Nethrar
Nethrar
Unrestrictive Nether / multiworld portals, with ridden and riderless minecart and boat support, multiworld, and many options for the power server admin.
Version: v2.3.1 (Dev v3.0-alpha1)
General
Nethrar is a Nether portal plugin that aims for simplicity and easy usage. Portals behave like SSP portals, except that you control them. There are no requirements to start. Just drop it in and you get portals essentially identical to SSP, but with smarter placement and linking. You can also configure practically any part of Nethrar, even adding multiple worlds or changing what worlds are linked together.
Features
- Drop-and-go: defaults provide full, basic SSP-like functionality for most servers. Just drop the .jar file into your plugins directory. Nethrar should now be able to guess most parameters, but if there is any doubt, check the generated worlds.yml file.
- Total multiworld support. Whatever arbitrary world configurations you wanted, now you can have them.
- Portals 'remember' their destination, so world loops are possible. For example, if I have it set up that portals from world A go to world B, and portals in world B go to world C, and then finally portals in C go to A, what would happen if I build a portal in A, which leads to B, and then step back through it? I will go back to A, not to C. This 'memory' is preserved with clean server shutdowns.
- Facing, orientation, and, when applicable, velocity, are preserved going through the portal, for the smoothest transition possible for players. Minecarts carrying players function seamlessly. Minecart tracks should lead to and from the portal on both sides, on the same elevation, for minecarts to work properly.
- Minecarts can now go through portals riderless! Powered minecarts are not supported, but empty minecarts and storage carts both go in and out unassisted. For best results, use with the force-chunk-loading feature.
- Boats can be driven through portals too! If you are linking between two water worlds, or a water and normal world, you can now paddle through between the two.
- Chunk keep-alive: For servers strapped on disk IO, or lower-performance servers, teleporting can be a real bummer for everyone on the server. Nethrar can be configured to keep chunks loaded in a radius around portals, increasing RAM usage, but decreasing the amount of resulting lag from teleporting through portals.
- Custom world generator support.
- World blocks: Each world can have a 'world block' assigned to it, like wool or a gold block or stone. If you create a portal with a particular world's world blocks in the top two corners, then that portal will link to that particular world. This lets you make permanent 'special' portals that go places regular ones won't.
- It works.
Configurable settings
- whether to use Permissions or not.
- whether to redirect respawns or not.
- how many chunks around a portal to keep loaded.
- whether to allow riderless vehicles.
- how much debug logging to print (currently there is very little even at the most verbose setting, this is more for helping me with debugging).
- relative scale of each world.
- what worlds get linked together, and in what manner.
Important Note: You should turn off the default Nether functionality if you are going to use Nethrar. Failing to do so can cause random and unpredictable double teleports, teleport loops, or worse. Set "allow-nether=false" in server.properties, or add it at the end. This will not delete your existing Nether, it will just prevent the portals from teleporting you if you stand too close for too long.
Downloads
Nethrar (.jar, config.yml, worlds.yml) (.zip, .tar.gz)
Other downloads also available direct from the files section.
Dev build: (http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/658/189/Nethrar-3.0-alpha1.jar)
Source (github) (LGPL licensed)
Configuration / Installation, most people
Download Nethrar.jar. Put it in your plugins/ directory. For most people, this is enough. Have problems? Check out the Help section below labeled "read me first".
Configuration / Installation, fewer people
If you had trouble with worlds not being what you expect, or if you want more power, then do the following. The plugin will put a config.yml inside a directory called "Nethrar" in the plugins/ directory. Set the following parameters in config.yml for your particular server. Also, edit worlds.yml to describe the world setup YOU want for your server. Assign the relevant Permissions nodes as you see fit.
config.yml
# Set to true to use Permissions, otherwise everyone gets all permissions. usePermissions: false # Set to false to use builtin vanilla respawning behavior. listen: respawn: true # Set to some number > 0 if you experience server-wide lag when anyone # teleports. forceLoadRadius: 0 # Set to true to allow minecarts / boats to pass through a portal without # a Player passenger. TrainCarts users should set this to 'true' to allow # TrainCarts to teleport correctly. riderlessVehicles: false # Set to 1 or 2 to increase the amount of console messages Nethrar will # show. debugLevel: 0
worlds.yml
world: environment: normal destination: world_nether scale: 8 world_nether: environment: nether destination: world scale: 1 peaceful: false respawnTo: world # Add more worlds here, or edit the ones above as you see fit. # For example, to make a loop of normal -> Nether -> skylands -> normal, # do the following: # world: # environment: normal # destination: world_nether # scale: 8 # worldBlock: 57 # ^ Any portal made with diamond blocks in the corners will link to 'world'. # world_nether: # environment: nether # destination: world_skylands # scale: 1 # peaceful: false # worldBlock: 42 # ^ Any portal made with iron blocks in the corners will link to 'world_nether' # world_end: # environment: normal # destination: world # worldGenerator: # name: SkylandsPlus # args: if there were any args to pass to your world generator, they would go here # scale: 8 # worldBlock: 41 # ^ Any portal made with gold blocks in the corners will link to the 'world_skylands'
Note that to make a SkylandsPlus world, you'll first need the SkylandsPlus mod, which you can get here.
New Permissions nodes
# Allows usage of Nethrar portals. nethrar.use # Allows usage of Nethrar teleportation. nethrar.tp
New Commands
# Teleports the invoking player to the destination world. # Places a single block of glass at the destination under the feet. /nethrar tp worldname
Help (read this first)
Not issues
- "I'm using MinecartMania and when I go through a portal I don't keep moving!" Obsidian is the default "minecart stopper" block in MinecartMania. Either power the obsidian block on both sides of the portal with redstone, or change the stopper block to be something other than obsidian.
- Transitioning between worlds can be a little laggy. I am trying to mitigate this, the Bukkit devs and community are making great progress making teleports suck less, but there is nothing we know of that we haven't done to make things better. Sorry.
- "Help I fall and sometimes die when I teleport between worlds!" Best thing I can say is: make sure you're running an up-to-date build of CraftBukkit, and it's lag-related, but it's nothing I believe I can solve any more than I have already tried.
- "Why didn't I respawn at my bed?" Recent versions of CB should fix this, and Nethrar will support this soon as well even with respawn redirects.
- "Help I am always respawning in the default world." Unless you are using Nethrar respawn redirects to keep people who die in one world to respawn in the same world, this is working as the Bukkit devs seem to want it to work.
Known issues
- New in recent versions of CB You can experience random teleportation 'loops' where if you step into a portal you'll get spontaneously re-teleported after stepping out, or teleported back and forth really fast. Setting "allow-nether=false" seems to prevent this. This is an issue with vanilla Nether by Notch et. al., or the new client, or both. Unfortunately, this also causes CB to send some false move events, and Nethrar doesn't play well with those.
- Chunks can sometimes, but less commonly with newer (860+) builds of CB, fail to load when transitioning between worlds, and only load on relog. Portals can also stop functioning when this occurs. Set "forceLoadRadius" in config.yml to something greater than 0 (reports say that 4 tends to work, I would recommend something between 2 and 4).
- Camera orientation is not preserved when travelling through a portal in a minecart. I suspect some deeper issue with the server when putting a player into a minecart.
Potential future development
- Pre-emptively generate or load chunks in the Nether which are 'known to be needed.'
- Allow minecarts with any passengers to teleport between worlds. Works best with force-loaded chunks to enable physics with no players present.
- Enable teleportation of *any* entity - animals, mobs, mobiles, etc.
- Per-world teleportation permission (eg. if player has permission for world, can take portal to that world).
- Auto-link / generate nether for new normal worlds, as option.
- Teleport delay. Obviously incompatible with vehicles.
A note about future development: This is a side project first and foremost. Development was primarily driven by my and my friend's needs on our personal server, and future development will be heavily influenced by that. If there is sufficient demand by the general public and users, then I can implement other features, but I am not compelled or otherwise forced to do so. Just FYI.
Nitty gritty details
A somewhat conservative heuristic is used to link portals in the smaller world to portals in the larger world (the Nether is the 'smaller' world, usually), to avoid portal spamming the larger world. Additionally, portals will never destroy a pre-existing portal; rather, they will simply link to that portal. Stepping into a portal in one world will first try to find a portal to link to in the destination world, then build a new one if none is found. The tl;dr version of this search is "Is there a portal in the destination world, that, if newly created and stepped into, would link to this portal in this world?" If so, link to that portal, otherwise build a new one. What determines whether a portal in one world links to one in the destination world? Essentially, if the hypothetical 'perfectly positioned' counterpart, in the destination world, to the first world's portal would conflict / intersect with an existing portal in the destination world, then the already-present portal is chosen as the destination. Note that this overall strategy is to prevent creating portals unless absolutely necessary, but can make generating distinct unique portal pairs in close proximity difficult. If you really want to know what the name comes from, you can ask, but it's really not important.
Changelog
- Version 2.3.1
- 1.2.4-R1.0 support.
- No major changes besides updating to remove dep
- Version 2.3
- 1.1-R3 API support.
- Added support for custom world generators. Environment is still required, add key values worldGenerator.name to specify a world generator plugin, worldGenerator.args for additional args for the generator.
- Version 2.2.1
- Removed 'physics!' spam.
- Version 2.2
- 1.0.1-R1 update. Supporting portals to The End. If the portal gets extinguished, no guarantees it'll be possible to re-light!
- Version 2.1
- Implemented world blocks. World can have an optional "worldBlock" property, an integer, defining a block ID for that world's "worldBlock." Any portal made with that block in the top two corners will link to that world.
- Updated to use Bukkit builtin permissions. You must use a compatible permissions plugin to use this. Read http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/permissions-faq.25080/ for more information.
- Still uses sync threads to do teleportation.
- Version 2.0
- Added easier drop-and-go installation code and support.
- Added true multiworld support. See worlds.yml for syntax and examples.
- Added per-world custom destination world.
- Added per-world custom destination world for respawns.
- Added command "/nethrar tp world"; Use it as a server admin to get between worlds to set up portals for people.
- Added portal destination persistence to help with more complicated world setups.
- Version 1.5.1
- Fixed teleporting when riding a minecart so that everything happens in a thread, instead of half in a thread and half synchronously (it's not okay to be a passenger of a vehicle in another world, eh?).
- Version 1.5
- Fixed "moved too fast" issue causing disconnects. Unfortunate side effect: teleports exhibit just a wee bit of lag before actually occuring once you hit a portal. Depends on the server's load at the time. This will have to wait for if/when the Bukkit team fixes the checks around that disconnect.
- Riderless minecart teleportation! Hidden Netherworld logic, long-distance unassisted storage cart teleportation, possibilities abound! Supposedly will work great with Evercart.
- Boats! Now you can enable your crazy multiworld water coaster. Not tested as thoroughly as it should have been, buyer beware...
- Various refactoring to help prepare for Nethrar v2.0.
More changelog available at the Changelog page.
Is there any way to configure this so portals won't obey Y-axis scaling and will spawn on the ground/inside blocks? Portals spawning in mid-air can be rather odd and clunky.
If not, could this be added? It seems like it should be default behavior as it makes portals very difficult to use in some situations.
Love the plugin, hope to see it developed more!
@PhanaticD
It shouldn't prevent any portals from spawning, especially not the ender dragon portal.
also does this plugin prevent the end portal from spawning when you kill dragons? on my server when the dragon is killed a portal out doesnt spawn and im trying to find out why
@akrieger
it only happened once, since the restart after that havent seen it since
@PhanaticD
This was supposed to be fixed in 1.4.6 >.< Can you revert to 2.3.2b in the meantime?
so yesterday i was seeing this error over and over again, and today someone complained about hundreds and hundreds of wolves at their portal. and sure enough there was an unloadable amount of wolves lol i had to spam killall as soon as i joined the server
@DevonCWoodcomb
Hm, still no idea what's causing the loop teleportation.
Wrt. 'being worse than vanilla' at making portals, Nethrar is supposed to be more *precise* at it than vanilla, that is the whole point. If it ends up being over a lava lake, well, unfortunate portal positioning.
Your comment about how when you went back through the portal it made a new one in the sky was very interesting. I've never heard of this before. What were the exact coordinates of A,B, and C, and are you using anything except the default worlds.yml?
@akrieger
I too tend to teleport back instantly through the portal again.
Additionally it seems to be worse than vanilla about making new portals, make Portal A on the main world, itll make portal B in the nether (in the sky above a lava lake most of the time) and then spit me instantly back to the default world but itll make a new portal, Portal C, way up in the sky and then loop me.
@Ranetha
Good to know, I'll update the files!
works fine for me in 1.4.6 - thanks!
@OSWChewbaca
As far as I know, the alpha version of Nethrar should work with 1.4.5, and *probably* 1.4.6 (although I haven't tested yet). The most recent beta version of Nethrar should also work with anything, but not have any updated features.
What version is this for
I mean what minecraft version
@greg2725d
Interesting. The last time I saw this, it was because the world scales were both set to the same value. Are you just using the defaults / default worlds.yml file? Do you see this whenever you walk through, or when you use a minecart, or never with a minecart? I may need to tweak the values to deposit you farther outside of the portal.
So we updated to the beta build of 1.4.6. I also am running the latest build of your plugin. i'm having a problem though when we re spawn after going through a portal. Our re spawn point is sometimes the inside the portal on the other side and we just teleport back to the real world. Its not every time either. So we may walk though a portal in the real world, see the nether for a second, then reappear in the real world again. Its not a major issue but still a pain sometimes. Great plugin though. Helps us out on our server.
I have uploaded an *alpha* version of Nethrar 3.0 to the files section. When it is approved, you can download it there, or presumably from http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/658/189/Nethrar-3.0-alpha1.jar
Read the known caveats list on the file so you understand what is known to be broken. There's a reason it's just an alpha.
I have successfully updated Nethrar to teleport items and animals and mobs. Mobs *in* minecarts do not yet work, as that would require adding a vehicle move listener, and I do not yet know the performance implications of that. I'm going to clean it up and release it as an alpha build later.
Good morning everybody!
It is the first day of my vacation. I also see that an RB for 1.4.5 has been released. I am currently working on making player teleportation as smooth an experience as possible, and then going to finalize cow/sheep/etc teleportation, then hopefully release a... drum roll please...
Nethrar 3.0 beta!
Yessir, this new version will have so many new features I decided it's worthy to be a new major version number. Lets hope nothing tremendously tricky shows up!
@android01
I've historically been bad at updating the internal versions numbers, sorry again! Glad it works for you, and I'm still tweaking the riding-in-minecart teleportation to be smoother if possible.
@akrieger
Ah, thanks. I didnt notice the beta has been updated, as it has the same version number I already had, and that one wasnt working. I redownloaded and it works, just the minecart transport that is little strange.
Thank you.
@android01
I'm sorry this isn't updating fast enough for you. As far as I was aware, Bukkit in 1.4.* doesn't support the full features that vanilla Minecraft does, but I could be wrong. Your Nether transportation system will still work if you upgrade to 1.4.* with the current version of Nethrar, just any new features aren't added yet. I already listed below that item and mob teleportation was functioning in my development versions, but I only have so much time I can spare around my job to update Nethrar.
If it helps you wait, I have a vacation starting this week, and I was going to work on Nethrar during that. Again, feel free to update to 1.4.*, your minecart Nether transportation system should still work. Use the beta version listed in the files section 2.3.2b.