Text Display Tutorial

A text_display tutorial for the general use and the issues I have struggled with using them in my worlds.

World Download

mcstacker command generator

transformation visualizer

0:00 Intro
1:12 Basics (bold, underline, fonts, color, etc)
3:33 Background (color, opacity)
5:38 Rotation
7:10 Multiple text (how to remove, modify, and select)
11:40 Transformation (Scale and motion)
15:04 Gneiss cat

[brutexx]

Thank you for the tutorial! :D

EDIT: Small correction! At 3:18, at least in version 1.20.4 there needs to be two backslashes, not one! So it's \\n in order to have a line breaker.

[NedJeffery]

Mojang: "Lets use 1 system to colour text, and a completely different system to colour the background. That won't be confusing at all, will it?".

[doktormozg]

Props to minecraft devs for creating such advanced dev commands which only a small portion of players would ever use - love it

[wChris_]

Its important, you only add FF to the front, if the left most hex digit is 8 or more, else add 00.
Alternatively you can ask either google itself to convert the hex number or search for any hex to decimal converters online, and pick one you like. But make sure to use the 2s complement result!

[griffinrupe]

This is a fantastic guide and definitely makes this easier to learn for beginners, but even still that Gneiss Cat stuff looked like straight up magic

[mosendew]

I was one of the people who asked for this, I was so happy when you responded and am so happy that you actually made it! This is so helpful, thank you. There is so little information out there for post-1.16 Minecraft commands

[META_Tommy]

theres a new field for display entities in 1.20.2 called teleport_duration which lets u animate display entities without having to use transforms. when you teleport the entity itll just take X amount of ticks to go there, with X being whats set in the teleport_duration field. it works with rotations too which is especially useful cus it feels like u need a degree in linear algebra to use the transformation rotations q.q

this can be better option for translation than using transforms since the game will stop rendering the display if the entity location is too far away

[isobarkley]

surprisingly convoluted and incredibly customizable. bravo devs

[aspectreishauntingeurope]

Hey! At 8:04 the possibly confusing behavior is actually text nodes "inheriting" the styles of previous nodes, if they don't have a style set. This is probably so that if you want to make a red message with clickable elements and such, you don't need to specify the color over and over again. If you want to read more about this format and how it works, google "minecraft wiki raw json text format". I would have inserted a link, but youtube deleted my previous comment when I tried to do so :^(

[Thermo_D]

I will say, even though it can seem more complicated, /data modify is SUPER useful for transformations, (if you aren't trying to do interpolation). You can change 1 "value" at a time, but you can do it arbitrarily or from another entity! I've used it to literally copy the entirety of one display entity to another. And instead of trying to remember not to screw with 1 value while changing another, you have to do each value separately, so like /data modify entity whatever transformation.scale[0] set value 5f will just change the X scale, rather than having to define all of them all at once every time. It is a little odd using "." instead of brackets, but man is it useful to not have to worry about other things.

[Paint_The_Future]

I used text display entities to create a post-game scoreboard for one of my maps. It looks so good!

[Wyattporter]

I used to be a lot more proficient with Minecraft commands, and I think it kind of got away from me with the addition of stuff like execute. Thanks for this video!

[verycoolipromise]

i hope Gneiss Cat is able to return from their adventure one day

[coolvin]

This proves Minecraft is a better markdown language than HTML.

[liukrast]

Just for those who tried to put \n in their text component. You actually need to put \\n ... cause minecraft wont automaticly understand what a single \ is meant to do!

[greebler]

i'm very lucky to have found your content, it's genuinely been some of the most useful minecraft-related content out there! please keep up the great tutorials!

[_marshP]

I actually needed this, but I never expected it to come from you!
Thanks!

[lightningbolt]

For the issue you talked about with defining one thing as bold or a certain color turning everything else that color, it might be because the first piece of text is counted as the default for the rest. For example, in a tellraw command, using [{“text”:”First “, ”color”:”gold”}, {“text”:”Second”}] would make both words gold, despite the fact that only the first is defined as gold, but using [{“text”:”First “}, {“text”:”Second”, ”color”:”gold”}] would make the first word white and the second gold.

In the case of three or more, only the _first_ word is counted as default, it doesn’t carry over from the text behind it.

[TheKdlvt]

0:47 - As tech support, Gneiss' complete lack of adblock gives me anxiety. As a website manager, it also warms my heart. I just genuinely wish phishing ads like that weren't so prevalent.

[Fiopon]

hey, for the issue you have with formatting carrying over, if you want to go back to default text, add "reset":true and then add any other modifications you want. its easier than having to unset bold, color, italics and everything else.

i think this is less so a bug and more so a holdover from the past.
in the past, colors and formatting codes did not use json objects, but rather used the section symbol followed by a character. this would apply the formatting to whatever follows it. I believe that in order to keep everything looking the same as in the past, they have json objects copy this old flaw