The aim of this plugin is to add both novelty and a hint of strategy to Minecraft chat.
Think back to the Starwars or Lord of the Rings movies and some of the dialog between the characters. On occasion you'll see two discussing something in a language other than English (with subtitles below) or with one speaking English, the other something different, and yet they both understand each other. This plugin attempts to emulate this sort of atmosphere: all without the need for learning and memorizing constructed languages.
The uses for this plugin may not appeal to all, but others (such as RP'ers) may find it to their liking as an added element for gameplay on their server. A group of friends could share similar skins and have their own race of elves, androids, vampires, etc. Having their own language to go with it might be the icing on the cake!
The plugin is still somewhat early in its development with more features being planned. If you're curious, check it out on my Github page here: https://github.com/F1shb0ne/ChatMunger
Once you run the plugin for the first time, it will create a skeleton folder for where all your languages will go, and ExampleLang to use as a template. Be sure to make a copy/rename ExampleLang to something different, as that name will never be used.
There are two text files that serve as a dictionary for each 'language' your server will have. The first is a list of your made-up words (one per line), and the second is a word association file: a word you want to substitute followed by a word you make up that will always be used.
The way the chat munging works is that the made-up words you give it are categorized by word length. As the plugin processes a player's /speak command, it replaces each word with a randomly chosen word of the same length in the dictionary. Priority is first given to the association file; it will try to match the original word with one in that list, otherwise it will randomly choose from the plain word list. If there is a word of a length that cannot be found in the dictionary, it will find a smaller word to substitute instead. So for example a 12-letter word in the original message might be replaced with a 10-letter word in the dictionary.
The 'look and feel' of the language will only be as good as what you give it. A small wordlist or one filled with unimaginative vocabulary will quickly show to your players, so be creative! There's loads of inspiration to be found on the net in case you're stumped on what to use: there's plenty of individuals out there who have miticulously created dictionaries for languages like orcish, elvish etc, on the net.
There will be bugs and I will fix them as I find them and when I can, so if anyone does find a problem send me a PM. As mentioned earlier, the source is publically available, so if you encounter a problem see if it is the result of a bug in my code. Bug reports are always welcome ("It doesn't work" doesn't help; please be concise) and bug fixes are even better! I will be sure to give credit in the release notes.
To view a list of all known languages on the server, the player types /langinfo. Any languages the player knows will be in blue, as opposed to red indicating they don't. To get more information about a specific language, the player can type /langinfo [language].
To start using a language, the player types /lang <language>, and then may use /speak <message>. An administrator will need to get the ball rolling by either using using /givelang to instantly give one or more players some languages, or doing it on themselves and using the slower /teachlang method as a player would.
