Curse

Welcome to the second Minecraft Spotlight of this week! In today's issue we will be covering "Scavenger", a plugin originally created by SirHedgehog and currently managed by cnaude.

Scavenger saves players' inventories upon dying and returns their items once they respawn; even when they go to the title screen and log back into the server. Besides dropped items, the plugin can also recover lost experience and levels.

Some of you may think this is too much of a cheat, or that it takes away from the survival aspect of the game. Using the configuration file, however, you can easily customize the plugin; which includes setting a price for item recovery, and more!

Installation

Installing a new plugin on your server is fairly easy. If this is your first time, simply follow these steps and your players will be enjoying this plugin in no time!

1. Download the latest version of Scavenger from here or here.
2. Place the "Scavenger.jar" file in the "plugins" folder, located in your server's main directory.
3. Start or reload your server.
4. Check if the "Scavenger" folder has been added to the "plugins" folder successfully.
5. Open the "config.yml" file found in the previously mentioned folder to configure the plugin.
6. Restart the server to load your new configuration. Alternatively, you can reload the plugin from within the game using the /scvr command.
7. Enjoy your newly installed plugin!

Configuration

If you want players to drop certain items, even if Scavenger is enabled, this can be done via permissions. For example, if the following permission node is assigned to a player, their iron axe will be dropped upon dying:

scavenger.drop.258

For this feature to work properly, SingleItemDrops should be enabled in the configuration file. The other way around, i.e. only recovering specified items, is also possible by setting SingleItemDropsOnly to true.

The plugin also provides the option to charge money for item recovery. This can either be done by setting an amount or by using a percentage of the player's balance. Additionally, a minimum and maximum can be set when using percentages, to keep things fair.

In the original game players are able to loot each other's items upon dying. If this is something that bothers you or your players, be sure to give Scavenger a try! The plugin offers item recovery, support for many plugins and plenty of customization to fit your needs.

Lastly, we also had the chance to interview cnaude, the current manager of Scavenger. Continue reading to find out more about the development process behind this plugin!

What inspired you to take over this project?
This was one of the first plugins ever loaded on the SDF-1 Minecraft Server. After it fell out of maintenance I took this opportunity to learn java and get the plugin updated.

How was your version of the plugin received by the community at its first public release?
The feedback from the community has been overwhelmingly positive.

Did you come across any problems during development and, if any, how did you solve them?
I really have not run into major problems during development.

What was your favourite development tool for this project?
I use NetBeans as my primary IDE for Bukkit plugin development. I like the simplicity and overall polished feel of NetBeans. I have tried others like Eclipes and Intellij but I always come back to NetBeans.

Have you learned anything new from this project?
I learned how to program Java as a result of this project. I am by no means an expert Java programmer, but I am always learning.

What stage of Scavenger's development process did you enjoy most?
The first time I ran the first build on my server was the best. It felt pretty good knowing that something I worked on is going to actually work and work well.

And what is your favourite aspect of the plugin itself?
It is stable and does exactly what it is supposed to do.

Are you working on any other plugins or updates at the moment?
ChairsReloaded, BananaLogArchiver, PetCreeper, WolfColors, TeleportRequest, DyeWool, AutoWhitelist, MuteManager, Tx0 (private plugin), MoreSaplings (in development).

In addition to Minecraft plugins, have you ever released any custom content for other games?
Long, long, long ago I used to create DoomII maps. So many linedefs. :)

Besides your own creations, what are some of your favourite plugins from other developers and why?
Deadbolt has always been a favorite plugin. I consider it almost a required plugin for Bukkit servers. It's such a simple solution to protecting chests. My other favorite is Residence. Allowing players to protect their own creations has kept griefing to a minimum. Lastly Dynmap is another string favorite. Everyone loves being able to see where they are in the world with realtime online map.

Do you have any advice for other potential plugin developers?
Find a good tutorial on Java programming and start small. Find a good Bukkit tutorial and look other developers' code. Most of the plugins are open source which makes it much easier to see how things work. The developer section on the Bukkit forums has a lot of really great information.

Many thanks to cnaude for creating this plugin and for participating in our interview!

Thanks to MadPixel for the Minecrafter font.