Introduction

A Minecraft Network is a collection of regular Minecraft servers, alongside a proxy to hold onto the connection so you can switch between different backend servers. You can make a network without a proxy utilizing Minecraft 1.20.5's Transfer Packet, but there are reasons to still use a proxy.

Transfer Packets?

In 1.20.5, Mojang added transfer packets. You enable it on all your backend servers and then you can /transfer ip port player to send a player to a different server.

However, this lacks a couple distinct features

• Network Wide Plugins
• Recovery after a server crash

The Proxy

For my proxy itself, I am using Velocity, mainly because it's modern, and can handle modded backend servers (Paper, Fabric, Forge), as well as supporting game versions from 1.13 to latest release (with "modern" encryption)

Velocity

Velocity is the modern, high-performance Minecraft server proxy. Designed with performance and stability in mind, it’s a full alternative to Waterfall with its own plugin ecosystem.

PaperMC

I like to keep my proxy fairly lightweight, so I only run a few plugins, mainly:

• Permissions System
• Network-Wide Banning System
• Queue System
• Geyser & floodgate - Allow Bedrock Clients to join the server

Velocity is recommended as it has security built in that BungeeCord (the previous proxy software a lot of servers used) does not. It achieves this by generating a token on the proxy you need to give to all your backend servers.

The Hub

In most networks, you want a hub/landing area for players to select what game mode they want to play, as well as catch players from servers crashing.

Apart from "standard" plugins, I chose to add the following for switching servers:

• ajQueue - Queue system to avoid flooding backend servers with join requests
• Citizens2 - NPCs for players to interact with to change servers
• ServerSelectorX - Compass in Inventory that opens a menu to pick a server
• ViaBackwards - Let older game clients join the hub
  • I only accept 1.19+ clients for now, as if we run a modpack instance I want it to be semi-modern.

Syncing Data

I use a MySQL Database to sync data across servers, using the following plugins:

• AdvancedBanX - Network-Wide Ban System
• LuckPerms - Permissions System
• Nicknames

Optimizing for UX

I take user experience pretty seriously. I hate when servers don't put in the effort to make things simple for their users.

For example, I use CommandWhitelist to only show players commands they have access to with tab auto complete.

I also use VirtualBooks to allow /help to be a book rather than text in chat, as it's easier to use.

Another thing that is helpful is automatic re-queuing on server restart. This allows me to restart servers and have the players rejoin upon the server restarting.

Survival-like Servers

For survival servers, I like to use some plugins to either save time, or add functionality while keeping it fairly vanilla.

• GraveStonesPlus - Upon death, put all items into a skull block to retrieve later.
• NotTooExpensive - Removes anvil leveling restriction
• Pl3xMap - Online 2D Map of the world
• Shopkeepers - Custom Villager Trades/Player Shops
• TreeAssist / VeinMiner - Sneak when mining a tree/ores to break all of them

I also run a few data packs from PurpurPacks

• Re-dye various items (Glass, Terracotta, Concrete)
• Infinity + Mending on Bows - Restore pre-1.11.1 behavior
• Infinity on Crossbows - Just feels fair if you can get infinity on bows

Creative

For creative, I use Multiverse-Core + Essentials + WarpGUI to essentially fake multiple creative servers, as I want both a vanilla world and a superflat world.

I allow players to use WorldEdit, and I run GriefPrevention in Creative mode so players need to claim their land before they can begin.

Legacy Survival Worlds

When we get bored of a map, I want to keep it around for spectating to allow players to see previous worlds. I run a spectator only server with previous maps with Warp GUI.

Conclusion

While this is a fairly basic network, I'm quite proud of it as it only took me a couple days to complete everything thus far, although I want to add more gamemodes in the future.

While everything works, the way I update plugins is less than ideal (every week I just download all the plugins on all servers) but it works well enough for now. Another challenge I want to tackle is configuration management when a plugin is used across servers and hosts, as right now I just duplicate configs everywhere.