- Thu Apr 24, 2014 5:24 am
#187783
The exact cap is customLimit * chunkCount / 256 where customLimit is a user defined limit for the mob type in question and chunkCount is a count of chunks to spawn mobs in (not necessarily the number of loaded chunks).
Mob types with their respective default customLimit are as follows:
monsters: 70
animals: 15
water-animals: 5
ambient: 15
The chunks available for mob spawning is (2 * minimum(viewDistance, mobSpawnRange, 8) + 1)^2 chunks around each player. AFAIK, minerealm's view distance is 6. The default value for mobSpawnRange is 4 which leads me to believe there are only 81 chunks around each player (not counting overlapping chunks) available for spawning.
That would mean about 22 monsters per player, abut 5 animals per player, about 2 water-animals per player, and about 5 ambients per player. This is a world wide cap. If VVolfie is hoarding 250 cows, nobody's going to see pigs fly.
When the count for the number of mobs of the particular type is reached in the selected chunks described above, the type of mob stops spawning naturally. However, the count can still be forced above the cap through using monster spawners and breeding.
The number of players online has an effect, but each player also carries some baggage - a bunch of mobs in the chunks around them. What would be a suitable conclusion is some players carry more baggage than others. If it looks like everyone is afk, there's a good chance there are a lot of mobs. If the server is populated with a bunch of noobs, there's a fair chance there's space to spawn more mobs. If you're the only one online, you have complete control over where and when mobs spawn.
An interesting feature of the way mobs are categorized is ocelots are considered hostile mobs - they have a better chance of spawning than other animals. I was actually able to find several ocelots on the nearest border of the east jungle just by standing around waiting.
