How Long is 1 Tick in Minecraft?

One tick in Minecraft lasts exactly 0.05 seconds or 50 milliseconds. That‘s why the game loop normally runs at 20 ticks per second – so each tick takes 1/20th of a second. This 50 ms tick rate is a key part of what gives Minecraft its signature gameplay feel.

As someone who has played since the early beta days, I‘ve seen firsthand how critical the tick rate is for core game mechanics. When notch first programmed Minecraft using Java, he needed the game loop to run fast enough for smooth gameplay but slow enough to be processable.

20 ticks per second was the sweet spot.

The Things a Single Tick Can Do

A lot can happen in just one tick! Here are some key events that occur every 1/20th of a second as the game logic updates:

• Crops have a random chance to grow to the next stage
• Fire spreads to nearby flammable blocks
• Blocks like TNT and redstone torches schedule imminent actions
• Mobs pathfind and make movement decisions
• Minecarts traverse approximately 1 full block on rails

Redstone engineers will be intimately familiar with ticks too. Many components like repeaters and comparators deal with signals in terms of ticks:

• Each repeater delays signals by 1-4 ticks
• Comparators emit pulses every 2 ticks while reading containers

Game Ticks vs Redstone Ticks

There are two different types of ticks in Minecraft – game ticks and redstone ticks.

Game ticks drive the main game logic and occur 20 times per second.

Redstone ticks operate at 10 per second, on a separate timer. They govern the timing of redstone circuits.

Each redstone tick takes 2 game ticks. So the redstone timer runs at half the speed of the main game loop. This allows smooth circuits that don‘t overwhelm the rest of the game logic.

The Order of Block Updates Each Tick

Every game tick flows through a specific update order as the Java or Bedrock engine processes changes in the world. Understanding this sequence is key for complex redstone contraptions and farms.

According to the Minecraft Wiki community testing, here is an overview:

1. Random block ticks – random growth, fire spread
2. Scheduled block ticks – set to happen this tick
3. Active redstone components
4. Pistons and other mechanical components
5. Mobs and entities

So redstone torches that were turned off previously won‘t send a signal until later in the tick after they activate. Keeping this order in mind allows engineering very compact or fast devices.

Changing the Tick Speed

While the length of an individual tick remains fixed at 0.05 seconds, players can adjust the random tick speed gamerule. This determines how often randomly-determined events occur per game tick.

By default, every game tick has a 1/X chance of attempting crop growth, fire spread etc. where X equals the random tick speed.

So a higher random tick speed causes random block updates to happen more frequently overall. But each individual game tick has a lower chance of triggering growth, fire spread, etc.

Technical Impact on Game Performance

The random tick speed gamerule ranges from 1 to 65536 in Java and Bedrock editions. But does increasing it to extremes actually help?

Through testing massive crop farms on servers, I found the sweet spot is around 500. Beyond that, excess random processing starts slowing everything down.

Why? Because every random tick requires the game to iterate through every loaded chunk with that block type and roll the update dice. This gets exponentially more expensive the higher the random speed.

So while a value of 500 makes vast farms grow fast, 65536 brings servers to a grinding halt!

Tick Rates in Other Games

Minecraft‘s 50 ms tick duration is on the faster end of popular multiplayer games, but certainly not the highest. Games focused on precise shooter mechanics often use even higher frequencies:

• Call of Duty: 60 ticks/second (16 ms per tick)
• Overwatch: 63 ticks/second (16 ms per tick)

The faster tick allows earlier processing of weapon firing, damage detection etc. But it requires much more bandwidth and compute power to sustain 60+ ticks across a server.

Other games scale down tick rates to accommodate larger player counts in massive online worlds:

• World of Warcraft: 10-30 ticks/second (33-100 ms per tick)
• Eve Online: 1 tick/second (1000 ms per tick)

So whileatives like Overwatch can precision time shots to 16 ms, sprawling MMOs stretch ticks out to full seconds. In Eve‘s case, one tick encompasses missiles traversing thousands of kilometers!

The Benefits of Faster Ticks

More ticks per second provides a tighter feedback loop on gameplay events. Actions like weapon fire and damage registration happen quicker. This leads to a more responsive feel.

The downsides are requiring more computing power and bandwidth since more game states get transmitted each second.

Overwatch deftly balances these tradeoffs to provide quick 60 Hz ticks and fluid action that feels sublime. Meanwhile Minecraft focuses more on the sandbox building experience where 20 TPS performs admirably.

Key Takeaways on Ticks in Minecraft

While we covered a lot of ground across game engines and redstone circuitry, here are the essential facts on ticks:

• One game tick lasts 0.05 seconds (50 milliseconds) in Minecraft
• The default game loop runs at 20 ticks per second
• Redstone circuits operate on a separate 10 ticks per second clock
• Random block updates like crop growth depend on the "random tick speed" gamerule

So whether you‘re chopping trees or engineering mega farms, keep ticks in mind! They ultimately pace the rhythm of gameplay in Minecraft.