Minetest tileserver

Near realtime tileserver for minetest

Overview

A standalone java-based tile-server for minetest. Renders the mapblocks on-demand as an interactive map and displays the current players. As players interact with the map the changed MapBlocks get re-rendered and updated in the web-client (near-realtime, 20 seconds default)

The resulting tiles are cached in a file-backend and served to the client if unchanged.

Development state

• Tested and live with one Production-Instance (see Demo)
• Please file issues/requests in the github issue-tracker

Demo

• See: https://pandorabox.io/map/#-1830.125/426.5/11

Compatibility

Requirements:

• Postgresql Database for minetest backend (existing)
• Java runtime (8+)
• Modern machine with enough (2GB+) RAM and CPU

Testing was done on a fairly new minetest version (0.4.17) There will be failures in the MapBlock Parser if the version found is not met (older minetest-versions).

Please create an issue with minetest-version and MapBlock info in the bug-tracker if that happens to you.

Installing

• Download the jar in the releases section
• Backup your minetest database (THIS IS IMPORTANT!!) as the db schema gets updated (see How it works)
• Configure the database connection according to the Configuration section if they are not default value
• Start the server with: java -jar tileserver.jar

Configuring

See config

How it works

The blocks table in the minetest database gets a new column for the modification time. Triggers for insert and update on the table ensure the time gets updated after each change:

alter table blocks add column mtime bigint not null default 0;
create index BLOCKS_TIME on blocks(mtime);

create or replace function on_blocks_change() returns trigger as
$BODY$
BEGIN
    NEW.mtime = floor(EXTRACT(EPOCH from now()) * 1000);
    return NEW;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

create trigger blocks_update
 before insert or update
 on blocks
 for each row
 execute procedure on_blocks_change();

These changes get applied atomatically with the initial DB-Migration, so please create a backup before starting the Tileserver!!

With this information and the modification-time on the created tiles the periodically scheduled Updater-Job removes the stale Tiles in the tile-cache.

On the next access (browsing on the web-interface to the coordinates) the Tile gets re-rendered.

Building

Requirements:

• Java 8+
• Maven 3+

Build, test, install:

mvn clean install

With Docker

• See the Makefile

Contributing

• Issues, recommendations and pull-requests are welcome