While running the MaxGamer community, I wrote a number of plugins and publicly released them on Bukkit. These plugins were then available for other server owners to configure and use within their own communities. This was my first attempt at open source software and I was surprised to see the number of downloads and positive feedback that I received - including a number of pull requests from other developers and donations from server owners!

These were projects I wrote in my spare time while studying at university and running my own community. I was very young when I first started writing these. Their quality is not excellent by any measure, but I’m very proud of the outcome because of the fact I managed to produce a working product that was used by tens of thousands of players. Development was spread across 2012-2014.

QuickShop

My first plugin was QuickShop, a plugin that allowed players to create shops to sell items to other players. This was inspired by a number of other plugins that all did something really well, but none of them did everything well. The core features I wanted to include were:

  • A simple, interactive interface for players to interact with shops
  • Displaying the item above the shop to make it easy to identify
  • Support for player to player shops with limited stock and configurable tax

This plugin was a huge success and was downloaded over 100,000 times. Since my exit from the Minecraft community, it is no longer maintained, unfortunately.

MaxBans

My second plugin was MaxBans, a plugin that allowed server administrators to administer penalties to players. This was built for the same purpose as QuickShop - I liked features from a number of other plugins, but none of them did them all. Specifically, I enjoyed having a system of warnings - 3 strikes, and you’re out - with each strike becoming more severe. It was also a good success, downloaded over 300,000 times.

Maintenance was handed over to another user from Bukkit, though it’s no longer updated.