King of the Ladder

King of the Ladder is a competitive Minecraft minigame where players climb to the top of a ladder tower, claim the crown, and knock challengers back down.

Players enter an arena built around a ladder and fight their way toward the king plate at the top. Reaching the plate makes a player the king and adds to their score, but holding the position becomes harder as other players climb up and try to take the crown. The goal is to become king as many times as possible while keeping opponents away from the top.

• Configurable arenas with an in-game setup menu, area selection, plate materials, game modes, and per-arena settings.
• Customizable messages, scoreboards, boss bars, sounds, items, and menus.
• Player statistics, per-arena records, leaderboards, cooldowns, and PlaceholderAPI support.
• Flat-file storage by default, with optional MySQL persistence.
• Public API for arena flow, king changes, and player statistic events.
• Optional hooks for common server plugins such as PlaceholderAPI and world-management plugins.

• Java 25
• A Paper-compatible Minecraft server

• Documentation
• Javadocs
• SpigotMC
• BuiltByBit

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Despical/KOTL.git
cd KOTL

Build the plugin jar:

./gradlew shadowJar

On Windows:

gradlew.bat shadowJar

The packaged jar is created under build/libs/.

Run the full verification used by CI:

./gradlew build

On Windows:

gradlew.bat build

Configuration files are bundled in src/main/resources and copied to the plugin data folder on first startup. Most server-facing behavior can be adjusted without rebuilding the plugin.

Common files:

• config.yml controls gameplay, storage, chat, commands, cooldowns, and arena detection.
• arenas.yml stores arena data and records.
• messages.yml, scoreboard.yml, bossbar.yml, and items.yml control presentation.
• mysql.yml configures MySQL when database storage is enabled.
• menu/ contains menu layouts used by setup and statistics screens.

King of the Ladder exposes Bukkit events under dev.despical.kotl.api.events for game shutdown, arena entry and exit, king changes, and player statistic updates.

Maven:

<repository>
    <id>jitpack.io</id>
    <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
</repository>

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.Despical</groupId>
    <artifactId>KOTL</artifactId>
    <version>main-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Gradle:

repositories {
    maven { url = 'https://jitpack.io' }
}

dependencies {
    compileOnly group: 'com.github.Despical', name: 'KOTL', version: 'main-SNAPSHOT'
}

Optional integrations declared by the plugin include:

• PlaceholderAPI
• Multiverse-Core
• SlimeWorldManager
• SlimeWorldPlugin
• MultiWorld
• My_Worlds
• WorldGuard

We prioritize user privacy and application integrity. Please do not open public issues for discovered vulnerabilities.

Read our SECURITY.md for responsible disclosure reporting.

We welcome Pull Requests from the community. To help us maintain clean project history and formatting, please follow these guidelines:

• No tabs: Use spaces exclusively for indentation.
• Style consistency: Respect the established code architecture and style templates.
• Version control cleanliness: Do not increment project version numbers in example configurations within your PR.
• Minimal diffs: Disable automated reformat-on-save settings that affect untouched files.

Learn more via our formal Contribution Guidelines.

Please also follow our Code of Conduct when participating in the project.

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License.

See the LICENSE file for comprehensive copyright notices and third-party attributions.