Thanks to the Mammoth mod, huge events with thousands of players will soon be possible in Minecraft.
You might know it: If too many players cavort together in a Minecraft world, the game eventually becomes a slide show. This is mainly because the standard server software for Minecraft is limited to one CPU core. Most self-hosted servers therefore have problems managing more than 200 players at the same time.
Several thousand people playing together without lags is hardly possible so far. A new mod, however, is supposed to do just that soon!
This is what’s behind the mammoth project
The mod is called WorldQL / Mammoth and comes from a Minecraft fan named Jackson Roberts who got bored during the Corona lockdown. That’s when a new project came to his mind: It would be cool if several thousand players could be active on a single server at the same time.
First attempt: To do this, he first tested the following method: Roberts divided a Minecraft world into several sections, each of which was hosted on its own server. The transitions were synchronised with each other so that, for example, one could ride a horse across the invisible borders. This worked to some extent, but had various weaknesses, for example in mass PvP. Therefore, this method was discarded.
This is how it works now: The world status is stored in a central database: WorldQL. This in turn provides several servers with information at the same time, such as the location of all players – in real time, so that no lags occur. Blocks are also synchronised, so you can build together. This could also benefit huge Minecraft projects such as the replica of the whole of Middle Earth
Strictly speaking, players are not all on the same server, but can still play together. The complete architecture of the Mammoth mod is even more complex than described here. You can read all about it here in Robert’s blog.
A Linux version is supposed to be released on 7 or 8 September. However, the mod is still being worked on, for example, the code is currently being cleaned up.
This is still happening at Minecraft: The big update 1.18 with the second part of Caves & Cliffs is just around the corner. You can already play a first snapshot of it now.
