1.20.5 client support has arrived, this is a huge update for the client network. Special thanks to the sponsors who helped test this update and allowed us to release a much more stable release than we'd anticipate.

Note: ViaVersion plans to use Java 17 for 1.21, this is your pre-warning (see below for more details).

Changelog:

• 1.20.5 client support (by KennyTV, EnZaXD with help from RK_01, DrexHD and Gerrygames)
• Added a large number of sanity checks to NBT reading to prevent errors from bad data (by KennyTV)
• Fixed Entity sound handling in some >1.19 protocols (by KennyTV)
• Fixed text components that are too long kicking 1.20.3 clients (by KennyTV)
• Fixed handling of null json entries in text components in 1.20->1.20.2 (by KennyTV)
• Fixed 1.15->1.16 item attribute uuids (by KennyTV)
• Fixed various issues with text component handling in old protocols (by EnZaXD and RK_01)
• Fixed 1.12->1.13 enderman held block handling (by KennyTV)
• Fixed lots of text component translation issues in 1.8->1.9 (by EnZaXD)
• Fixed an issue with non-lowercase sounds in 1.8->1.9 (by EnZaXD)
• Ignore errors in custom payload reading in older protocols as per vanilla behaviour (by EnZaXD)
• Fixed an error when creating dumps on Sponge (by EnZaXD)

Important: The ViaVersion update for 1.21 will require Java 17 or above

• While we will still offer additional magical jars for Java 8 compatibility on releases for the foreseeable future, you should still make sure your server can run on Java 17 by then
• Even 1.8 servers can run Java 17. Most 1.8 server forks will also have proper support for it
• Some versions have an arbitrary/unnecessary Java version check from Spigot that prevent startup:
  • For 1.16 and 1.17, use Paper's -DPaper.IgnoreJavaVersion=true startup flag
  • For 1.13 to 1.15, use any updated fork that just removes it. An unsafe (!) way of skipping Spigot's check is by using -Djava.class.version=<supported Java class version>

Huge thanks to Kenny, EnZa, RK, Drex and Gerrygames who made this possible, it's an incredible amount of work put in by them for this update.