[WIP] Academia: The user friendly RPG plugin project

Academia​

No Assembly Required!​

​

​

• What is this and why should I care?

Well, if you're looking at this and saying, "Good lord, another RPG plugin? What is wrong with these devs? Can't they come up with something original for once?", then good sir/madam, let me dissuade you from that opinion. While it is true that there are quite the quantity of RPG plugins on Bukkit, they are not used on many servers at all. Why? Simply put, the pain and hassle of getting them set up, configured the way you want them, while making sure that it doesn't break any of your plugins and making sure players don't do anything you don't want them to do.

I browsed the available RPG plugins, such as Heroes, and found that most required too much customization to be an easy plugin for server owners to simply drop and go. While there is nothing wrong with customization (and indeed, they are much more powerful for it), sometimes, server owners are looking for something a little easier from the get-go. So, I hereby introduce the beginning of the RPG plugin Academia!

• So what is Academia? And what's with the weird name?

Well, I'm glad you asked! (though you could have been nicer with the name comment...) Academia is, simply put, a drag and drop RPG plugin that requires absolutely no configuration on the server manager's end. After placing it in the plugin folder, it builds all the defaults and everything by itself, and works right away with no customization required. Indeed, there will be very little to customize, though the option will be there if need be.

As for the name, well, first let me describe the basis of the plugin.

• Entirely class based. Pick a class, and level up that class. Learn skills exclusive to that class, and level them up as well.
• Skills can be bound to items, so no need to type constant commands (with one exception, described later).
• Classes need to be learned to be used (hence the name). If you want to be a warrior, you need to learn how, and perform a certain series of actions to earn your right to be that class. Those who have acquired the class already are urged to help others learn what they need to to become that class.
• Built in simple econ and perm manager, though built with vault to use any of vault's.
• When spout finally updates itself: New items, and new crafting recipes, including class specific recipes, class specific enchantments, and a load of other new goodies.

• Alright, I'm interested (sort of). Tell me more, what sets this apart from others

First off, as described, Academia's drop and go feature. Almost no customization is required by the server owner, and all customization can be done in-game, so there's no need to keep restarting the server to change settings. Secondly, each class available is set in stone. As of currently, no custom classes can be added. But don't count that out, you'll find the ones currently in are quite feature rich and very unique.

Also, the method to learn classes. Whereas most RPG plugins have you pick a class right away, Academia gives you the option to make your players earn their class choices. There are in game requirements to each class, some ranging from kill a certain number of mobs with a bow, to one class which requires you to ingest the drop of each mob (with ill effects as expected). Players are expected to stumble upon these requirements themselves, and teach others once they themselves have learned, building a sort of community in your server.

Finally, this plugin adds party support, econ and permissions support (very basic) through this or Vault, potential quest support in the future, and loads of other stuff that I'll eventually get around to adding.

• Okay, I suppose this doesn't sound too bad... I mean, I'm a little wary of plugins that seem this grand, seems to me the creators usually get burned out and discontinue their hard work after a while...

Okay, that's a good point. But seeing as I'm in college and have nothing better to do, this is a good project for me to improve my coding skills. And trust me, they need improving...



Anyway, that's the current situation. More info to come later, as I get around to typing it out. Let me go ahead and post my github link for what I have so far, which is not much. Just a sort of barebones framework and other loose and messy code that really needs comments. I would appreciate help as it comes, so feel free to throw some my way.

As for my experience, well, I'm a fairly decent coder in java, but fairly new to the Minecraft plugin scene, only making one that was more or less proof I could code a plugin than anything actually useful. Anyway, any help would be appreciated, as well as comments, suggestions, heck, even hate and flame would be nice, at least I know people would be interested enough to read this thing.

Resources:
Source code: https://github.com/TotalInfinity/Academia

Reserved for me typing stuff at a later date

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

Hey, plugin looks great. I would be happy to test it foe you and report bugs on my server. Send em a PM if/when you agree or it's ready yet.