How to get block ticks sent to chunks not nearby to players?

Hi all,

First of all, this is what I'd like to achieve: When exploring the wilderness far away from home my farms (e.g. cacti, sugar canes, seeds, saplings, etc) should still work and everything should grow during my absence.

My first approach was to simply keep chunks at home loaded (persistent) assuming that this was enough to keep nature blocks "alive". What I have done to make chunks persistent can be looked up in this thread: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/do...oadevent-really-keeps-the-chunk-alive.245690/

Chunks became indeed persistent but blocks wouldn't update. In the meantime I came across Minecraft's concept of "Block Ticks" which are nicely described here: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tick

Obviously only chunks (respectively 16x16x16 sections in those chunks) within a range of 15 chunks to each side of a player receive these block ticks which are vital for nature blocks to keep alive (growing, decaying, etc).

Now to my question: Is it possible to get block ticks sent/supplied to chunks which are loaded (persistent) but not in the close range (15-chunks-radius) of a player? And if yes, how can this be done?

Many TIA!
maystorm

 

Wouldn't this lag a server pretty hard?

 

Minecraft mechanics prevent this

 

maystorm
You can do research if something like that is possible with NMS (additional resource)

 

@tommyhoogstra: This will surely slow down the server if you are going to keep lots of chunks persistent. However, the intention is to only make a few chunks persistent (half a dozen to a dozen or so). Needs to be carefully tested and profiled, though.

@GameplayJDK: Thanks for the link! Going to look into it. Not sure, however, whether my Java skills are sufficient for it.