I'm encountering a new (to me) mining glitch on this one Minecraft server. The owner isn't having the problem, but the server is in the same city as where he lives, so it may be communication relay related, but I don't think so.
If I mine a single block (like with an unenchanted iron pickaxe), it seems to work correctly pretty much all the time.
If I hold down left click and try to mine multiple blocks in sequence, then other blocks besides the first will often keep reappearing. Eventually, they'll get mined, although the quickest solution is to let go of the button and then mine the block in isolation.
I've found one similar bug, MC-51915, but my report is NOT a dupe of that bug. In that other case, there is some server lag, even in single player mode, that is making the server take excessive time to make the block drop as an item.
However, on this server, we're not experiencing any server CPU load issues, and communication latency seems to be really fast and also not a bottleneck. I can wait as long as I like, and the block will never drop as an item. Basically, the mining just failed or got lost for some reason, and I have to try again.
I don't have any privileged access to this server, but I can talk to its owner so as to acquire as much diagnostic info as you'd like. Can I turn on something on the client that logs individual client/server messages and paste on the ones related to mining failed blocks?
Thanks!
Comments
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If it were just lag, wouldn't the block eventually appear to break? If the break fails, then I can wait as long as I want, and it never corrects itself. Lag usually refers to either communication delays or the server being overloaded with work to do. The server is definitely not overloaded here, and I see no other evidence of significant communication delay.
I've been tinkering with this a bit. If I press the let button and mine in a consistent direction, I do not see this occur. So some information from the client is sent to the server that must tell it my orientation and that I'm mining.
However, if I change orientation, then there is a significant chance that the blocks that I'm pointing to now will not get mined. So I'm just wildly guessing here, but the communication might be something like this:
Client has started mining; here's the player position, orientation, and timestamp
Client changes orientation.
Client has stopped mining; here's a timestamp
It seems odd that Minecraft might communicate this instead of like which blocks are being mined, but perhaps this is a way to prevent hacked clients from mining too fast. But if the orientation info is significantly delayed, then the server might think that I'm mining into the air for a while, while the client things I'm mining blocks. Perhaps when a block is broken on the client, it requests info from the server as to what is going to occupy that block now?
Anyhow, it seems like this could be handled much more robustly, like with everything getting timestamps or something.
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So the following is not a viable work-around, because I've fallen into lava before doing this, but:
If I'm still holding down the left button and change orientation, but I also hold down W so that I would walk into the block I'm mining, I have not been able to get the bug to manifest. It seems like Minecraft is doing a better job of communicating position and orientation info if I'm moving than when I'm just pivoting.
Should the client send more frequent orientation updates when the player is mining?
[Mod] Neko
Caused by lag.
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It's not a lag problem. I have investigated all ways I can think of in which this might be a lag problem and ruled them out.
And just because I entertained the notion that it MIGHT be lag does not mean that it IS lag, and it is not appropriate for you close the bug on that basis. Moreover, even if the problem WERE caused by lag, all it would mean is that Minecraft is handling some lag improperly, which is unintended behavior and therefore something that requires improvement.
But it's not a lag problem.
The server where I have this problem has a consistent ping time under 40 milliseconds. By contrast, I regularly play on another server with consistently more than 50 ms ping time, and that server does not exhibit this problem. So it's not an internet latency problem. I also have more than enough bandwidth as well.
I also observe this problem on the server when I'm the only one on and the CPU load is extremely low. So it it not the result of lag due to the game tick taking too long either.
We have also observed the problem occur in arbitrary locations, and there isn't an excess of entity processing going on in spawn, although we'd see that as excessive CPU load, which isn't happening.
I believe your assessment that this is a lag problem is incorrect, and I request that you reopen this bug.
Thanks.
This is just lag on your end, not the servers end