Gradle Setup

This guide will walk you through the way we recommend setting up Gradle for your games. This is also how we created our Games repository internally.

Note

This guide assumes you’re using the Kotlin DSL syntax for Gradle. If you are using Groovy, you will have to convert our examples to match your project.

Version Catalogs

If you use subprojects (mentioned later in this guide), we recommend setting up a Gradle version catalog. This allows you to share dependency versions between multiple subprojects, and Minestom uses it internally.

To set up a version catalog, follow this guide from the Gradle documentation.

Subprojects

If you plan on making multiple games for your server (even a lobby and one minigame), we recommend placing them all in one project so that they can share common code.

You should create a common Gradle subproject which your games can depend on. In that project, you can write utilities, like methods that create packets or format chat messages. You can also place common game modules in the common subproject. That way, all of your games can import and use them.

Learn more about Gradle subprojects here.

Setting up subprojects

1. Create a folder in the root of your project. Name it according to the name of your minigame.

2. Inside that folder, create two files: build.gradle.kts and settings.gradle.kts. These define the build configuration for the subproject.

3. In build.gradle.kts, configure your subproject to build its own JAR. For example:

   group = "com.bluedragonmc.games"
   version = "1.0-SNAPSHOT"
   
   repositories {
       mavenCentral()
       maven(url = "https://jitpack.io")
   }
   
   dependencies {
       // `libs.<name>` comes from the version catalog we set up earlier.
       // See the "Version Catalogs" section of this guide for more information.
       implementation(libs.server) // The BlueDragon core `Server` library, which provides a runtime and some common game modules
       implementation(libs.bundles.configurate) // Sponge's `Configurate` library, which provides a configuration loader and some common (de)serializers
       implementation(libs.minestom) // Include Minestom to compile against
   }
   
   tasks.getByName<Test>("test") { // Optional
       useJUnitPlatform()
   }

4. Configure your Gradle build settings.

   your-game/settings.gradle.kts

   project.name = "yourgamename" // Should be the same name as the directory you created in Step 1.
   // If you are using version catalogs, you may have to add something like this:
   dependencyResolutionManagement {
       versionCatalogs {
           create("libs") {
               from(files("../gradle/libs.versions.toml"))
           }
       }
   }

5. Include your subproject in your main project’s build step. To do this, add the following to your root project’s settings.gradle.kts:

   settings.gradle.kts

   includeBuild(":<your project name>")
   // Replace <your project name> with the name of the directory you created in Step 1.
   // Make sure to keep the colon (:)

6. Create the source files for your project. In your subproject folder you created in Step 1, create the following directory structure:

   Your Project Root/
     (yourgamename)/
       src/
         main/
           java/ <-- If you're using Java
             com.yourcompany.yourproject/ <-- Your package name
               Main.java <-- Your main class
           kotlin/ <-- If you're using Kotlin
             com.yourcompany.yourproject/ <-- Your package name
               Main.kt <-- Your main class
           resources/
             game.properties

7. Open up the game.properties file and add this to it:

   # Fill in these variables with your game's display name and its main class's fully-qualified name.
   # For example, the `main-class` for ArenaPvP is `com.bluedragonmc.games.arenapvp.ArenaPvpGame`.
   name=Your Game Name
   main-class=com.yourcompany.yourproject.Main

8. In your src folder, create the package and main class you defined in Step 7. Make sure it extends the com.bluedragonmc.server.Game class.

9. Follow the Creating a Game guide to start building your first game!

When you run a Gradle build on your root project, the subproject’s JARs will be placed in build/libs inside your subproject’s directory. If you want them to be automatically copied to the root project or want a Gradle task to run a development server, see the Gradle run task guide.