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Message Customisation Reference (messages.yml)

messages.yml holds every player- and console-facing string RTP emits. Edit it to reword, recolour, or rebrand any message. Read it before requesting formatting support: most "can this text be changed?" questions are answered by a single key here.

Apply changes by editing on disk and running /rtp reload, or change one key at runtime with /rtp config messages <key>=<value>.

When a non-English locale is active (see LANGUAGE.md), the translated messages.yml is read from lang/<code>/ instead of this baseline file.

Formatting

Message values accept, in any combination:

Form Example Notes
Bukkit legacy color codes &a, &e, &c Supported on every platform.
Hex color codes #2636ef
MiniMessage tags <gradient:#5e4fa2:#f79459>, <rainbow>, <#rrggbb> Full support on Paper/Folia. On Spigot, gradient/rainbow/transition are expanded to per-character hex; other tags are stripped by the legacy pipeline.
PlaceholderAPI placeholders %player_name% Resolved only when PlaceholderAPI is installed.

Placeholders

  • Shared [Pn] placeholders are defined in the placeholders: list at the top of the file. [P0] is the plugin prefix (a rainbow [RTP] by default) and is reused in nearly every message. Append entries to the list to define [P1], [P2], and so on.
  • Per-message placeholders (e.g. [attempts], [world], [delay], [remainingCooldown], [money], [spot], [filename]) are documented in a comment directly above each message that uses them. Only the placeholders listed for a given key are substituted in that message.

File layout

The file is split into commented sections so related strings stay together:

Section Contents
1. General Configuration The shared placeholders list.
2. Teleportation Player-facing teleport flow: delay, success, cancel, cooldown, lockout, no-locations-queued, queue position, not-enough-money.
3. Time Formatting Unit suffixes for time placeholders (days, hours, minutes, seconds, millis).
4. System & Management Reload, version-mismatch, permission-denied, and management strings.
5. Administrative Logs Console audit / log lines.
6. Scan Command /rtp scan progress and result strings.
7. Info Command /rtp info output.
8 / 8b. Command Descriptions & Menu Framework Help text and the generalized book/chat menu rows, headers, and dividers.
9. PlaceholderAPI Support PAPI-specific strings.
10. Visuals Visualization-related strings.
11. Metadata Internal version marker.
12. Developer Options Developer-facing toggles / strings.

Notes

  • Icon glyphs are intentional. Some values embed single-codepoint UI icons (type-a-value, paginator arrows, run/row markers, the section sign). Preserve them verbatim; do not ASCII-fold or delete them.
  • Locale parity. A custom key added to this baseline must be mirrored into every shipped locale under lang/<code>/messages.yml, or that locale silently falls back to English. See the Translation Guide.
  • Never change version - it is used internally for config migration.