Emage

⚡ Smoother & Smarter GIFs

Previously, GIF playback was tied to the server's tick rate and sent full image updates to everyone nearby. Now, Emage sends map data directly to players using the PacketEvents library. This hugely improves overall server performance and makes applying large images and GIFs much faster. It also allows GIFs to play smoothly up to 60 FPS, completely independent of server lag.

• Delta Updates: When a GIF plays, the plugin calculates exactly which pixels changed between frames and only sends those specific pixels over the network. This drastically reduces server bandwidth.
• Field of View Culling: GIF frames are now only sent to players who are actually looking toward the map. If the map is behind them, the server saves bandwidth by skipping the update entirely.

SQLite Storage & Map ID Recycling

Emage now stores all map data in a centralized SQLite database instead of generating hundreds of individual custom files. This prevents file system clutter, improves chunk loading speeds, and makes backups much simpler. Your existing maps will automatically migrate to the new database the first time you start the server.

• Zstandard Compression: Switched to Zstd for saving images, resulting in significantly smaller storage sizes and faster loading times.
• Map ID Recycling: When an image is removed, its internal Bukkit map ID is returned to a pool and reused for future images. This prevents your server from permanently running out of available map IDs over time.

Better Image Processing & Colors

Images no longer stretch or squish to fit the item frame grid. The plugin now preserves the original aspect ratio of your image by padding any extra space with a black background.

• Dynamic Color Palette: The plugin synchronizes its color palette directly with your server's specific Minecraft version. This means new block colors added in recent Minecraft updates are automatically recognized to make your images look more accurate.
• Unified Dithering: Consolidated all color-matching algorithms into a single, highly optimized method. It automatically provides the highest quality colors without requiring manual tweaking.
• Color Sync Command: Added the /emage synccolors command for server admins to manually rebuild the color palette cache if needed.

Configuration & Admin Tools

Managing the plugin is easier with an automatic configuration migration system. When you update Emage, it securely backs up your old config.yml into a backups folder and safely merges your previous settings into the new format.

• Increased Limits: Raised default limits for a better out-of-the-box experience (Max FPS from 30 to 60, GIF frames from 200 to 240, Image grid size from 10 to 16).
• Easy Removals: Added /emage remove to quickly delete an image from the specific item frame grid you are looking at, and /emage remove all to wipe all Emage maps server-wide.
• Auto-Cleanup on Break: If an item frame containing an Emage map is broken by a player or explosion, the plugin instantly deletes the associated map data from the database to keep storage clean.

⚠️ Breaking Changes & Removals

• Quality Flags Removed: The --fast, --balanced, and --high flags have been removed from the /emage command. Processing quality is now handled entirely automatically.
• Memory Pool Configs Removed: The custom byte array memory pool system was removed in favor of standard Java garbage collection. The memory.use-pool and memory.pool-size config keys no longer exist and will be removed from your config.

Other Changes

• Fixed potential out-of-memory crashes by storing cached GIF data in soft memory references, allowing the server to automatically clear them if it runs dangerously low on RAM.
• Fixed the update checker failing to read the GitHub API properly by switching to a strict JSON parser.
• Switched cache hashing from MD5 to SHA-256 to prevent potential cryptographic errors on certain host systems.