Hello,

Today, I am proud to present to you the new and improved VoteParty.

A project that has been in the works for a while is finally ready to see the light of day and be shared among all of you.

I hope you take the time to read all of this as it will help you transfer from the old versions to the new one.

After reading everything that we have to say below, we also HIGHLY encourage you to check out the new wiki for VoteParty so you can make sure you are familiar with all the new content.

Wiki Link: https://wiki.helpch.at/glares-plugins/voteparty

First up, MAKE SURE YOU BACK EVERYTHING VOTEPARTY RELATED UP.

When you run the new version for the first time, I am going to assume you will NOT have anything related to the old version in your plugins folder.

The following should be removed:

1) VoteParty plugin folder
2) VoteParty jar
3) VoteParty PlaceholderAPI Expansion (plugins/PlaceholderAPI/expansions/VoteParty.jar)

IF YOU FAIL TO FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS AND JUST THROW THE NEW JAR IN AND YOU GET ERRORS AND BREAK STUFF THAT IS ALL ON YOU. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.


After you've done all that, then you're ready to continue!

This update was no small task, in fact, there were almost 200 code changes along with decisions made in order to construct this new version from the ground up.

What is new?

Glad you asked, there's a lot.

1) VoteParty has reverted one big thing from the previous update which is that this jar will support MC Versions: 1.8.8-1.15.x
2) VoteParty uses a new configuration system that will allow you to make changes and allow us to update parts of it on the fly
3) VoteParty uses a new material system that (hopefully) should allow you to use material names across all versions of the game
4) VoteParty no longer will require NuVotifier ( AFTER THE FIRST STARTUP)

Alright, now that you're aware of how the backend has changed, let's talk about how things have changed for you as a server owner.

[Plugin Logistics]

VOTEPARTY WILL NOW REQUIRE PLACEHOLDERAPI TO BE INSTALLED.

One of the biggest changes in this update (at least in my opinion) is that after the first boot of the plugin, NuVotifier (Votifier) will be optional. We are aware that there are more plugins than Votifier that can handle the voting (some networks have custom ones). So, to allow others to work, we've changed how it works to make it completely optional. Keep in mind, if you disable the hook for Votifier in the config and you don't have another voting plugin, you will have to manually add votes (no idea why anyone would want to do that).

To make VoteParty still work, we've designed a custom event that fires when a voting plugin (such as Votifier) receives a vote. When the event fires, it will handle updating the votes and giving the rewards.

This also means that any plugin can also hook into VoteParty and fire this event (such as if they were using a custom voting plugin)

Pertaining to VoteParty and PlaceholderAPI, the hook (expansion) is now built into the plugin, that way when we do plugin updates, we can also do updates to the expansion without requiring you guys to do any extra work to keep updated.

[Vote Handling]

A big thing that was talked about in the rewrite was the ability to track the number of votes that players had. So, to handle that, we designed a system that allows you to check the player's votes within a specific time frame. Want to check how many votes a player has in the past 2 days? We got that. How about 7 days? We got that. How about 1 year? We got that.

(Please note that this data only starts tracking once you start using VP 2.0+)

Given that we have this data now, you can also expect some leaderboards to be implemented in the future.

[The New Help Menu]

You guys get access to the all-new VERY SEXY help menu.

https://i.imgur.com/IwMGYjh.gif

Our biggest goal with this was to have easy user interaction with it. So, we decided to create a clean and crisp menu that is clickable and you can hover over the commands for more information on it!

[The New Chance Handling]

Throughout the time we took rewriting this, we noticed a couple of logistical issues that we wanted to patch up. So, we want to make it clear that when it comes to the random rewards that can be given out for voting and for the party, each command will now roll the chance number you provide out of 100. The total chance values of all the commands you provide DO NOT need to add up to any specific number.

[Improvements to Party & Voting]

One of the biggest requests that we received was the ability to have guaranteed rewards for voting and parties. That being said, you can now define a list of commands that will run NO MATTER WHAT (if enabled) on all players for the party, and on the player who voted when voting.

[Language Improvements]

One of the goals during the rewrite was to keep different parts of information in their own files to prevent clutter. That being said, all messages that the plugin provides have been moved to their own language file. Currently, we only support English, but we will be opening up submissions for other languages to be in the plugin by default. The default language will be configurable in the config.

[Closing Notes]

I want to take this time to give a couple of shoutouts for people who made this update possible.

1) @Sxtanna , you guys have this guy to thank for how clean this plugin is. He's an amazing developer, and he was the biggest backbone on this update, so 90% of this update should be credited to him.
2) @HelpChat Beta Testers, thank you so much for all your feedback and time you took testing this new update to provide suggestions that I would've never been able to think of on my own.

Make sure to join the Discord if you need help or have suggestions for future updates!

Discord: https://helpch.at/discord

Cheers,
Glare.