Bukkit

Status

This plugin is under development. Basic functionality may not be complete, and the functionality and intent of the plugin may change in the near future in response to the needs of our server's staff.

Until this plugin is marked stable do not rely on it for critical functionality of your server unless you have the resources to branch the plugin and maintain it separately in the event that the functionality changes in a way that does not meet your needs.

Description

This plugin will watch global chat looking for the names of players or their aliases. When a player's name or alias is mentioned in global chat, a sound is played for that player. Functionality is enabled via a permission, and can be customized by the player. Aliases can also be defined for groups of players defined by permissions.

The software focuses on efficiency rather than flexibility, and tries to not increase CPU and RAM load of the server noticeably.

Expected Use

This plugin is designed to enhance the chat experience within Minecraft for the players, and to help server staff better respond to player inquiries. The initial inspiration for this mod came from one of our ops. He posed the question, "Wouldn't it be nice if we got a ding when someone said 'admin'?"

Usage

Every player (with the correct permissions) will receive an alert when their full user name is mentioned in chat. Players may use the /chatalerts command to configure this behavior.

To see usage information, use the command "/chatalerts help", or "/chatalerts" with no arguments.

To disable receiving all alerts, a player may use the command "/chatalerts off".

To re-enable receiving alerts, a player may use the command "/chatalerts on".

To register an alias, a player may use the command "/chatalerts set [alias]", where alias is the alias the player wishes to register. Only one player may have a given alias registered, and if another player already has this alias registered the player will be notified.

To unregister an alias a player uses the command "/chatalerts set [alias]" again.

To set which sound a player hears when they receive an alert, they may use the "/chatalerts alert [sound]" command where [sound] is the name of a client sound effect. A player may view a list of all sounds by omitting the [sound] argument. The default sound is BURP, the sound effect heard after filling the hunger bar while eating.

All user names and aliases are case-insensitive.

Example Usage

My name is QBRADQ. I am a moderator on my server. I need to be alerted when people mention my name or ask for a moderator.

The operators of my server have given me the permission node "group.mod", a place-holder permission node that identifies me as a moderator. The operators have configured two group aliases for this permission node as such:

...
groups:
  ...
  moderator: group.mod
  mod: group.mod
  ...

Now when I log onto my server I get alerts when people say the following:

"Hi QBRADQ!" "Sup Qbradq?" "Can I get a moderator?" "I love this new chat alerts mod!"

The last line is an example of a false-positive.

Now most folks on my server call me "Brad", and some refer to me as "qb". I want to get alerts when people use these terms to refer to me. I use the following commands to set aliases for myself:

/chatalerts set brad /chatalerts set qb

I'm busy building my 27th automated pumpkin farm and I don't want to be disturbed. I turn off chat alerts by using this command:

/chatalerts off

Now that I'm done with my latest pumpkin farm I want to turn alerts back on, but I'm getting tired of being belched at all the time. I use this command to change the sound I hear to a nice kitty meow:

/chatalerts alert CAT_MEOW

I can always use the next command to find out what sounds are available:

/chatalerts alert

Finally I re-enable alerts using this command:

/chatalerts on

What a lovely day at the Watershed!

Installation

Copy ChatAlerts.jar to your server's plugins directory and reload.

Configuration

On first load a default config.yml will be created. This file contains four sections: disabled, sounds, aliases and groups. The groups section is the only one that should be edited by hand.

To add a user group alias, add the alias as the key and the permission node as the value. All players with the named permission node will be notified whenever the alias is mentioned.

config.yml should only be altered while the server is stopped.

Permissions

chatalerts.user - Only players with this permission will receive alerts or be able to use the /chatalerts command. It is true by default.

Permissions used to place players into group aliases are completely arbitrary. They can be existing permissions, permissions used by other plugins or a new permission node created for that specific purpose.