Skip to content

FAQ#

Installation#

How do I install BentoBox, BSkyBlock and all those other addon things?#

The easiest way to start is to download a "pack" of addons and BentoBox from https://download.bentobox.world. You can also check out this tutorial to learn about other ways. Welcome to our community!

Configuration#

How do I make my own custom islands?#

You are referring to our in-house schematic format we call Blueprints. The Blueprints page provides all the relevant information to get you started with the Blueprints, as well as a few hints and tricks you can use to further customize them. You can also have a look at this video which, although outdated, might help you create your first Blueprint within minutes.

What version of any database is required?#

Minimum required versions:

  • MySQL 5.7 or later
  • MariaDB 10.2.3 or later
  • MongoDB 3.6 or later
  • SQLite 3.28 or later
  • PosgreSQL latest is always recommended

How can I increase a player's island size?#

Each island has a protected area. You can increase the protected area up to the inter-island distance. Island ranges can be increase via commands or by giving the island owner a permission. Permissions are checked only when a player logs in, so if you use a permission only, the player must relogin to make it happen. Commands work instantly. Remember, the protected range applies to the island as whole.

Permissions

Grant owners the [gamemode].island.range.<number> permission.

  • The island owner will have to reconnect on the server in order to apply the changes
  • If the island owner changes, then the island range will adjust to the new island's range permission, or revert to the default range if the owner has no permission.

Commands

Use the /[admin_command] range commands.

Issues#

Superflat chunks are generating in my worlds#

Relevant issues: BentoBox#1212, BSkyBlock#247.

Superflat world A superflat world. (Credit: 1213videogamer on PlanetMinecraft).

If you start seeing superflat chunks being generated in your world, then it is because the world generator is not working for the world anymore. There are a few reasons why this may be the case. They are ordered according to their likeliness.

We strongly recommend you revert to backups made prior to this situation. Although we are providing instructions to help recover from such an event in case you do not have backups available, we do not guarantee their effectiveness. Moreover, these solutions are designed to address the problem as much as possible, however, ignoring the impact on performance or player islands. Use them knowingly.

As a quick fix, there is a setting in the admin settings console to remove super flat chunks. This is the main tool to fix the damage, but unless you fix the root cause it will just cause super lag and never fix the issue properly.

In any case, stop your server immediately to prevent further damage from being done to your worlds.

Causes#

BentoBox or the Gamemode addon is no longer running#

Why?

BentoBox or the Gamemode addon is not enabled on the server. This can occur if you updated BentoBox or the Gamemode addon to a version which is not compatible with your server or which is incompatible with one of your plugins.

Solutions

Investigate as to why BentoBox or the Gamemode addon is no longer enabled. Read the logs to find errors at startup. Try booting your server up while adding a single plugin at a time to find out which plugin is causing the issue.

There is no generator set for this world in the bukkit.yml file#

Why?

This is often the situation. While setting the default world of your server to be the Gamemode addon's world, you forgot to specify the right generator for said world in the bukkit.yml file.

Solutions

Make sure you followed each step of this tutorial thoroughly.

The use-own-generator option from the Gamemode's config is set to true#

Why?

This is a common mistake.

Users tend to misunderstand this option as allowing them to activate a "magic" cobblestone generator (but it's an addon!). This is indeed not what this option is designed for, and this is clearly explained in the comments surrounding this option in the config file:

# Use your own world generator for this world.
# In this case, the plugin will not generate anything.
# If used, you must specify the world name and generator in the bukkit.yml file.
# See https://bukkit.gamepedia.com/Bukkit.yml
use-own-generator: false

Ultimately, this can also happen if you forgot the specify the world name and generator in the bukkit.yml file.

Solutions

If you do not plan to use an external plugin to generate the world, then you should set this option back to false.

On the contrary, you should make sure you have specified the world name and the corresponding plugin name as its generator in the bukkit.yml file.

Another plugin is trying to control the generator of this world#

Why?

Although very rare, this can still happen.

Some plugins, especially world management ones (e.g. Multiverse), tend to provide settings that could override the generator of our worlds.

Solutions

Review all of your plugins to find out which one is the most likely to cause the issue. World management plugins or custom-coded ones that are interacting with worlds are to be investigated first. Either report the issue to their developers or fix the configuration files that are involved.

There is a bug in BentoBox or in the Gamemode addon#

Why?

Woopsie!

Nowadays, this is extremely rare. But it might still happen for some reasons.

Solutions

Make sure this is actually a BentoBox-related bug: remove all the plugins from your server one by one until only BentoBox is left.

If the issue is no longer occurring, this means another plugin is causing it. In that case, please refer yourself to this section.

If the issue still occurs, this means this is a BentoBox bug. Please report it on our bug tracker.

How to clean the superflat chunks afterwards?#

If you have backups, use them to revert your server's worlds and BentoBox databases to their previous states.

If you do not have backups, log into your server and open the Admin Settings Panel using the /[admin-command] settings command. Find the "Clean Super Flat" flag and toggle it on. Depending on your settings, locales and on the BentoBox version you are running, the name, icon or description might be different. But we are sure you will be able to find that flag by yourself nonetheless!

image The Clean Super Flat flag in BSkyBlock's Admin Settings Panel.

This flag will slowly regenerate any superflat chunk from your world over time. This happens when chunks are loaded, so you might want to either teleport to said chunks to force the regeneration, or you could leave the flag enabled for a few days. Do not forget to disable the flag at some point! It is quite resource-intensive...

My server lags when a player creates their island!#

Pasting the island or generating the chunks are the main causes of this issue.

Firstly, the paste speed may be too much for your server. Try lowering it. Look in the BentoBox config.yml for this setting:

# Number of blocks to paste per tick when pasting blueprints.
# Smaller values will help reduce noticeable lag but will make pasting take slightly longer.
# On the contrary, greater values will make pasting take less time, but this benefit is quickly severely impacted by the
# resulting amount of chunks that must be loaded to fulfill the process, which often causes the server to hang out.
paste-speed: 64

If you are running timings, the BlueprintPaster task should ideally be taking a long time, yet take a low percentage of a tick time.

If the server still struggles when pasting islands, then that implies it struggles to generate the chunks. That is something we have little control on as a plugin, but here are a few things you could do to mitigate this:

  • Try reducing the "distance between islands" setting in the gamemode's config file. Lower values means fewer chunks to generate. This will require you to entirely reset the worlds and databases.
  • Use Paper as your server software. Paper handles asynchronous chunk generation.
  • Pre-generate the world. Especially for gamemodes whose generators are resource-intensive, such as CaveBlock or SkyGrid.

I can't place saplings on my island!#

Relevant issue: BentoBox#277.

If no message shows up to the player telling them that they can't place the sapling, then it means that BentoBox does not cause this issue.

If you are using GriefPrevention on your server, there is a config option in this plugin that prevents players from placing so-called "Sky Trees".

How do I change the island distance?#

All the game modes have a configuration for the distance between player islands. In BSkyBlock, is is called distance-between-islands and it is found in the config.yml file here:

# Radius of island in blocks. (So distance between islands is twice this)
  # It is the same for every dimension : Overworld, Nether and End.
  # This value cannot be changed mid-game and the plugin will not start if it is different.
  # /!\ BentoBox currently does not support changing this value mid-game. If you do need to change it, do a full reset of your databases and worlds.
  distance-between-islands: 400

In the case of BSkyBlock, the default value is 400, which means that players will start 800 blocks apart from each other. It also means that a player's protection area can grow up to a value of 400.

Most of the time, the default setting should be sufficient for your server. However, some admins like to space out players even further, or sometimes, have them closer together. Whatever you choose, once the game is running, you cannot change this value. If you do try to change it, BentoBox will refuse to start and give a warning in the console like this:

[14:08:20 ERROR]: [BentoBox] *****************CRITIAL ERROR!******************
[14:08:20 ERROR]: [BentoBox] Island distance mismatch!
World 'bskyblock_world' distance 800 != island range 400!
Island ID in database is BSkyBlock99ea1c15-f5f8-410a-9019-d6b843a5a254.
Island distance in config.yml cannot be changed mid-game! Fix config.yml or clean database.
[14:08:20 ERROR]: [BentoBox] Could not load islands! Disabling BentoBox...
[14:08:20 ERROR]: [BentoBox] *************************************************
This is a protection mechanism, because if you do change the value and were able to proceed, islands could end up on top of each other and that would lead to very unhappy players!

** But I am just starting my server! How do I change this value and clean the database? **

I will assume you are using the default JSON database (flat file). Follow these steps:

  1. Stop the server
  2. Change the config.yml value for the island distance to whatever you want.
  3. If you have no other BentoBox games running, or just want to reset everything, then delete the plugins/BentoBox/database and the plugins/BentoBox/database_backup folders
  4. Delete the worlds that the game modes made, for BSkyBlock, this is by default these folders in your server folder: bskyblock_world, bskyblock_world_nether, and bskyblock_world_the_end
  5. Restart the server.

If you already have other BentoBox game modes running on your server, then things are a little more complex: 1. Stop the server 2. Change the config.yml value for the island distance to whatever you want. 3. Open the plugins/BentoBox/database/Island folder and delete all the files that start with the name of your game mode, e.g., BSkyBlock99ea1c15-f5f8-410a-9019-d6b843a5a254.json 4. Delete the worlds that the game modes made, for BSkyBlock, this is by default these folders in your server folder: bskyblock_world, bskyblock_world_nether, and bskyblock_world_the_end 5. Restart the server.

If you are using other databases like MySQL, then the steps are the same, but you will need to use SQL commands to remove the database, tables, or entries.

In BentoBox 1.16 we implemented an option to properly link together portals. However this option works only if allow-nether is enabled in server.properties and allow-end in bukkit.yml.

To enable linking nether portals you need to find option in gamemode config: create-and-link-portals and set it to true.

To enable creating proper end obsidian platform (like in vanilla end) you need to find option create-obsidian-platform and set it to true.

Be aware, that enabling these options opens the same exploits with unlimitated obsidian generation that original Minecraft has.

API#

How do I start writing addons for BentoBox? Is there an API?#

Yes, there is definitely an API. Writing addons is very similar to writing plugins except there is a lot more API available for things like teams, protections, commands, panels and pasting.

Follow this tutorial to create your first addon!


Last update: February 13, 2023 07:45:36