They are seperate options now, but I figured that turning monsters off would lose part of the fun of it. I've built a few things in Peacful mode on singleplayer, and it's just not the same as with monsters.
I read up on a bunch of stuff last night and this morning I have rebooted the server with some tweaked java settings that should help things. Also, I've added entire directory that Minecraft Server is in to the exclusion list in Avast's real time scan - and that instantly saved about 10% of CPU time :O
Now we just need Bukkit, a method for moving the existing world to an SQL backend, my new PC and virgin to either install my 100Meg line or complete their free upgrade that they're also doing that would see my upload go up to 2Mbit.
Yeah, I hand't saved the settings file after turning Animals off. And when I saw how fucking laggy it was being I decided to turn monsters off too to see if that helped.
I think the lag could just be the awful network code - I was reading last night that it sends your client /all/ the block data around you, right down to Bedrock and up to the top of the sky. I'm sure that will change and be improved as the server software is updated, but right now it needs one hell of a phat pipe to handle more than 3 users or so.
CPU usage is topping out at about 75% in spikes, averaging more like 20% - that's on a Windows 7 32bit install running pretty much nothing but the Server on a C2D@2.34Ghz with a good whack of RAM.
I think I'll do a defrag on the drive that has the World stored on it tomorrow, as it's created over 2,000 files so far and I'm sure they're probably all over the place.
My upload speed is currently only 768Kbps, and I suspect that that is the biggest problem right now. When new players connect it has to stream a /shit/ load of data to them, which in turn lags everyone else down for a bit. Once people are on and playing it seems to use about 160-200kbps per player :S
Aww :(
I might phone Virgin tomorrow and tell them to come and install the 50MB line until they've got the 100MB up and running - that would double my upload to 1.5Mbit, going to 5Mbit when they do their free upgrade thing (whenever they get round to that).
Jon, Patch, Xen - feel free to Op anyone if they need it (press T to talk then /op [username]), then they can use the /tp [your username] [other persons username] command to teleport out of mines when they are stuck :$
:( You need a bigger pipe (yj)
Not got much time to play for long periods, joys of having babies I guess, and tonight, first time I decide to try the server we're also looking after my 6 month and 2 year old niece.
Good fun tho. The lag seems way better with animals/monsters off.