Curse

Welcome to this week's Minecraft Spotlight! This time we will be taking a closer look at Grappling Hook, a plugin created by Tooner101.

Grappling Hook introduces a new item that enables players to climb mountains and pull entities closer. As you can see above, the item in question is a grappling hook that can be created at a crafting table; by combining a fishing rod and three iron ingots.

Using the grappling hook is just as easy as using a fishing rod! Players simply have to cast the hook by right clicking until it grabs hold of a solid block. Right clicking once more will "pull" them onto said block. The hook does not in fact pull players to their desired location, it teleports them instead. Still, the effect is close enough.
As stated earlier, the grappling hook can also be used on entities. As opposed to blocks, however, it will not pull yourself towards the other entity but rather the other way around. Casting the grappling hook onto both players and mobs allows you to pull them closer; certainly making for an interesting twist to any battle.

Besides entities and solid blocks, the grappling hook is no different from a regular fishing rod. Meaning that throwing the hook into water or air will not do anything, save for catching fish.

Unlike most plugins, this plugin does not require you to setup anything, except choosing whether or not you would like to use permissions.

Once again, we had the opportunity to hold a developer interview; this time it's Tooner101's turn. Read on to learn more about the creation process behind Grappling Hook!

What was your inspiration for starting this project?
Once in a while, I like to browse the Plugin Requests section of Bukkit just to see what cool ideas people have for making their server better, and one plugin was requested multiple times; a grappling hook that uses a fishing rod. So after looking into it a bit more, it was discouraging to see so many people saying that a plugin like this was "impossible" to make because there is no method to get the location of the hook when thrown. I hate when people say something is impossible without a lot of knowledge on the subject so I decided to prove it could be done.

How was your plugin received by the community at its first public release?
Suprisingly, not a lot of people downloaded it at first. Because of the amount of requests for this plugin, I assumed I would get a lot of initial downloads but that was not the case. For those that did download it, I got amazing reviews on the plugin with phrases like "THANK YOU SO MUCH!" and "THIS PLUGIN IS AWESOME!". I like to think that it is not the amount of downloads but the joy of the actual downloaders themselves.

Roughly how much time did you spend on finishing the first usable version of Grappling Hook?
I probably spent around 2-3 days coding until the first version was ready to be released.

Have you come across any challenges during development and, if any, how did you handle them?
The main challenge of this plugin was storing the hooks in a way that wouldn't consume too many resources for the server. Storing entities in code is rarely a good thing so I had to think of a few workarounds that would work just as well but didn't use the actual entities themselves.

And what is your favourite feature of the plugin itself?
My favorite feature is having the ability to climb a steep mountain in survival mode without a lot of effort. And just having an extra item in the game that allows you to get around the way grappling hook does is a fun thing.

Are you currently working on any other plugins or updates?
I am currently working on an update for Grappling Hook that will allow the server owner to set velocity as the method of transportation. Instead of just teleporting the player to the location of the hook, they will be pulled there. I have a few other plugins I am working on and the release of the biggest plugin I have ever made to be released in beta in the near future.

Do you have any advice for other potential plugin developers?
Learn Java. It may seem simple but there are a lot of potential plugin developers who just assume all they need to know is the bukkit api. A huge part of coding anything is just problem solving so getting practice doing that will help exponentially. For those developers who do know Java, my advice is just to make a plugin that you would like to have on your server and more than likely other people will enjoy it as well.

Special thanks to Tooner101 for both participating in our interview and developing the plugin!

Grappling Hook is a simple, yet very effective little plugin! As advertised by the developer, it "simply works". All that has to be done to make it work is installing it and enabling permissions or not. Not only the installation process is straightforward, but the in-game usage is as well! Players only have to craft the new tool using existing items; after which they can start scaling mountains and whatnot without the need to remember a long list of complicated commands.

Thanks to MadPixel for the Minecrafter font.