Update 1.38: Responsive Update

OCT 26 2026

Hello all,

Today we are launching a new update that adds new playlists and resource pack updates, fixes issues from last week’s 1.21.11 update, and improves the tab list UI. We have also dramatically improved player model responsiveness by migrating the game’s entire player rendering into the Place engine.

After the 1.21.11 update, we are finally free to massively migrate our legacy code and external plugin features alike to the Place engine, in preparation for finally starting work specific to the standalone game. Expect to see a ton of server improvements as side effects of these migrations; this update is only the beginning.

This update also returns the Halloween playlist. Happy spooky season!

NEW SERVER-SIDE PLAYER RENDERER

In this update, in a world-first, we have migrated GunColony’s player rendering entirely from Minecraft to the Place game engine. In minigame servers, Place now takes over all player rendering, and the Minecraft server itself no longer sends any player rendering packets in game clients.

We have taken this opportunity to introduce a combination of 4 different new innovations that were fine-tuned together to improve the responsiveness of player models viewed by other players.

Because Minecraft’s original player movement was so delayed, the responsiveness gains we obtained from our new system was absolutely massive. We have measured this improvement to be equivalent to a ~150 ms average reduction in ping for player movement. Here is an in-development recording of the new player renderer (the glowing player in the video) side-by-side with the original Minecraft renderer:

Moving player rendering to Place not only improves GunColony’s gameplay responsiveness today, but also unlocks massive new capabilities for the game engine in the future. For example, we will be able to bring back a new, reliable anti-xray system that hides players behind walls without player offsetting bugs that plagued the previous system. In addition, being able to hide Minecraft players from each other and re-render them as Place player models is a necessary component of future standalone game crossplay, by unifying all player rendering through Place so that both Minecraft and standalone players can see each other through the same code path no matter what client each player is using.

Note: this new playerer renderer is enabled in minigame servers (not yet enabled in the lobby). It is also not yet enabled for player-controlled zombies and wolves in Zombie Siege, and does not affect mobs. We will extend the feature to all servers and to mobs and disguises (arbitrary entity rendering) in the future.

NEW PVP & COMPETITIVE PLAYLIST

We have added a new batch of map playlists to the server, which have been prepared by pale1 based on the latest round of staff team voting results. Enjoy fresh map & gamemode combinations in GunColony’s PVP gamemodes!

In addition, in the next updates we will add the submission for the latest Community Map Contest as well. Stay tuned!

Removed Summer & America limited time scenarios from PVP lobby
Removed comp_christmas scenario from Competitive lobby
Updated Elimination playlist (24 maps -> 25 maps)
Updated Demolition playlist (11 maps -> 11 maps)
Updated Defusal playlist (36 maps -> 33 maps)
Updated Defusal Scenario playlist (13 maps -> 14 maps)
Updated FFA playlist (74 maps -> 56 maps)
Updated TDM playlist (63 maps -> 50 maps)
Updated TDM Random Spawns playlist (62 maps -> 62 maps)
Updated KOTH playlist (24 maps -> 18 maps)
Updated Domination playlist (38 maps -> 45 maps)
Updated Mine-Spades playlist (15 maps -> 25 maps)
Updated Arms Race playlist (41 maps -> 38 maps)
Update One in the Chamber playlist (44 maps -> 29 maps)
Updated Zombie Siege playlist (24 maps -> 36 maps)
Updated Scenario playlist (129 map combinations -> 146 map combinations):
- Airsoft (34 maps -> 39 maps)
- CounterStrike (8 maps -> 15 maps)
- NoobTubes (33 maps -> 29 maps)
- Overpowered (28 maps -> 25 maps)
- ProSnipe (13 maps -> 20 maps)
- Historical (13 maps -> 18 maps)
Adjusted rarity of OITC playlist from 0.33 to 0.4 because of the significant decrease in maps.
Adjusted rarity of ZS playlist from 0.5 too 0.33 because of the significant increase in maps.

RESOURCE PACK UPDATE

We have updated the server’s resource pack with some new changes by Rijam.

Adjusted double slab blocks added in Minecraft 1.19+ to placeholder blocks to reserve them for future custom block textures
Added a lot of new icons corresponding to server features, which we will start to make use of in future updates
Added new font-based chest GUI background textures, which we will start to make use of in future updates
Added a new darker variant of iron bar texture, replacing unwaxed copper bars
Added a new lighter variant of iron chain texture, replacing unwaxed copper chains
Fixed the orb texture in the Tactical Awareness Grande
Custom textures for infested blocks are now visible in the creative inventory again

TAB LIST UPDATE

We are continuing to rapidly migrate external features into our custom plugins to prepare for our standalone game. This time, we have migrated the BungeeCord server tab list to the Place engine, replacing our previous external tab list plugin.

There are a few immediate benefits.

Server names are now capitalized to be easier to read
Player rank/suffix is now shown in the tab list
The player ping field now updates much more frequently

More importantly, since we have migrated the tab list to Place, we will be able to edit it much more easily in the future, and it will be available in the future standalone game.

OTHER CHANGES

Significantly improved the internal technical systems used for GunColony updates, including fixing issues, improving memory usage of local testing, and making it easier to release new code changes on the server
Enabled Halloween playlist

BUG FIXES

Fixed a long-standing side effect of the Place tickless system that slowed down chunk loading speeds when a player joins any new world (e.g. at minigame game start or at lobby first join)
- This is done while improving the reliability of minor (1000Hz) tick firing in the tickless system
Updated ScriptBlockPlus to fix a significant memory leak that caused the PVP server to lag and freeze since the 1.21.11 update
Fixed a bug where all aim down sight movement speeds in the game were increased by 20% accidentally, due to newer Minecraft server versions clamping the Speed potion effect to at least level 1
- This may have helped contribute to some hit registration issues reported by players last week. However, we expect the new player rendering system and the actual memory leak fix (lag fix) to be the main fixes to the responsiveness issues.
- Hopefully people don’t suddenly think the movement speeds are too slow now…
Fixed a bug where in-map time of day kept resetting to early morning in StaffBuild maps, causing maps to be stuck at that time of day
Fixed a lot of bugs related to player data
Fixed a rare bug that could have affected hit registration
Many other minor bug fixes because the AI spotted them

NEW PLAYER DATA ARCHITECTURE (INTERNAL)

We have implemented a new, innovative distributed player data architecture in Place, which combines extremely fast same-server performance with reliable cross-server player data access.
- Planned since 2024 and with core aspects like data locking in place since last year, this player-data architecture has long been a dream of the Place engine, and has finally seen the light of day. It might be the first of its kind in the world.
- Player data can be accessed in-memory by the server that a player is online in, as fast as modifying a normal variable in memory, whereas normally such operations would need an entire database operation. This is a core tenet of Place’s plan to make our game server as efficient as possible so that we can make our game available for free at scale.
- Any server (including Place web servers) can access player data of offline players using temporary database locks; and of online players in another server through a player data transactional query that goes through Place’s Redis messaging system. All player data accesses from all three sources are fully consistent and do not create race conditions.
This data architecture is not used yet aside from a few integrations in the Place tokens system, but will be extremely important in the future for Place’s web-based features (which need to run statefully alongside the game and access player data of online players).