Bukkit

Although originally outside the original scope of the plugin, I added the capability to track games to the plugin. This is done by somebody with permission to use the preparegame command. the preparegame command prepares a game to start; the command accepts a name of the world in which to start the event or if not provided it will use the world of the issuing player. The location of the player issuing the Preparegame command will be recorded as well.

At this point,it is now announced and players that wish to participate (on the entire server) to use /joingame. Those who wish to spectate use /spectategame.

If the player is outside the world in which the event occurs, in both cases they will be teleported to the location stored when the game was prepared. This is particularly valuable when a new arena is created using /newarena.

when /startgame is issued in PvP mode, (again, by somebody with the proper permissions), it can either be provided a time interval to delay (default is 30 seconds) in which all PvP combat will be disabled. All players will be put into adventure mode and their health and hunger bars will be refilled. After the time has expired, players will be incurred with 5 seconds of blindness (this is to help prevent kills immediately when PvP is re-enabled).

When a game starts, Chests are randomized. Chests/Furnaces/Dispensers with Wool beneath are "static". These will not have randomized contents. However, their contents at the start of the game will be stored and reset when the game is over. Item frames are dealt with similarly, but have special logic described below.

Item Frames

Item Frames are often used for decorative purposes. By default in Minecraft, hitting a Item Frame would destroy the frame and drop both the item frame and the contents of the item frame on the ground. The plugin prevents this. When a game starts, it saves the current contents of all Item Frames in the world. When a player hits an Item frame, they are given the contents of that item frame. For decorative items often used in item frames, such as trapdoors and anvils, this is of dubious purpose. However this can be useful for Swords or other items, and is a good way to "hide" good weapons in plain sight, by making them belong; such as a powerful sword in a mansion parlour as a mantlepiece. The plugin also takes special care for buttons.

As it is currently written, Buttons are the only item that can be placed. Buttons can only be placed on Gold Blocks. This requires the map to either be modified or designed with this plugin's constraints in mind, if it includes this sort of interaction. When a game is reset, the contents of static chests are restored and all item frames have their original contents restored as well. Buttons that were placed while the game was in progress are removed as well.

Since preparegame sets the spawn, it's worth noting that if you are in creative mode you ought to make sure you are a reasonable height, otherwise players will fall and die the moment they try to join or spectate the game.