Hello CubeCrafters!

We're changing things up, starting fresh in 2026. CubeCraft Monthly content posts will no longer happen. We intended for CubeCraft Monthly content drops to occur at the start of every month, with content released at that time. We've released all the minor content we wanted, and we're now getting to the bigger long-term content drops, which means some months might not have big updates.

But we still want to give you a monthly post. Introducing CubeCap! - An end of month recap of updates, events and other miscellaneous announcements to share with you. All your news in one place!

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Now we all know the Free for All Nether map is not the most loved map. So it's time to put its flame. But we don't want to remove a map without adding a new one. Introducing Overworld! - Using the foundations of Nether, we've ripped the roof off and converted it into an Overworld paradise. Available on Java & Bedrock, check it out!

We've also added the Free for All "Deeps" map from Bedrock to Java. Java is getting 2 new FFA Maps!

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We're making a change to Java Map Rotations, we're stopping them - Instead, all of the maps from the past rotations, plus extras are now active in the map selections for everyone to play! Have fun.

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Our CubeCraft League is hosting its 3rd Tournament, and sign-ups will open very soon. Get a team ready, as you'll need to sign up on 7th February 19:00 GMT. The Tournament games are EggWars on both networks, the tournament starts 7 days after sign-ups: 14th February. Have the chance to win epic rewards!

Merry Christmas CubeCrafters!

It's that time of year around, Christmas Time! - And we have a packed December for you. Snowman Survival is back, Christmas Maps are active, and there's a beautiful Christmas Markets Hub with a Build-the-Snowman Hunt. Read below to learn more.

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For 2025, we went stunning! - Throughout this Cubemas event, our main hub is a Town Square with Christmas Markets! - You'll even find little helpers throughout the Markets. Check it out!


Once again, Cubit requires your attention. Behind spawn, you'll find an incomplete Snowman. You must find the hidden items and rebuild him! Around our hub, there are 20 Snowman-themed items. Every five you collect, the Snowman will rebuild. Be sure to speak with Cubit to review your progress. - If you rebuild the Snowman, you'll get a Hat as a reward!

Hello CubeCrafters!

Wow, it's November already, 2025 is going so fast! - But that means it's time for another content drop. This month, we've added something we've wanted for so long on CubeCraft, and we're extremely excited to share it with you. Introducing Wardrobe Cosmetics + a Limited Time Mode for Pillars of Fortune - Read below to learn more!

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We've just dropped some brand new cosmetic types onto our Bedrock network. Wardrobe cosmetics have landed, adding Hats, Backswag, Gloves & Costumes. We've also added more advanced Shoes.

Available on our Bedrock network, we've added 5 of each type. Each animated and some even have specific actions, if you're running, sneaking or flying!

You can find our Wardrobe cosmetics currently in the middle of our hubs, in our loot menu or via /wardrobe + Gift Editions available too!

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Available for a limited time, we've merged both Pillars of Fortune and Lucky Islands together! - Giving you Lucky Pillars. Rather than a pillar of Bedrock, you'll be placed on a pillar of Lucky Blocks, take the chance and break it away if you dare! - You can also vote to enable or disable items being given to players, as well as the Lucky Block mode: Normal, Blessed & Overpowered.

Hello CubeCrafters!

Welcome back to Behind the Cube! We've been on hiatus for a while and been busy cracking out other updates over the last few years, but today I want to step back a couple years to our 1.19 server update. This was our biggest, most ambitious update we've ever performed on the network. This has allowed us to deliver far more feature-complete updates across both networks simultaneously, and completely transformed our developer experience.

This edition will dive deep into the internals our server update to 1.19, some the challenges that we encountered during our migration, and some spicy changes we’ve made on the tech side that have greatly improved our updating process. This is a juicy one, so grab a bowl of popcorn and let’s dive right in!

The 1.19 1.18 update…?

As many of you may be aware, we initially communicated our goals of updating the network to 1.19 waaaaay back in September of 2022, however in actuality, work began far earlier, prior to 1.19 even being released. Updating nearly 10 Minecraft versions was no easy feat, and required a lot of background planning and backend work.

For a bit of background…​

Previously, our server platform was running on a 1.9.2 Spigot jar we updated to 1.12 and modded Bedrock support into back in 2021. Some of you may recall our Translator system we discussed in our [Feelin’ Lucky] Behind the Cube which sat on top of our BungeeCords. This system allowed us to support Bedrock Edition users on our existing Java infrastructure.

As we grew throughout 2020 and 2021, it became a major technical challenge for us to maintain as we started implementing native Bedrock features that are now integral to our server, such as resource packs, custom entities and custom items / blocks. We decided to go the route of removing the Translator, and turning our Java server into a full-on Bedrock server.

Moving away from our Translator proved to have a large number of benefits, including reducing player latency by 50ms - 100ms across the board. However, this came with the downside of maintaining a significant amount of code in our server software.

Updating to 1.18…​

Rather than going the route of updating our 1.9-but-really-it-was-actually-1.12-server jar to 1.18, we decided to start fresh by forking Paper 1.18. The first commits to our new CubeTap project (internally known as CubeTap Junior) were in March of 2022.



The first few months of work primarily revolved around getting our new CubeTap version up to speed with our 1.12 version. We also took the opportunity to redesign core parts of our Bedrock support, such as moving to Bedrock’s server-authoritative inventory system, implementing chunk caching, and adding proper custom blocks. We also added new APIs to integrate nicely with these systems.

If you want to hear more about how we added Bedrock support into our server, implemented custom items, entities and blocks on both Java and Bedrock, let us know!

Click to expand...

Updating CubeCraft!

Much of the work to update the CubeCraft codebase began in July of 2023. For those of you who have worked with Spigot or Paper before may know that in 1.13, there were massive, backwards-compatible breaking changes in the Bukkit API. The internal NMS code also saw major changes, going from being heavily obfuscated to fully deobfuscated using Mojang’s code mappings. Additionally, from 1.13 - 1.18, huge amounts of the server code was rewritten.

While most of these changes were positive, essentially most anything using NMS was going to break (and boooyyy did we use a lot!) and most all 1.13+ Bukkit plugins were going to no longer be functional.

After some time, the first project we completed updating was GameFramework, which is one of our core frameworks that all our games are built on top of.


Getting GameFramework to work was a massive milestone and meant that within a short period of time, we could actually start testing CubeCraft code on 1.19!

Within just a few weeks from this point, we had many of our other core libraries updated, such as Loot, Armoury, Play Again, etc. and by early August, had a version of Survival Games running for Java Edition


At the speed things were going, it looked as if we were going to have 1.19 out by December, just in time for our 10th anniversary! Right? Right..? Well, we’ll see… let’s not get too ahead of ourselves

What did we want out of this update?

As work continued to get all our code updated to 1.19, a question arose: what did we want to get out of this update?

I think the obvious answer everyone arrived to was: offer new features and to build potential for future content. While these are and have always been at the root of any content update at CubeCraft, we were starting to see major technical debt problems arise on our existing network.

At the time, our codebases for both Java and Bedrock were very disjointed. We maintained four separate Git branches for each project:

• production - Contains all code live on our Java Edition server
• production-mco - Contains all code live on our Bedrock Edition server
• master - Contains all code live on our Java Edition development server
• master-mco - Contains all code live on our Bedrock Edition development server

This is on top of the fact that some of our core libraries had separate versions for games using GameFramework and ones not yet migrated. This meant that there were not only 4 branches, but 8.

This ultimately meant that if a bug fix was found in team handling for instance that was present on both Java and Bedrock, that would mean a commit fixing the issue would need to be pushed to eight branches (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Also at the time, our update process typically involved us writing the code for Java Edition first, testing it, and then merging it into our Bedrock branches, often encountering multiple merge conflicts, then updating or removing any features not relevant to Bedrock, and testing again. This is also the reason that in times past, we often released all major content updates for Java first (or even exclusively in some cases), then later Bedrock. This made any major update incredibly cumbersome and often led to very "Java-first" updates that disregarded features on Bedrock.

Since we were already making major technical changes, we decided now would be the best time to reconsider how we conducted our updates on a technical side.

Modularising the code

Shortly after getting Survival Games functional on our Java Edition development network, @ rubik_cube_man, @ Alemiz, @ Austin Mayes and I sat down and discussed plans on how we wanted to approach this problem. We decided that modularising the code was the best approach, creating a common module for all common code, then separate java and bedrock modules for features that vary for each platform. Rather than maintaining 4 branches, we would only need 2: one for production code and one for development code.

We then pitched the idea to the rest of the dev team and decided on a course of action.


Modularising all our Bedrock and Java code together essentially meant that all updates we did would only ever need to be written once, rather than one time for Java, then tested, then updated in bits and places for Bedrock (or in some cases like MinerWare, substantially), then tested again, then finally released. We could instead streamline the process and do simultaneous testing on both platforms, allowing greater flexibility between updates and the ability to offer much more content. These changes also meant that general bug fixes in the game logic only needed to be written once, rather than individually for each platform.


While the results of this modularisation have been incredibly beneficial for us today, it took us a long time to get there. There was a large amount of scope creep, unexpected challenges and many, many delays.

Delays and challenges…

As we began to modularise our codebase and integrate everything together, we began to realize that many of our core libraries needed massive rewrites to cooperate well with both Java and Bedrock, or needed to be rewritten from the ground up. Systems such as our menu library, game voting system, loot, and other similar systems needed massive overhauls.

Here is a quick look at how we now create menus on our network now using the UI library we wrote as part of this migration:

Hello CubeCrafters!

Spooky season is here! In this CubeCraft Monthly October post, there's a lot of content for you to check out. Read below to learn more.

As a side note, if you join our Java network during our Halloween event, you'll get a free Halloween Cubelet. These are also now available while playing games during the event!

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For this Halloween Event, the main hub has undergone a massive change. It's been transformed into a Pale Garden Forest! - It's dark, creepy and full of scary Creaking. Explore, have fun and keep an eye on the Creakings...


Along with the new hub, as usual, a hunt is present. On Java, 20 Pumpkins have been hidden, find them for an awesome Hat & Points. On Bedrock, 30 Trick or Treats have been hidden throughout the hub. Find them all, discover if they are Tricks or Treats, and unlock a fantastic Win Effect!

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New Halloween maps have been added for our 2025 event, with the classics returning. Check them out below!