Is it possible to toggle Resource Pack elements for players?

[vernal heath]

Context: I want the appearance of the armour bar to change with the armour material equipped

Alternatives:

• Using a display entity with interp for this element in Paper/Spigot and modifying it, while hiding the HUD element entirely with the resource pack
• Using the XP bar, etc. (other components) for this as they won't be in use
• Switching the resource pack entirely for the player ❌ Bad solution

Requirements:

• Without armour, no armour bar is shown ✅ Vanilla
• With iron chestplate, the armour bar is blue
• With netherite chestplate, the armour bar is orange with a different number of icons (same "progress"/"size")

Using:

• Paper/Spigot (so a solution relying on these is ideal - but a generic "method" is even better!)

[mortal jasper]

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[cloud rune]

vanilla shaders would be able to do this.

[vernal heath]

including changing the shape of them, not just the colour? i'd be interested in a guide for that if you have one, not touched shaders but im curious about guis

[quasi dune]

Inherently if something exists you can use shaders to screw with it in some way probably

It’s just as you get to things that are more inherent to the game working as it is the harder it is to screw with them in a way that works effectively on everything

GUI elements are especially bad if you don’t know what you are doing with shaders

For one simple reason actually

GUI scale

[vernal heath]

did find an ancient datapack/resource pack now that did this by hiding the armor outright and sending to action bar with a custom font (of icons)

doesn't feel like a great solution though, very inefficient and means i cant use action bar if i need to - and not sure it works with varying widths anyway

i will look into shaders but if they're that complex might have to try another way

[leaden gust]

its either shaders or using actionbar and fonts unfortunately

which i really need to learn

[vale mantle]

Actually, not sure if vanilla shaders can react to you changing your armor.
The shader is very limited on what it knows but very powerful when it comes to changing something

And gui elements are solely rendered by core shaders, which know the fewest information

And it’s hard to send into to the armor bar rendering shader since you can’t modify the armor bar at all and different armors don’t do so uniquely

TL;DR
You are better off using the action bar

[vernal heath]

being that the server is spigot, is it not possible to do something like send a 1 tick ui element and use this to determine which one? - or prevent it rendering outright so its smooth

[vale mantle]

Don’t think you can send that information to the shader, also not using a plugin but I'm not sure, there are very cursed packets

[cloud rune]

You can use different particle colors to display the change to the shader

[vale mantle]

Yea no, that way you can only react to it using a post shader

And iirc all Post shaders Start behind the gui

So they don’t affect the armor bar

[vale mantle]

Atleast transparency does

[vernal heath]

how about hijacking the exp bar as it isnt used in this gamemode and can be modified in spigot?
progress = fullness of bar
level = which type of bar to use (i believe i'd only need 2 backgrounds and 2 foregrounds, that i can tint the colour of)

that works for my use if its a feasible way to do it

[vale mantle]

that could work but writing the shader will still be a lot of work

and if you don't know how to write shaders then that's a long learning process for that effect

I've been making vanilla shaders on and off for quite some time now and i would need to experiment a lot before having something resembling what you need

[vernal heath]

i did poke around the shaders and make some prototypes, was able to achieve a little offhand map -> minimap, think ill be able to achieve it so ill go the xp route

appreciate the help and did find some great resources by searching around here

ill put it together maybe later today, could post the final result here if its useful to anyone?

[vale mantle]

sure

if it's something to show, consider putting it into #1112960948655902751

[vernal heath]

neat, thanks for pointing that out 👍

didnt get around to it cus busy with uni work but ill be sure to put it there when i get to it, could be a useful thing to just swap in images and locations on screen

[mortal jasper]

:white_check_mark: Closed Question

Closed the channel and marled it as resolved!
If you have more questions feel free to ask them in a new channel!