Cushion Screens!

CushionScreens

Turn a wall of cushions into a working screen. Show static images, animated GIFs, and videos - with synced audio - directly inside your Minecraft world. Load content straight from a URL, control playback like a media player (pause, resume, seek, loop, volume), and pick how many colors the screen can show.

Features

• Images, GIFs, and video - any file FFmpeg/Java's image libraries can read.
• Audio - video playback can stream synced audio to players' game clients (no resource pack needed), with per-command volume control.
• Load directly from a URL - /cushionscreens url <link> downloads and displays an image or GIF straight from the web.
• Up to 176 colors - instead of just the 16 cushion dye colors, the mod can place a different light-emitting block underneath each cushion (copper bulbs in various oxidation stages, a lit furnace, a respawn anchor, crying obsidian, a sculk catalyst, a magma block...) to get extra brightness levels per color. Every screen glows at night by default, even without this.
• Playback controls - pause/resume freeze and continue exactly where you left off (no reloading), loop repeats video/GIF (and audio) forever instead of stopping on a blank screen, seek jumps partway into a video.
• Three scaling modes - stretch to fill exactly, crop to fill without distortion, or fit with letterboxed black bars.
• Survives restarts - a built screen is remembered across server restarts and rejoining; no need to rebuild it.
• Bake - turn a specific image into a permanent, un-managed picture, then build a new screen somewhere else.
• Command hook - other commands/datapacks can check whether something is currently playing via a scoreboard value, e.g. for /execute if score.

Requirements

Getting started

/cushionscreens build <width> <height>

Builds a screen directly in front of you. Put your images/GIFs/videos in the cushionscreens/ folder inside your game/server directory (created automatically on first use), then:

/cushionscreens image cat.png
/cushionscreens gif dance.gif
/cushionscreens video 20 trailer.mp4
/cushionscreens url https://i.imgur.com/abc123.png

Full command list

Attributes

Attributes go after the file/URL (and after audio/targets for video), written as an NBT compound - the same style Minecraft uses for item components:

/cushionscreens video 20 clip.mp4 audio @a {colors:176,loop:true,volume:75,seek:30,scaling:fit}

Colors

Every screen always sits on a lit waxed copper bulb by default (16 colors, glows at night). Higher values trade performance for a wider color range - changing the block under a cushion is much more expensive than just changing its color, so expect more lag at higher color counts, especially on /video and /gif with large screens. Static /image is far less affected since it's a one-time change.

• 16 - default, just the cushion colors.
• 17 - the 16 default colors plus one true black (a black cushion on a non-glowing block, since black on a lit block isn't fully black).
• 64 - adds the 4 copper bulb oxidation stages under each cushion.
• 80 - the 64 above, plus a non-glowing variant for each color.
• 176 - all 11 supported light-level blocks under each cushion.

Scaling

• stretch - fills the screen exactly, may distort the image if its aspect ratio doesn't match the screen.
• crop - scales to fill the screen completely without distortion, cropping whichever edge overflows.
• fit - scales to fit entirely within the screen without distortion or cropping; leftover space is filled with black bars (letterbox/pillarbox).

Bake

/cushionscreens image cat.png {bake:true}

Shows the image like normal, then the mod "forgets" that spot is a screen - the cushions and blocks stay exactly as they are forever, unaffected by /stop, /clear, or future /image//video//gif calls, and aren't tracked for restart persistence. Use this to permanently commit a picture and free up the screen for something else.

Checking playback state from other commands/datapacks

The mod keeps a scoreboard value in sync with whether anything is currently playing:

/execute if score CushionScreens cc_playing matches 1 run say something is playing!

Known limitations

• Only one screen is tracked at a time.
• The color values used for colors:64/80/176/17 are based on real in-game measurements, but may still be refined in future updates.
• Looped audio runs independently from the video loop and isn't explicitly resynced, so very long loops may drift slightly out of sync over time.
• After a server restart, restoring a saved screen can take a little while if the area isn't already loaded (up to ~60 seconds before it gives up).
• /cushionscreens url supports images and GIFs only, not video/live streams.

License

MIT