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Per-player budget

Players who add load by themselves get a shorter view distance while their region is busy. Everyone else is never limited.

The player budget decides who should give something back when a region is over budget. Since Storia 26.2-1-beta, the answer is: only the players who are adding load themselves. Players who simply stand, build or walk in a busy place, like spawn, are never limited.

Load that comes from the place itself (farms, crowds of mobs) is handled by the Tick guard, which thins out the crowd instead of touching the players.

Who is limited#

A player's view distance is lowered one step per check when both are true:

  1. Their region is over budget. Its tick takes longer than max-region-mspt (45 ms), or the server's tick threads are saturated (pool-saturated-percent, 85%) and the region uses more than its players' fair share.
  2. They are moving fast. Faster than fast-mover-speed (12 blocks per second, above sprinting) on two checks in a row: flying with elytra, riding fast, and so on. Moving fast makes the server load, generate and send many new chunks.

It is raised again one step per check as soon as they slow down or the region recovers. A single teleport does not count, because the speed has to hold for two checks.

Redstone keeps running

By default the simulation distance is never changed, so redstone, farms and mobs around players keep ticking. The view distance is never lowered below the simulation distance either.

The view distance can only shrink if there is room above the simulation distance. In server.properties:

view-distance=10
simulation-distance=6

lower-simulation-distance#

player-budget:
  lower-simulation-distance: true
  min-simulation-distance: 4

This also lowers the fast mover's simulation distance, first. It saves more CPU, but machines further away from that player than the new distance stop while it is lowered.

Memory#

Separately, the budget watches the Java heap after garbage collection. Above memory-high-percent (85%) everyone's view distance is lowered one step per check; below memory-low-percent (70%) it is raised again. Memory is shared by the whole server, so this is the one case where everyone is affected.

Measured#

A laggy spawn with the tick guard switched off, so the region stays over budget. Alice stands still; Bob moves 20 blocks per second.

Player Speed View distance
Alice 0 blocks/s 10, not limited
Bob 20 blocks/s 10 → 9 → 7 while moving

Inspecting it#

/storia budget

Player budget (checked every 5s)
Tick threads busy: 100% (saturated: busy regions thin out crowds more)
Share per player: 33% of a thread
Heap after GC: 9%
 Alice: region 60.6 MSPT, 16.1 TPS, 98% thread, 2 player(s) | 0 blocks/s | sim default, view default
 Bob: region 60.6 MSPT, 16.1 TPS, 98% thread, 2 player(s) | 20 blocks/s | sim default, view 9

Settings#

See the player-budget table in Configuration. To turn it off:

player-budget:
  enabled: false