Creditor

Creditor

Creditor was designed and created by Hytale Workshop following a conversation regarding the problem of server owners unintentionally (or in rare cases, intentionally) not crediting the creators of the mods which they use on their server. Creditor adds a new /credits command which shows a list of installed mods and their creators, as well as other metadata from the manifest.

The mod can be included as a Java library in your own mod (process described below) or it can be installed independently by a good faith server owner. When installed independently, the credits menu adds a checkmark badge in the upper right which tells players that the server owner is actively choosing to support modders. If the symbol is missing, the mod was installed transitively as a Java library in some other installed mod, and the server owner has not chosen to credit creators. This works best for the community if as many people as possible package this with their mod!

Installation

Creditor can be installed as a mod on the server by putting the JAR file in the mods folder as normal, but it can also be used as a Java Library and packaged in your mod. Add Creditor to your project via Cursemaven:

repositories {
    maven { url "https://www.cursemaven.com" }
}

dependencies {
    implementation "curse.maven:creditor-1560961:<file-id>"
}

Note: The file-id is the ID of the file on CurseForge, find the file you want and copy the ID from its URL curseforge.com/hytale/mods/creditor/files/FILE_ID_IS_HERE

Creditor requires initialisation as a Hytale plugin, so in your Main.start() and Main.setup() methods, run Creditor.start() & Creditor.setup() respectively.

When you build your mod, make sure to use the shadow plugin to ensure the dependency is bundled with your mod

plugins {
    idea
    java
    ...
    id("com.gradleup.shadow") version "8.3.6"
}

tasks {
    shadowJar {
        archiveClassifier.set("")

        manifest {
            attributes(
                    "Implementation-Title" to project.name,
                    "Implementation-Version" to project.version,
                    "Multi-Release" to "true"
            )
        }

        from("src/main/resources/hytale-assets") {
            exclude("manifest.json")
        }

        // Remove the nested hytale-assets/ copy from the JAR (assets are at root now).
        // The nested copy still exists in build/resources/main/ for deploy.sh compatibility.
        exclude("hytale-assets/**")

        // Exclude signature files (cause issues)
        exclude("META-INF/*.SF")
        exclude("META-INF/*.DSA")
        exclude("META-INF/*.RSA")
        exclude("META-INF/LICENSE*")
        exclude("META-INF/NOTICE*")
    }

    build {
        dependsOn(shadowJar)
    }

    jar {
        enabled = false // Only use shadowJar
    }
}

Rich credit metadata

Mods can include optional credit metadata in their asset pack under Server/Credits. The asset overrides manifest display fields on the /credits page while the manifest remains the fallback.

Example: Server/Credits/my_mod.json

{
  "Plugin": "com.example:MyMod",
  "Description": {
    "MessageId": "myMod.myMod.description",
    "RawText": "My Mod adds useful server features and includes custom credit metadata."
  },
  "License": {
    "MessageId": "myMod.myMod.license",
    "RawText": "My Mod is licensed under MIT."
  }
}