF they don't take the opportunity for some of them to unload after a save, then this, I believe, is part of the reason why XBox users can turn their autosave off and PC users cannot (without using a mod). Would there be a memory management advantage to unloading all the chunks and thereby forcing XBox users to leave their autosave running at, say, 15 min intervals? I don't think so, because with several players on the map, it is easily possible for the whole map to have to be loaded within a 15 minute timeframe anyway. So, if the max memory was dependent on only part of the map being loaded at one time, the game would completely crash whenever the whole world was undergoing changes at the same time. Therefore, I agree with Nose_Job, part of the reason for not unloading completely facilitates smoother entrance and exit of individual players in splitscreen; but also, it ensures (to a degree) that the game doesn't overload the system IF the whole world is in play at one time. Does this make some sense? I think the PC behaves differently because, one PC only needs to download the part of the world where that player is at. The rest is stored on the server. That player's PC, therefore, doesn't need to download and display parts of the world where other players may be. However, on the XBox, with 4 players able to play on the same unit at the same time, it is conceivable that significantly more quadrants of the world might be "in play" (i.e. altered by players) all at once on the same unit (and within the shortest autosave interval - 15 mins). The XBox can't just "forget" what's been changed, it either needs to store that info somehow in RAM or save it to the harddrive. (I know I'm not describing this very well - hope you can make at least some sense of it).
I think you're describing it perfectly. The computer can do the loading and saving of chunks in the background and keep the game going. We can see from the autosave screen that the xbox doesn't (can't?) do this. If there was only one person playing then the save screen coming up every few minutes would be annoying enough - though I think this might make infinite worlds possible. But I think with 2, 3, or 4 people playing, the amount of information having to be loaded and unloaded constantly would be too much for the xbox.
I think you're describing it perfectly. The computer can do the loading and saving of chunks in the background and keep the game going. We can see from the autosave screen that the xbox doesn't (can't?) do this. If there was only one person playing then the save screen coming up every few minutes would be annoying enough - though I think this might make infinite worlds possible. But I think with 2, 3, or 4 people playing, the amount of information having to be loaded and unloaded constantly would be too much for the xbox.
Aye, but now we get into the rub - Awhile ago there was a discussion about whether getting rid of splitscreen play entirely would enable the XBox to deal with "infinite" worlds. 4JSteve posted on that discussion that getting rid of splitscreen would make "little or no difference." So... something else must also be going on here... limiting the XBox's ability to free up RAM and still keep track of all the things that might have changed in the world since the last save to the harddrive... and therein lies the question?
Because if the whole map is loaded at once, it kinda explains why they can't increase the world size, because all of the xbox's memory is being used to store the map data.
I kinda get what the OP is getting at
We know for sure, however, that the whole map does not (at least initially) load at once. It doesn't even all generate at once... but only as you explore it. However, it may eventually wind up being all loaded, since it does not appear to unload whatever you've explored or re-explored since starting that session of the game... even though it unrenders the portions of the game that are out of view. What prevents it from completely unloading whatever it unrenders? Well, it's not just keeping track of what you can see at any point in time; but everything that may have been changed (by you or other players or even the game itself) that is out of view since the last time the game was able to "dump" whatever it was keeping track of to that point.
Aye, but now we get into the rub - Awhile ago there was a discussion about whether getting rid of splitscreen play entirely would enable the XBox to deal with "infinite" worlds. 4JSteve posted on that discussion that getting rid of splitscreen would make "little or no difference." So... something else must also be going on here... limiting the XBox's ability to free up RAM and still keep track of all the things that might have changed in the world since the last save to the harddrive... and therein lies the question?
Interesting. I probably should not have speculated about the whole world size thing. That was just an uneducated guess. The truth is I have no idea how xbox processing, memory, and hard drive work and what causes these limits. But I do think we are getting a better handle on what it is doing with minecraft so that we can use it to our advantage and/or deal with the limits.
We know for sure, however, that the whole map does not (at least initially) load at once. It doesn't even all generate at once... but only as you explore it. However, it may eventually wind up being all loaded, since it does not appear to unload whatever you've explored or re-explored since starting that session of the game... even though it unrenders the portions of the game that are out of view. What prevents it from completely unloading whatever it unrenders? Well, it's not just keeping track of what you can see at any point in time; but everything that may have been changed (by you or other players or even the game itself) that is out of view since the last time the game was able to "dump" whatever it was keeping track of to that point.
Seems to me there must be different levels of "loading". Maybe there is a difference between information being loaded into the memory initially and information being processed for gameplay as you travel around the world? I don't know much about the inner workings of the xbox or computers so this is just a hunch based on what we're seeing.
Interesting. I probably should not have speculated about the whole world size thing. That was just an uneducated guess. The truth is I have no idea how xbox processing, memory, and hard drive work and what causes these limits. But I do think we are getting a better handle on what it is doing with minecraft so that we can use it to our advantage and/or deal with the limits.
Seems to me there must be different levels of "loading". Maybe there is a difference between information being loaded into the memory initially and information being processed for gameplay as you travel around the world? I don't know much about the inner workings of the xbox or computers so this is just a hunch based on what we're seeing.
I would class this sort of speculating as somewhat useful, so please keep it up. As Nose_Job well knows, I'm a idiot when it comes to redstone, so odds are I'm never going to be able to come up with an experiment that would even start to answer my questions... and I certainly don't much abou the inner workings of the XBox either. Given MS's reputation, does anyone really?
I do engage in a lot of speculation with some family members who are computer programmers; and I really enjoy just yakking about different things. Sadly, however, the one I knew who was a gaming programmer (different games entirely though) died before I got into Minecraft and hence rekindled my interest in video gaming.
I think your hunch is a good one.
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What got me thinking about the autosave possibly triggering a memory dump without data loss was DMSiafu's test below:
If the game autosaved within 5 minutes of the death and then would not autosave again before the controller turned off, then items still being at the place of death 15 minutes after the death would be explained under a scenario where your thought about them despawning after 5 minutes could also be true. I think that an interim or autosave would be an opportunity for the game to dump and free up some RAM temporarily since it wouldn't have to keep track of changes made in those chunks after they were saved to the hard drive UNTiL they were re-entered by a player still in the game. Doing the post-save memory dump might have the drawback of slowing down re-rendeering of that area whenever the player decided to re-enter, but their building, mining or other changes wouldn't be lost... if that makes any sense.
Only reason I know this is quite a few of the 1.7.3 maps that I have that I just created and left for 1.8.2 to do borders ended up that way. As in the ones that had spawn in center of map the new chunk border was basically at that range.
So would this mean that possibly that would be what is in memory? or just a reference file? Obviously I am not too keen on the subject but this is from my observation when creating maps from past to present.
Tamorr: This is an interesting bit of information and I believe it fits. By my calculations, blocks within a 150 -170 or so radius from you are loaded when you spawn which is roughly what you are saying about 1/9th of the map. I would assume that when the game is first created and saved it loads this area around your spawn point. This means it would have to generate the landscape based on the seed and the version number. When you reloaded in the newer version and traveled, it started loading those new chunks and had to generate them based on the seed and the new version number which is why you got the sharp divisions.
Interesting. I agree, the chunks do not unload as you travel. IF they don't take the opportunity for some of them to unload after a save, then this, I believe, is part of the reason why XBox users can turn their autosave off and PC users cannot (without using a mod). Would there be a memory management advantage to unloading all the chunks and thereby forcing XBox users to leave their autosave running at, say, 15 min intervals? I don't think so, because with several players on the map, it is easily possible for the whole map to have to be loaded within a 15 minute timeframe anyway. So, if the max memory was dependent on only part of the map being loaded at one time, the game would completely crash whenever the whole world was undergoing changes at the same time. Therefore, I agree with Nose_Job, part of the reason for not unloading completely facilitates smoother entrance and exit of individual players in splitscreen; but also, it ensures (to a degree) that the game doesn't overload the system IF the whole world is in play at one time. Does this make some sense? I think the PC behaves differently because, one PC only needs to download the part of the world where that player is at. The rest is stored on the server. That player's PC, therefore, doesn't need to download and display parts of the world where other players may be. However, on the XBox, with 4 players able to play on the same unit at the same time, it is conceivable that significantly more quadrants of the world might be "in play" (i.e. altered by players) all at once on the same unit (and within the shortest autosave interval - 15 mins). The XBox can't just "forget" what's been changed, it either needs to store that info somehow in RAM or save it to the harddrive. (I know I'm not describing this very well - hope you can make at least some sense of it).
Aye, but now we get into the rub - Awhile ago there was a discussion about whether getting rid of splitscreen play entirely would enable the XBox to deal with "infinite" worlds. 4JSteve posted on that discussion that getting rid of splitscreen would make "little or no difference." So... something else must also be going on here... limiting the XBox's ability to free up RAM and still keep track of all the things that might have changed in the world since the last save to the harddrive... and therein lies the question?
We know for sure, however, that the whole map does not (at least initially) load at once. It doesn't even all generate at once... but only as you explore it. However, it may eventually wind up being all loaded, since it does not appear to unload whatever you've explored or re-explored since starting that session of the game... even though it unrenders the portions of the game that are out of view. What prevents it from completely unloading whatever it unrenders? Well, it's not just keeping track of what you can see at any point in time; but everything that may have been changed (by you or other players or even the game itself) that is out of view since the last time the game was able to "dump" whatever it was keeping track of to that point.
Interesting. I probably should not have speculated about the whole world size thing. That was just an uneducated guess. The truth is I have no idea how xbox processing, memory, and hard drive work and what causes these limits. But I do think we are getting a better handle on what it is doing with minecraft so that we can use it to our advantage and/or deal with the limits.
Seems to me there must be different levels of "loading". Maybe there is a difference between information being loaded into the memory initially and information being processed for gameplay as you travel around the world? I don't know much about the inner workings of the xbox or computers so this is just a hunch based on what we're seeing.
I would class this sort of speculating as somewhat useful, so please keep it up. As Nose_Job well knows, I'm a idiot when it comes to redstone, so odds are I'm never going to be able to come up with an experiment that would even start to answer my questions... and I certainly don't much abou the inner workings of the XBox either. Given MS's reputation, does anyone really?
I do engage in a lot of speculation with some family members who are computer programmers; and I really enjoy just yakking about different things. Sadly, however, the one I knew who was a gaming programmer (different games entirely though) died before I got into Minecraft and hence rekindled my interest in video gaming.
I think your hunch is a good one.