Skylife — Competitive Sky-Islands Minigame (Paper / Kotlin)

A high-intensity Sky-Islands PvP minigame that blends SkyWars-style survival combat with Smash-like abilities (skills), ranks, a coin economy, and full database persistence.

Status: Active development (expect breaking changes).
Minecraft: 1.20+ · Java: 17+ · Server: Paper/Spigot :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

Table of Contents

• What is Skylife?
• Core Gameplay Loop
• Key Features
  • Skills
  • Economy
  • Ranks
  • UI & Feedback
  • Database
• Installation
• Configuration
• Commands
• Database Schema
• Development
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• License

What is Skylife?

Skylife is a modular minigame platform for Paper servers. Players spawn on isolated sky islands, gather resources, pick a loadout of abilities, and fight for coins and stats.

Design goals:

• Fast rounds with clear pacing: lobby → skill pick → combat → reset
• Skill expression through abilities + positioning
• Persistence: coins, ranks, stats survive restarts (DB-backed)
• Modular architecture (managers/listeners/skills) to scale features cleanly

Core Gameplay Loop

1. Lobby / Queue
2. Skill Selection (4 slots, hotbar-integrated)
3. Match Start (island spawn, protection window)
4. Combat & Progression (kills/deaths, coins, stats, skill usage)
5. Match End (results, persistence, auto restart/reset)

Key Features

Skills

• 4 Skill Slots per player (auto placed in hotbar slots 1–4)
• Pre-game selection UI (GUI-based)
• Per-skill global limits (how many players can pick a skill per match)
• Cooldowns & costs (per skill, configurable)

Current skills (initial pack):

• ⚡ Speed Boost
• 🔥 Fireball
• 🛡️ Shield
• 💊 Heal
• 🗡️ Strength
• 👻 Invisibility
• 🚀 Double Jump
• ❄️ Ice Path :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

Tip: Keep skills readable. Players should understand “what happened” within 1–2 seconds.

Economy

• Coins earned through gameplay events
• Kill rewards and death penalties
• Persistent storage in DB :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}

Typical use cases:

• Shop cosmetics / kits
• Unlock new skills / upgrades
• Seasonal resets with leaderboards (planned)

Ranks

Hierarchical ranks for permissions and prestige:

• 🔴 ADMIN
• 🟡 DEV
• 🟢 MOD
• 🔵 VIP
• ⚪ PLAYER :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}

Rank perks:

• Colored chat tags
• Permission gates
• Scoreboard priority
• Persistent storage :contentReference[oaicite:5]{index=5}

UI & Feedback

• Live scoreboard: status, K/D, coins, rank, skill limits, colored player list
• Chat formatting: rank tags + coin info
• Nametags: dynamic rank display above player heads
• Actionbar: cooldown/status hints :contentReference[oaicite:6]{index=6}

Database

• MySQL / PostgreSQL support
• Uses Exposed (ORM) + HikariCP (pooling) :contentReference[oaicite:7]{index=7}
• Auto-creates required tables on first startup (recommended on a fresh DB)

Stored data includes:

• player profiles (UUID, name, rank)
• coins
• kill/death stats
• skill selections & match limits
• match history :contentReference[oaicite:8]{index=8}

Installation

Requirements

• Paper/Spigot 1.20+
• Java 17+
• MySQL or PostgreSQL database :contentReference[oaicite:9]{index=9}

Option A — Build from source (recommended for now)

No releases are published yet, so building locally is the current path. :contentReference[oaicite:10]{index=10}

./gradlew build