RapidLeaf-Fall

RapidLeafFall makes chopped-down trees disappear the way they should — fast, but smooth. When a player breaks the last log holding up a canopy, the disconnected leaves fade away after a short, slightly random delay instead of lingering for minutes like vanilla. No more floating leaf blocks, and no lag spikes.

It uses only the stable Bukkit/Paper API — no NMS, no reflection, no version-locked internals — so the same build runs across the whole 1.21 line on both Paper and Leaf.

Features

Fast but smooth decay — each leaf is removed after its own random delay, so big trees melt away gradually instead of popping in a single frame.

Zero lag — removals are spread across ticks with a configurable per-tick cap. A whole canopy is never deleted in one tick.

Vanilla-accurate — a leaf only decays when it is genuinely disconnected from a tree (its vanilla distance reaches the decay threshold). Living trees are never touched.

Every leaf type — oak, spruce, birch, jungle, acacia, dark oak, cherry, mangrove, azalea and flowering azalea are all supported through the Bukkit leaves tag, so new leaf types keep working automatically.

Respects player builds — persistent (player-placed) leaves are left alone by default.

Drops or clean removal — drop leaf loot via breakNaturally(), or simply clear the leaves to air.

Multi-world — enable everywhere, or whitelist only the worlds you want.

Protection-friendly — listens at monitor priority and ignores cancelled breaks, so it never fights WorldGuard or other land-protection plugins.

Requirements

Paper or Leaf 1.21.x (targets 1.21.11), running on Java 21+.

Installation

Drop the jar into your server's plugins/ folder and restart. A default config.yml is generated under plugins/RapidLeafFall/. Edit it as you like, then run /rlf reload.

Configuration

Every option lives in plugins/RapidLeafFall/config.yml:

• radius — block radius around a broken log scanned for decaying leaves (default 7).
• min-decay-delay / max-decay-delay — each leaf is removed after a random delay in this range, in ticks (defaults 10 / 60).
• blocks-per-tick — safety cap on leaves removed per tick (default 64).
• check-diagonal-leaves — propagate decay through diagonal neighbours too (default true).
• ignore-persistent-leaves — never decay player-placed leaves (default true).
• drop-items — drop leaf loot, or clear to air when false (default true).
• decay-effects — play vanilla break particles and sound on decay (default false).
• enabled-worlds — world whitelist; leave empty to enable everywhere (default []).
• debug — verbose console logging (default false).

To flatten the load on very large trees, lower blocks-per-tick or raise max-decay-delay.

Commands and permissions

• /rlf reload — reload the configuration.
• /rlf status — show current settings and the pending queue size.

The alias /qld also works. All subcommands require the permission rapidleaffall.admin (default: op).

How it works

A log break fires a block-break event (after protection plugins have had their say). Nearby leaves are scheduled for a check, each with its own random delay. When that check runs, the leaf's vanilla distance is read; if it is no longer supported by a log, the leaf is removed and its neighbours are re-checked. The decay cascades outward exactly like vanilla — just much faster — while the per-tick cap keeps the server smooth.

Made by ZiTr_ · released under the MIT License.