Howdy folks!
There we are, finally back with a big new release.
Before we unpack this new fancy update, there's something important I have to say about the direction of the project.

Up until this point, OpenAudioMc has been delivered as a "Product", meaning that you (as the end-user) downloaded the plugin, configured it just like any piece of Minecraft kit and off to the races you go.
As all of you know, OpenAudioMc has been growing a lot recently and it was very difficult for me (as an alone and independent developer) to keep up with the updates, issues, and work that had to be done behind the scenes (aka, the open audio magic). it's because of this that starting 6.2, OpenAudioMc will be seen more as a service that grows instead of something that'll eventually hit its final version. I'll get back to what this means, and I promise you it's exciting and awesome.

Changelog:

• NEW! (ish): OpenAudioMc+ made a return! For those who don't know, OpenAudioMc+ is a web administration panel that you can use to manage the web-client. Your client settings (domain, messages, background, title, etc, etc) have been moved there for you (you are very welcome), aside from just settings being moved, Plus also offers you several REST-API endpoints and keys which you can use to integrate OpenAudioMc into your own website or use our authentication service to request data we have about your players (I'll get back to this shortly) Read more at https://help.openaudiomc.net/#plus. Keep an eye out, a lot of new features will be added to + very soon!
• New client: As many of you have seen, the old client recently changed its visual appearance to fit the new OpenAudioMc style, but it's gone a step further and massively improved major parts of the clients (your settings like messages and background now load instantly, messages now support Minecraft color codes and more)
• Speakers & Regions: After popular request, the performance of Speakers and Regions got a massive bump, now being over 4 times as fast and smooth with responding to your in-game movements. They now also update immediately on teleport to make warping and other events even smoother.
• Beefed up backend: With the introduction, we also moved over to Plus to handle major backend tasks, massively increasing our server-side performance and capacity.
• Plugin improvements: The Java plugin got some major improvements in it's existing config file and overall reliability (the days of faulty requests, packet loss, getting stuck in illegal states and weird desync issues are over)
• Bungee cord improvements: Servers running under the bungee cord now are a lot more responsive and give propper feedback messages to the server admin when they misconfigured something.
• Fixed Philips hue: Cheers!

As a service?
As mentioned, OpenAudioMc will now be handled and maintained more like a service than a normal piece of software. Like always, you can still host and maintain your own (forked) web client but we discourage that now more than ever. OpenAudioMc+'s functionality is pretty barebones as it currently is but will be updated in real-time. Meaning that new features in the panel and web-client will appear without you having to do anything, as well as the roll-out of new fixes and improvements making it less work for you. If you still wish to host your own client and accept the responsibilities that come with it you can still do so, shoot me a message so I can add you to a Discord channel with status updates as for when to update your client. Keep an eye out on our Discord and my personal Twitter to stay up to date with the development of the platform, feedback is always appreciated and I'd love to hear what other features you like to see coming in the future since this opens up a lot more possibilities.

What about privacy?
Some features on the OpenAudioMc+ platform require to have a list of player states available, this is data we receive when the player joins the server and immediately delete when the player leaves the server or the server reboots. We store the following data while the player is online

• Minecraft Name
• Minecraft UUID
• If the player has the web-client open
• What the OpenAudioMc session for that player is

This data will NEVER be shared with external parties or even with other contributors to the OpenAudioMc team. If you wish to opt-out and thereby distance yourself from the features and upcoming updates of OpenAudioMc+ you can do so via the settings page. I don't see why this would be a problem for still want to give you guys the option to opt-out if you feel uncomfortable with the thought of it. I assure you and promise that this data is necessary and will never be saved for longer than (at most) 20 seconds after the player's session ended.

Other notes:

• The default client host has been changed from app. to client.openaudiomc.net since that hosts the new client that isn't backward compatible.
• You have 4 weeks to update before the old authentication routes will be discontinued
• Your feedback is always welcome in our Discord, all I ask is for you to be respectful
• If you love the project, please consider donating or leaving a review on Spigot.
• I'm ever so thankful for all of your support recently on the project, I never had this much fun while working on OpenAudioMc and I adore every single one of you