TheBridges 1.0 - It's been a while but I delievered!
The beta phase is over. TheBridges 1.0 is the full production release: a complete rewrite and polish pass across teams, sudden death, bridges, bosses, refills, progression, setup UX, scoreboards, and runtime stability.

This release turns the plugin from a promising beta into a fully server-ready Bridges platform built for real public use.

Release Changelog

Core Release

• TheBridges is now considered a full 1.0 production release.
• Large-scale polish pass across gameplay, administration, progression, setup, and match flow.
• Many systems were refactored to behave more predictably under real server conditions.
• Focused heavily on stability, consistency, cleaner lifecycle handling, and production readiness.

Teams System

• Reworked team identity to use stable canonical team names like Team Red instead of player-based naming.
• Prevented normal players from leaving teams once assigned.
• Locked team switching after assignment unless the player has explicit override permission.
• Improved reconnect and disconnect handling so players no longer lose team membership incorrectly.
• Hardened team flow for real match environments and tournament-style stability.

Sudden Death

• Rebuilt Sudden Death to behave as an actual endgame phase instead of a deathmatch arena.
• Removed fake Sudden Death center, Sudden Death spawn system, and related map setup clutter.
• Sudden Death now plays out naturally on the real map.
• Water rising was redesigned and improved significantly.
• Added admin-set initial water rise level via map command.
• Water rising now fills cleaner, expands from center outward, and prioritizes relevant areas.
• If no initial water level is set, fallback selection uses real spawn-based logic.
• Water is now properly lethal and damages players consistently while in liquids.
• Sudden Death duration was extended for better pacing.
• Added true collapse escalation after Sudden Death timeout:
  • lightning pressure near players
  • random water spawning near survivors
  • bosses spawning on team, solo, and center anchor locations
• Removed unwanted boss spawn messaging during Sudden Death and forced-spawn pressure moments.

Bridges Generation

• Rebuilt bridge geometry generation to eliminate fragmented, incomplete, and inconsistent builds.
• Greatly improved diagonal bridge generation and directional consistency.
• Switched from coarse snapped bridge planning to a more continuous sampled footprint approach.
• Improved bridge surface filling so bridges are fully built instead of stitched in broken spans.
• Added post-build integrity reconciliation to fill any missing planned blocks.
• Hardened runtime placement so temporary placement failures do not permanently create holes.
• Improved replaceability logic for passable clutter such as grass, snow layers, torches, vines, and similar blocks.
• Made bridges far more natural, visually coherent, and structurally believable in all directions.
• Added underside support ribs and stronger structural shaping.
• Added end abutments so bridges feel anchored into terrain rather than abruptly floating.
• Improved defense/detail placement to stay more consistent regardless of angle.
• Deterministic material choice now prevents visual palette shuffling between bridge spawns.
• Deterministic bridge seeding improves consistency and debugging.
• Bridge generation timing was slowed slightly for a better visual reveal.

Bridge Animation and UX

• Improved bridge reveal pacing so bridges spawn more cleanly and more dramatically.
• Segment reveal animation was upgraded to use the hardened placement path.
• Bridge animations now place more safely and consistently across all animation modes.
• Added live bridge build progress to scoreboard:
  • active build state
  • percent complete
  • block progress
  • estimated remaining time
  • bridge count/status

Bridge Setup and Map Admin UX

• Bridge setup is now dramatically easier for admins.
• Added a much more guided setup flow for bridges.
• Added support for a dedicated bridge wand/tool for position selection.
• Admins can now create bridges using simple position marking instead of raw coordinate entry.
• Added bridge position commands that use current player location.
• Added improved setup prompts and HUD guidance.
• Added live bridge editing flow and easier bridge management.
• Added auto-bridge generation options from map/team layout.
• Map setup GUI now better exposes bridge configuration and setup progress.
• Overall map setup is much less manual and much more production friendly.

Ore Replacer

• Removed impractical cuboid size limitations.
• Ore replacement now works on large cuboids and large maps.
• Improved runtime behavior and scalability.
• Ore processing now prioritizes gameplay-relevant areas first:
  • map center
  • center objectives
  • team spawns
  • solo spawns
• Ore replacement now expands from the middle outward instead of scanning from arbitrary corners.

Water / Liquid Damage

• Liquids now properly damage players.
• Water now damages on contact every few ticks as intended.
• Better UX and gameplay feedback for dangerous water interaction.
• Sudden Death flood pressure is now actually meaningful and match-ending.

Pre-Bridges Combat Rules

• Pre-Bridges no longer blocks all damage globally.
• Only player-vs-player combat is restricted there.
• Environmental and non-PvP damage behavior is cleaner and more intentional.

Boss System

• Boss spawning and cleanup were significantly improved.
• Bosses now spawn more safely and more reliably.
• Boss health handling was corrected.
• Rage behavior and boss damage logic were fixed.
• Boss targeting now better respects alive-player state.
• Spectators and invalid targets are ignored more consistently.
• Reward overflow behavior was improved.
• Sudden Death boss integration was made cleaner and quieter.
• Added boss count visibility to scoreboard during Sudden Death.
• Progression support was expanded around boss-related gameplay.

Chest Refills

• Refills were improved to behave properly for Bridges match flow.
• Chest refill handling now resets actual relevant loaded chests rather than just bookkeeping state.
• Better consistency for center refills, full refills, and match resets.
• Improved hologram/state refresh behavior tied to chest reset flow.

Scoreboard / UI

• Added better live scoreboard support for Bridges-specific systems.
• Improved bridge build progress presentation.
• Added Sudden Death water wave scoreboard data:
  • current water Y
  • next target Y
  • next wave timing
  • wave progress
• Added Sudden Death boss alive count support.
• Improved segment and runtime presentation across match states.
• Better focus-card behavior so high-priority endgame data is shown when it matters.

End Phase / Match Shutdown

• Fixed the issue where end flow appeared to skip immediately into restarting.
• Reworked end lifecycle so end handling is cleaner and more predictable.
• Unified end/restart behavior under a single end-phase driven flow.
• Reduced duplicated countdown behavior and simplified terminal phase handling.
• End-of-match flow is now more production-safe and easier to reason about.

Libby / Runtime Dependency Loading

• Fixed library-loading problems with runtime dependencies like XSeries, FastBoard, and AnvilGUI.
• Cleaned up the build/runtime strategy so Libby becomes the proper source of truth.
• Removed problematic mixed relocation/runtime-loading behavior.
• Improved startup verification and failure behavior for missing critical libraries.

Challenges, Achievements, and Quests

• Progression systems were rebalanced around actual Bridges gameplay instead of a narrow survival-games style loop.
• Better support for mining, routing, building, bridge pressure, center control, bosses, travel, and crafting.
• Expanded Bridges quest pool with more prep/build/control-oriented objectives.
• Increased default quest assignment count for a fuller progression experience.
• Improved starter quest selection to better reflect the real Bridges match loop.
• Curated the default challenge pool to better fit competitive Bridges play.
• Added missing Bridges-relevant challenge coverage.
• Reduced the default reliance on overly gimmicky challenge rolls.
• Added new boss-focused achievement support.
• Hardened challenge registration so difficulty buckets cannot silently fail due to bad config metadata.
• Added self-healing challenge registry rebuild behavior if challenge pools ever come up empty.

Production Readiness

• Many legacy or misleading systems were removed where they no longer matched actual Bridges gameplay.
• Reduced hidden admin friction across setup and map creation.
• Improved deterministic behavior for generation systems.
• Improved match-state consistency and terminal-state safety.
• Better separation between display/config metadata and runtime gameplay truth.
• Numerous fixes aimed at making the plugin safer for large public servers, events, and long-term operation.