Death Recap

Most deaths end with one line in chat: "Steve was slain by Zombie". It doesn't say what hit you first, how much damage the creeper did, or where the arrows came from.

Forward-DeathRecap shows the rest. When a player dies, they get a short breakdown of every hit in chat. After they respawn, they can watch the last seconds before their death again in 3D, from behind themselves, through their own eyes or through the eyes of their killer.

Made by Forward Development for Paper 26.2 and newer.

The death recap

Right after dying, the player sees what happened in the last 10 seconds. The example under In game shows what that looks like.

• Every hit shows who or what did it, the weapon, the damage and how much health was left.
• Hover over a weapon to see its real tooltip, including enchantments and custom names. Hover over a line for the exact numbers.
• Damage that repeats, like burning, poison or standing in a cactus, is combined into one line.
• The last line tells you how much health your killer had left.
• You can show the full timeline, a short summary with a button, or only the button.
• In PvP, the killer can get the recap too.
• /deathrecap shows your last recap again.

The death replay

After respawning, the player clicks [▶ Watch replay] in the recap or types /deathrecap replay, picks a camera, and the last seconds before their death play back around them. Server owners can also let the replay start by itself after respawning.

What you see in the replay:

• Yourself, with your own skin, armor and the item in your hand.
• The mobs and players that were near you, with their weapons and armor, and every swing and hit.
• Arrows, tridents, fireballs, snowballs and potions in flight, and lit TNT.
• Blocks being placed, broken, burned or blown up, and explosions with their blast and sound.
• Mobs that died during the fight falling over, and finally yourself falling over at the moment you died.

A recording bar at the top shows the replay time. A timeline above the hotbar shows where you are in the clip, with a red mark for every hit you took.

Cameras

• Follow cam: behind you, turning smoothly with you and pulling in when a wall is in the way.
• Your view: through your own eyes, exactly what you saw.
• Killer view: through the eyes of the mob or player that killed you.

You pick one before the replay starts and can switch at any time with Ctrl.

Controls

The replay is controlled with the normal movement keys:

When paused, the controls are shown on screen.

Only the viewer sees it

A replay is only visible to the player watching it. Other players see nothing, not even the figures or blocks in it. The blocks in a replay are shown on the viewer's screen only and the real world is never changed. When the replay ends, the player is back exactly where they were, in the same game mode.

Saved deaths

Every death is saved as a small clip. /deathrecap replays opens a menu with all of them.

• Each death has an icon for what killed you: your killer's head in PvP, a spawn egg for mobs, a feather for fall damage, a lava bucket for lava, and so on.
• The item shows the death message, how long the clip is and when it will be deleted.
• Left-click to watch it. Right-click to share it in chat.
• Clips are deleted after 24 hours by default. You can set this anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 days.
• Clips are kept after logging out and after a server restart.

Sharing a death

Right-clicking a death in the menu posts a message in chat that anyone can click to watch it:

[DeathRecap] Steve shared a death: Steve was slain by Zombie [▶ Watch]

A shared link only works for 10 minutes, and players can share once per minute so chat doesn't get spammed. Both can be changed.

For staff

/deathrecap replays <player> opens the deaths of any player, also when they are offline. This is useful for checking reports, suspicious kills or possible cheating. Staff don't have a cooldown between replays.

Themes

The plugin comes with six color themes: forward (blue), crimson, emerald, amber, amethyst and mono. A theme colors every message, the replay screen, the recording bar and the menus. You switch with one line in config.yml.

Every theme is its own file in the themes folder. To make your own, copy one, give it a new name, change the colors and set theme: yourname.

Everything can be changed

• All text is in messages.yml and uses MiniMessage, so you can change every word and color, add gradients or translate the whole plugin. English, Dutch and German versions are included in the translations folder.
• config.yml has options for almost everything: how long the recap and replay go back, the camera, the controls, block recording, the menus, cooldowns, sharing, how long clips are kept and much more. Every option has a comment explaining it.
• The name in the chat prefix, the replay title and the menus is one line in config.yml.
• /deathrecap reload applies your changes without a restart.
• When you update the plugin, new options are added to your files automatically. Your own settings are never overwritten.
• If you make a mistake in a file, the plugin tells you in the console what is wrong and which value it uses instead. A broken file is never replaced or cleared.
• A debug option in config.yml logs extra details about replays and saved clips to the console, for troubleshooting.

Safe to run on a public server

• No duplication through menus. Nothing can be taken out of or put into any menu. Every click, shift-click, drag and hotkey is blocked. If an item from a menu ever ends up somewhere else, it is deleted right away.
• No items are ever given to players. The camera menu is a menu, not items in your inventory, so there is nothing to keep by crashing, disconnecting or dying.
• The world is never changed. Blocks in a replay only exist on the viewer's screen.
• Replay figures can't be farmed. They drop nothing, give no XP and can't be hurt, pushed or targeted by mobs.
• Players always go back where they were. Even after a disconnect or a server crash during a replay, the player gets their game mode and position back on their next join.
• No escaping a fight. Replays can't be started while in combat, gliding or riding, and there is a cooldown between them.
• No commands during a replay, so the replay can't be used to teleport or set homes in places the player couldn't reach.
• No chat packet exploits. Weapons and names shown in recaps and replays are cleaned up first, so specially crafted items can't kick or crash other players.
• Vanished staff stay hidden. Players the victim couldn't see are not recorded.
• Protection plugins are respected. Blocks that another plugin stopped from being broken or placed don't show up in replays.

Commands and permissions

Aliases: /dr and /recap. deathrecap.* gives every permission.

Requirements

• Paper 26.2 or newer, or a fork of Paper such as Purpur.
• Java 25.
• A licence key from Forward Development. The server needs an internet connection to check it when it starts.
• No other plugins, no resource pack and no client mods needed.
• Bedrock players (through Geyser) get the chat recap; the 3D replay is made for Java Edition. Server owners can turn replays on for Bedrock players in the config.

Spigot, CraftBukkit and Folia are not supported. The plugin uses features that only exist in Paper.

Performance

The plugin records a few seconds of movement around every online player, every tick. This is light on a normal server, but you can tune it:

• replay.seconds sets how far back a replay goes. The default is 15 seconds and the maximum is 2 minutes. Longer replays use more memory.
• replay.record-radius and replay.max-entities limit how much is recorded around each player.
• Saved clips are small, usually well under 100 KB each. They are saved and loaded off the main thread, so the server doesn't lag while doing it.

On servers with a few hundred players at once, a replay length of 10 to 20 seconds is a good choice.

Good to know

• Flowing water and lava and moving pistons are not shown in replays. Placed and picked up water and lava are.
• Mobs appear in their default look. A sheep in a replay is always white, for example.
• Things that happened further away than the recording radius, like a skeleton shooting from far away, are not in the replay. The arrow and the hit are, but the skeleton itself may not be.
• A replay shows the place as it was during the fight. Changes made to the world after the death that the replay doesn't know about stay as they are.
• Players and mobs near a death are part of that death's clip, with their skin, equipment and position. Clips stay on the server only, are deleted after the configured time (default 24 hours), and can be watched by the player who died, anyone they share it with, and staff with the permission.

Licence terms

Paid or free, your licence lets you use the plugin on one server at a time with your own licence key. You may not share the key or the plugin, resell it, or remove or bypass the licence check. The licence check sends the key, a server id, the plugin version and the server's IP address to Forward Development, only to check the licence and detect misuse. The full terms are in EULA.txt, which comes with the plugin. Questions: legal@fwdscripts.com

Forward-DeathRecap is not an official Minecraft product and is not approved by or associated with Mojang or Microsoft.

Installation

1. Put Forward-DeathRecap.jar in your plugins folder.
2. Start the server once, so the config is created.
3. Put your licence key after private-key at the top of plugins/Forward-DeathRecap/config.yml.
4. Change the rest of config.yml, messages.yml and the theme to your liking.
5. Restart the server.

A licence key works on one server at a time. To move it to another server, stop the old one first. If the old server crashed, the key is free again after a few minutes.

Players get their first recap and replay the next time they die.