Trivia

A game-show plugin for Spigot/Paper servers. Asks multiple-choice questions in chat, and players answer by standing on the matching coloured block in an arena. Player chat is muted while questions are live, so nobody can spoil the answers.

A game of Trivia is split into rounds, where each round contains a variable number of questions. The host drives the game with commands:

1. /trivia game start - enrols every online player except those with the trivia.ignored permission.
2. /trivia round start - announces the round number and its name, in chat and as an on-screen title.
3. /trivia round ask - asks the next question. Repeat until the round runs out, then /trivia round start for the next one.

The question is broadcast in chat, and three seconds later the answer options appear, labelled A, B, C, …. Letters are tied to block_options. Which answer appears under each letter is shuffled every question, so players must read the options each time.

Players move onto the pad matching their answer. answer_delay seconds after the options appear, the correct answer is revealed: the block beneath each player is checked (searching downward to block_search_lower_bound), and anyone not standing on the correct block counts as wrong.

Player chat is muted from /trivia round start / /trivia round ask until the answer is revealed, so answers can't be typed out. Grant trivia.ignored to anyone (such as the host) who needs to talk during a question.

Game modes

Mode	Description
casual	Correct answers score a point; nobody is eliminated. Players who join the server mid-game are added automatically, and /trivia game scoreboard shows the standings.
competitive (default)	A wrong answer kills the player. When only one player remains, the game ends and the winner is announced (if end_game_on_lone_player is true).

Commands

All commands are host-only and share the alias /tr.

Command	Description
/trivia reload	Reloads config.yml, questions.yml, and trivia-messages.yml. Round and question progress is reset, so follow up with /trivia game start to restart the game.
/trivia game start	Starts a game with all online, non-ignored players.
/trivia round start	Starts the next round — the first round if the game has just started, otherwise the next one.
/trivia round ask	Asks the next question in the current round.
/trivia game scoreboard <top N>	Broadcasts the players with the top N scores. Only functional when game_type is casual.

Permissions

Permission	Default	Description
trivia.host	Server operators	Required to use the /trivia commands. The node checked in-game is the value of permission_host in config.yml (default trivia.host); the command is also registered with trivia.host in plugin.yml, so that node is always required.
trivia.ignored	Nobody	Excludes a player from the game: they are never enrolled, and they can chat while questions are live. Grant this to hosts and spectators.

Configuration

config.yml

Key	Default	Description
permission_host	trivia.host	Enables the use of the /trivia commands.
permission_ignored	trivia.ignored	Player is not counted in the game.
game_type	competitive	casual or competitive
block_options	blue/red/yellow concrete	Ordered material: "&colour" map. Keys are vanilla material names, unknown ones are skipped.
answer_delay	5	Seconds between the options appearing and the answer being revealed.
block_search_lower_bound	-64	The lowest y-level searched beneath a player for the block they're standing on.
scoreboard_cutoff	5	Maximum player names listed per score on the scoreboard.
end_game_on_lone_player	true	End the game and announce the winner when only one player remains (competitive).

questions.yml

Rounds are played in file order, and questions within a round are asked in file order.

Key	Description
rounds	A list of round objects.
round.name	The round's name, shown when the round starts.
round.questions	A list of question objects.
question.question	The question to be asked.
question.answer	The correct answer.
question.incorrectAnswers	A list of incorrect answers.

rounds:
  - name: "General Knowledge"
    questions:
      - question: "What is the capital of Norway?"
        answer: "Oslo"
        incorrectAnswers:
          - "Helsinki"
          - "Stockholm"
          - "Berlin"

Each question shows the correct answer plus incorrect ones, up to min(number of blocks in block_options, incorrectAnswers + 1) options in total - extra incorrect answers are randomly sampled. Provide at least one fewer incorrect answer than you have blocks (e.g. 2 for the default 3 blocks) so every pad gets used.

trivia-messages.yml

All values support & colour codes.

Key	Placeholder	Broadcast when
game_start	-	A game starts.
round_start	%d = round number	A round starts.
scoreboard	%d = score	Each score tier on the scoreboard.
game_end	%s = winner's name	A player wins the game.