SpiralGenesis

Every player starts somewhere of their own. Instead of dropping everyone at one crowded world spawn, SpiralGenesis gives each new player their own plot of land - 500x500 blocks by default - laid out in an expanding spiral around a centre point you choose.

The plugin finds them somewhere sensible to stand: not in an ocean, not in a lava pool, not at the bottom of a ravine or on the edge of a cliff. It happens on first join, off the main thread, and the player keeps that spot as their respawn point for good.

Installing it on a server people already play on moves none of them: a player who was there before the plugin keeps their position, bed and respawn anchor, and gets a plot only when an operator gives them one with /sgen reassign.

Quick start

1. Requirements: Paper 1.20 or newer, a Paper fork such as Purpur, or Folia. Java 21 for Minecraft 1.20 and 1.21; Minecraft 26.1 and newer require the server to run on Java 25, which is Mojang's requirement rather than this plugin's.
2. Drop SpiralGenesis-x.y.z.jar into your server's plugins/ folder.
3. Start the server. plugins/SpiralGenesis/config.yml is generated on first run.
4. Stand where you want the spiral to begin and run /sgen setcenter.
5. That's it. The next player to join gets plot #0,0, centred on that spot.

Installing on a server people already play on? Read Installing on an existing server before the first start: a new player who joins before step 4 is placed around (0, 0), and the origin should be chosen away from existing builds and claims.

Optional: install Floodgate if you run Bedrock cross-play. If your Java players log in with a password, any login plugin works (AuthMe, nLogin, LibreLogin and the rest) with no configuration: SpiralGenesis waits for the player to be released from limbo before placing them. On an online-mode server, or a network authenticating at the proxy, set allocation.trigger: ON_JOIN to place players the moment they connect.

Pregenerate your world first. Allocation generates chunks as it searches. On a fresh world that is fine, but a pregenerated area makes first joins near-instant. See sizing guidance for how big to make it.

What it does

• One plot per player, never reused. Plots are handed out along a square spiral, so players spread outward evenly instead of piling into the same valley.
• Skips bad ground. Oceans, lava, ice, deep water, ravines, sinkholes, cliff edges and jagged peaks are all rejected. The plugin searches inside a plot for a good landing spot before giving up on it.
• Respawns at home. Die and you return to your own plot, not to world spawn - unless a bed, a respawn anchor, a /spawnpoint set elsewhere or another plugin's respawn location says otherwise.
• Cross-play aware. Bedrock players (Geyser/Floodgate) are placed the moment they join. Java players behind any login plugin are held until they authenticate, so nobody burns a plot before proving who they are. This works without naming a login plugin, so it covers AuthMe, nLogin, LibreLogin and anything else.
• Doesn't stall the server. Chunks load through Paper's async API and each candidate spot is checked on its own tick. Saves are batched off the main thread.
• Runs on Folia. The same jar uses region, entity and async schedulers throughout.
• Can protect the spawn point. Optional, off by default, and needs GriefPrevention: switch it on and every player gets a small claim around their spawn that only they can build in, so their bed and first chest are covered the moment they arrive. It never costs anyone their plot when it cannot be created. See the admin guide for the settings and the two GriefPrevention numbers worth checking first.

What it does not do

SpiralGenesis gives each player space, and at most a few blocks of ownership. With protection: switched on it claims a small square around each player's spawn point through GriefPrevention, and that is the whole of it - the rest of the 500x500 plot is unclaimed, and players are expected to claim it themselves in the normal way. Left off, which is the default, it protects nothing at all and nothing stops another player walking over and breaking things. Either way, pair it with a claim plugin such as GriefPrevention or Lands for anything beyond the spawn square - the spiral layout gives those plugins clean, non-overlapping regions to work with.

Configuration

plugins/SpiralGenesis/config.yml, with the defaults that matter most:

origin:
  world: "world"
  x: 0
  z: 0

cell-size: 500        # size of each player's territory in blocks (500 = 500x500)

placement:
  strategy: FIRST_SAFE
  stride: 16          # blocks between candidate spots (16 = one chunk)
  max-candidates: 12  # spots tried inside a plot before moving to the next one
  height-ceiling: 110 # HIGHEST only: ignore anything above this Y

safety:
  min-surface-y: 63     # reject spots below this height
  max-scan-attempts: 8  # plots to try before settling for the best seen so far
  max-pit-depth: 8      # reject spots this far below the surrounding land (ravines)
  max-roughness: 12     # reject spots whose surroundings are this uneven (cliffs)

placement.strategy decides which spot inside a plot a player lands on:

Every value is range-checked on load, so a typo degrades to a sane value instead of breaking joins. The full annotated file ships inside the jar; see the admin guide for what each rule actually rejects and how to tune it.

Player assignments and the current spiral position live in data.yml - leave that one alone unless you are deliberately resetting the grid.

Commands

All commands require the spiralgenesis.admin permission (default: operators). /spiralgenesis works as an alias for /sgen.

setspawn and reassign act on the live player, so the target has to be online. tp and info read from storage and work for offline players too.

/sgen simulate 50 is the fastest way to check your settings against your world before players arrive - it reports how many plots were skipped, how often the search fell back, and exactly which safety rule did the rejecting.

How the spiral works

The first plot, #0,0, lands on the centre. Each following plot moves one cell along an expanding clockwise square spiral, so plot n is always cell-size blocks from its neighbours:

        (-1,-1) ───> (0,-1) ───> (1,-1) ───> (2,-1)
           ▲                                    │
           │    (0,0) [P1] ───> (1,0) [P2]      │
           │                      │             ▼
        (-1,0)                    ▼           (2,0)
           ▲                   (1,1) [P3]       │
           │                      │             ▼
        (-1,1) <──── (0,1) <──────┘           (2,1)
         [P5]         [P4]                      │
                                                ▼

A cell's world position is simply x = origin.x + u * cell-size and z = origin.z + v * cell-size. The full derivation, terrain rules and lifecycle hooks are in the admin guide.

Compatibility

Built against the 1.20.4 API, which newer servers still accept. CI boots the plugin on Paper and Folia at both ends of the supported range - 1.20.4 and 26.2 - and runs allocation against real generated terrain on each, so the range is checked on every change rather than assumed.

Minecraft 26.1 and newer refuse to start on anything below Java 25. That is a server requirement from Mojang, not this plugin: the jar is Java 21 bytecode, which a Java 25 runtime runs unchanged.

Troubleshooting

Players still spawn at world spawn. They are probably not new. Only players without a recorded plot are allocated one; everyone else keeps the spawn they already have until you /sgen reassign them (they must be online for that).

Nobody gets a plot and the log names origin.world. The plugin binds only to the world origin.world names and never substitutes another. If that world is not loaded it logs Configured world '...' (origin.world) is not loaded at SEVERE, lists the worlds that are, and allocates nothing. New players are held where they joined and allocated as soon as the world is bound: correct origin.world and run /sgen reload. A world that a world manager loads after SpiralGenesis starts needs no reload; it is picked up the next time a player without a plot passes the gate or a held player acts. Multiverse-Core is always enabled first, so its worlds are already loaded when SpiralGenesis starts.

First join takes a few seconds. The plugin is generating chunks to look for safe ground. Pregenerate the area (see the sizing table in the admin guide) and it disappears.

Players get placed before logging in. Check allocation.trigger is FIRST_ACTION, not ON_JOIN. The startup log states which trigger is active and which login plugins it saw.

Players never get placed. Something is suppressing every action they take, so the gate never opens. The console warns when the action-timeout-seconds backstop fires; if you see that repeatedly, an anti-cheat or region plugin is the usual cause. If it is your login plugin, point its on-login command hook at sgen allocate %p and the gate is bypassed entirely. See the admin guide.

Someone landed somewhere terrible. Run /sgen simulate 50 - the per-rule rejection breakdown usually shows the rule that needs loosening, most often min-surface-y or max-roughness on mountainous or ocean-heavy worlds.

Docs, source and contributing

• Admin & architecture guide - terrain rules, lifecycle, storage format, sizing, testing matrix.
• Changelog - Security policy
• Bugs and feature requests: GitHub Issues
• Patches welcome - CONTRIBUTING.md covers setup and PR rules, and RELEASE_PROCESS.md covers how releases are cut.

Building it yourself:

./gradlew build

The jar lands in build/libs/.

License & credits

GNU General Public License v3.0.

Inspired by Block4Block / DynamicSpawnPlugin, which pioneered spiral-pattern spawn distribution for Paper servers. SpiralGenesis is an independent implementation.