Installation

Installation

Requirements

• A Spigot, Paper (or fork) server from 1.8.8 to 26.x, or Folia.
• Java 8 or newer, or whatever your server version needs (Java 25 for 26.x).
• Optional: PlaceholderAPI for placeholders, DiscordSRV to post through your Discord bot, MythicMobs for Hunt races on custom mobs.

Installing

1. Put ChatGames-Premium-2.0.0.jar in your plugins/ folder.
2. Start (or restart) the server. Don't use /reload or PlugMan: restart.
3. The files appear in plugins/ChatGames-Premium/. A game starts by itself after time_minutes (25 by default) when at least min_players_online players are on.
4. Try it right away: /chatgames unscramble starts a game now.

On first start the plugin downloads the item, block and mob names for your lang into translations/ (see Languages).

Storage: SQLite or MySQL

Player data (points, wins, times, challenge progress, streaks) is saved in a database.

SQLite (the default) needs no setup: the data goes in chatgames-data.db in the plugin folder.

MySQL / MariaDB, for sharing data between servers or for large servers:

Storage: 'MySQL'
MySQL:
  host: 'localhost'
  port: '3306'
  user: 'root'
  password: 'your-password'
  database: 'chatgame'
  connection-parameters: '?autoReconnect=true&useSSL=false&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8'

The database must exist; the tables are created on start. table_name and fastest_times_table name the tables. They may only use letters, digits and underscores. If the connection fails, the console says why and the plugin disables itself, so check the host, port and password.

Player data is kept in memory while players are online and saved in the background (when they leave, every 5 minutes, and on shutdown), so the database is never in the way of the game.

Upgrading from 1.9.9

Drop the new jar in place of the old one and restart. On the first start:

• Configs are upgraded. The old files are copied to backups/1.9.9-<date>/ first. Every value you changed is moved to where it lives now (game settings to games.yml, Discord to discord.yml, logs to add-ons.yml, chatRaces.yml becomes races.yml, Shopping List becomes Memorize). Everything you didn't change gets the 2.0.0 default.
• Player data is upgraded. Points, toggles and sound settings are kept, and each player's best time still counts for the overall fastest leaderboard. The old table is kept, renamed to chatgames_1_9_9.
• An edited rewards.yml is kept as it is; the new games get default rewards.
• Every 1.9.9 placeholder still works.

First things to set

Setting	File	Why
lang	config.yml	The language for item/block/mob names, and (with config-language: auto) all config files
time_minutes or randomDelay	config.yml	How often games start
min_players_online	config.yml	Players needed for a game to start by itself
disabled-worlds	config.yml	Worlds where nobody can play
enable per game	games.yml / races.yml	Which games run
The rewards	rewards.yml	The defaults give iron blocks; change them to your economy
prefix	config.yml	The %prefix% in messages

Then run /chatgames reload.