Getting Started with Minecraft Plugin Development: Your First Plugin for Minecraft 1.16.5

Welcome, aspiring Minecraft developers! If you're eager to start creating custom plugins for your Minecraft server, you're come to the right place. In this guide, we'll walk you through the process of creating your first Minecraft plugin. Our goal will be to make a simple plugin that sends a title message to players when they join the server.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following:

1. Java Development Kit (JDK): Download and install JDK 8 to JDK 16 from Oracle's official website.
2. Integrated Development Environment (IDE): IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse are popular choices for Java development.
3. Minecraft Server: Set up a Minecraft server running version 1.16.5. You can download the server software from the official Minecraft website.
4. Build Tool: We'll use Maven to manage our project dependencies. Ensure Maven is installed and configured on your system.

Step 1: Setting Up Your Working space

Firstly, if there is no JDK from version 8 to 16 on your computer, we need to download it from the official website.

1. Go to the website and see the page shown in the screenshot below

2. After we have gone down on this page, we see links to download 16 JDK. We are downloading the newest version of JDK

3. Create a New Maven Project

Open your IDE and create a New Maven project. Set the GroupId to com.example and the ArtifactId to FirstPlugin.

4. Project Structure

Ensure your project structure looks like this:

FirstPlugin/
├── src/
│ ├── main/
│ │ ├── java/
│ │ │ └── com/
│ │ │ └── example/
│ │ │ └── FirstPlugin.java
│ │ └── resources/
│ │ └── plugin.yml
└── pom.xml

Step 2: Configuring pom.xml

Open the pom.xml file and add the following dependencies for the Spigot API:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>org.example</groupId>
  <artifactId>FirstPlugin</artifactId>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>

  <name>FirstPlugin</name>

  <properties>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
  </properties>

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.8.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>${java.version}</source>
          <target>${java.version}</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.4</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
    <resources>
      <resource>
        <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
        <filtering>true</filtering>
      </resource>
    </resources>
  </build>

  <repositories>
      <repository>
          <id>spigotmc-repo</id>
          <url>https://hub.spigotmc.org/nexus/content/repositories/snapshots/</url>
      </repository>
      <repository>
          <id>sonatype</id>
          <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/groups/public/</url>
      </repository>
  </repositories>

  <dependencies>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.spigotmc</groupId>
          <artifactId>spigot-api</artifactId>
          <version>1.16.5-R0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
          <scope>provided</scope>
      </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Step 3: Writing the Plugin Code

Navigate to src/main/java/com/example/FirstPlugin.java and add the following code:

package com.example;

import org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPlugin;
import org.bukkit.event.Listener;
import org.bukkit.event.EventHandler;
import org.bukkit.event.player.PlayerJoinEvent;
import org.bukkit.Bukkit;
import org.bukkit.entity.Player;

public class FirstPlugin extends JavaPlugin implements Listener {

    @Override
    public void onEnable() {
        Bukkit.getPluginManager().registerEvents(this, this); // Register our event listener
    }

    @EventHandler
    public void onPlayerJoin(PlayerJoinEvent event) {
        Player player = event.getPlayer();
        player.sendTitle("Welcome", player.getDisplayName(), 10, 70, 20);
    }
}

Step 4: Creating the plugin.yml File

Navigate to src/main/resources/plugin.yml and add the following content:

name: FirstPlugin
version: 1.0
main: com.example.FirstPlugin
api-version: 1.16

Step 4: Building and Running Your Plugin

1.Build Your Plugin

Run mvn clean package in your project's root directory. This command compiles your code and creates a JAR file in the target directory.

2. Deploy Your Plugin

Copy the generated FirstPlugin-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar file from the target directory into the plugins folder in your Minecraft server.

Start Your Server

Start your Minecraft server. If everything is set up correctly, your plugin will be loaded, and you'll see a welcome message whenever a player joins the server.

Congratulations! You've just created your first Minecraft plugin ;)