Pre-generate your world with Chunky
Chunky is a great mod/plugin that makes it easy to "pre-generate" parts of your world, helping your server's performance as it no longer has to use resources to generate chunks while your players are online. Instead, you can run Chunky before you release your server to your players, hopefully resulting in less lag in the future caused by chunk generation.
Install Chunky on your server, following the instructions to install a mod/plugin from here. We recommend downloading it from Modrinth.
Head to your server's Console and run the chunky world [world] command, where the [world] is the name of the world you'd like to pre-generate. On a Paper-based server, the world names are world for the overworld, world_nether for the Nether and world_the_end for the End. On Fabric or Forge however, these would instead be called overworld, the_nether or the_end respectively. For example, running chunky world overworld would select the overworld on a Fabric server.
Pick the radius of blocks which you'd like to pre-generate. Common ones picked by small server owners are 10k, 15k or 20k blocks. A 10k-radius world require running the chunky radius 10000 command, for example, which would generate 10,000 blocks in each direction from 0,0.
You can use the helpful World Size Calculator tool to find out how much storage your pre-generated world will take up. 10k blocks would be around 17GB, but 15k would jump up to as much as 38GB, and 20k a large 68GB.
Finally, run chunky start which will start the pre-generation process on your server. Note that this can take a while, sometimes over a day, or for large radius numbers even multiple days. Your console will display the progress made, but if it gets too spammy you can disable these messages with the chunky silent command.
Pause the generation process at any time with the chunky pause command, or resume with chunky continue – if you want to cancel the entire thing, run chunky cancel
Chunky also has a couple other useful features for server admins, like the ability to "trim" worlds (deleting chunks outside of a certain radius, making it useful for reducing your world size). The Chunky Border addon also lets you set a world border which can't be bypassed by some of the glitches with vanilla world borders.
Please note that generating chunks is not the same as loading them. Generated chunks are ones that the Minecraft server have created and stored in your server's files (specifically in your world folder). These are then loaded in when players are in close proximity of the chunk... however, the chunk will then later be unloaded when no players are nearby. This means that automated farms built by players on your server will still require a player to be online and in the chunk's vicinity for it to be loaded in and activated.
Note that "spawn chunks" (the 16 chunks around your world's spawn area) are permanently "loaded", making them ideal places for communal farms on your server which can run 24/7. Operators can also use the /forceload command to make other chunks permanently loaded, so long as the server's online.
Install Chunky on your server, following the instructions to install a mod/plugin from here. We recommend downloading it from Modrinth.
Head to your server's Console and run the chunky world [world] command, where the [world] is the name of the world you'd like to pre-generate. On a Paper-based server, the world names are world for the overworld, world_nether for the Nether and world_the_end for the End. On Fabric or Forge however, these would instead be called overworld, the_nether or the_end respectively. For example, running chunky world overworld would select the overworld on a Fabric server.
Pick the radius of blocks which you'd like to pre-generate. Common ones picked by small server owners are 10k, 15k or 20k blocks. A 10k-radius world require running the chunky radius 10000 command, for example, which would generate 10,000 blocks in each direction from 0,0.
You can use the helpful World Size Calculator tool to find out how much storage your pre-generated world will take up. 10k blocks would be around 17GB, but 15k would jump up to as much as 38GB, and 20k a large 68GB.
Finally, run chunky start which will start the pre-generation process on your server. Note that this can take a while, sometimes over a day, or for large radius numbers even multiple days. Your console will display the progress made, but if it gets too spammy you can disable these messages with the chunky silent command.
Pause the generation process at any time with the chunky pause command, or resume with chunky continue – if you want to cancel the entire thing, run chunky cancel
Chunky also has a couple other useful features for server admins, like the ability to "trim" worlds (deleting chunks outside of a certain radius, making it useful for reducing your world size). The Chunky Border addon also lets you set a world border which can't be bypassed by some of the glitches with vanilla world borders.
Please note that generating chunks is not the same as loading them. Generated chunks are ones that the Minecraft server have created and stored in your server's files (specifically in your world folder). These are then loaded in when players are in close proximity of the chunk... however, the chunk will then later be unloaded when no players are nearby. This means that automated farms built by players on your server will still require a player to be online and in the chunk's vicinity for it to be loaded in and activated.
Note that "spawn chunks" (the 16 chunks around your world's spawn area) are permanently "loaded", making them ideal places for communal farms on your server which can run 24/7. Operators can also use the /forceload command to make other chunks permanently loaded, so long as the server's online.
Updated on: 02/08/2023
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