Throttle Auto Walk on chunk loading issues

[magicus]

Describe the feature

I am using Auto Walk to travel with boat along the blue ice highways on 2b2t. This reaches speeds up to 72 m/s, which puts a strain on the server's ability to load the chunks ahead. If you continue with this high speed when chunks are not loaded properly, you will end up outside loaded chunk and need to relog.

I have been manually throttling the Auto Walk feature, turning it off when the amount of loaded chunks ahead of me reaches a critical minimum, and turning it back on once they have loaded. This works but makes the process require manual supervision, which is not as convenient.

I think it could be possible to implement this kind of functionality directly in Meteor. My thinking is along this lines:

1. Given the player's current speed and direction, calculate which chunks will be entered within a certain time. (For a rough number, let's say 500 ms).
2. Check if all these chunks are loaded.
3. If not, put Auto Walk in pause mode, and start watch for chunk loading.
4. Once all these chunks have been loaded, move Auto Walk out of pause mode.

Most of this sounds like it should be fairly simple to implement, though I am not really sure how easy it is to detect chunk loading. Depending on what kind of chunk loading instrumentation already present in Meteor, this might prove more of a challenge.

Before submitting a suggestion

• This feature doesn't already exist in the client. (I have checked every module and their settings on the latest dev build)

• This wasn't already suggested. (I have searched suggestions on GitHub and read the FAQ)

[DrParanoya]

ELytraFly has a dontGoIntoUnloadedChunks setting, so I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be too difficult to add it to AutoWalk

[magicus]

ELytraFly has a dontGoIntoUnloadedChunks setting, so I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be too difficult to add it to AutoWalk

I had a look at the code.

ElytraFly just checks the very next chunk you are about to enter, and sets your velocity to 0 if it is not loaded. If you're traveling on an ice road with boat, it takes like forever to slow down, so that will (likely) not be near enough.

There is an event in Meteor that is sent when chunks are loaded; I guess the AutoWalk module could subscribe to that, and that way try to keep track of the loaded chunks. But it seems far from trivial; you need to know when to yeet them from the set of remembered chunks, you should only store information about loaded chunks that are ahead of you in your current direction of travel, etc.

[magicus]

... but then again, it might be worth trying out the ElytraFly method. I don't know if we can just set the boat's velocity to 0, but if it works I guess it is an acceptable solution. Still, it will take time to regain speed from a full stop, so a gradual slow down to lower speeds (e.g. 50 m/s) while waiting for the chunk to load would be preferable.

[chri-k]

the currently implemented solution is the elytrafly method. chri-k is also writing an alternate method that tries to avoid total deceleration. this will likely appear sometime soon as a separate PR. (it is useful to have both methods, since acceleration is not a factor in some use-cases)

[magicus]

an alternate method that tries to avoid total deceleration.

That sounds great, I think this is the key here, and why I was talking about "throttling". Trying to keep the speed up to the maximum possible given the rate that the server can provide new chunks.