How to make a Minecraft SMP
An SMP is a survival multiplayer world that a fixed group of people share and keep coming back to, rather than a match that ends. To make one on JetRift, choose Survival, name the world, and add your friends by Minecraft username so only they can get in. It is free, takes about ninety seconds, and the address never changes.
What makes it an SMP rather than a server
Technically nothing. The word describes how a group uses a world, not what the world is. An SMP is survival, it is the same people every time, and it is expected to last long enough that what you built last month still matters.
That is why the two things worth getting right are who can get in and whether the world survives. Everything else is taste.
Who can get in
An SMP with an open door becomes a public server with griefers in it, usually within a week. Here the door is closed by default: you add Minecraft usernames, and anybody not on the list is refused by name at the gate before they ever reach the world.
Adding somebody later takes a few seconds and takes effect immediately. Removing somebody does too, which matters more than it sounds like it does.
Rules worth agreeing before you start
The arguments that end SMPs are all the same three arguments, and all of them are cheaper to settle in a group chat on day one than in the world on day forty.
- Is taking from an unlocked chest stealing, or is everything communal?
- Can anybody terraform near somebody else’s build, and how close is near?
- What happens to somebody’s stuff when they stop playing for a month?
- Is the Nether roof allowed, and are farms that lag the server allowed?
Keeping it alive
The world saves itself every couple of minutes while anybody is on it, and again when it stops. You can roll back to any of the last twenty minutes, to any hour of the last day, or to any day of the last fortnight, so both kinds of bad night are recoverable: the one you noticed instantly and the one you noticed on Thursday. Sleeping costs nothing: the a hundred and fifty hours a month are hours somebody is actually playing, not hours the machine existed.
The address is a name rather than an IP and port, so it does not change when the world moves between machines. An SMP that everybody has to be re-sent an address for is an SMP half the group quietly stops joining.
Make one now. Free, no card, and about ninety seconds from here to an address you can send your friends.
Start a worldCommon questions
How many people can be in the SMP?
Up to ten at once. That is sized for a group of friends rather than a public server, which is what an SMP usually is.
Can we add mods or a datapack later?
Not your own, yet. Uploading a plugin means running somebody else’s code on a machine other people’s worlds are on, and we are not willing to take that risk. The game modes on offer are built on plugins we wrote and maintain.
Can I move an existing SMP world here?
No. Worlds here are generated fresh. You can take a world out at any time, since every backup is a standard world archive you can download and run anywhere, but not in.
What happens if somebody grieves it anyway?
Remove them from the list, which takes effect immediately, and roll back to a save from before they arrived. Both are on the world’s page, and the saves go back a fortnight.