Spawn radius chunk size?

[technophobia]

I've been reading and re-reading the forums and change logs trying to figure out how large an area is always loaded. I swear I read somewhere there was a mention that the chunk centered on the spawn point stayed loaded all the time, but now that I've gotten to a point where I want to automate, I can't seem to find any reference to it.

So simply put my question is if anyone knows what kind of space is it good to put things into that you want to continue even when you're off mining in some far cavern? Does this even exist in BTW? Frankly this is the only thing I miss from modded vMC is being able to build a machine to keep chunks loaded so I can build real automation in and know it's running when I'm not there.

[Western-Knight]

Unless I'm wrong, the only chunks actively loaded are within radius of the/a player... I believe you may be S.O.L. my friend. I could be wrong however.

[Dorugami]

I think it's a vMC thing. I don't know how many chunks exactly around it, but the spawn chunk is sure to be loaded so long as you're in the same dimension.

[Gilberreke]

I think FC didn't touch the spawn chunk staying loaded, but I'm not sure of that or how big the radius is. Should be the same as vanilla I guess.

I could be wildly wrong.

[VegasGoat]

The wiki says 24x24 and it only happens on multiplayer servers. That seems really large though. I remember searching in the past and finding somewhere that said it was 15x15 chunks, but I can't find that any more.

All I could find was this:

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Spawn/Mu ... er_Details under "Constantly Loaded Chunks".

[erikdk321]

Spawn chunks are always loaded in singleplayer as well, the wiki is wrong

[Gilberreke]

Spawn chunks are always loaded in singleplayer as well, the wiki is wrong

In BTW too? That's what we're debating here I think.

[caveatEmptor]

Unless Flowerchild changed it relatively recently, it works in BTW as well. Even before I knew about the spawn chunk thing I noticed weird things happening in my BTW singleplayer worlds- if I left my base for a long period of time and it rained while I was out, the windmill's gearbox would be broken when I got back even though I wasn't anywhere close to it during the storm, or a whole bunch of stuff I left in the millstone would be all done when I got back- that sort of thing. So it definitely was happening in BTW as well.

[DNoved1]

KaboPC has a mod which will show you the spawn chunks, if you're curious.

Video of it

Probably won't work with BTW however.

[technophobia]

Thanks guys, appreciate the responses. The link seems to imply its about a 12 by 12 chunk area, with each chunk being a 16 by 16 block area. If this is correct, I think I should be safe building a nice size village with automation and it should keep running. I'll do some testing with a millstone and water wheel and see how it works out before I go crazy building.

[FlowerChild]

To me, it's a good reason to build up spawn given the added output it will give to many automated systems you might build there, which I find plays nicely off the original spawn location being so important in BTW worlds. Hence why I've left it largely alone.

I also find there's a bit of a tradeoff there too, as since the spawn is always loaded, it virtually guarantees that any items you drop on death while in the area will despawn before you get a chance to recover them.

I even feel it fits in well with BTW's back story, but will of course remain as ambiguous as ever in that regard ;)

[Gilberreke]

Also remember that this means that machines that cross the spawn chunk radius are especially prone to weir load/unload behavior.

Does anyone know if the original spawn is always in the middle chunk of this radius?

[Rob]

Does anyone know if the original spawn is always in the middle chunk of this radius?

Judging by what was said in that mod video, Id say no. Depending on spawn location the always loaded size could be 12x12, 12x13, 13x12 or 13x13.