Well, more like hundreds of thousands of blocks of lava =)

The other day, I had to make to change the height of one of the Minecraft maps. I added 64 units of space to the top and bottom of it so that people could build higher into the sky. I made a whoopsie though and instead of filling the bottom of the map with something like stone, I filled it with air. Problem with that is that the original bottom layer of the level had lava, so if you add a bunch of air underneath the lava… Well, just take a look at these pictures.

It was raining lava from above. The physics engine of the server was working super hard to try and calculate where the lava was going to move to, so for the most part, the lava stayed stationary in the air. In addition to putting a bunch of CPU strain on the server, it also really really slowed down anyone in the level who looked in the general direction of the lava mess. Minecraft has a fog setting which limits how many blocks you can see, so turning it on made it possible to actually move around with a decent framerate.

This last picture was with the fog turned off.

Whoopsie. Sorry about that =)

-Justin