Does anyone know of a mod that, given the seed for example, could locally generate chunks so that they can be displayed before the server generates them?
IE if multiple people are exploring and the server’s struggling to keep up, it would be awesome if the client could generate them locally and fill in the gaps locally until the server gets around to generating them proper
(Kinda like how I imagine distant horizons does it)
I think your idea is a good idea. You could keep the view distance low on the server to reduce the number of real chunks being generated. Clients can render whatever they want.
I think one issue would be when you approach a player structure from the outside, the client might see an unmodified world first and then the player structure would pop in and overwrite the client-side terrain. Its not a technical issue, but more a player experience concern.
Any chunk with a player structure would already have been generated by the server so there should be no popping in.
Personally I would rather the world rendered in first then player structures than nothing rendering in at all
Theoretically that shouldn’t be as much of an issue as the server will already have loaded those chunks by definition, and it priorities nearby chunks first anyway
I think the server render distance would stay high but prioritise loading the immediate 8 chunks around every player first, then after all players have a decent radius loaded it can focus on further out ones. Any gaps can be filled in by the client if it has spare processing power