Glyphs

Glyphs are custom characters - emojis, chat tags, icons - added to Minecraft's font through the resource pack. Players type placeholders like :heart: in chat, and they work in any config text too (item lore, GUI titles, any eco plugin). Glyphs are a paid-version feature, since they're delivered through the resource pack.

The paid version ships example glyphs: :heart: (also <3), an animated :spinner:, eight chat rank tags (:king:, :hero:, :god:, ...) locked behind permissions, and the items_gui GUI background.

The paid defaults also include the items_gui Eco Workshop background glyph. %ecoitems_glyph_items_gui% inserts it manually, while /ecoitems gui positions it automatically. Its editable texture is plugins/EcoItems/pack/assets/ecoitems/textures/glyph/gui/items.png.

Making a glyph

  1. Put the texture at plugins/EcoItems/pack/assets/ecoitems/textures/glyph/<name>.png.

  2. Create a config in plugins/EcoItems/glyphs/:

# glyphs/coin.yml
texture: glyph/coin # pack/assets/ecoitems/textures/glyph/coin.png
ascent: 8 # How far above the text baseline the glyph sits
height: 8 # Rendered height in pixels
placeholders:
  - ":coin:"
permission: "" # Optional; empty = everyone
tab-complete: true # Offer :coin: as a chat completion
colorable: false # false renders the glyph white; true lets text color tint it

  1. Run /ecoitems reload.

texture is a [namespace:]path relative to textures/, without the file extension - the namespace defaults to ecoitems, and the shipped glyphs live under textures/glyph/.

Where glyphs work

  • All eco-formatted text: item lore, display names, GUI titles, messages - any config string in any eco plugin. Placeholders there are not permission-checked (the server admin wrote them).

  • Chat: players with the glyph's permission can type :coin: or paste placeholders; without permission the placeholder stays literal, and pasting the raw glyph character renders as a scrambled box. Type \:coin: to write the placeholder literally.

  • Signs: same behaviour as chat.

  • Placeholders: %ecoitems_glyph_<id>% inserts a glyph and %ecoitems_shift_<pixels>% moves text horizontally (see below), everywhere eco placeholders (and PlaceholderAPI) work.

Chat, sign, and tab-complete formatting can each be toggled in pack.yml under glyphs:.

Shifts

Shifts move text horizontally by an exact pixel amount - the building block for custom GUI titles and HUDs. Use the placeholder form anywhere:

# 20px right, then a glyph, then 8px back-left
title: "%ecoitems_shift_20%%ecoitems_glyph_coin%%ecoitems_shift_-8%"

Shifts range from -2047 to +2047 pixels. For plugins building Adventure components directly, the shift characters also live in the standalone ecoitems:shift font.

Stable characters

Each glyph is assigned a codepoint automatically, remembered in plugins/EcoItems/glyph-codepoints.yml so glyphs keep rendering in old chat messages, signs, and item lore across reloads and config changes. Deleting that file re-flows the assignments. To pin a glyph to a specific character, set char: in its config.

/ecoitems glyph <id> echoes a glyph's character back to you - handy in console for copying the raw unicode character into other plugins' configs.

The glyph picker

/ecoitems glyphs (permission ecoitems.command.glyphs, everyone by default) opens a book of every glyph the player is allowed to use - hover for the name and placeholders, click to copy the placeholder to the clipboard (books can't type into chat, so paste it). Glyphs the player lacks permission for don't appear, and show-in-picker: false hides a glyph from the book entirely - useful for oversized glyphs like GUI backgrounds.

Where to go next

  • Animated glyphs: Animated Glyphs for sprite-sheet animations.

  • The pack: Resource Packs for how glyph textures are delivered.

Sprite sheets (multi-bitmap glyphs)

When you have many small glyphs, keep them in one png and let each glyph reference its cell. Glyphs sharing a sheet become a single font provider:

# glyphs/emoji/heart_gold.yml
bitmap:
  texture: glyph/hearts_sheet # the shared png
  rows: 2 # how the sheet is divided
  columns: 2
  row: 0 # this glyph's cell, zero-indexed
  column: 1
ascent: 8
height: 8
placeholders: [":heart_gold:"]

All glyphs on one sheet should share ascent and height (differing values split them into separate providers). Cells no glyph claims stay empty. The shipped heart_gold/heart_blue/heart_green emoji demonstrate a 2×2 sheet.