Rich text#

Rich text is text with tags in it. You write the tags inside the string, and the engine draws the result: bold words, coloured names, letters that wave, a tooltip, an item icon. Chat messages, prefixes and speech bubbles are all drawn this way, so anywhere chat takes a string, it takes these tags.

game.chat:system("<color=gold><b>meek</b></color> joined")

A tag that is not one of these is shown as text, so a stray < is never eaten. \< and < are always a plain <; >, &, " and ' work too. Tags close by name: </b> closes the nearest open <b> and everything opened inside it.

Style#

These change how the letters look. They nest, so <b><color=red> gives you bold red text:

A few of them are worth knowing before you reach for the others:

• <color> accepts hex with or without alpha, and the sixteen names the game already uses, so <color=gold> matches vanilla gold exactly.
• <size> is a multiple of the surrounding text's size, so 1.5 stays proportionate inside a small bubble and inside a chat line.
• <font> sets colour, size, face and transparency in one tag, which saves nesting four of them.
• <!-- ... --> is hidden in the drawn message. Use it to leave a note in a string a script builds.

Moving text#

These animate the letters. Each takes strength and speed: <wave strength=2 speed=1>. They stack, so <wave><rainbow> gives you letters that bob and change colour at the same time.

Links and hover#

These make part of a message do something when the player clicks it or points at it:

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<click run="/spawn">spawn</click>          runs a command, or sends the text when it has no /
<click suggest="/msg Meek ">reply</click>  puts it in the chat box
<click url="https://example.com">site</click>   asks before opening
<click copy="ABC-123">code</click>         copies to the clipboard
<click callback="accept">accept</click>    fires game.chat.linkClicked("accept", message)
<hover text="<b>Meek</b> is online">Meek</hover>   a tooltip, itself rich text
<body id=42>Meek</body>                    fires game.chat.bodyClicked(body, message)

• run and suggest are the two chat-box ones: run acts straight away, suggest fills the box and waits for the player.
• url never opens anything by itself. The player is asked first.
• callback is the one to use for your own interface. The click fires game.chat.linkClicked on the client with the name you gave and the message it came from, so one message can carry an accept and a decline that your script tells apart by name.
• <body id=42> fires game.chat.bodyClicked with the body, which is how a name in a message becomes something a player can click to open a profile or a trade.
• The text inside hover is rich text as well, so a tooltip can be bold and coloured.

Pictures#

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<img src="res://icons/crown.png" size="1"/>          size in lines; or width and height
<item id="minecraft:diamond_sword" count="1"/>       the item's icon, with its tooltip on hover

img sizes in lines of text rather than pixels, so a size="1" icon matches the line it sits on. item draws a real Minecraft item, and pointing at it shows that item's own tooltip, count included.

Custom text shaders#

When none of the tags above draw what you want, you can write the drawing yourself. A ChatTextShader names a GLSL file. Text wrapped in <shader=name> is drawn through it:

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world:add("ChatTextShader", { name = "glow", shader = "res://chat/glow.glsl" })
game.chat:system("<shader=glow>LEGENDARY</shader> item found")

The instance's name is what <shader=...> looks for, and shader is the path to the file.

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// res://chat/glow.glsl
vec4 textColor(vec4 color, vec2 uv, vec2 glyph, float time) {
    float pulse = 0.75 + 0.25 * sin(time * 4.0 + uv.x * 20.0);
    return vec4(color.rgb * vec3(1.0, 0.85, 0.3) * pulse * 1.4, color.a);
}

The file defines one function, textColor, and it returns the colour to draw with:

• color is the glyph's colour, which is what the tags around it worked out.
• uv is where on the screen it is.
• glyph is where inside the letter, 0 to 1.
• time is seconds, which is what you drive an animation with.