Helix

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Introduction

What Helix is, who it is for and the ideas behind it.

Helix is an open-source server engine for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, written in Go. It aims to be the first Bedrock server software that matches the official Bedrock Dedicated Server (BDS) one-to-one, while giving you access to everything, from the lowest level (packets, chunks, ticks) to the highest (gameplay, mobs, worlds).

Helix is in active development. Players can join, spawn in a BDS world, see each other and use their inventory, but most gameplay is not built yet. See Status.

One engine, any server

  • Running a survival SMP? Turn on vanilla: world generation, mobs, villages, redstone, the Nether and the End, all working exactly as in BDS.
  • Building Skyblock or minigames? Turn vanilla off, keep the fast core, and write your own rules.

Every mechanic is BDS’s by default and can be replaced. Vanilla features are modules built on the same public API plugins use, so you can switch any of them off, and even the engine’s fundamentals can be swapped out.

The ideas behind Helix

  1. Expose everything. Every part of the engine, including the tick loop, chunk storage, physics, inventories and packet handling, is reachable and replaceable through the API. Nothing is internal-only without a written reason.
  2. Vanilla is just modules. Vanilla content uses only the public API, with no private shortcuts. If vanilla can build it, anyone can build something different.
  3. Data over code. Blocks, items, recipes, loot, entities and spawn rules load from Mojang’s own data files instead of being hard-coded.
  4. Vanilla is the reference. Behaviour is correct when it matches BDS exactly, checked against the real server: the packets a player is sent, the world files BDS writes and what happens in game.
  5. Multi-core by design. Regions of the world tick in parallel, you choose how many cores Helix uses, and results are the same on one core or many.
  6. Pay only for what you use. A disabled module or an event nobody listens to costs nothing at runtime.

Helix is a Go library first

Servers can import Helix into their own Go program and configure or replace anything in code, at full speed. Sandboxed WASM plugins are planned as a layer on top, for drop-in extensions.

Where to go next