One for the techie gamers…

Kids are getting quite into Minecraft (Bedrock edition).

At the moment they are just joining each others games to play in the same world, but I believe that only works while the owner/creator of the world is online and playing that world.

They’d rather have a shared world that either of them can log in to at any time.

So I think that probably means I need a host/server?

What’s the best approach to this?

I see Mojang have a Bedrock server to download for Windows or Ubuntu so I could get something set up locally – but that means having another PC running to host it (or are any NAS boxes capable of running it?). There are even Docker images for it.

Alternatives seem to be using the Minecraft Realms feature or a third-party hosting service – but both of these options seem to be a relatively expensive ongoing cost. Plus I think the kids are keen to have their own server so they can apply various mods etc.

What is everyone else doing?

This is something I’ve looked at briefly but not made any decisions. I considered installing a server on my NAS drive (Synology) but decided it probably didn’t have enough ooomph.

Yeah I’ve been looking to buy a NAS so if it could double up as a Minecraft server then that’d be very useful.

Not sure how much ooomph it needs. Doesn’t seem to be any specs on the Mojang site, but I do know people have run it (very slowly) on newer Raspberry Pis!

Don’t know, but you can run one from a camera:
https://m.dpreview.com/news/2871208039/video-programmer-shows-possible-to-run-a-minecraft-server-on-a-canon-eos-sl2-200d-dslr

I ran one for my daughter a 5 or 6 years ago for her and about 8 friends. It was on a far from new Mac Mini and it seemed to cope fine.

Took a bit of figuring out and you had to change a setting on the router and allocate a port to allow access.

I won’t be of much help now as things will have changed.

Took a bit of figuring out and you had to change a setting on the router and allocate a port to allow access.

Yeah it’ll probably just be local network to start with, but I’m okay with the technical aspects if it needs port-forwarding set up.

@Freester

I’ve just been doing some research and it looks like it will run on Synology in a Docker container.

This video shows how to set it up:

And this one goes into a bit more detail:

So this may be a good option.

Ooooh thank you. Really dumb question. My lad is playing on Android. So that is Bedrock (formerly Pocket Edition) right?

Yeah I believe so. My kids play on PC (via the Microsoft Store Bedrock edition) but can also join the same game from Minecraft PE on the iPad so I assume it will be the same for Android.

Brill thanks – looks like my Synology doesn’t support Docker 🙁

Thought about a nice Raspberry Pi project but that’s not a goer as the server doesn’t run so well.

Got an old PC. May have to repurpose that…

@grahams did you ever do anything with this?

My lad is Minecraft mad again and desperate to share his creations with this mates. Think I may just have a go at installing the server on a spare windows PC…

I had a long look at doing it, and ended up paying £5 a month for a minecraft realm subscription instead.

much the same cost at the end of the day and way less hassle

https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/minecraft-java-edition-server ?

@Freester said:

@grahams did you ever do anything with this?

A bit..

I created an account on linode.com with $100 free credit (via the link in this NetworkChuck video about Docker) and I used that to create an instance running Minecraft.

Fun experiment and it worked okay, but Minecraft interest seems to have fallen away again in my house.
Kids are back on Fortnite and Roblox for now, and I’m preferring Valheim to satisfy my “mining stuff to craft with and crafting stuff to mine with” itch (awesome game, try it as co-op with your lad!).