Multithreading question

[NolValue]

This isn't really an outright request for help or support, more asking a question on what you guys would recommend in terms of this idea.

 

I've been working on a mod as of late, if you guys know what CustomNPCs is, I'm working on my own type of mod in that sort of genre.

 

So, right now, I'm working on a custom AI system based off Behaviour Trees. I chose this over using Minecraft's built in one because theirs feels kind of limited, plus it's easier to visualize what decisions my AI would make this way.

 

After getting closer to completion, I've been thinking about how this system is a lot of overhead to add to Minecrafts already relatively bloated stack.

 

Do you guys think it would be justifiable to move all my NPC entities AI onto their own thread? 

 

As in, have a singleton AI Handler class in which it has it's own thread where it processes its children (at a fixed tickrate of course) on loop?

 

(Accidentally posted in wrong section before. Reposting here and editing old thread)

[Draco18s]

If you already know how to handle multithreading properly, then go ahead.

If you don't, then I highly recommend not doing it.

[NolValue]

I know it relatively well. Not too strong on it in Java, only used it occasionally, but I do have extensive experience in other languages.

 

Thanks for answering my question, I'll go ahead and give it a try.

[NolValue]

4 minutes ago, diesieben07 said:

The thing to be careful about in Minecraft is that almost all data structures in Minecraft are not threadsafe.

If you offload your AI to a separate thread, it cannot directly interact with the world, at all. You need to copy all data that the other thread needs to work on the main thread, before passing that copy on to the other thread to work on.

Yeah, Minecraft really isn't inherently threadsafe. Thankfully, at least right now, the AI is going to only read data from other threads. It shouldn't be able to directly alter it. The most it'll do is maybe spawn an Entity like a projectile.