Anti X-Ray

PREVENTS cheaters from taking all the good stuff for themselves, without the tremendous overhead of Orebfuscator.

How does it work?

Basically, players are limited in the amount of valuable ores they can mine, based on their play time on the server. Legitimate, non-cheating players probably won't notice because the default limits are generous, but xrayers will be blocked from mining ore too quickly. So cheaters can still cheat, but they can't take more than a non-cheating player's reasonable share of ore. So their only gain is avoiding monsters while digging. They can't mine their first diamonds/"other good stuff" sooner than non-cheating players, and they can't take more total than they could if they weren't cheating.

How does this compare to Spigot AntiXRay and Orebfuscator?

The trouble with these and similar plugins is that while they're incredibly effective, they're very, very expensive to run. They consume a lot of CPU cycles doing deep packet inspection and manipulation, and they consume a lot of RAM trying to cache the results in memory. Small servers simply can't afford it, and larger servers have to cut back on their max players or other plugins. Any server which doesn't have enough CPU or memory may suffer heavy lag and crashes, other servers are simply spending too many cycles to stop a few cheaters - it's not a good trade-off.

In contrast, Anti-XRay is extremely cheap. It doesn't do any heavy processing, and consumes very little memory. It's true that technically cheaters can still use xray to find ores and dungeon chests (Mojang hasn't really made those worth hiding), but they're limited in how much advantage they get out of it. Basically, you're allowing players to cheat (but only very little!) to save immensely on CPU cycles and RAM.

How does this compare to ore loggers and ratio reporters?

Those simply don't work. Viewing a report to determine who has been x-raying only helps you catch players AFTER they've done permanent damage, removing massive amounts of diamonds so that non-cheating players can't find any. Banning the cheaters doesn't actually solve the problem, because it doesn't put the diamonds back in the ground AND more cheaters will soon replace those guys, so the problem continues. Also, this approach requires administrators to actively work to catch cheaters. An automatic approach like that provided by this plugin makes more sense.

Anti X-Ray keeps ores in the ground so that non-cheating players can find them. By placing limits on the amount of valuable resources a player can mine based on his play time on the server, Anti X-Ray guarantees that cheaters don't get greedy. They can still cheat a little, but not to the extreme of ruining the fun of other players. In fact, most new-to-server cheaters just leave the server to find another server where they can cheat without limits, solving your cheating problem very well.

Versus ore loggers, you're actually SOLVING the problem, and doing it in a fully automated fashion. Versus ore obfuscation solutions, you're saving RAM and CPU.

The Details

Players have an invisible currency which grows while they play (up to a maximum amount). Players who aren't actively playing (idling) don't gain any. When players break a valuable block, their total is reduced. If they don't have enough to break the block, they get a message explaining that they've reached their limit, and will have to wait X minutes before they can break that block.

Players who have been playing on your server since before you installed this plugin will start maxed-out to make the transition go smoothly.

Players who are NEW to your server after you install this plugin will start with a negative amount. This will prevent players from logging in and immediately x-raying to get valuables like diamond, because they won't have played enough yet to reasonably mine diamonds without cheating.

Yes, it's possible that some players who aren't cheating will run into the limits. It's my goal to adjust the default limits to minimize the chance of impacting legitimate players, while at the same time stopping xrayers from going crazy and taking all the valuable ore for themselves. If a player complains, these are the common scenarios:

• That player is a cheater, and is trying to convince you to disable the plugin or give him permission to bypass it so that he can cheat more.

• That player has "raided" someone else's existing mine instead of exploring on his own, allowing him to find diamond within the first hour of joining the server for the first time. Tell him to stop being lazy and earn his own diamonds.

• The player is EXTREMELY lucky, and managed to survive a reckless cave diving expedition without bothering to grow food or make armor and weapons. This is extremely unlikely - the player is probably cheating.

• That player is "branch mining", which involves tediously mining in long, straight, parallel tunnels near bedrock to collect lots of diamond. Chances are that player has an unhealthy obsession with diamonds, and already has a million more diamonds than he can possibly use. For this case, I recommend advising the player to take a break from mining when he hits the limit. If you give a player like this the bypass permission, he will grab most of the diamond in the area, robbing other players of the opportunity (even though he's not cheating, he's potentially causing a problem).

Catching Cheaters

This plugin will do a good job of preventing cheaters from benefiting from xray. However if you'd also like to actually catch and ban them, there's a configuration option to make a log entry and notify moderators (permission: antixray.monitorxrayers or op) when a player reaches the mining speed limit. This does NOT necessarily mean the player is cheating (read below!), but teleporting to the reported location will often be enough to determine whether the player was cheating or not. Since the 1.3 update, the Vanilla /tp command will accept coordinates, making these investigations very easy even when the player is offline.

What are the indications of a cheater?

It's impossible to know absolutely for certain whether a player is cheating or not unless you're looking over his shoulder while he plays. However all of these are indicators of likely cheating.

• Mines straight down. Xrayers don't fear lava because they can see through the ground.

• Mines in the dark. Xrayers don't need light - most of their blocks are transparent anyway.

• Mines in very long, single-block-wide tunnels (possibly winding), with very few, very short branches. You may notice a distinct lack of any pattern - unlike a "strip miner" who digs straight, parallel tunnels very close together, an xrayer's tunnels "wander". Xrayers don't need a pattern to be efficient, because they can see exactly where all the ore is, and so they can always take the shortest path to the next node.

• Starts mining before he even builds a rudimentary shelter, and without bothering to start even a small farm. Xrayers can see through most blocks, so they see caverns and monsters, and dig around them instead of fightning them.

• Carries very few supplies with him and doesn't wear armor while mining. May not even have a sword. Xrayers can see through most blocks, so they see caverns and monsters, and dig around them instead of fightning them.

• Finds diamonds VERY early after joining the server. Xrayers don't have to look for diamonds. They know exactly where they are and can see the shortest path immediately after logging in.

• Complains frequently, "Why do I have to wait to mine diamonds?!", while other players don't seem to notice the "problem".

• A VERY high ore-to-stone ratio. This plugin doesn't measure that, but you could supplement this with an ore logging plugin if you really want to catch and ban cheaters (this plugin will limit their cheating so that they don't mine more valuables than non-cheating players). Because xrayers can see the shortest path to any ore node, they minimize the number of stone blocks broken as they mine.

Setup and Configuration

Beyond just putting the .jar file in your plugins folder, all of these steps are optional. There is no database required - that is also optional.

Tweaking the Ore-per-Hour Ratio

Please do not adjust the diamond mining rate, starting values, etc, until you have actually tried the defaults for a day or so. Over-thinking them will likely lead to you choosing bad values which either prevent non cheaters from mining, or allow cheaters to cheat too much.

In the config file, you'll find something like this:

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AntiXRay:
  EnableMetricsTracking: true
  NewPlayerStartingPoints: -400
  PointsEarnedPerHourPlayed: 800
  MaximumPoints: 1600
  IgnoreMaxPointsForBlockRatio: true
  ExemptCreativeModePlayers: true
  NotifyOnMiningLimitReached: false
  DefaultMaxHeight: 63
  ProtectedBlockValues:
    EMERALD_ORE:
      Value: 50
      MaxHeight: 35
    DIAMOND_ORE:
      Value: 100
      MaxHeight: 20
  Worlds:
    world: ''
    world_nether:
      DefaultMaxHeight: 256
    world_the_end:
      DefaultMaxHeight: 256

EnableMetricsTracking let's you disable metrics tracking. More about this at the bottom of this page.

New player starting points are how many points an entirely new player to your server (meaning he's NEVER been on your server before) will start with. The points are used to break blocks, like DIAMOND_ORE, which by default costs 100 points.

Points earned per hour played is the speed at which players get points. In this example, players get 800 points per hour, so on average, they can mine 8 diamonds per hour indefinitely without ever being temporarily blocked from mining.

Maximum points is the "buffer" players build up. Players don't spend ALL their time mining for diamonds, so this buffer gradually fills up with points. This means players who take breaks from mining will be less likely to encounter the mining speed limit.

In this example, because the starting points setting is much less than the cost of mining a diamond, this means that an entirely new player who has just joined the server can't mine ANY diamonds right away. This helps stop xrayers, who often start xraying right away, and will likely encounter the limit and either quit or complain (the latter helps you catch them).

You can add other ores as well, but generally xrayers don't bother to gobble up non-diamond ores, so those other ores probably aren't worth spending CPU cycles on tracking.

Cutom block definitions allow you to define new ore names by id and sub id (sometimes also called data). Read more about this below in the tekkit related section.

Protected block values is the place where you write down the default values for the ores you want to be protected by default in all worlds for which the plugin is enabled for. Additionally you can provide an ore-specific default maxHeight value for each of those. Read about maxHeight values below.

Default max height determines the default max height for all ores which don't have a specific maxHeight value set. Players are free to mine (break) as much ores they want above this height. This is useful for example to block players from mining to many diamond ore (which, in a default minecraft world, is only located below height 16), but at the same time allow them to place and break it again in their houses above that height with their fortune pickaxes if they like too, without having to reduce their point stock for that.

Now, there is the "Worlds" section:
This section determines the worlds in which AntiXRay shall be enabled and at the same time allows you to overwrite some of the default values specific for each world:

DefaultMaxHeight will overwrite the default max height from above, but only for this world.

ProtectedBlocks lets you add or overwrite ore values and ore specific max heights for this world.

In the example snippet below you can see how to use that: the example sets the value of diamond ore to 75 and it's height limit to 63 in world 'world' (maybe this world uses some custom world generator which generates slightly more diamond ore, up to height 63..).

Also you can see that the default max heights were increased to 256 in the nether and end worlds. By default players wouldn't be able to, for example, break diamond ore there (after placing it there of course) below height 20, because the section of default protected blocks from above restricts diamond ore by default in all enabled worlds if it is mined below height 20.
The world specific default max height value however overwrites all previously default max height values. So players can freely place and mine diamond ore again in the nether and the end.

In general heights get overwritten in this hierarchy:
default max height < default protected ore max height
< world specific default max height < world specific ore max height

More information on minecrafts default ore heights can be found in the minecraft wiki: http:www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Ore

If you want to add a world but not want to overwrite any default values or heights do as follows:

Let's say the world you want to add in order to enable AntiXRay in it is called "mining_world". Then create an (empty) section with the worlds name by putting 2 quotation marks behind the colon without anything between these, like so:

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Worlds:
  mining_world: ""
  world:
    ProtectedBlocks:
      DIAMOND_ORE:
        Value: 75
        MaxHeight: 63
  world_nether:
    DefaultMaxHeight: 256
  world_the_end:
    DefaultMaxHeight: 256

Without the colon or the empty quotation marks the plugin wouldn't be able to read the world name and it would get removed after the next reload.

More detailed block type specifications and Mods

You can also specify block types by id instead of name. This might be useful if you want to protect some custom blocks which got added by some mod.
Note however that there are mods this plugin doesn't quite work well for because they introduce new methods of mining which completely bypass plugins.
Also note that AntiXRay will automatically replace the block ids in the config with the material name, if it finds a matching one.

Also you can specify the data value (subid) for protected blocks by adding the data value to the block name/id separated by a tilde (~). Data values for blocks are usually used to differ between different states of the block (ex. the rotation of log or stairs, whether or not redstone ore is glowing, the color of wool, the growing state of plants, etc.). If you don't specify a data value it will default to -1, which is used to specify that the data value shall be ignored. This could look like this:

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ProtectedBlockValues:
  999~12: # maybe some custom modded block
    Value: 50
    MaxHeight: 35
  WOOL~14: # red wool, for example purposes
    Value: 100

Where's the Database Option?

By design, there is no database option. This is one of a few cases where using a database is definitely more trouble than it's worth, and possibly detrimental to performance. There are only TWO integer values stored per player. That integers are read from file only once per login, and written to file once per logout (or when you shut down the server). There's no need for a database, and besides that, it will slow your boot trying to establish the initial connection.

I used to have database support, and one of the problems was that the database was used so infrequently that the connection would fall asleep. I will not add the database option back in unless in the future, something about the above changes so that there's either a LOT more data, or very frequent changes to data.

Using a Block Ratio Instead

If you'd rather require players to mine more coal or break more stone to earn more valuable ores instead of making them wait an amount of time, you need to do three things. First, set the points per hour to zero. Second, set the "cost" of the other blocks you want players to break to a negative amount. Then when the player breaks those blocks, he will GAIN points, taking him closer to mining. Finally, update your messages.yml to explain that the player must break more stone or other ores (depending on your configuration), instead of telling him he will get more points by waiting. For example, if you wanted to allow players to mine one diamond per 100 stone broken, you'd do this:

• points per hour: 0
• starting points: 0
• DIAMOND_ORE: 100
• STONE: -1

• In messages.yml: "You're finding a lot of diamond! You have to break more stone before you can collect this ore."

Commands

/antixray help -> Overview over the possible commands.

/antixray reload -> Reloads the configuration and message files.

/antixray check [player] -> Shows you your or another players current points. I do NOT recommend you to give your players the ability to check their current points as they can use this information to avoid reaching their limit in order to avoid that you get a notification about them!

/antixray set <points|counter> -> Sets the players points or counter value. I do NOT recommend you to use this to reset your players points whenever they reach their limit (by doing so, you are wasting effort and you will make the limit useless)! This command is mainly meant for debugging purposes and trying out different mining limit settings.

Permission nodes

antixray.monitorxrayers (default: op) -> The player will get notified when a player has reached his mining limits and notifications are enabled.

antixray.bypass (default: false) -> Allows the player to freely mine any block without being checked by Anti X-Ray. Usage on own risk..

antixray.help (default: false) -> Allows a player to view the help page which contains information about the commands. Default: op

antixray.reload (default: op) -> Allows a player to reload the antixray configuration and message file.

antixray.check.self (default: op) -> Allows a player to view his amount of remaining mining points.

antixray.check.others (default: op) -> Allows a player to view an other players amount of remaining mining points.

antixray.set (default: op) -> Allows the setting of a players stored values, like the amount of remaining mining points.

Notice

This plugin uses Hidendra's Metrics class to report usage stats to mcstats.org. This is giving me (and you) an idea of how many servers are actually using this plugin. You can disable this by setting "AntiXRay.EnableMetricsTracking" to 'false' in the config.

Chinese Translation (v1.9.0)

A chinese translation by song_xin of this plugin's description, its config settings and messages can be found here: https://github.com/SongXin1015/translate/tree/master/Anti%20X-Ray

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If you like this plugin, check out these plugins too:

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  • Blocks dumping lava and setting fire on another player in non-PvP servers.
  • Disable fire damage, spread, or both.
  • Wipe away ugly builds with a right-click - no database required!
  • Automatically prevents spawn camping in PvP servers.
  • Prevent damage to the surface by limiting lava and water placement, and TnT damage.
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  • Includes a creative mode for creative worlds.
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• Population Density
  • Automatically assigns new players to wilderness where they'll find other new players and plenty of space, wood, and ore.
  • Optional teleportation system which can't be abused by players to escape combat or save them from being lost.
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  • Optional reserved spots for administrators.
  • Automatically removes idle players when the server is nearly full.

Donations

If you like this plugin, consider supporting its development by making a donation.
Thanks in advance!