Everythingstartup Bridge

Keep your community wiki connected to your server's player activity. Everythingstartup Bridge records who connects, how long they stay, and when they leave, then sends authenticated presence updates and player history to a compatible Everythingstartup wiki receiver.

It runs on a **dedicated Minecraft Java 1.21.1 server with NeoForge**. Players do not need to install the bridge or change how they play.

## Connected time that follows the player

- **Persistent player history:** records players by UUID and updates their latest username when they log in.
- **Time spent connected:** counts the whole session, including AFK time, menus, spectator mode, and death screens. It does not measure active input.
- **Continuous sessions:** death, respawning, and dimension changes do not restart the timer; repeated disconnect events do not count the same session twice.
- **Restart-aware accounting:** retains saved session time without adding server downtime.

Recording begins when the bridge is installed. Earlier playtime is not imported or estimated from vanilla statistics or old logs. Stable identity requires authenticated UUIDs or a separately verified trusted proxy setup.

## Presence and history for your wiki

- Sends current player presence and a paginated export of recorded player history.
- Uses authenticated HTTPS requests, periodic heartbeats, and bounded retries.
- Keeps checkpoint writes and HTTP requests off the server tick thread, with bounded pending work.
- Continues local recording during receiver outages, provided local storage remains healthy.
- Provides data for a separately configured wiki to show online players and connected-time totals.

**Website setup is required for public display.** The JAR does not include a website, hosted service, or receiver. A compatible receiver must be provisioned and bound to this server's identities and secret token; a static website host alone is insufficient. It is not a general-purpose connector for arbitrary websites.

The current Everythingstartup receiver has limits of **5,000 recorded UUIDs, 256 online players, and 1,800,000 serialized state bytes**, including staged history. The byte limit can be reached before the player limit. The bridge stops synchronization when capacity is exceeded and retains local history instead of truncating it. The separate local ledger has a 100,000-player cap; that is not the website's supported capacity.

## Installation and requirements

- **Minecraft:** Java Edition 1.21.1.
- **Loader:** built and locally tested with NeoForge 21.1.252.
- **Java:** 21.
- **Additional library mods:** none; required runtime libraries are supplied by NeoForge.
- **Installation side:** dedicated server only. The bridge requires no client mod, resource pack, or client network channel.

Stop the server, place the bridge JAR in its `mods` folder, and start it. First startup creates `config/everythingstartup-bridge.toml` and a world-local ledger under `<world>/data/everythingstartup_bridge/`. **Synchronization is disabled by default**, so local tracking can be checked before connecting a receiver.

For wiki synchronization, configure the receiver, enter its HTTPS endpoint and dedicated secret token in the server-local TOML, enable synchronization, and reload the configuration. Keep credentials private. Make consistent backups of the ledger before restore or maintenance work.

## Configuration and administration

The TOML provides settings for synchronization, credentials, heartbeat and freshness intervals, checkpoint frequency, connection and request timeouts, retry backoff, and shutdown drain time. Defaults are **15-second checkpoints, 15-second heartbeats, and a 45-second receiver freshness window**; receiver freshness settings must match.

Administrative commands are available from the console/RCON or directly to a permission-level-4 player:

- `esbridge status` — inspect tracking health, synchronization state, counts, and checkpoint information.
- `esbridge sync` — request fresh presence and a full history export.
- `esbridge reload` — load valid configuration changes; invalid changes retain the previous settings.

Use a leading `/` when entering commands in-game. Ordinary players and command blocks cannot use them.

## Multiplayer and compatibility

The bridge is designed for dedicated multiplayer servers and adds no items, blocks, recipes, progression systems, or player controls. Other mods in your server pack may still require client installation. Fabric, Forge, other Minecraft versions, and the actual main modpack have not been verified.

## Development status and limitations

**Version 1.0.1 is implemented and packaged locally.** Existing validation records report passing regression checks, dedicated-server tests with real TCP protocol connections, persistence/restart checks, and integration with the actual receiver source in an isolated local environment.

- **Still awaiting deployment verification:** production hosting, database persistence, HTTPS integration, authenticated production identities, graphical game clients, and browser presentation. The separate website source exists, but its production hosting has not been provisioned.
- **Not enabled in this release:** cached skin extraction. Skin metadata remains empty even if the configuration flag is enabled; the bridge performs no remote profile or avatar lookup.
- **Not included:** historical playtime import or automatic recovery migration after restoring an older local ledger. Recovery conflicts can pause synchronization pending operator resolution.
- **Crash recovery has limits:** unsaved session time may be lost. With healthy storage and default settings, the expected loss window is the 15-second checkpoint interval plus scheduling and durable-write delays. A stalled or damaged disk has no fixed loss bound.