Display entities are neat!
A lot has changed in the Minecraft landscape over the last few years - it's about time we started making use of them. Today we're talking about display entities.
What's a display entity?
I hear you, it's all a bit complicated
In 1.19.4, Mojang added four new types of entity to Minecraft:
- Interaction - an entity that detects when it is interacted with or attacked. Custom hitboxes become possible
- Item Display - envision an invisible item frame, but it isn't a block
- Block Display - essentially allows you to display blocks that aren't there and aren't solid
- Text Display - a more flexible, and performance friendly option for displaying text than armor stands.
These entities opened up a large amount of exciting opportunities for map makers and server developers. People were very quick to create technical demonstrations - everything from working pianos, to smooth opening doors.
What's the appeal?
We know what they are, but why would we use them?
One big reason to adopt display entities is performance. Unlike armor stands, these entities aren't subject to physics processing, and so a lot of them can be used in a small space to create quite intricate designs without slowing down a server.
Another reason would be the flexibility. See one of the things these new entities can do is be scaled, rotated, and manipulated in ways that, up until now, hasn't been possible without using a resource pack or mods.
You might have noticed something strange about the blocks in this article's header - "hang on," you say "those aren't vanilla blocks!" This is an example of display entities in action. As you can see in the close up shot, there are actually a number of entities being displayed and manipulated to form a coherent object.
And all of this works in vanilla Minecraft. No mods. No resource pack.
How can I make some display entities?
They're complex, but there are tools to help out
Working with these entities by hand can be rough going. There's a lot of math involved with the rotation and scaling aspects, but fear not! There are some tools out there that make these powerful new entities slightly easier to deal with.
We've been using Block Display Studio to make the distillery blocks that you saw above. It's free and easy to get started with, plus it gives you the commands you'll need to spawn your monstrosities in your own world.
No doubt you'll be seeing some more display entity work from us soon - we've already got another creation using them to show off, but in the meantime, happy tinkering!