Glyphs and emojis

Pictures that work as characters in chat, names, lore, signs, books and menus. Animated ones too.

A glyph is a small picture used as a text character. Use them for emojis in chat, icons in item lore, ranks in front of names, or whole menu backgrounds.

items/emojis/emojis.yml

smile:
  type: glyph
  texture: smile.png
  height: 9           # pixels tall on screen (default 8)
  ascent: 8           # how far above the baseline it sits (default height - 1)
  chat: true          # players can type :smile: (default true)
  permission: myserver.emoji.smile   # who may use it in chat (default: everyone)

Using glyphs

Where	Write
Names, lore, messages, titles, HUDs	<glyph:smile>, or <glyph:myserver:smile> with a namespace
Chat, signs, books and anvil renames, by players	:smile:

ruby:
  name: "<glyph:gem> <red>Ruby"

Glyphs are always drawn in their own colours. The text colour around them doesn’t tint them.

Animated glyphs

Draw the frames side by side in one image, left to right:

fire:
  type: glyph
  texture: fire_strip.png     # 4 frames next to each other
  frames: 4                   # up to 16
  frame-time: 2t              # how long each frame shows (default 2t, at most 16t)

The pack then ships a small text shader that picks the right frame, so players see it animate wherever the glyph appears.

Each glyph gets a private character that is saved in cache/glyphs.json. Text that is already stored (signs, books, item names) keeps working across restarts because of that file. Don’t delete it.