Hub, NPCs & signs¶

The hub (or BR spawn) is where players arrive, pick a match and come back after it. MRTBattleRoyale gives it a set of hotbar items, an arena menu, protection, and optional NPCs and join signs.

All hub settings are in plugins/MRTBattleRoyale/lobby.yml.

Setting the hub¶

Stand where players should spawn and run:

/br setlobby

This saves your position (world, coordinates, yaw and pitch) in lobby.yml. Players are sent there when they leave a match or the queue.

Nothing works until you set it

Until you run /br setlobby, the hub world is empty: teleports fall back to the main world's spawn, but the hub items and the protection are not active anywhere. They only ever work in the world of the lobby you set, so the plugin never touches your survival or creative worlds.

Don't type a world into lobby.yml by hand unless it really is your hub: if you write world and that is your survival world, everyone entering it becomes invulnerable and gets the compass.

/br setlobby vs /br setup lobby

/br setlobby sets the main hub. /br setup lobby is a different thing: it sets the waiting lobby of a single arena during arena setup.

lobby.yml¶

lobby:
  world: ''
  x: 0.5
  y: 64.0
  z: 0.5
  yaw: 0.0
  pitch: 0.0

  # Teleports anyone joining the server to the hub. Players rejoining a
  # match in progress (within rejoin-grace-seconds) stay where they were.
  spawn-on-join: false

  # Protects whoever is in the hub: no breaking, placing, damage, hunger
  # or item drops, and no PvP in any direction.
  protect: true

  # Y level below which a hub player is sent back to the spawn.
  void-level: -100

  # Gives the hub items (arena menu, party, stats, shop) in the hub world.
  hub-items: true

  # Clears the inventory when the hub items are given. Enable it ONLY on a
  # dedicated hub where players must not carry anything else.
  clear-inventory-in-hub: false

  # Hotbar slots (0-8) of the other hub items.
  items:
    party-slot: 0
    stats-slot: 7
    shop-slot: 8

  # Compass that opens the arena menu.
  compass:
    enabled: true
    give-on-join: true
    slot: 4

items:
  party: PLAYER_HEAD
  stats: BOOK
  shop: ENDER_CHEST
  leave: RED_BED
  teamselect: WHITE_BANNER
  spectate: COMPASS
  follow: ENDER_EYE

protect, void-level and hub-items work only in the hub world.

Hub items¶

With hub-items: true, players in the hub world get these items in their hotbar:

Item (default)	Slot	What it does
Compass (Play)	`compass.slot` (4)	Opens the arena menu
Player head (Party)	`items.party-slot` (0)	Shows your party (`/br party info`)
Book (Your stats)	`items.stats-slot` (7)	Opens your statistics screen
Ender chest (Cosmetics)	`items.shop-slot` (8)	Opens the cosmetics shop

Good to know:

Leaving the hub world removes the items again, so they never take up slots in other worlds.
Hub items can't be dropped, moved around the inventory or swapped to the off hand.
If a slot holds one of the player's own items, that item is moved to a free slot, never deleted. If two hub items share a slot, the first free slot is used.
By default the rest of the inventory is left as it is. Set clear-inventory-in-hub: true only on a dedicated hub server.
Items are recognised by an internal tag, not by their material: you can change the materials freely in the items: section. Their names and lore are in the messages file (lobby section).

The items: section also sets the look of the match items: leave (leave the queue), teamselect (team selector in DUO/SQUAD lobbies), spectate and follow (spectator tools, see Spectators).

The arena menu opens with the hub compass, /br menu or a play NPC. Each arena shows its state at a glance:

green: open, you can join (it also says how many players are still needed);
yellow: countdown running;
red: match in progress;
grey: arena not ready (not fully set up).

Arenas reserved by a running event are not listed.

Solo / Duo / Squad split¶

With arena-menu.by-mode: true in config.yml (the default), the menu has two steps:

Mode choice: Solo, Duo and Squad, each with how many arenas it has and how many players are playing or waiting.
- Left click: the arenas of that mode, with pages.
- Right click: quick join, straight into the best open lobby of that mode.
Arenas of the mode, with a Quick join button in the bottom bar and a back arrow.

The mode step is skipped when all your arenas have the same mode. While an event is running, the mode screen also shows an event button that opens the event menu.

arena-menu:
  # true = first the mode (Solo / Duo / Squad, right click = join now),
  # then the arenas of that mode, with pages. Skipped when every arena has
  # the same mode. false = one list with every arena.
  by-mode: true

Quick join uses the same matchmaking as /br join solo|duo|squad.

NPCs (Citizens)¶

With the Citizens plugin installed you can place clickable NPCs. Commands need br.admin.npc.

Command	What it does
`/br npc create play`	Creates an NPC at your position that opens the arena menu
`/br npc create join <arena>`	Creates an NPC that joins that arena directly
`/br npc remove`	Removes the NPC you have selected in Citizens
`/br npc remove <id>`	Removes a linked NPC by its id (works from the console)
`/br npc list`	Lists the linked NPCs and their action (works from the console)

Join NPCs have a live hologram above their head with the map, the mode, the players (players/max and the state) and, while waiting, how many players are still missing. It updates every second. Its lines are in the messages file (npc section).

How NPCs are stored

The NPCs themselves belong to Citizens: MRTBattleRoyale only stores the link (NPC id → action) in npcs.yml. /br npc remove <id> refuses NPCs that are not linked, so it can never delete your shopkeepers or quest NPCs. If you delete a linked NPC through Citizens, the link is cleaned up automatically.

Without Citizens, /br npc just tells you that Citizens is missing. Use join signs instead.

Join signs¶

A join sign works without any other plugin. Place a sign and write:

Line	Text
1	`[BR]`
2	the arena name

Creating one needs br.admin.signs (without it, the first line is cleared and the sign is just a normal sign). Right-clicking a join sign is the same as /br join <arena>. Signs keep working even if a protection plugin (WorldGuard, spawn protection) blocks block interaction in your hub.

Hub protection¶

With protect: true, players in the hub world (and not in a match) are protected:

no breaking or placing blocks, no buckets;
no damage, no hunger, no item drops;
no PvP in either direction;
no using doors, trapdoors, gates, containers, beds, item frames, armor stands and similar. Buttons still work (handy for parkour and other hub features);
no trampling farmland or eggs.

With void-level, a hub player who falls below that Y level is teleported back to the hub spawn.

Build mode (/br admin)¶

Admins are protected like everyone else when they walk through the hub, so a stray click can't damage your spawn. To build or decorate the hub, toggle build mode:

/br admin

(no arguments, needs br.admin.build).

While build mode is on:

you are exempt from the hub protection;
you get no hub items, so your building inventory is not replaced on every join or teleport;
your inventory is never cleared, whatever clear-inventory-in-hub says.

Build mode is saved on your player, so it stays on after a relog or a restart until you run /br admin again. Turning it off gives you the hub items back.

Tip

/br admin with arguments is a different set of tools (match control: revive, zone, airdrop...). See Admin tools.