💬 Text Display Dialogue

Your TypeWriter conversations, floating in the world instead of the chat.

A TypeWriter extension by BTC Studio

🎥 Watch the demo

✨ What it does

The extension replaces the chat box of TypeWriter dialogue with Minecraft text displays. The speaker's name and every line of text float next to the NPC (or at a spot you choose), type themselves out and pop in with a short scale animation.

Everything is sent with packets to the player in the conversation: nothing is spawned in the world and other players see nothing, even when ten players talk to the same NPC at once.

The entries work like the regular TypeWriter dialogue entries (speaker, criteria, modifiers, triggers, typing duration, sound). Swap them into a conversation you already have: the rest of your page stays as it is.

🗨️ Spoken dialogue

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• Typed text above the speaker: the name and the text appear one block above the NPC, with the standard TypeWriter typing effect.
• One line per line break: long messages stack downwards, so a paragraph stays readable in the world.
• Natural controls: the confirmation key, or a right-click on the text, completes the typing; a second press moves on. A "click to continue" hint appears once the text is complete.
• Start and end triggers: fire actions when the dialogue appears and when it closes.

🔢 Choices in the world

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• Floating option lines: each answer is its own line, shown one after the other once the question is typed.
• Scroll to choose, right-click to confirm: the player scrolls the hotbar to move the highlight. The held item never changes and the selection wraps around.
• Logic on every option: each option has its own criteria, modifiers, triggers and optional position, so answers can be hidden, locked or placed around the NPC.
• Timed choices: set a timer to cancel the choice after a delay and run cancelTriggers. The countdown can be shown in the text with a placeholder.
• Player-relative menu: a variant follows the player at an offset you set, for speakers with no position in the world (a radio, a narrator, a voice in the player's head).

🎬 Cinematic subtitles

Add text segments to a TypeWriter cinematic timeline: each segment appears with its own delay and typing animation, in front of the camera path, for cutscenes that tell their story without the chat.

🎨 Styling and texts

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• Look: scale, text opacity, view distance, billboard (face the player or stay fixed) and separate background colours for the speaker, the text and the hints.
• Every text is editable: layouts, speaker names, option lines and prefixes, hints and system messages are TypeWriter snippets. Restyle or translate them in plugins/Typewriter/snippets; the defaults reproduce the standard display.
• Clean errors: if a display cannot start, the player gets a short message you control, and the technical details go to the server log only.
• Focus during dialogue: opening an inventory, dropping an item or swapping hands is blocked while a dialogue is shown, and the message shown can be changed or hidden.

🧩 Entries and placeholders

Dialogues

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• textdisplay_spoken: spoken dialogue with text displays
• textdisplay_option: option dialogue with text displays
• textdisplay_player_option: option dialogue placed relative to the player

Cinematic

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• textdisplay_spoken_cinematic: spoken text segments on a cinematic timeline

Placeholder

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• %typewriter_textdisplaydialogue_timer%: seconds left on the current option timer, 0 when none. Registered in PlaceholderAPI, so it also works in scoreboards, chat or other plugins.

🚀 Set up in two minutes

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• Drop the jar in plugins/Typewriter/extensions/ and restart.
• In the TypeWriter web panel, add a Spoken dialogue with Text Display to a sequence that has an NPC, and write its text.
• Link it to an Option dialogue with Text Display, give each option its own triggers, and publish.

Talk to the NPC: the conversation now floats above its head. The full walkthrough is in the documentation.

📋 Requirements

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• TypeWriter 0.9.0-beta-177 or newer
• Paper server (Folia is not supported)
• No other plugin needed: text displays are sent with the packet library bundled with TypeWriter
• Optional: PlaceholderAPI, for %placeholders% in dialogue text