Courier
Courier
A player to player mail system for Bukkit Minecraft servers
by defxor
Allows creation of text note items and sending of letters to players no matter if they're online or offline. The letters are delivered by postmen at intervals specified in the config file, and letters can be stored and handled as any other item for later reading. We wanted something that not only allowed us to pass notes to each other, but also felt like it was part of the regular Minecraft environment.
We believe we succeeded.
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Usage
- /letter [text]
- Creates a Courier Letter with the supplied text. Hold the Letter in your hands and write /letter [text] again to add more text to the Letter. Use &nl or \n to insert newlines. Multiple page Letters are supported, use right-click and left-click to turn the page.
- /post [playername]
- Sends the Letter held in your hands to another player, name verified to be a player on the server. Depending on the config, the received Letter will be privacy-locked to that player (can be unlocked by simply adding text to it with /letter).
- /courier fees
- Lists the fees, if any, that apply for sending mail or creating letters
- /courier unread
- Requests re-delivery of all unread mail, even if they have been delivered to you before. Courier knows the difference between a mail having been delivered and actually read, and this is meant to be used in the cases where you've managed to misplace the Letter without having read it first.
- /postman
- Intended for OPs only, if postman delivery happens seldom and you want to force one to appear. NOT NEEDED in actual gameplay.
To receive messages, simply poke the friendly postman when he appears or right-click him to receive the message directly into your hands or inventory.
The strings "%loc" and "%pos" will be replaced with the current X,Y,Z position in any Letters written, if surrounded by spaces.
Permissions
Quick version: Give your players courier.write, courier.send and courier.list
Long version:
- courier.write
- Allows players to create Letters (default: op)
- courier.send
- Allows players to send Letters to other players (default: op)
- courier.list
- Allow players to see name suggestions if there's more than one match when sending (default: op)
- courier.info
- Allows seeing command help, fee structure and requesting of re-delivery (default: true)
- courier.theonepercent
- Allows posting of mail even if you have no credits and Economy support has been activated (default: false)
- courier.privacyoverride
- Allows the player to read privacy locked Letters (default: false)
- courier.useitemframes
- Allows the player to put Letters into ItemFrames (default: true)
(For anything but the defaults a Superperms compatible permissions plugin needs to be installed)
Configuration options
- Privacy.SealedEnvelope
- Whether Letters that have been Posted to another player should only be possible to read by that player. If you want to change this option, please read this forum thread. (default: true)
- UseFees
- Whether Courier should activate and require Economy support through Vault. (default: false)
- Fee.Send
- The postal fee withdrawn from the player if UseFees is set to true (default: 10)
- Fee.BankAccount
- The Bank or Player account fees will be deposited into (default: none)
- UpdateInterval
- The interval between checks towards dev.bukkit.org to see if there's a new version of Courier available. A value of 0 disables. (default: 18000 seconds)
- Route.InitialWait
- How long will Courier wait until sending out the first postman after players have started joining the server (default: 10 seconds)
- Route.NextRoute
- How long between rounds. This is the maximum amount of time a delivery can take between two online players (default: 60 seconds)
- Route.WalkToPlayer
- Currently not functioning due to changes in Minecraft.
If friendly postmen (Villager) should walk up to players or not. Unfriendly mobs (Enderman) ignore this setting and never do. (default: true)
- Postman.Type
- Which Minecraft Creature to use as Postman. Courier will accept all valid Creatures but only 'Enderman' and 'Villager' are supported. (default: 'Enderman'). Note: This setting is case sensitive! 'villager' does not work, 'Villager' does.
- Postman.QuickDespawn
- How quickly will a postman despawn after having taken damage or delivered the mail (default: 3 seconds)
- Postman.Despawn
- For how long will a postman stay around each round waiting for the player to take his mail (default: 20 seconds)
- Postman.SpawnDistance
- What's the maximum line of sight distance a postman will spawn in front of a player (default: 10 blocks)
- Postman.BreakSpawnProtection
- Whether Courier should try to override mobspawn protection in order to spawn its Postman (default: true)
- Postman.VanishDistance
- The distance a Postman will check to see if a vanished player would be betrayed by appearing within (default: 20 blocks square)
- Postman.CreativeDelivery
- Whether Postmen should deliver mail to Players who are in Creative mode (default: true)
- Letter.ShowDate
- Whether to display the date a Letter was sent or not (default: true)
- Letter.FreeLetter
- If players should receive free Letters or if they need to have the necessary resources (default: true)
- Letter.Resources
- List of resources needed if FreeLetter is set to false. Example: [CobbleStone, Paper, CobbleStone] (default: [Coal, Paper])
- Letter.RequiresCrafting
- Whether Courier should just deduct the resources or if players need to manually craft letters (default: false)
- Letter.Frameable
- Should it be possible to put Courier Letters into ItemFrames - in effect creating posters/flyers (default: true)
In addition to the above all user visible strings can be edited. Some translated configs are available in the translations folder as well in the plugin data folder. Move and rename them to 'config.yml' to use.
Trivia
As you've understood (and seen if you've looked at the in-game images) I use Maps to render Courier Letters. If you're a plugin developer and your plugin handles maps and you either want to make sure your map system isn't screwed up by Courier Letters, or maybe if you want to handle Courier Letters in a special way, you can easily identify them:
The actual Maps used by Courier to render Letters ALWAYS have their X coordinate set to 2147087904 (or INT_MAX - 395743, if you want).
The ItemStacks(Material.MAP) that point to those Maps are Enchanted with DURABILITY and the enchantment level is used as a database key to find the matching text.
Release history
- 2015-05-14: v1.2.1 uploaded
- 2015-05-09: v1.2.0 uploaded
- 2013-01-16: v1.1.9 uploaded
- 2012-12-30: v1.1.8 uploaded
- 2012-12-20: v1.1.7 uploaded
- 2012-03-04: v1.1.6 uploaded
- 2012-02-25: v1.1.5 uploaded
- 2012-02-13: v1.1.1 uploaded
- 2012-01-31: v1.1.0 uploaded
- 2012-01-15: v1.0.0 uploaded
- 2012-01-02: v0.9.6 uploaded
- 2011-12-30: v0.9.5 uploaded
- 2011-12-27: v0.9.2 uploaded
- 2011-12-26: v0.9.1 uploaded
- 2011-12-23: v0.9.0 uploaded. This page created.
(see the Changelog for detailed information)
Known issues
- Moving Letters between slots in creative mode (/gamemode 1) causes them to become empty later (eg. after logout/login)
- This seems to be a Bukkit issue, please do not handle Courier Letters in creative mode until this is better understood.
- Courier does not support extended character sets, it will skip such input when writing Letters.
- This is due to Bukkit Maps only supporting the 'old' standard Minecraft Font. If support is extended in Bukkit I will implement it into Courier as well.
- ... and all open tickets and issues, of course.
Future development
This plugin is looking for a new maintainer. The original author does not play Minecraft any longer. The update to Minecraft v1.8 could only be made thanks to a pull request having been made at Github. Do not expect any future development until a new maintainer can be found.
I have this working now, is there any way to reload?
@defxor
Yes indeed. You can just craft a book and write in it as normal, and then send it to a player with a command.
@dexfor So many thanks for the answer, i think that Courier plugin would looks really great with these implementations. Anyway Courier with the Map ID running run greats and all the players of my server love it from months ago :)
Cheers, blessings and so many thanks for keep it up, your work is top, word !
@MaximusMJ
With regards to Iron Golems, sure. Since you're not the first to ask, and I was sure Courier accepted all Minecraft creatures, I had to go take a look at what name you need to use as Postman.Type for them to appear. It seems it's not obvious, and so I've added a clarifying post to the forum :)
Set Postman.Type to 'VillagerGolem' in the config file. I made a quick test and it seems to work fine.
As for Mailboxes, please see existing suggestions and comments in the Tickets section.
hey @defxor, I've had some ideas. Can you make irongolems as postmen? That would be great. And can you add a mailbox? (building a chest on two fences) example : c=chest f=fence c f f
@SurceBeats
Well, should I? :) I think Bukkit still lacks the APIs I would need, but they will probably arrive in 1.3.x updates..
(I'd like to hear opinions on how you would want it to work)
Are you planning to discard the maps and implement the new book-writing integrated in Minecraft? Salutes man!
All: I'm thinking I might need to release a v1.1.7 of Courier due to Villager trading. Please voice your opinion in this thread on the forum.
Note: Major new developments are still planned for v1.2.0 and won't be back ported.
@beanssprout
Yes, in the mythical v1.2.0 that I still haven't finished ;) See the forum for more information on what's in that build.
@diannetea
I've just tested Courier on v1.3.1 with Villagers as Postmen and cannot repeat your problem. Now, granted, right-clicking a Villager postman brings up a trade dialog which is clearly unwanted, but the letter is still delivered. Left-clicking also works as intended.
I'm running 1.3.1 and the villagers do not give me anything, they just continually spawn saying that a postman has arrived.
Will there be a feature for admins to be able to send one letter to everyone at once?
I am very pleased to say that is works with 1.3.1 as far as I've tested. Thanks for the awesome plugin!
This plugin is just the best, thanks for making this!
hi! yeah, right, I want, that admins area able to read letters, whether I put privacy on. A permissions node would be fine and can you make more mobs to postman? an irongolem would be awesome.
@defxor
It didn't really help me, cant find the solution there..
@ni_r3ng3r_ni
/mail is one of the aliases Courier registers. See if the info here helps.
This is conflicting with the /mail command, I tried reading my mail by typing /mail read, and I got:
Courier: You must be holding the letter you want to post! see /courier /post playername /mail [read:clear:send [to] [message]]
All those lines in my chat, can you please fix this? :D awesome plugin by the way!
All: If Minecraft/Bukkit 1.3 requires me to release a new version of Courier it's likely it will only be a compatibility update with no or next to no new features. If there are any bugs you feel I really need to fix - please vote on those tickets now :)
@sizoxe
Colors ... will have to come in a future version. Please add to an existing ticket or create a new one if there isn't one that covers what you need :)
@Kurisuellegarden
I'm guessing you run a dev build, and not the newest, correct? If not - please answer this ticket with more information.
@kola321
Thanks! :D
@_Greylocke_
Alright, understandable. I'll concentrate on SQLite and look at using whatever Bukkit is configured for (SQLite or MySQL) after that. Thanks.
@uncovery
Courier does not, unfortunately, re-read the current mail storage yaml file while running. The use case you propose is interesting and something I'd like to support, but while changing it for you in the 1.1x branch would be quite easy it's all changed in the un-released v1.2x branch where the yaml format has been deprecated and replaced with SQLite.
I'm very much open to working with you on this feature, feel free to come with suggestions in PM!
Does the plugin re-read the mailfile from time to time while the server is running? I am planning to write a web interface to the system and want to make sure that mails initiated by a web interface are not overwritten/ignored. How you suggest to achieve that?
Otherwise it would be amazing to have a console interface to insert letters into the mailfile such as
/adminmail sender recipient message
@defxor re: MySQL, if there is a database feature, I'd prefer MySQL because I already have it installed on my server. I could then take advantage of all the other tools that I've built around my existing MySQL setup.