Plugin Tutorial

Plugin Tutorial#

If you need help with using this plugin, refer to this tutorial to guide you through a step-by-step process to set this plugin up.

Step 1: Install the Plugin
If you haven’t already, follow the installation instructions in the Installation Guide to install the MCAV plugin on your Minecraft server. Make sure you are using a compatible version of Paper (1.21.10).

Warning

If you are running a Linux headless server, you will need to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to where the mcav library installs binaries. This would be in the ~/.apt/usr/lib/{platform}/ directory, where platform is your current operating system platform. You have to either export LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include this before you start the server, or append it to the java.library.path system property in your server’s startup script.

Step 2: Configure the Plugin
Run the plugin once to generate the default configuration files. You can find the main configuration file in plugins/MCAV/config.yml. Open this file in your favorite text editor and adjust the settings as needed. If you would like audio support for videos, follow one or both of the ways to set up audio:

Option 1: HTTP Audio Streaming

  1. Port-forward another port besides your current Minecraft server port.

  2. Go into the config.yml and set the port under the http-server section to the port you just forwarded. Make sure to set the host-hame to your public-ip address too if the server is open to the internet.

  3. Change the enabled option under http-server to true.

  4. Restart your server to apply the changes.

Option 2: Discord Audio Streaming

  1. Create a new Discord application here.

  2. Open the Installation tab in your new application. Uncheck the User Install option, and set the Install Link dropdown menu to None.

  3. Open the Bot section in your application, and scroll down to the Privileged Gateway Intents section. Enable all the intents (PRESENCE, SERVER_MEMBERS, and MESSAGE_CONTENT).

  4. Scroll up, and rename your bot to something unique, and then click the Reset Token button to generate a new token.

  5. Copy and paste that token into the token field under the discord-bot section in your config.yml.

  6. Enable Developer Mode in Discord by going to User Settings > Advanced > Developer Mode. Then right-click on your server icon in Discord and select Copy Server ID. Paste that ID into the guild-id field under the discord-bot.

  7. In your server, right-click the voice-channel you want to use for audio streaming and click Copy Channel ID. Paste that ID into the channel-id field under the discord-bot section in your config.yml.

  8. Set the enabled option under discord-bot to true.

  9. Restart your server to apply the changes.

Option 3: Simple Voice Chat

  1. Install the Simple Voice Chat plugin on your server. Make sure that it’s the correct version for your Minecraft server.

  2. Open the config.yml file, and set the enabled option under the simple-voice-chat section to true.

  3. (User Side) Install the Simple Voice Chat mod on your client.

  4. Restart your server to apply the changes.

Step 3: Profit
Now that you have configured the plugin, you can start using it to play videos in your Minecraft server!

Usage Instructions#

The sandbox plugin provides many features. Refer to the Commands Guide for a complete list of all their commands and proper usage. The following guide below will help you get started with the most common commands.

First, run the /mcav screen command with arguments to create a new map screen. For example, running /mcav screen 5x5 0 OAK_PLANKS ~ ~ ~ will create a 5x5 screen at your current location with oak planks as the frame.

If you would like to play a video, here are the steps to take:#

  1. If you would like to play a video on the screen you just created, run the /mcav video map command. Otherwise, you can use other commands like /mcav video block.

  2. Set the audio type to whatever audio you configured in Step 2 (HTTP or Discord).

  3. Specify the other arguments accordingly to its command usage.

  4. Set the mrl to either a local file path, or pretty much any valid URL to a website like YouTube, Vimeo, or Twitch. A list of all supported video sites can be found here.

If you would like to create a browser, here are the steps to take:#

  1. Use the /mcav browser create command to create a new browser on that screen. Browsers can only be created on maps. For example, running /mcav browser create @a 640x640 100 1 5x5 0 FILTER_LITE https://www.google.com will create a new browser that all players can see on the 5x5 screen you just created with a resolution of 640x640 pixels, full quality, and snapshots taken every second with Filter Lite dithering. It will display the Google homepage by default.

  2. If you want to interact with the browser, you can use the /mcav browser interact command, which will take all your chat input and send it to the browser as if you were typing in a real web browser. For special keys like enter, type the key in “Enter” to simulate pressing the enter key. Left and right-clicking on the browser will simulate mouse clicks. For more information on possible keys, see the KeyboardEvent.key column here.

  3. Once you’re done with the browser, you can close it by running the /mcav browser release command.

If you would like to stream OBS output, here are the steps to take:#

  1. Follow all the steps to play a video. The only difference is that you must set the player to be FFMPEG instead of VLC.

  2. Set the mrl to be dshow:video=OBS Virtual Camera on Windows. For other operating systems, please refer to the FFmpeg Documentation. The format MCAV parses is format:input. In this case, the format is dshow and the input is video=OBS Virtual Camera.

If you would like to create a virtual machine, here are the steps to take:#

  1. Use the /mcav vm create command to create a new virtual machine on that screen. Virtual machines can only be created on maps.

  2. Follow the command argument usage in the Commands Guide to specify the VM parameters. You are on your own to provide the valid QEMU arguments for the VM to run. For some examples of valid VM arguments, here is one for providing an ISO image with 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores:

/mcav vm create @a 640x640 30 5x5 0 FILTER_LITE X86_64 -cdrom /path/to/your.iso -m 2048 -smp 2

You are not limited by any of these commands! You can combine them in any way you like to create whatever you want on your server!

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