spark in All the Mons

spark is a performance profiler for Minecraft clients, servers and proxies. If your game is lagging, your tick rate is low or your CPU usage is high, this is the tool that helps you find out why.^[1]

The pack ships spark 1.10.124 as the NeoForge jar, and it has been in the pack since 0.3.0-beta or earlier.^[2]

What it does

spark is made up of three components, and each one covers a different kind of problem.^[1]

• CPU Profiler: diagnoses performance issues like lag, low tick rate and high CPU usage. It samples what the system is doing, builds a call graph from that data and shows it in an online viewer. Running it for about 30 seconds is usually enough to get useful results.^[1]
• Memory Inspection: includes a heap summary, a full heap dump and garbage collection monitoring, so you can track down memory problems.^[1]
• Server Health Reporting: reports TPS, tick durations, CPU usage, memory usage and disk usage. It can also monitor individual ticks and send a report whenever one runs longer than a threshold you set.^[1]

Good to know

The profiler is lightweight enough to run in production with minimal impact. It needs no configuration or setup, and you can tune it to target specific threads or sample at a specific interval.^[1]

There are two profiler engines. The native async-profiler engine is only available on Linux x86_64 systems. The other is the built-in Java ThreadMXBean engine, an improved version of the WarmRoast profiler by sk89q.^[1]

Same as in the All the Mods 10: To the Sky 2.0.4 guide

spark is different from most mods you'll meet in this pack: there's nothing to craft and no machine to place. It's a performance profiler for Minecraft clients, servers and proxies, so it helps you find out why the game is lagging.^[1]

The mod page says spark needs no configuration or setup, you just install it. That makes your first steps more about knowing what it can do than building anything.^[1]

What you can do with it

1. Start with the CPU profiler when you notice lag, a low tick rate or high CPU usage. Those are the problems it's meant to diagnose.^[1]
2. Let the profiler run for about 30 seconds. The mod page says that's enough to give useful insight into the problem areas.^[1]
3. Read the results as a call graph. spark samples what the system is doing, builds the graph from that, and shows it in an online viewer for you to analyse.^[1]
4. Check overall health. spark can report TPS, tick durations (min, max and average), CPU usage, memory usage and disk usage.^[1]
5. If you suspect a memory problem, use the memory tools: a heap summary, a full heap dump, and garbage collection monitoring.^[1]

The mod page also mentions a /tps command for checking ticks per second more accurately. It is the only command named in the sources I have.^[1]

Unverified This section describes spark as its project page does. The sources I have show no pack-specific changes, extra commands or permission settings for spark in this pack, so check in-game before relying on any of those.

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

Here's the thing about spark: it isn't a tech or machine mod. There are no machines, multiblocks, power networks, fluid pipes or item automation to set up. It's a performance profiler for Minecraft clients, servers and proxies, so "core mechanics" here means the diagnostic tools it gives you.^[1]

The sources also don't list any items or crafting recipes for it, so you won't be crafting anything with this mod.^[1]

The three components

• CPU Profiler: diagnoses performance issues such as lag, low tick rate and high CPU usage.^[1]
• Memory Inspection: diagnoses memory issues.^[1]
• Server Health Reporting: keeps track of overall server health.^[1]

How the CPU profiler works

The profiler samples statistical data about system activity and builds a call graph from it. That graph is then shown in an online viewer, where you can analyse it as a simple tree structure. The viewer can also apply deobfuscation mappings.^[1]

It's described as lightweight enough to run in production with minimal impact. Running it for just about 30 seconds is enough to give useful insight into problem areas. You can also tune it to target specific threads, sample at a specific interval, or record only "laggy" periods.^[1]

There are two profiler engines. One uses the native AsyncGetCallTrace plus perf_events through async-profiler, and it's only available on Linux x86_64 systems. The other is the built-in Java ThreadMXBean engine, an improved version of the WarmRoast profiler.^[1]

Memory tools

• Heap Summary: a basic snapshot of the JVM's heap, showing memory usage and instance counts for each class. It isn't meant to replace proper memory analysis tools.^[1]
• Heap Dump: a full HPROF snapshot of the server's memory, optionally compressed, which you can open in conventional analysis tools.^[1]
• GC Monitoring: watches garbage collection activity so you can relate it to server hangs, see how long collections take and how much memory they free, and compare young and old generation collections to help choose GC tuning flags.^[1]

Server health reporting

spark can report TPS (ticks per second, to a more accurate degree than the /tps command), tick durations (min, max and average), CPU usage for the server process and the overall system, memory usage, and disk usage.^[1]

Besides tick rate averages, it can monitor individual ticks and send a report whenever a single tick's duration exceeds a certain threshold. That helps you spot trends and the nature of a performance problem relative to other system or game events.^[1]

Configuration in this pack

The pack sets backgroundProfiler to false in its spark config file. The file's header _header points to spark's own configuration documentation.^[3]

Unverified What the backgroundProfiler option does in detail isn't explained in the available sources, so check spark's official configuration documentation before relying on it.

Other mods in this pack have a clear tier ladder in the quest book. Mega Showdown moves from structures to stones, rings and bands. Artifacts is a flat list of gear. EnderIO runs from its first Bedrock material to a Void Chassis and then to machines. None of the quests shown for these three chapters mention this mod, so they give it no tiers or steps.^[4][5][6]

Unverified The sources here show no recipes for this mod's items and no place for it on the pack's main quest path, so a progression path or tier breakdown cannot be confirmed. Check the pack's quest book for anything beyond what is shown here.

Here's the short version: in the quest chapters I can see for this pack, no quest asks for an item from spark. spark is a background tool, so you won't find a crafting goal tied to it in the quest book the way you do with a machine or a gear mod.^[4][5][6][7]

The chapters I checked were Mega Showdown, Artifacts, EnderIO and Productive Trees. Every task in them points at items from other mods, such as the Tera Orb and Keystone in Mega Showdown, the gear in Artifacts, the machines in EnderIO, and the saplings in Productive Trees.^[4][5][6][7]

One gap to be upfront about: only 31 of the 166 quests in "Productive Trees" quest and its chapter were visible to me. What the other 135 say is in the quest book, so check there rather than trusting me on it.^[7]

Same as in the All the Mods 10 8.1 guide

Good news: spark is a simple one to configure. It's a performance profiler for clients, servers and proxies, and the project describes its CPU profiler as needing no configuration or setup, so you can just install it and go. This pack's config file is tiny.^[1][3]

What the pack sets

• backgroundProfiler is set to false in this pack. It is the only setting in the file.^[3]
• _header is just a text note at the top of the file that points to spark's configuration documentation. It doesn't change any behavior.^[3]

spark has been in the pack since early on. All the Mons 1.3.0 ships spark 1.10.124 (the NeoForge build), and the mod was first included in All the Mons 0.3.0-beta or earlier.^[2]

spark 1.10.124

This is the version you get in 1.3.0, and it is a backport release. It was manually uploaded to backport some bug fixes to the popular 1.21.1 version of Minecraft.^[2][8]

The build brings the latest spark for Minecraft 1.21.4 to Modrinth. The changelog I was given doesn't list the individual fixes, and the full list is on spark's own changelog page.^[8]

Unverified No pack changelog entries about spark were available, so changes to it between individual All the Mons releases are not confirmed here.