Chat
Minecraft supports two-way chat communication via the 0x03 chat message packet.
Character Set
Minecraft loads its internal 8-bit character set from fonts.txt in minecraft.jar. Ignoring the first line then stripping newlines, the file lists characters 32-255 in order. It follows ASCII for values under 0x80.
The character set is as follows:
" !\"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\\]^_'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~⌂ÇüéâäàåçêëèïîìÄÅÉæÆôöòûùÿÖÜø£Ø׃áíóúñѪº¿®¬½¼¡«»"
This list encapsulates all characters that are in the fonts file. Characters outside of this are acceptable, but are rendered differently.
Font
Minecraft loads its font from font/default.png in minecraft.jar. Glyphs 0-255 are given, each in an 8x8 area.
Minecraft also provides other font pages, as font/glyph_XX.png, where XX is the hex representation of the first byte of the UTF-16 character. The archive also provides font/glyph_sizes.bin. Glyphs are in-order, a byte a piece. The glyph's width can be ascertained from the expression (byte & 0x0F - byte >> 4). However, the sizes for the first 256 glyphs are *not* correct and the minecraft client generates them on startup.
Control Sequences
The client treats certain two-character sequences specially. The first character must be:
- § (U+00A7) for minecraft
- & for minecraft classic
The following character indicates a certain colour or formatting to apply to the proceeding text.
The Notchian client expects that an escape code in a chat message will be followed by at least one character, and will otherwise crash with a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException. The workaround for servers is to never end a message with a color control character.
Colors
These correspond very roughly to the colors available in ANSI terminals.
e.g.: This is white, but §4this is dark red
| Sample | Code | Common Name | Foreground Color | Background Color | Hexadecimal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R | G | B | R | G | B | ||||
| 0 | Black | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | #000000 | |
| 1 | Dark blue | 0 | 0 | 170 | 0 | 0 | 42 | #0000aa | |
| 2 | Dark green | 0 | 170 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 0 | #00aa00 | |
| 3 | Dark cyan | 0 | 170 | 170 | 0 | 42 | 42 | #00aaaa | |
| 4 | Dark red | 170 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 0 | 0 | #aa0000 | |
| 5 | Purple | 170 | 0 | 170 | 42 | 0 | 42 | #aa00aa | |
| 6 | Gold | 255 | 170 | 0 | 42 | 42 | 0 | #ffaa00 | |
| 7 | Gray | 170 | 170 | 170 | 42 | 42 | 42 | #aaaaaa | |
| 8 | Dark gray | 85 | 85 | 85 | 21 | 21 | 21 | #555555 | |
| 9 | Blue | 85 | 85 | 255 | 21 | 21 | 63 | #5555ff | |
| a | Bright green | 85 | 255 | 85 | 21 | 63 | 21 | #55ff55 | |
| b | Cyan | 85 | 255 | 255 | 21 | 63 | 63 | #55ffff | |
| c | Red | 255 | 85 | 85 | 63 | 21 | 21 | #ff5555 | |
| d | Pink | 255 | 85 | 255 | 63 | 21 | 63 | #ff55ff | |
| e | Yellow | 255 | 255 | 85 | 63 | 63 | 21 | #ffff55 | |
| f | White | 255 | 255 | 255 | 63 | 63 | 63 | #ffffff | |
Styles
Like the color codes above, style escape codes are created by combining § (U+00A7) with one of the following characters. Style codes can be combined (except for "r") to enable multiple effects at once. Using any color codes will reset the current style back to plain (unknown if this is a bug or intended behavior). The "r" plain style code will also reset the current chat color back to white (may also be a bug). The "k" random style code is used for the "§kFUNKY LOL" message in /title/splashes.txt inside minecraft.jar.
| Sample | Code | Style |
|---|---|---|
 |
k | Random |
 |
l | Bold |
 |
m | Strikethrough |
 |
n | Underlined |
 |
o | Italic |
 |
r | Plain White |
