Dedicated Server for Minecraft:EE
Could we please have an option to create a dedicated server with classroom controls? I have different classes that use the same world, and it would simplify things for the students and teachers if the world was "always up".
Also - are there any plans to increase the player limit above 30? I would love to get 100+ students in there for massive projects...!
Many thanks and keep up the hard work
FG
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Specifically as a result of this ongoing question, last summer I took a look into the state of Bedrock hosting, and at the time it was very much in preliminary stages compared to what has been available with Java. Given the continued protracted challenges arising out of licensing and server hosting with M: EE, for my work this summer I’m back to developing educational programming focussed on the Java platform, where there are tools, server facilities and plug-ins to provide the flexibility that currently does not exist with M:EE.
On one hand, Minecraft is incredibly broad and deep, and there is plenty to explore within the Java platform. On the other hand, however, given that we are approaching 18 months since the arrival of Covid, it’s a shame that there has not been a server-enabled version of M:EE to better support remote learning during this time.
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Ugh, My post vanished!
I'll rewrite a short version. Please provide at least a basic dedicated server software to work with Education Edition, even if it is just the Basic Bedrock server adjusted to work with Education Edition. (since the number of players able to be on a server are going to be restricted more by the machine it's running on than by the software I'm sure.)
So for those who use the normal work around (which requires an extra computer and student account for each world) I have figured out how (maybe this is common knowledge but I only just tested it) to allow players to sleep through the night without having to be at the host computer to operate that player myself. I stick the HOST in the Nether (You may want to turn Minecraft sounds off for that account if you leave it next to a nether portal.) Anyway, Make sure you adjust general settings for the world before you start (like if you don't want them using code builder in the world, disable it before creating the world or if you DO want them to use it make sure it is enabled.) Create world, Do what ever setup you want for the world. Then in creative mode with /wb true and destructive items enabled (apparently bedrock is a destructive item.) You can teleport yourself to 0 2 0 and break out a space in the bedrock (I also surrounded it with bedrock) then create nether portal, go to nether Break nether portal TP to 0, 2, 0 in the Nether and break out a space there and create another nether portal. Make sure you have a sign in each room to let you know if you are in the Nether or overworld. Actually you probably don't even need to do any of that, You are just trying to stick the Host somewhere out of the way in the nether (It may even be possible to do this with teleporting so as not to leave behind nether portals, but I'm not sure how to teleport between dimensions in Education edition.)
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Ethan Cooper I agree we do NEED a dedicated server for Education Edition.
Until we get one, we are having to make due. Here is one thing you can do to help with the "sleep" issue. Get your "server host" player into the Nether or the End somehow. Since players can't sleep there they won't mess up sleeping in the overworld. In my last classroom survival world. I stuck the "host" account in an obsidian box under the nether portal so that the students could sleep and play as normal even if some one wasn't "playing" the hosting player.
Granted, this only works if you have "spare" accounts to play with, I know there are places where a teacher only gets their single faculty account and they don't have access to any "extra" student accounts to use to Host additional worlds.
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Not so dear Microsoft:
It's been 3 years. Please add dedicated servers. It would help my class so much. Thank you.
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YES! WE NEED ALWAYS ON SERVERS!
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Thank you Sander Jong, de and Christoph Peters! We love how specific you're getting - this truly helps our developers understand your needs.
You mentioned it would want to behave like Realms but allow teachers to manage different worlds. Can you tell us more about these requirements? How many worlds? What other features does it need to have to suit your needs? Anything else in Realms that works as-is that you would like, and anything else you would change?
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Super Per, thanks for sharing! We will share these with our team as we continue to plan for this.
Also adding
Shashwat Jain's 10/26/20 comment here so we have it. Shashwat, it would be helpful if you tell us what exactly you would like to see from this feature as a user and the impact it would have on you. Thanks!"IS THERE ANYWAY TO JOIN SERVERS USING EDUCATION EDITION, PLS ADD THIS FEATURE IN A NEW UPDATE, AND WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG FOR 1.16 TO COME IN IT."
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Standalone MC:EE Server
Milo Wearn
So instead of having to be in the game you could have something like this: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server2 -
Milo Wearn -- I set up a Bedrock server a few weeks back and tried to connect from M:EE with no success. Even though M:EE and Bedrock share the same code base, it looks like they're not able to connect.
Bryan Sanders (archived) -- I just tried to use the rejoin code from my session Monday night and it had expired. So yeah -- that's problematic. I'd really prefer a whitelist feature over the join codes.
Kyle-M What ever became of the M:EE server pilot from two years ago? I've not seen any disclosure of the results from that? It might help us all if we had a sense of how well it worked and what the challenges were.2 -
Bump.
Any news on the Minecraft EE dedicated server software front?
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Just read through this thread in depth (though I skimmed some parts that are beyond my technical understanding). I believe that my district would need to have its own server to comply with privacy laws. If that's what the Azure solution means, I'd love to see it.
I've had a lot of issues getting multiplayer to work in my schools because of firewalls and network configurations. My workaround has been to host on a guest wifi network from my laptop but this seems to max out around 15 players(I don't know why), and I would prefer to have 30 slots as advertised. I'm interested in this "server farm" setup that some people have talked about as an interim solution.
I am really not looking forward to the day that my district decides to pull MC access because of cyberbullying incidents. So, I would definitely like to see more ability for teachers to limit/supervise students' access to multiplayer than currently exists. I hope too, that those controls can be used by teachers without IT admin privileges or a high level of technical knowledge!
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One of these "servers" exists, a team and I have been working on a little project that allows players globally to join a world.
Here's a screenshot from one of our beta worlds https://imgur.com/a/zJfyn8k2 -
This thread has been going on for 2 years and we still have so little progress.
Are we ever going to be able to have a physical server on school grounds that could be used to connect 200+ students to the same server or be running multiple different servers that students can join? Or is that not ever going to be possible?2 -
Yeah it is crazy that has been an issue for EE, you would think Microsoft would want more people using their product. Having schools host their own servers is a perfect way for that.
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Can you guys please add servers for bedwars and skyblock if you do I am 100% sure that downloads would go up, and can you add 24/7 servers even if the owner of the server is not online this would also increase the downloads, I asked everyone in my class and they have recommended this, please I am sure if you add this the download and play rates will go up by 100%
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Bump.
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Daniel Hernandez. just a question. Are they working on the working dedicated server for Edu
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Shouldn’t be to much work. MC:EE is based on the bedrock client. Its probably exactly the same core. Im not sure why microsoft is stalling here.
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We should atleast know how far the minecraftEDU team has come along for servers where the host doesn't need to be in the world all the time, I'm pretty sure this discusion has gone on for 3 years. I've been waiting for this feature for too long. Please give us answers on how far you have come on this feature
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Yes, For proper security in our environment we block peer-to-peer east-west traffic as well as keep our administrative and faculty on separate networks from students so asking teachers to host the server session on their devices and have students connect to their devices is a terrible architecture design. Hopefully you will come up with a managed hosted solution that perhaps allows sessions (server slots) to be reserved ahead of time by authenticated teachers who then can share the server information with the students and bring in their lesson plans.
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We know that Bedrock Edition Has a dedicated server software available. (No where near as good/flexible as the Java servers available.) But there still is a way to host a dedicated server for Bedrock. We just need microsoft/Minecraft Education Edition to enable some version of a minecraft education edition server. I would love to help test it out on a small scale to help find the bugs in a safe environment before trying to test it out in a larger more complex school environment.
We know it CAN be done. We just do not know WHY it has not been done yet. I'm sure it must be to do with security but certainly that could be handled by simply only allowing whitelisted players to enter the server. Heck, they are already using something that looks a little like a server GUI for the Classroom Mode. If you could create a server with a GUI functionality just a little more advanced than the existing Classroom Mode, it would be totally awesome.
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I believe the issue is that there is no $$$ for this development
Matthew Hess I can't believe that is the case since I know there are plenty of clubs and camps that would be interested in setting up a dedicated server for their groups. If Education edition dedicated servers were to become a reality, I know there are more groups that would be willing to subscribe to Microsoft for education to work on projects together. Biggest challenge I have with getting my group to work on "joint projects" is that the world has to be hosted by one of the students or the teacher pretty much all the time but most people can't leave their account in the world all the time to host it. If there were even a way to have a "dummy" account be able to host the server long term but not actually have to have the player in the world to disrupt things like sleeping through the night for survival challenges.
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Hi J Watt — I’ve been monitoring this thread for two+ years now, and to be honest, there has never really been any substantial response or indication that there are any plans in the works to develop a server version of M:EE. It would be wonderful to get some indication that work is being done behind the scenes and that something is forthcoming, but barring that, my best recommendation to you would be to look into using a Java server and the commercial version of Minecraft. My first use of Minecraft with students was almost a decade ago, using a modded version of Jave Minecraft, and I used that with my classes up until 2018 when my school moved to Windows 10. This past summer I did project development using the Java Minecraft edition, setting up two different server instances and making use of a good number of third-party plug-ins that allow for functionality/protection of the sort you are looking for — something that sadly just does not exist with M: EE. Although the pending 1.17 release of M:EE will be bringing feature parity to the platform (with Java and Bedrock), there are many many features/protections available with Java that are just not available on M: EE. For the kind of granularity you are looking for, the Java version with a server and plug-ins, far surpasses what is currently available with the Education Edition.
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J Watt I believe you may be able to do some of what you are asking about by creating your world and then exporting it as a template world (I'm not 100% certain about how to do this but there are template worlds out there.) Anyway, if you turn it into a template, then when teachers/students import the world onto their machines and create a world from it, the original template is still available to go back to and create again at any time.
You are totally correct in that the granular control (ability to very easily accidentally destroy things like NPC or command blocks when in creative mode with world builder on just because of a mouse glitch or lag spike, is soooo frustrating.)
as Andrew Forgrave says, Education edition is sorely lacking in a dedicated server solution. And since Education Edition is based on Bedrock, it should be fairly simple to implement the dedicated server for it. However, the Dedicated servers for Bedrock ARE NOT very good when it comes to fine control over permissions. So if you want a server with fine control over user permissions, you may have to go to Java Edition.
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Hello MEE Team,
1. I would just like to know if you plan on adding in an option or feature to create servers, not just for classroom purposes, but also for things like creative mode and survival?, so students can play together on a world without someone owning it and always having to host it so others can join. Just like in normal MC versions where you create a server Id or link and share it. Also if you could make it work on different networks, that would be great!
2. Do you also plan on adding in Hardcore mode and different world generation options, like amplified, no structures, caves only, etc..?
Please notify me if you have an answer or plans for any of these.
Thanks!
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Please please please add this to the game. It would be such a wonderful addition. So many people out there have too many students to have them in one Minecraft world.
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I also posted the same suggestion of adding servers today only. Then, I saw this thread and began reading it. The 1.17.50 update is already out and we are having fun with it. But, still, even after 3 years the servers aren't added to the game. I request Minecraft: EE Team to work on this topic. It's so fun to play in servers like Hypixel etc. So please try to add the servers by the 1.18 update.
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We already have bedrock servers, and MCEE is just a modified version of bedrock, so it shouldn’t be too hard to implement this.
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I couldn't agree with you more, Aleece. We've barely used Minecraft this year because of these problems. Teachers (myself included) don't want to spend time preparing a lesson only to take a gamble that the software will work.
I appreciate they want to make things easier, but removing IP address connections has ruined it for our school. We still can't get most connections working through the firewall.
I had been running long-term servers for a while now. But, just like you, even if we get passed the unreliable connection method, the host software stops working after a day or so anyway. I'm working with support who can't explain to me why join codes just stop working, despite the server running fine. I'm getting errors I've never seen before - going backwards.
The best thing Microsoft can do right now is turn off the forced update process and let us use the stable versions of the software until they get serious with the multiplayer development. They need to be reminded that schools are paying for this and it's getting harder and harder to justify the cost if it doesn't work.
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I humbly disagree.
If you are rolling out a "big change" (by your own admission), you should thoroughly test it before forcing every single user to upgrade. As I've said a few times already, you could at least mitigate the impact of potential issues by turning off forced updates. This way, schools can simply roll back and wait until they have the time to manage this disaster, or wait for the devs to get it right.
I don't think it's particularly fair to blame how school networks are structured - it's no secret that school's want to monitor and restrict every piece of traffic running through the network and they (including myself) have been working very, very hard, putting in plenty of unpaid time to try to get this to work.
If you'd prefer home networks, get out of the education software industry. Give this back to TeacherGaming who made MinecraftEdu with teachers and schools at front of mind.
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