We’re just finishing up Sponge support in the Minecraft module for AMP which makes up McMyAdmin 3.
From the panel you’ll be able to pick a sponge version you want to use, hit update, and it will automatically download and install the requested version for you. If you pick “Latest” as a release stream then it’ll grab whatever the latest is at that time.
Is there anything you guys would like to see in the way of sponge-specific integration beyond being able to install and run it? When the plugin repository is available we plan to add support for that too.
You’ll be able to download the version of MCMA3 with Sponge support next week hopefully.
Edit: Sponge support was added in MCMA3/AMP release 1.2 ‘Tethys’ - Go get it!
One thing that I think would be really useful to be able to configure through MCMA are which “modules” are enabled in the sponge core:
As you may be aware, Sponge runs by dynamically patching itself into minecraft at runtime, this allows us to actually make certain parts of the system optional, in particular performance patches. Making these performance-related patches optional allows server owners to
Figure out whether a particular performance optimisation actually helps performance
It also allows us to bundle experimental or potentially over-zealous optimisation patches but leave them disabled by default, allowing server owners to experiment with them.
All mixin modules can be enabled/disabled via the config/sponge/global.conf file under the key /sponge/modules, although currently only the entity-activation-range module is bundled, we intend to bring more patches over as development progresses.
Some modules also have configuration themselves, so as well as being able to turn these features on and off, in some cases they can be “tuned” so that server owners can find the best possible optimisation for their environment. For example the aforementioned entity-activation-range plugin can be configured via settings in the /sponge/entity-activation-range key in the aforementioned file.
Having access to these settings via MCMA would be very cool (although maybe with an attached disclaimer or small help message indicating the severity of messing with settings which are not understood) and would potentially be of great value to server owners.
Keep up the awesome work, nice to have you on the forums here too though I see you’ve been lurking for some time.
Hey @mumfrey, that’s definitely a great suggestion and should be easy enough to implement. The settings can be accessed anyway via the file editor but they’re simple enough that I don’t see any reason not to add some Sponge-specific UI over the top to make it nice.
Indeed I’ve been hovering around for a while, what’s got things moving now is that the dev builds are in better shape and it’s starting to be more viable to use Sponge, so I figured now would be a good time to add support for it.
As a side note, any official Sponge developers who would like an AMP/MCMA3 licence to test and play around with are entirely welcome to one. Especially once we’ve rolled out the Sponge support.
A few things I might add to having support for through a web interface:
Ability to choose between implementations of Sponge (SpongeVanilla and SpongeForge when SpongeVanilla is made available)
The difference between implementations is that SpongeVanilla has a different bundle of launch settings compared to SpongeForge being that SpongeVanilla is simply launched with java -jar spongevanilla-{buildNum}-{APIVer}-{BuildVer}.jar as it uses a different type of launcher compared to that of SpongeForge.
Ability to toggle VM flags with the debugging tools we provide:
The one thing we have to be really careful about is not causing information overload for new users. We want to make sure that 95% of users can just hit “Start” and have it 'Just Work’™.
Things like supporting Mixins might have to be handled in an AMP plugin rather than being part of the main Minecraft module so that users have to explicitly enable it to access that functionality. We’re not fond of having tucked away ‘advanced’ menus because it causes support headaches and hosting providers really really hate them.
SpongeVanilla will most likely be supported when it becomes available.
While I would normally agree, when it comes to getting debugging information, allowing the server admin to provide us with the debugging output from Mixins is immensely beneficial. If anything, allowing server admins to properly produce debugging output for us to actually figure out whether it’s a bug with our implementation or something else is interfering is something I would say is really powerful. Also, I’m not entirely in the now with what an AMP is, I’m assuming it’s a plugin framework for McMyAdmin?
McMyAdmin is no longer really a thing. AMP is kinda like McMyAdmin but for any game or application, not just Minecraft. It uses plugins to support particular games and applications. And McMyAdmin 3 is in fact just an AMP plugin rather than a standalone product. The instances can also talk to each other so you’ll (finally) be able to manage multiple servers from the same place.
As well as there being plugins to support particular applications (which are actually called Modules), plugins can also add/modify arbitrary functionality. And in fact a lot of AMPs ‘stock’ functionality is implemented as plugins, this includes things like the file manager/editor, the pushbullet support, and a handful of other bits.
So is MCMA3 just a AMP plugin that adds Minecraft support?
Because I keep seeing MCMA3 being thrown around but then people are saying that it’s really part of AMP, cool! Mind just choosing one or at least clarifying exactly what MCMA3 is in comparison to MCMA2 and AMP?
Having that said, is it possible to make a module for debugging utils to add to the McMyAdmin module for Sponge? While you have answered what AMP is, you didn’t really answer whether the primary question I had with debugging.
So MCMA3 is basically just another name for “AMP while it’s running the Minecraft module and using a McMyAdmin 2 licence key” - The branding is kept around because the name is known, and because MCMA2 licences can be used on AMP but only to create Minecraft servers.
So where MCMA2 is a standalone thing, AMP has a Minecraft module which in some circumstances is also known as MCMA3. When talking specifically about MC I tend to refer to it as MCMA3 because its the name people know.
Essentially gabizou want’s an easy way to package up logs, mixin debug information, plugin versions, sponge version and forge version so if someone is running into problems while using MCMA3 it’s “one click” or as easy as possible to create a pastebin like report full of all the information needed to help the user.
It’s likely that you need more detailed instructions on how to get that information rather then just being pointed at a wiki page for java vm arguments.
I don’t see why someone would need mixin debug information in a Production Environment. It will totally wreck the startup time if you run your server with -Dmixin.debug=true.
though I see you’ve been lurking for some time.