Server selection
Signs, NPCs and placeholders for choosing a server.
The bridge ships signs and NPCs that let players in a lobby pick a server. Neither needs an
additional plugin, and both update themselves as servers start, fill up or disappear. Who may
create them is governed by the right mutecloud.signs, which by default only operators have.
Signs
Place an ordinary sign, look at it from at most six blocks away and type:
The signs of a group are assigned to the running servers in order: the first sign gets the first server, the second sign the second. A right click sends the player to the sign's server. If no server is assigned to the sign at the moment, the player gets a notice and the cloud is asked to start another server of the group. Breaking a sign with the right removes it from the selection; for everyone else the server refuses to let it be broken.
What a sign looks like is set in the server's plugins/MuteCloudBridge/config.yml, separated
into four states:
| State | When | Default in lines 2 and 3 | Block |
|---|---|---|---|
searching | no server assigned | searching for server, group | GRAY_CONCRETE |
starting | server still starting | server name, starting | YELLOW_CONCRETE |
online | server accepts players | server name, player count | LIME_CONCRETE |
full | player count reached the maximum | server name, full | RED_CONCRETE |
Each state has four lines with & colour codes and the placeholders {group}, {server},
{players}, {max} and {state}. The block behind a wall sign or beneath a standing sign is
coloured in the state's colour, but only if it is already concrete, wool, terracotta, glass or
air. signs.update-ticks sets how often the signs are rewritten, by default every second, but
no more often than every ten ticks.
The signs themselves are stored in plugins/MuteCloudBridge/signs.yml. If this file sits in
the lobby template, every lobby has the same signs.
NPCs
An NPC appears where you stand and faces the same direction:
The third word is either a Minecraft entity type such as villager, zombie or armor_stand
or a player name. With a player name the NPC becomes a figure with that player's head and
coloured leather armour. Everything after that is the displayed name, by default
&b&l{group} &7({players} online). The name supports {group}, {players} and {servers}
and is refreshed every five seconds.
There are five click actions. verbinden sends to the emptiest free server, vollste to the
fullest one that still has room, zufall to any server, menue opens an overview of every
server of the group, and nichts does nothing. By default a right click connects and a left
click opens the menu. For new NPCs this can be changed under npcs.right-click and
npcs.left-click in config.yml.
If no server of the group is free at the moment, the NPC says so and has one started. NPCs do
not move, take no damage and are placed again on every server start. They are stored in
plugins/MuteCloudBridge/npcs.yml.
Back to the lobby
The proxy provides /hub with the aliases /l and /lobby. The command sends a player to the
emptiest server of the first group registered as fallback group, that is with
fallback = true. If the player is already there, the server says so.
Placeholders
If PlaceholderAPI is installed on a server, the bridge registers its own placeholders there, for example for scoreboards or holograms:
| Placeholder | Content |
|---|---|
%mutecloud_service% | name of this server, e.g. Lobby-1 |
%mutecloud_group% | its group |
%mutecloud_node% | the node it runs on |
%mutecloud_version% | its Minecraft version |
%mutecloud_players%, %mutecloud_max_players% | players on this server |
%mutecloud_network_players% | players across the network |
%mutecloud_services%, %mutecloud_groups% | number of servers and groups |
%mutecloud_connected% | yes or no, depending on whether the bridge is connected |
%mutecloud_players_<group>% | players in a group |
%mutecloud_max_players_<group>% | slots in a group |
%mutecloud_services_<group>% | servers of a group |
%mutecloud_online_<group>% | servers of a group that accept players |
%mutecloud_best_<group>% | the emptiest free server of a group |
%mutecloud_node_players%, %mutecloud_node_services% | counts of the node |
%mutecloud_node_memory_used%, _total%, _free% | memory of the node in MB |
%mutecloud_node_cpu% | load of the node |
Group names are case insensitive.
Servers up to 1.20.4
Servers running on Java 8 or 17, that is everything up to and including 1.20.4, receive the legacy bridge. The cloud swaps in the matching version itself on every start. Signs are available there with the same commands and layouts, but they only colour wool and do not validate the group name. NPCs, placeholders and titles are not available on these servers; announcements appear in chat.