Explanation Choosing between FalcoInstance and InstanceContainer

Choosing between FalcoInstance and InstanceContainer

Whether falco-instance is worth adopting, and where InstanceContainer remains the right choice.

Take it if any of these apply:

• You unregister worlds while the server runs. InstanceManager#unregisterInstance unloads chunks only for an InstanceContainer; every chunk, tick partition and entity of any other instance is left behind. This is the reason the module exists.
• You want the light engine to keep a chunk up to date without a listener of your own. ChunkLightScheduler#supplier() produces FalcoChunks, and since 1.0.0 those carry Falco's light and Falco's lifecycle on one class. Before 1.0.0 this combination did not work at all.
• Empty sections cost you. A chunk that allocates its sections on demand retains 25 objects and 840 bytes where Minestom's retains 192 and 6 848, and on a generated overworld 62.24 % of sections hold nothing. The tables and what they do not say are in Counted.

Keep using InstanceContainer if you need SharedInstance views onto the world you are building — see Shared worlds for what is and is not possible — or if you are relying on any of the four Minestom sites that branch on instanceof InstanceContainer.

No speed claim. Nothing here is faster, no benchmark in this repository says it is, and the memory figures above are counts rather than timings. The distinction is spelled out in No speed gain is claimed.

What the chunk does differently

FalcoChunk extends Chunk and holds a BlockStorage. Sections are created on the first write into them; every section that holds nothing shares one instance. The read-only accessors that avoid materialising a section are in How-to Use FalcoInstance instead of InstanceContainer.

The counts per operation — a setBlock at y = 64 materialises ten sections, all of them the heightmap descent rather than the write — are in Reference Measured results.

Sources

• Why falco-instance exists — why the module exists, the four places a foreign instance behaves differently, and what it refuses to attempt
• Counted — the object and byte figures quoted above, with what they do not say
• Research: Instance Container — the investigation that preceded it
• Project Status — the working record, including what is still open

Related: Explanation Why falco-instance exists · Explanation Scope and non-goals · How-to Use FalcoInstance instead of InstanceContainer