MP Time Fix

TIME FREEZE

Small server? Stop coming back to a rotten pantry and a missed season.

On a small multiplayer server, time keeps passing for everyone even when only one player is online. Players who log in once a week come back to find their food rotten and half a year gone. Time Freeze fixes that without 
penalizing the players who are online.                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

WHAT IT DOES

When fewer than 2 players are online (configurable):

- Days and seasons pass 4 times slower (configurable, or fully frozen). The date, the seasons, the temperature, the snow, the leaf colors and the length of the day all follow this slowed calendar.
- Everything that takes time keeps its normal speed: crops, fruit trees, berry bushes, animals (growth, pregnancy), barrels, charcoal pits, pit kilns, bloomeries, cooking, drying, metal cooling... The player who is online is never slowed down.
- Absent players' food does not rot in the containers they placed (chests, vessels, shelves, barrels, crocks, pots...), even if their chunk is unloaded and reloaded days later.

As soon as enough players are online, everything goes back to normal.

TEAMS

Players can group into teams with /team. A team counts as one player: while any member is online, the team's food rots normally (someone is there to take care of it). When the whole team is away, it is protected.

SEE WHAT IS PROTECTED

Look at a container: the info at the top of the screen tells whether it is protected ("Protected: Bob is away, food does not perish") or why it is not. Food in a protected container also shows a "Protected" line in its tooltip.

SMART PLAYER COUNTING

- Players in creative or spectator mode do not count (an admin checking something does not restart time).
- AFK players (no movement for 15 minutes) do not count.
- The mod only acts on dedicated servers: players who install it for your server keep a vanilla single-player experience.

COMMANDS

/timefreeze : status (slowed or not, players counted, displayed date, how far behind the date is, food protection)
/timefreeze debug : compares date, season, temperature and day length with vanilla (admin)
/timefreeze reload : reloads the config (admin)
/timefreeze owner : shows the owner of the container you look at (admin)
/timefreeze owner set [player] : changes the owner of the container you look at (admin)
/team create [name] / join [name] / leave / list : manage teams

CONFIGURATION

File ModConfig/darkmpfix.json on the server:

- MinPlayersForTimeFlow (default 2): players needed for time to flow normally
- CalendarSpeedWhenFrozen (default 0.25): date speed when too few players (0 = frozen, 1 = normal)
- ProtectOfflineFood (default true): protects absent players' food
- OfflineFoodPerishMultiplier (default 0): perish speed of protected food (0 = no rot, 0.1 = 10 times slower)
- LegacyContainerOwner (default FirstOpener): owner of containers placed before the mod was installed
- IgnoredGameModes (default Creative, Spectator): game modes that do not count as players
- AfkMinutes (default 15): minutes without moving before a player stops counting (0 = disabled)
- OnlyOnDedicatedServer (default true): only acts on dedicated servers
- AnnounceInChat (default true): chat messages when time slows down or flows again

INSTALLATION

- Required on the server and on every client (the client shows the date and computes the seasonal visuals).
- Works on an existing world: no date jump on install, the slowdown only applies from then on. Containers placed before the mod belong to the first player who opens them.
- Game version: 1.22.7

GOOD TO KNOW

- The real game clock is never stopped or rewound: the mod computes a "virtual date". This is why crops and recipes are never affected.
- With the default settings, seasons last longer while few players are online: a winter started solo lasts longer too.
- The moon phases follow real time.
- Removing the mod makes the date jump forward by the accumulated delay.
- Mods that compute seasons by themselves from the raw game time will see the real season.