Bukkit

What is Xtra Features?

First, I need to say that the purpose of ItemsForXP is to "give items for xp" to the players. In other words, it allows players to give their xp and get items by interacting with signs.

When I started ItemsForXP, I simply wanted a fast, lightweight plugin what would let my players buy items with their experience points. This actually happened when bukkit servers were in this purgatory of an experience system. Minecraft 1.0 had come out with enchantments, but Bukkit didn't support it yet. We were stuck in Beta 1.8 for a while with all this useless experience points adding up. My players and I also had a hard time collecting resources fast enough to keep up with our creativity in a purely survival world, and I did not want to cheapen the gameplay by adding "give" commands or supply houses. We wanted to play in survival but also be able to collect extra resources. So, I connected the dots and created a pseudo-economy out of the experience system with ItemsForXP 1.0.

Not having a name for myself in the plugin community, I was surprised by the attention ItemsForXP got. Apparently, this is a pretty good idea and even though we now have enchantments and plugins like EconXP, people are still very supportive, encouraging, and a bit imaginative about this plugin. In fact, interest has grown …increasingly. With this level of interest, people developed their own ideas, good ideas, about what this plugin should do. That's great. I love that people are getting involved. However, one of my principles of software design is minimalism. A good program can do all kinds of things, but a great product has a clear purpose and it fulfills that purpose really well. So, I found a way to incorporate everyone's ideas into my plugin without ever bloating it: the Xtra Features add-on.

Every release, starting with v 3.0, will download as a zip file that contains two jar files. One, of course, is the normal ItemsForXP plugin. The other file is the Xtra Features add-on (filename: ItemsForXP_XtraFeatures.jar). If you only want the basic plugin with all it's memory saving, super fast, tiny footprint just put ItemsForXP in your plugins folder and trash the add-on. However, you want all the advanced, show-offy, community customized features put both files in your plugins folder.

Remember, ItemsForXP just does one thing really well without the Xtra Features. It allows people with perms to set up signs that allow players (with a different perms) to buy items with their experience points. There are supporting features with this: checking your xp and level and whatever else I add later. All the fancy extra stuff that doesn't go with the purpose of "giving items for xp" will be in the Xtra Features add-on.

Xtra Features is dependent on ItemsForXP and will not work without it. This is to save resources on your server and development time in my week.

I hope this is clear. If you have any questions related to this article, please post below. Please, if your question is about the plugin in general or a specific feature, please post on the main page or create a ticket.

Thanks for all your interest and support guys! I really makes me smile. :)