Question Understanding Tick Updates

[CodemanXD]

I shared the following on the TechnicalMinecraft subreddit, but wanted to share it here since this could be something with Paper:

I have two sugarcane farms set up near my Creeper farm, and I noticed that one of them has several lanes of sugarcane that do not grow nearly as much as the rest do.

I've found that the lanes are outside a chunk border. This chunk is 7 east and 4 south (Chunk -20 ~ 15) of where I have my Creeper farm AFK spot (Chunk -27 ~ 11). If I move one chunk south (Chunk -27 ~ 12), this issue doesn't seem to happen anymore. I've tested with setting my randomTickSpeed really high (/gamerule randomTickSpeed 3000). Height from the Creeper farm makes no difference (i.e. actual AFK spot versus directly on top on the farm below the AFK spot.

My question really is just am I misunderstanding how tick updates work regarding distance from player? For reference, I am:

• Running Java version 1.20.2
• Paper server, Fabric locally, Sodium as a performance mod
• Simulation and Render Distance are both max (32 chunks)

I've seen others say tick updates on Java happen within 128 blocks or an 8x8 chunk area, but this does not seem to support that. Is there a setting that might be causing this, or am I not understanding how tick updates work?

 

[stefvanschie]

The amount of chunks that are random ticked around the player depends on the horizontal distance between the center of the chunk and the player's position, which must be within 128 blocks. Because it depends on the player's position, some chunks that you might expect to be ticked, might not be because the player's position with regards to the center of the chunk is more than 128 blocks away. Hence, it might be that your position is still too far away for the chunk to be random ticked. See also this article and specifically note the image. Assuming your position is the same as in the image, we can see that the chunk seven to the east and four to the south is not inside the random tick range.

 

[CodemanXD]

The amount of chunks that are random ticked around the player depends on the horizontal distance between the center of the chunk and the player's position, which must be within 128 blocks. Because it depends on the player's position, some chunks that you might expect to be ticked, might not be because the player's position with regards to the center of the chunk is more than 128 blocks away. Hence, it might be that your position is still too far away for the chunk to be random ticked. See also this article and specifically note the image. Assuming your position is the same as in the image, we can see that the chunk seven to the east and four to the south is not inside the random tick range.

I was thinking the shape was a square, not a circle. This helps a lot. Thanks for the explanation! I just have my tick-based farms closer together now