VelocityNavigator

[3.0.0] — 2026-04-10

✨ New Features

• Initial Join Balancing — Players are now load-balanced the moment they connect to the proxy, not just when they run /lobby. Configurable via balance_initial_join in navigator.toml.
• Developer API — Third-party plugins can now hook into VelocityNavigator via NavigatorAPI and NavigatorAPIProvider. Preview routes, inspect server health, and read routing config programmatically.
• Three Routing Modes — Choose between least_players, round_robin, and random selection algorithms.
• Contextual Routing — Route players to game-specific lobbies (e.g., BedWars lobby) based on which server they are leaving.
• Self-Documenting Config — The generated navigator.toml now includes rich inline comments explaining every setting and routing mode, with links to full documentation.

🏥 Reliability

• Async Health Checks — Ping candidate lobbies before routing to ensure they are alive. Configurable timeout and caching.
• Ping Coalescing — Multiple simultaneous /lobby requests share the same CompletableFuture ping, preventing network storms on high-traffic proxies.
• Pre-Execution Cooldown Locking — The anti-spam cooldown is applied before command execution begins, preventing macro-based abuse from bypassing the lock.
• Graceful Failover — If all contextual lobbies are offline, the plugin falls back to the default lobby pool instead of showing an error (configurable).

📊 Telemetry & Updates

• bStats Integration — Anonymous usage telemetry via bStats (plugin ID: 28341).
• Modrinth Update Checker — Automatic version checking during startup with configurable release channel (release, beta, alpha).

🛠 Admin Tools

• /vn reload — Hot-reload navigator.toml without restarting the proxy.
• /vn status — View runtime status (version, routing mode, health checks, bStats, update checker).
• /vn version — Check installed vs. latest version.
• /vn debug player <name> — Preview the routing decision for a specific player.
• /vn debug server <name> — Inspect a server's real-time health snapshot.
• Full tab-completion for all admin commands.

🔧 Configuration

• Automatic Migration — Seamless migration from v1/v2 configs with backup generation.
• Field-Level Validation — Invalid config values are corrected with warnings, never crashes.
• MiniMessage Support — All player-facing messages support MiniMessage rich text formatting.

🎉 VelocityNavigator v2.0.0-Stable is here!

This is a major milestone release. We have completely refactored the codebase to meet enterprise standards, focusing on stability, speed, and user experience.

🆕 What's New?

• 🔄 Modrinth Native: The update checker now queries the Modrinth API directly.
• 🛡️ Crash-Proof Config: We added strict type-safety checks. A typo in your config file will no longer crash the plugin.
• ⚡ Smart Timeouts: Server pings now timeout after 2.5 seconds, preventing a single laggy server from freezing your command usage.
• 📢 Better Feedback: Players now receive specific error messages (e.g., "Server Full", "Whitelisted") instead of the command just doing nothing.
• 🐛 Bug Squashing: Fixed constructor initialization errors and improved debug logging.

📦 How to Update

1. Stop your proxy.
2. Delete your old VelocityNavigator.jar.
3. Upload the new v2.0.0-Stable JAR.
4. (Recommended) Backup and delete your old navigator.toml to let the new crash-proof version generate.
5. Start the proxy!

🚀 Highly Customizable Config:

The plugin now uses a more organized, nested navigator.toml file with a custom header.

⚙️ Automatic Config Updater:

The plugin will automatically detect and upgrade old configuration files to the new format, preserving user settings.

💬 Optional Command Aliases:

Server owners can now define which command aliases (like /hub or /spawn) they want to use in the config file.

✨ Reconnect to Spawn:

If a player uses a lobby command while already in a lobby, they are now re-connected to that lobby's spawn instead of just seeing a message.

For the next update, you can focus on the suggestions we just discussed:

• Permission Support.
• Fully Customizable Messages.
• Smart Server Selection.

Hey everyone, here's the first release of VelocityNavigator!

This is a simple plugin that lets you use / lobby, /hub, or /spawn to send players to your lobby server. You can even set up multiple lobbies in the config for it to choose from!