Getting started

Introduction

What ExyliaArrows is: 120 projectile effects with three moments each, drawn with display entities.

ExyliaArrows draws an effect on a shot. Not one effect: a shot has three moments and they are nothing alike — the flash at the bow, the trail along the flight, and the impact it ends in. Every effect in the catalogue declares all three and they are compiled apart, because their budgets have nothing in common.

120 effects in six categories ship in effects.yml, built out of display entities — real blocks and items that turn, fall and grow, animated by each viewer's own client — with particles around them for light and smoke. The rule the catalogue holds itself to is that every moment of every effect puts at least one solid object on screen.

The three moments

Trigger	When it plays	What it can afford
`launch`	The shot leaving the bow.	One flash. Optional, short, quiet.
`trail`	Along the flight, every `trail-interval` ticks.	One or two small displays plus a particle line. No sound. This is the one with a budget.
`hit`	Wherever it lands, whatever it hit.	The payoff: under a second, a dozen displays at most, one or two quiet sounds.
`hit-entity`	Only when it lands on something alive.	Falls back to `hit` when it is not declared.
`hit-block`	Only when it lands on a block.	The same.

An arrow lives about forty ticks and four archers are four arrows in the air, so whatever trail writes is drawn on every one of those ticks, for every shot.

Three ways to own an effect

Way	Whose it is	Which server it suits
The menu	The player's: they pick one in `/arrows` and it plays on whatever they shoot.	Practice, PvP
A bow	The bow's: an effect token is dropped onto a bow and travels with it through chests, trades and deaths.	Survival, economy
The crate	Theirs for good: a key buys a roll, a rarity decides the odds, and what comes out is written onto their row rather than rented with a rank.	Anywhere keys are already a currency

behaviour.mode decides which of the first two is read — player, bow or both — and is covered in Modes and tokens.

The categories

Category	Icon	What is in it
`ember`	`BLAZE_POWDER`	Coals, fire and forge work.
`frost`	`BLUE_ICE`	Ice, snow and things that stop moving.
`storm`	`LIGHTNING_ROD`	Wind, rain and lightning.
`void`	`ECHO_SHARD`	Sculk, souls and what is left after.
`prism`	`AMETHYST_SHARD`	Crystal, starlight and colour.
`goofy`	`SLIME_BALL`	Jokes. Rubber chickens, pies and a sad trumpet.

Twenty effects each. The whole list is in Effects.

Which projectiles count

By default every launched projectile carries the effect — arrows, tridents, snowballs, eggs, wind charges, ender pearls. projectiles.all-types turns that into a list, and an effect may name projectiles of its own.

Visibility is the observer's

Mode	What they see
`ALL`	Every effect, theirs and everybody else's.
`NONE`	None at all.
`SELF_ONLY`	Only their own shots.
`OTHERS_ONLY`	Only other people's.

Requirements

Requirement	Detail
Server	Paper 1.21 or newer. Folia supported.
Required	`packetevents`
Recommended	`ExyliaLib` (a soft depend: the loader installs it)
Optional	`PlaceholderAPI`, WorldGuard for the `arrows-effects` flag
Database	Always. The choice, the visibility and the favourites live in one table.

Installation

The jars, the files it writes and the table it creates.

First steps

From a clean server to a player with an effect on their shots.

Effects

The full catalogue and how effects.yml is written.

Modes and tokens

The token, the remover, and what each mode changes.

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