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Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 16, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Most of Minecraft's server load is mediating interactions rather than sending the world at first. The base process of chunk loading gives you a 20x20 chunk (over 26 million blocks), centered on your player, on joining a server. All of this in seconds, usually! Computers are absolutely ridiculous.

After that, modifications are handled by Block Updates and Block Entity Data messages and so on. On the innocuous side, this avoids player desync, and doesn't waste bandwidth on telling you what's happening miles away. On the less innocuous side, I'm suspicious that wiki has a vested interest in client hacks; the server rejects clients' attempts to break blocks or damage players across the map. Point is that the server load cannot easily be reduced by smarter loading/unloading.

Coincidentally, you've stumbled upon one of the main reasons Star Citizen is a giant black hole of money.