A vanilla-faithful technical fork of Paper
Sugarcane is a custom Minecraft server fork designed to restore vanilla technical mechanics while retaining the stability and plugin ecosystem of Paper.
Paper optimizes gameplay. Sugarcane restores it.
Sugarcane exists for servers that rely on technical Minecraft behavior, including:
- TNT cannons and dupers
- Large-scale redstone machines
- Mob switches and advanced farms
- Cross-chunk and long-running contraptions
Many of these mechanics are altered or limited in Paper for performance reasons. Sugarcane removes those limitations and brings behavior closer to true vanilla parity.
Warning
Important: World Pregeneration Recommended
Sugarcane prioritizes correctness over performance safeguards. Because of this:
- Chunk loading is less restricted
- Machines can load chunks more aggressively
- High-throughput contraptions (TNT, hoppers, etc.) are no longer throttled
👉 You should use Sugarcane on pregenerated worlds.
Why? Vanilla-style mechanics can generate chunks rapidly under load, cause lag spikes during exploration, and increase disk and CPU usage if terrain is generated on-the-fly.
Recommended setup: Pre-generate your world using tools like Chunky or WorldBorder fill, then run Sugarcane for gameplay.
Sugarcane restores or improves the following behaviors:
- Removes TNT per-tick limits → high-rate cannons work flawlessly
- Enables block exploits → restores piston duplication, headless pistons, and bedrock breaking
- Standardizes armor stands → restores vanilla armor stand behavior (no unintended breaking via sweeps/cramming)
- Removes chunk load rate limits → ensures fast chunk processing
- Restores cross-chunk interactions → hoppers, fluids, and double containers work across chunk boundaries
- Prevents premature chunk unloads → tick tickets properly process without desynchronization in massive machines
- Increased activation range → minecarts and misc entities now activate properly over longer distances
- Fixes piston bolts → protects long-distance transport systems from skipping ticks
- Improves per-player mob spawning → provides granular control over mobcap influence radius
- Restores global mob cap behavior → global mob switches work again
- Raises recipe spam limits
- Relaxes packet limits → crafting automation systems no longer cause kicks or stalls
Sugarcane improves upon Paper's per-player mob spawns by providing granular control over mobcap influence radius while preserving vanilla-like local behavior.
Localized Mobcaps enhances Paper's per-player spawning system by allowing you to configure exactly how far each player's mobcap influence extends. This prevents distant players from interfering with each other's farms while maintaining natural local spawning behavior.
When enabled:
Mobcaps are evaluated locally around each player with a configurable radius Only mobs within the configured radius contribute to spawn limits Distant players no longer interfere with each other's farms Nearby players still share local spawning areas (more natural than strict private pools)
Located in paper-world-defaults.yml (or per-world config):
sugarcane:
spawning:
local-mobcap:
enabled: true
# Radius in chunks for local mobcap calculation.
# Vanilla uses ~8 chunks (128 blocks).
# Lower = more isolated players, stronger mob switches
# Higher = more shared spawning, less isolation
count-radius-chunks: 8
ignore-spectators: true
use-full-vertical-range: true
Enabled by default to provide a better-than-Paper experience with configurable radius Recommended radius: 8 chunks (128 blocks) - matches vanilla spawn distance
Mobcaps are scaled based on nearby chunks (vanilla-style scaling) Only mobs within the configured radius count toward a player's spawning limits Nearby players still influence each other (more natural than strict per-player pools) Distant players are effectively isolated, preventing cross-region interference
This feature improves upon Paper's per-player mob spawns:
✅ Configurable influence radius (not fixed at spawn distance)
✅ More natural local behavior (nearby players share areas)
✅ Prevents cross-player mobcap interference at distance
✅ Farms work independently at configurable distances
Enable this if:
Your server has multiple active players in different areas Players are unintentionally breaking each other’s farms You want a better multiplayer experience without full per-player mobcaps
Leave it disabled if:
You want strict vanilla behavior Your server relies heavily on global mob switches
This keeps it:
clearly optional framed as a Sugarcane-specific feature aligned with your “vanilla-first” philosophy without contradicting it
Use Sugarcane if your server focuses on:
- Technical Minecraft
- Large-scale automation
- Redstone engineering
- Vanilla-accurate mechanics
Do not use Sugarcane if your goal is:
- Maximum player count
- Heavy survival SMP with exploration-based generation
- Strict performance optimization
This project is actively tested against:
- TNT cannons
- Portal-based machines
- Mob switches
- Piston bolts
- Cross-chunk automation
Feedback and edge cases are welcome.
To fetch the latest Vanilla mappings, apply the Sugarcane patches, and compile the executable paperclip jar:
./gradlew applyPatches
./gradlew createMojmapPaperclipJarOutput jar:
build/libs/paper-paperclip-<version>-mojmap.jar
Sugarcane isn’t trying to be faster than Paper.
It’s trying to be truer than Paper.