The first published benchmark for the working version (docs/server.md
section 10, item 4). It ran the v2026.10.18.15 release, as install.sh
installs it, against vanilla 26.3 with 1, 10, 25 and 50 mixed bots. The
servers ran on the ThinkPad (quiet, under nice 19) and the bots on the
Mac mini over the tailnet. Vanilla's default game rules applied on both;
Horizon's server runs the locator bar now.
Both servers kept 20 TPS throughout. Horizon used 3.7 to 5.2 times less
memory. Its average tick was shorter with 1, 10 and 25 bots and 18 %
longer with 50, while it generated about twice the new terrain a second
(the exploring bots fly as fast as each server sends chunks). Its P99
was lower at every count.
benchmarks/server-mixed-2026-10-18/ holds the README, the report and the
machine's load; docs/server.md links it from sections 9 and 10.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
On a Linux without ALSA's library (most minimal server images), the
game exits at once with the loader's "error while loading shared
libraries: libasound.so.2". The supervisor took that for a crash and
restarted it five times over two and a half minutes before giving up
with "see logs/latest.log", which holds nothing about it.
Now:
- `run` starts the game with --help first (it loads no game files) and,
if the system can't load it, stops at once with the loader's line and
the packages to install on Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and NixOS;
- `init` prints the same as a warning after "Game:";
- install.sh lists the libraries `ldd` can't find, with the same advice;
- docs/server.md says so in the install section.
Also, a service installed without the installer's launcher on the PATH
ran `<dir>/releases/<tag>/horizon-server`: Linux reports the running
program with links resolved, so the unit pinned that release and an
update never reached it. The fallback now goes through `<dir>/current`
while it points at that release.
Found by the end-to-end install check on the ThinkPad (NixOS, no
nix-ld libraries) with v2026.10.18.15.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Chat session updates with their profile key checked against the services'
keys, signed chat and the message chain, last-seen acknowledgements, the
signature cache, signed say/me/msg, enforce-secure-profile, and vanilla's
log lines. Offline servers and players without a chat session chat
unsigned, as on vanilla. tools/test_secure_chat_parity.py compares both
servers with test keys and a mock services server.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Port CachedUserNameToIdResolver to the dedicated server, in place of the
in-memory name cache: usercache.json in the universe folder is loaded at
startup (bad entries skipped, a bad date warned about), players are added
when they join and kept for a month, and the file keeps the 1000 most
recently used, newest first, as Gson writes it.
The console's op, deop, ban, pardon and whitelist find players by name
through it, in any case. A name it doesn't hold is asked of the profile
service (profiles::find_by_name) on offline servers too, as vanilla does;
one the service doesn't know is the offline player of the lower-case name
on an offline server, and "That player does not exist" on an online one.
tools/test_user_cache_parity.py runs vanilla's server and Horizon's with a
mock profile service and compares the replies, the names looked up and the
files; the dedicated-server harness now compares usercache.json too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Walk and explore passes at 1 to 100 bots on the ThinkPad (bots on the Mac
mini), vanilla with the locator bar off, plus an explore pass at a rate both
servers keep up with. The README has the method, the tables, the profile of
what remains at 25 walking bots and the earlier runs; docs/server.md section
9 and the Scale row summarise it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
online-mode=true now authenticates players as vanilla's
ServerLoginPacketListenerImpl does. The server makes a 1024-bit RSA key
pair at startup ("Generating keypair"), sends it with a random challenge,
checks the challenge and decrypts the shared secret from the client's key
packet, encrypts the connection with AES/CFB8, and asks the session
service's verify endpoint (hasJoined, through the services discovery
document) whether the player joined with the server's hash, from the
"User Authenticator #N" thread. A verified profile keeps its UUID and
properties, so skins show in the player list; an unverified one is
refused with "Failed to verify username!", and an unreachable service
with authservers_down. The offline-mode warnings are only printed in
offline mode.
Refused logins are logged as vanilla logs them: "Disconnecting
<name> (/<address>): <reason>" and "<name> (/<address>) lost
connection: <reason>", with log-ips respected.
horizon-protocol gains RSA key generation (Miller-Rabin primes,
e = 65537), the X.509 encoding of the public key and PKCS#1 v1.5
decryption. test_online_mode_parity.py runs its logins against Horizon's
server too, plus a verified player the whitelist refuses, and compares
the two servers' log lines about the player.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
What the dedicated server does today (measured against vanilla 26.3), the horizon-server supervisor and
its packaging, server.toml, the CLI and TUI, the web panel, backups and updates, the control API and MCP,
the bot benchmark plan against vanilla and Paper, the working version for 2026-10-23, and the PRs that
build it (#551 to #556).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludovic Marie