Building
Tooltips
A Tooltip is the box Minecraft shows when a player hovers an item in their inventory, designed rather than typed: the item's icon in a frame beside its name and rarity, big numbers for damage and speed, a band of requirements, a grid of stats, a card for an ability, a row of gems and a durability bar. The icon and the name can be animated.
It needs Minecraft 1.21.5 or newer, and nothing on the server: no plugin, just the pack and an item that wears the tooltip.
Making one#
Press Add asset, pick the GUI tab, then Tooltip. Either:
- Generate: describe it ("a cursed bone dagger for my RPG server, level 30, poison on hit, a lifesteal set bonus"). Studio writes the words, numbers and colours and picks the blocks. It costs 5 AI Credits and takes a few seconds.
- Blank: start from a ready-made look, free: Mythic Weapon, Legendary, Simple, Spell Scroll, Frost Relic, Potion, Shop Item or Void Artifact. The name you give becomes the item's name on it.
Either way it opens in the editor.
The editor#
The tooltip is shown as the game will draw it, hanging off an inventory slot, moving where it moves. Switch between GUI scale 2, 3 and 4 to see it at the sizes players do. Click any part of it to select its block.
A tooltip is a stack of blocks, top to bottom. Add, reorder, copy and remove them in the Blocks list:
| Block | What it is |
|---|---|
| Header | The icon (any item, one of your pack's textures, a picture of your own or a small symbol), the name, a line under it and a row of stars |
| Big numbers | Up to four large numbers over labels, side by side: damage, speed, a price |
| Stats | A label on the left and its value on the right, in one or two columns |
| Band | A coloured strip with words at each end, for requirements |
| Words | Lines of words, wrapped to the box |
| Divider | A line, dots, or a line that fades at the ends |
| Card | An icon, a title, a line under it and wrapped words: an ability or set bonus |
| Bar | A filled bar with its numbers: durability, mana, charge |
| Gems | A row of diamonds, circles, squares or stars, some filled |
| Space | Empty room |
Words take colour codes: &c colours what follows (&0 to &f, or
&#ff8800 for any colour), &l makes it bold and &r goes back.
Box sets the width (100 to 256 pixels), the padding, the room between blocks, the frame (a band across the top, Minecraft's own rim, a plain rim or none) and the colours. Looks swaps the colours and frame for another ready-made style and keeps your blocks and words.
Edit with AI changes the tooltip from an instruction ("make it a frost dagger", "add a set bonus card"). It costs 5 AI Credits; the change lands in the editor unsaved, so you can keep it with Save or undo it.
Animation#
The header's icon and name can each shimmer, pulse, twinkle, cycle through the rainbow or flicker, at three speeds. The pack's text shader plays it, so it moves in game with nothing sent by the server.
Keep it on screen#
Minecraft picks GUI scale 4 for a 1080p screen, which leaves room for a tooltip about 250 pixels tall. The editor warns you when yours is taller.
In game#
Every Tooltip in a pack ships with it. To hand out an item wearing one:
- Press Sync in the editor with your server linked: the pack goes to you and you are given the item; or
- copy the give command from the editor and run it from the console or a command block. It is longer than chat accepts, so typing it in chat will not work.
The tooltip goes on any item: the give command hands out the one set under Item, and Item components, for a plugin has the same thing as JSON for ItemsAdder, Nexo or any plugin that takes an item's components.
With RP Engine on the server, a custom item can wear one by its
id: tooltip: legendary in the item's YAML. See
A designed tooltip.
How it works#
The picture is drawn into font glyphs that ride the item's lore. The item's own name is left empty and the game's tooltip box is swapped for an empty one, so what a player sees is your picture alone, pixel for pixel. The attribute and enchantment lines the game would add are hidden.
Because the name is empty, the item shows no name above the hotbar when it is picked, and places that print an item's name (an anvil, a death message) show nothing.
Sharing it#
Publish in the editor's header puts it in the Gallery. Anybody can add it to a pack of their own and edit it like any other Tooltip; pictures and pack textures its icons use go with it.