The number of players involves many subsequent differences, many of a social nature.

For example if I am collaborating with someone on building something very far away from spawn and I stupidly fall off and have to walk all the way back there from the spawn point, I am not only inconveniencing myself but them as well.

I think teleport is a reasonably compromise. It only allows you to teleport to another player. It's also nice for going round having a look at what people are doing.

Yeah the java thing really doesn't help.

I saw a pick on the floor, spent ages trying to pick it up then Drew ran past and whisked it away!

and I suspect Kos pushed me in a hole!

..and teleporting you out of your fucking hole you got stuck it :D

Haha, I dug the block out you were standing on, but there was a big hole underneat :D

 

I came down with a flower for you tos ay sorry though :(

I fell down a hole and was amazed to still be alive. So I explored a bit and roughly 3 minutes later everything caught up and the fall killed me :'D

When you say "the server" was only using 400 meg, that's very vague. As I said to someone before, Java memory stuff isn't as straightforward as that. :(

Did you launch the gave with any min/max memory settings? (Possibly it defaults to 512MB max, so when it gets to 400MB it starts trying to do garbage collection, but can't do it quickly enough, and thus everything slows down).

If not, try launching it with this:

java -Xmx1G -Xms1G -jar minecraft_server.jar

Which is giving it a maximum amount of 1GB and telling it to go ahead and allocate the whole 1GB.

Why is Java so popular, anyway? We use a Java-based support desk application here, and it's a big ol' pile of shite. And just about anything else that uses it seems to attract more than its fair share of hatred. And it needs updating at least once a fortnight.

 

Why do people use it? Why, Drew, why?

DO IT KOS DO IT!

1. Because Java is relatively easy to code and relatively portable.
2. Because many people who did programming-type degrees back in the day learned Java.
3. Because Java is, in theory, absolutely lovely. It's merely the practise where it falls down.

1. So?
2. Wankers.
3. I've got a car like that.

I gave it 2GB of ram to play with, and the Java process was using 400, the thing in the server status a bit less than that.

1. Aye.
2. Aye.
3. :D

What sort of router is it?

I wouldn't expect three people in an online game to have a significant impact on anything modern. :S

That's just a reason for NOT FALLING OFF and for you to make it up to that player for the pain and anguish your carelessness caused them. :@

(don't really have an opinion on this; I was just trying to make Patch happy)

I so hate the dark
I killed a spider - with a feather!
but I didn't see a creeper sneak up behind me
my corpse is lying in a hole now :(

It's a linksys something or other running DD-WRT, fairly recently updated.

 

It has been a bit dodgey for a while and it's due for a replacement, but I'm loathe to buy a new router when Virgin are giving away a free Wireless N router with their 100meg service (whenever the fuck it goes live :@)

Your words bring me shame :'(

Awww. Thank you. Feel free to shout some more. At Xen.

Desktop/GUI Java is pants, and deserves the hatred.

Server-based Java is actually capable of being very fast and good and stuff, but it does rely on the developers knowing what they're doing, and can require appropriate tuning to get the best out of it.

People use it because it came along and attracted people away from C++ and then nothing else has come along to replace it, except for C#.NET which is Microsoft.

(Java the language is a horrible over-engineered pile of shite, which is why there are so many alernative languages popping up which use the Java platform, but don't require using the horrible Java syntax.)