Bedrock Chunk Loader

Keep your farms and contraptions running with chunk loaders! Place a chunk loader and the chunks around it stay loaded and ticking, even when you're far away.

Features

• Persistent Chunk Loading: Keeps a square of chunks around the chunk loader loaded and ticking
• Your Own Radius: Choose each chunk loader's radius, from 1 chunk up to the limit the server's admins set
• Show Area: See exactly which chunks a chunk loader keeps loaded
• Farm Mode: Your chunk loader learns your mob farm while you're there, then keeps it producing while you're away
• Redstone Control: Power a chunk loader with redstone to pause it, perfect for automated setups
• Live Menus: One screen per job, built with Minecraft's data-driven forms, that updates while it's open
• Private Labels: The label above a chunk loader shows its status, owner and farm, to its owner and admins only
• Particle Effects: Purple effects for placing, switching on and off, redstone and breaking, and a slow pulse while working
• Owner Protection: Only the owner (or admins) can use or break a chunk loader
• Admin Panel: Manage every chunk loader in the world from anywhere, set limits, and switch them all off at once
• Admin Delegation: Operators can let trusted players manage chunk loaders without making them operators

Requirements

• Minecraft Bedrock 1.26.50 or newer

Installation

1. Download the .mcaddon file
2. Run the .mcaddon file to open Minecraft and automatically import it
3. Create a new world or edit an existing world
4. Activate the Behavior Pack (the Resource Pack will be activated automatically)

For Players

Obtaining a Chunk Loader

You can get a chunk loader by:

• Creative Mode: Find it in the creative inventory under Equipment
• Crafting: Use a crafting table with the following recipe:

[    Empty    ]  [    Diamond    ]  [     Empty     ]
[ Resin Clump ]  [ Redstone Block]  [ Amethyst Shard]
[    Empty    ]  [ Lapis Lazuli  ]  [     Empty     ]

The redstone block sits at the centre with a diamond above, lapis lazuli below, and a resin clump and an amethyst shard either side (either way round works). The four corners are left empty. Gathering the ingredients takes you across the overworld: deep caves for diamond, an amethyst geode, a mining trip for lapis, and the Pale Garden for a resin clump.

The recipe unlocks when you obtain a Redstone Block or a Resin Clump.

Placing a Chunk Loader

1. Place the chunk loader block where you want to keep chunks loaded
2. It switches on straight away, using the largest radius the server allows
3. Active chunk loaders show a green tick (✓) on the block and give off light
4. Inactive chunk loaders show a red cross (✕) on the block with no light

The Chunk Loader Menu

Use (right-click) your chunk loader to open its menu. It updates live while it's open.

• Status: Whether it's loading chunks, and how many
• Turn on / Turn off: Switch chunk loading on or off
• Show area: Outlines the chunks it keeps loaded for 10 seconds, at your height, and its kill areas in orange. Only you see the outlines
• Chunk radius: How many chunks around it to keep loaded, from 1 up to the server's limit. Radius 1 keeps a 3×3 square of chunks (9) loaded, radius 4 a 9×9 square (81), radius 6 a 13×13 square (169). Smaller is kinder to the server
• Show label: Shows or hides the label above this chunk loader
• Farm mode: Learns the mob farm this chunk loader keeps loaded. See Farm Mode

The label above the chunk loader shows its status, owner and farm (its mob, its two mobs, or Various for three or more, with the kills an hour). Only you and the server's admins can see it, and it's hidden behind blocks. (With Vibrant Visuals the game currently shows it through walls: MCPE-243723.)

Removing a Chunk Loader

Break the block like any other block. Only you (the owner) or admins can break your chunk loaders. Anyone else is warned as soon as they start mining it.

Redstone Control

When a chunk loader receives redstone power, it pauses chunk loading. When the signal is removed, chunk loading resumes automatically.

This lets you build chunk loaders into automated redstone setups: for example, only loading chunks when needed, or a lever to pause a chunk loader from a distance.

• Powered: Chunk loading is paused, the block shows its inactive texture, and the label shows [REDSTONE OFF] in orange
• Unpowered: Chunk loading works normally
• No redstone nearby: No effect at all

Chunks unload 2 seconds after the signal arrives, so the redstone circuit has time to settle first. A pause is remembered across restarts.

Admins can switch redstone control off for the whole server in the settings.

What Works with Chunk Loaders

Chunk loaders keep the following working:

• Redstone contraptions and circuits
• Crop growth (wheat, carrots, potatoes, etc.)
• Tree and plant growth
• Hoppers and item transport systems
• Furnaces and other processing blocks
• Water and lava flows

Farm Mode

Mob farms only work while a player is nearby, because mobs only spawn near players: a chunk loader keeps the farm's machinery running, but nothing spawns into it. Farm mode fills that gap. The chunk loader learns your farm while you're there, then keeps it producing while everyone is away. Faster farms produce more.

Setting Up Farm Mode

1. Open the chunk loader's menu and choose Add kill area. The menu closes
2. Look at where your farm's mobs die (up to 32 blocks away, and through glass, so you can do it from outside the kill chamber). An orange outline shows where the kill area will go
3. Crouch to add it there. The menu reopens
4. Set the kill area's size so it covers every spot where mobs die: 0 is just that block, and each step adds a block in every direction. Use Show area to check it
5. Stay nearby while the farm runs. After 10 minutes of it running, it's learned

A chunk loader can have up to 8 kill areas, for farms that kill mobs in several places. One area that covers many kill spots also works: the chunk loader remembers the exact blocks where mobs died. Kill areas must be inside the chunks the chunk loader keeps loaded.

How It Works

• Learning: while a player is within the farm distance and the farm is running, every mob that dies in a kill area is counted, along with how it died: by a player or not, with Looting or not, baby or adult, on fire or not. Mobs that die outside the kill areas (a fight nearby) don't count, and neither do bred animals
• Producing: while every player is further away than the farm distance, the chunk loader replays the farm's kills at the rate it learned. Each kill is rolled through the mob's real loot table, and the drops appear exactly where the farm's real drops appeared while it was learning, so your farm's own collection system (water streams, hoppers, hopper minecarts) picks them up as usual, and they meet the same fate as real drops
• Any mob farm works: iron, gold, raid, guardian, wither skeleton, creeper, blaze, mobs from other add-ons, and so on. Player-only drops (like iron ingots from zombies) only come from farms where players do the killing, just as in the real game
• Keeping it up to date: the rate follows the last 2 hours of watching, so changes to the farm show up. Choose Forget what it learned after rebuilding a farm. A farm no one has seen running for 7 days stops producing until someone visits it while it runs
• Backing up: if drops pile up in the kill areas (storage full, collection broken), production pauses until they're collected

Each drop is a fresh roll of the loot table, so the produced items match the farm on average rather than kill by kill. Mobs' equipment drops (such as zombified piglins' golden swords) aren't included, because they aren't part of loot tables.

Default Settings

• Chunk loaders per player: 5
• Largest chunk radius: 4 chunks (a 9×9 square, 81 chunks)

For Admins

Admin Command

Use /mygen:chunkloaders to open the admin panel. Operators can always use it, and so can any players an operator makes an administrator (see Delegating Admin Access below). Anyone else who runs it gets a permission message.

Admin Panel

• Summary: Whether chunk loaders are enabled, how many are working, and how many chunks they keep loaded
• Settings: See Settings
• Disable all chunk loaders / Enable all chunk loaders: Disabling stops every chunk loader on the server and blocks new ones from being placed. Each owner's on/off choice is kept, so enabling them again restarts exactly the ones that were on
• Administrators (operators only): See below
• Chunk loaders: Pick any chunk loader in the world from the dropdown to see its details and:
  • Turn it on or off, from anywhere. A chunk loader whose chunks aren't loaded is woken up for a moment to switch it on
  • Set its radius
  • Teleport there
  • Delete its data, for a chunk loader whose block has been lost (for example after chunk corruption, or the add-on being removed for a while). This frees up the owner's count

Settings

Settings save as you change them.

• Chunk loaders per player: 1 to 20
• Largest chunk radius: 1 to 6. Owners can choose any radius up to this. Lowering it shrinks larger chunk loaders straight away; each keeps its owner's choice for when the limit goes back up
• Farm mode: Whether chunk loaders can learn and run farms. Off hides it from the chunk loader menu
• Farm distance: 32 to 256 blocks. Within this distance of a player, a farm runs for real and its chunk loader learns from it; further than this from everyone, the chunk loader produces instead
• Farm kills an hour: 500 to 20,000. The most kills an hour any one chunk loader produces, however fast its farm is
• Redstone control: Whether redstone pauses chunk loaders. Turning it off restarts any chunk loaders that were paused by redstone
• Ambient effects: The slow pulse from working chunk loaders while a player is nearby

Delegating Admin Access

Operators can share admin control without making anyone an operator:

1. Open /mygen:chunkloaders and choose Administrators
2. Pick an online player from the dropdown and choose Make administrator
3. That player can now open the admin panel and manage any chunk loader

To revoke access, choose Remove next to their name and confirm. This works even if they're offline: their access is removed the next time they join.

Notes:

• Only operators see the Administrators button; administrators can't add or remove other administrators
• The administrator list is saved with the world
• Players can only be made administrators while they're online

Admin Permissions

Operators and administrators (marked with the chunk_admin tag) can:

• Open the admin panel
• Use and break any chunk loader, not just their own
• See every chunk loader's label

Performance Considerations

• Each working chunk loader keeps a square of chunks loaded: (2 × radius + 1)² chunks, so 81 at radius 4 and 169 at radius 6
• Many chunk loaders, or large radii, can affect server performance. The admin panel shows how many chunks are being kept loaded in total
• Lower the largest chunk radius, or the number of chunk loaders per player, to reduce the load
• Disable all chunk loaders to free up the server for a while without losing anyone's settings

Credits

Author: Rob 'myGen' Hall
License: GPL-3.0-or-later
Website: https://mygen.co.uk

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. See the LICENSE file for details.

Version History

See CHANGELOG.md.