PumpkinMsg: Install on Paper or Velocity in Minutes

Drop a single PumpkinMsg JAR into your plugins folder on Paper or Velocity. No database required. Supports LuckPerms and PlaceholderAPI.

PumpkinMsg ships as a single JAR that automatically detects whether it is running on a Paper server or a Velocity proxy. You do not need separate builds for different platforms — the same file works everywhere. Installation takes less than a minute on either platform.

Requirements

• Java 17 or newer on all server processes
• Paper 1.20+ or Velocity 3.x
• (Optional) LuckPerms — enables prefix display in the spy and cmdspy formats on both platforms
• (Optional) PlaceholderAPI — enables %placeholder% tokens inside format strings on Paper only

PumpkinMsg saves all user data (ignore lists, spy state, toggle state) to flat files in its own data folder. You do not need MySQL, SQLite, or any other database.

Installation Steps

Paper

1. Download the JAR

   Grab the latest PumpkinMsg.jar from the project’s releases page.

2. Place the JAR

   Copy PumpkinMsg.jar into your server’s plugins/ directory.

3. Install soft dependencies (optional)

   If you want prefix support in spy formats, place the LuckPerms Paper JAR in plugins/ as well. For PlaceholderAPI variables in format strings, install PlaceholderAPI the same way.

4. Restart the server

   Start or restart your Paper server. PumpkinMsg detects the Paper environment automatically and generates its configuration file.

5. Edit the configuration

   Open plugins/PumpkinMsg/config.toml to customize message formats and UI strings. Run /pumpkinreload in-game to apply changes without another restart.

After a successful start you will see a PumpkinMsg banner in the console confirming the platform and version.

plugins/
└── PumpkinMsg/
    └── config.toml   ← generated on first run

Velocity

1. Download the JAR

   Grab the latest PumpkinMsg.jar from the project’s releases page. This is the same file used for Paper.

2. Place the JAR

   Copy PumpkinMsg.jar into your Velocity proxy’s plugins/ directory.

3. Install LuckPerms (optional)

   For prefix support in spy formats, install the Velocity edition of LuckPerms into your proxy’s plugins/ folder.

4. Restart the proxy

   Start or restart Velocity. The plugin detects the Velocity environment and generates its configuration file.

5. Edit the configuration

   Open plugins/PumpkinMsg/config.toml to customize formats. Use /pumpkinreload from the proxy console or in-game to hot-reload changes.

PlaceholderAPI is a Paper-only dependency. On Velocity you can still use the built-in <sender>, <target>, <sender_prefix>, <target_prefix>, <player>, <command>, and <server> tokens in your formats.

Soft Dependencies at a Glance

Dependency	Platform	What it unlocks
LuckPerms	Paper & Velocity	Sender and target prefixes in spy and cmdspy formats
PlaceholderAPI	Paper only	Any %placeholder% token in all format strings

Verifying the Installation

Run /pumpkinreload from the console or in-game. If the plugin is installed correctly you will see a green confirmation message matching the reload-success string in your config.toml.

If the plugin fails to load, check that you are running Java 17+ by running java -version in your terminal. PumpkinMsg will not load on older JVM versions.