Getting started

Tea is a single-plugin engine for running Minecraft minigames on Spigot (1.20.5+):

• TeaCore - the engine. Every server that runs a game needs this.
• Lobby features (connection signs, /play, /leave, lobby spawn / gamemode management) ship inside TeaCore and are toggled on with lobby.enabled: true in plugins/TeaCore/config.yml. Set this on every hub server; leave it off (the default) on arena-only servers.

Games are separate plugin jars on top of Tea. This section is about installing and operating Tea itself; for any specific game, see its own docs section.

Minimum requirements

• Minecraft server 1.20.5 or newer (Spigot, Paper, or a Paper-based fork such as Purpur - Tea only uses Spigot API). Individual game plugins may require a higher minimum — see each game's own docs.
• Java 21
• WorldEdit or FastAsyncWorldEdit installed if you want to paste map schematics (soft dependency - everything else works without it)
• Redis (optional, only required for cross-server matchmaking)
• MySQL (optional, SQLite is the default)

Individual games may have additional hard dependencies. Check the game's own "Installing" page before deploying.

Pick your deployment shape

Shape	When to use	Redis needed?
Standalone - one server, multi-arena	Dev, small networks	No
Bungeecord / k8s - one arena per server, proxy in front	Scalable production, k8s pods	Yes
Multi-server - multiple servers, each running several arenas	Midsize networks	Yes

Pick one when setting network.mode in plugins/TeaCore/config.yml. All game behavior is identical across shapes; only routing changes.

Next steps

1. Install TeaCore
2. Configure network mode, DB, and Redis
3. Theme and translations
4. Author your first map
5. Install and run a Tea-based game on top of the engine.