BubbleChat

Smooth, animated speech bubbles above players when they chat. Word-by-word reveal, auto-sizing, multi-line wrapping, page indicators, mouth animations, custom colors, private RP channels, and a full per-player settings GUI.

Features

Speech Bubbles

• Particle-based bubbles that follow the player smoothly at client frame rate via entity-attached particles
• Word-by-word reveal animation with natural pacing and punctuation pauses
• Auto-sizing across 15 width tiers — bubbles grow and shrink to fit the message
• Multi-line wrapping (1-line, 2-line, and 3-line bubbles) with weighted character width for proper visual fit
• Page system for long messages — splits into up to 3 pages with dot indicators showing current position
• Smooth fade-out animation when the bubble disappears

Mouth Animations (Visemes)

Custom phoneme-based lip-sync animations play on the player model while the bubble is active. Each word triggers a mouth shape based on its starting letter, mapped to 16 distinct mouth positions:

The mouth animation system uses a custom sprite sheet with 16 phoneme positions (Rest, A, O, E/I/U/Y, S/T/D, N, L, R, F/V, H, W, J, K/G, B, M, P) animated via blockyanim files. Each position is registered as its own animation group so transitions between mouth shapes are smooth and immediate.

Animalese Voice

A charming Animal Crossing-inspired voice synthesis system that plays alongside speech bubbles:

• Phoneme-mapped audio — each letter triggers a pitched instrument note based on its phoneme group, creating a unique "voice" per message
• 8 voice types — randomly assigned per player session, each with a distinct pitch range
• Per-player volume control — adjustable from 0% to 200% (default 100%)
• Proximity-based falloff — volume decreases naturally with distance from the speaker
• Per-player mute — mute individual players' animalese audio without hiding their bubbles
• Global toggle — enable or disable animalese entirely from the Voice Settings page

Yell Effect

When a message contains ALL CAPS words (2+ letters) or words ending with !, a scream particle effect plays alongside the bubble for emphasis.

Appearance

• Dark and Light mode bubble backgrounds with per-player toggle
• Custom bubble colors via a full color picker with live HSV/RGB/Hex readouts
• Contrast protection (light mode) — automatically clamps overly-bright colors so white text stays readable, with a WCAG contrast indicator
• Dark mode brightness constraint — colors darkened to minimum 15% brightness to distinguish from the bubble frame outline

Player Color Overrides

Control what colors you see on other players' bubbles, independent of their own settings:

• All Players override — force every player's bubble to one color
• Per-player overrides — set specific colors for individual players
• Priority order: All Players override > Per-player override > Speaker's own color

RP Channels

Private roleplay channels for in-character chat that only channel members can see:

• PIN-based channels — create or join channels with a shared PIN code
• 3 channel slots — save up to 3 channels and switch between them
• Chat prefixes — type rp1, rp2, or rp3 before your message to send to that channel, or pbc to force public
• Dual visibility — optionally show your bubble to everyone (public + channel) while sending [RP] text to channel members
• Switch confirmation — optional confirmation prompt before switching channels via prefix
• Per-channel bubble colors — distinct tint colors for each channel slot, customizable per viewer
• RP cull distance — separate cull distance for channel bubbles (default 10M)
• Yell ranges — separate range settings for yell bubble visibility (default 50M) and yell particle visibility (default 75M)

Visibility Control

• Enable/Disable toggle — turn speech bubbles on or off entirely
• Self-visible toggle — show or hide your own speech bubble
• Hide players — permanently hide bubbles from specific players
• Mute players — temporarily mute with preset durations (5 min to 24 hours, auto-expires)
• Animalese mute — mute specific players' voice audio while still seeing their bubbles
• Cull distance — adjustable from 10M to 200M (default 20M)
• Max bubble count — limit simultaneous bubbles from 1 to 50 (default 10)

Settings GUI

Open with /bchat for the full settings page:

• Enable — On/Off toggle for speech bubbles
• Mode — Light/Dark toggle
• Self Visible — On/Off toggle
• Bubble Color — Color picker with live preview swatch, HSV/RGB/Hex readouts, and Default button
• Cull Distance — Dropdown (10-200M)
• Max Bubbles — Dropdown (1-50)
• Expressions — On/Off toggle for mouth animations
• Player Colors — Sub-page for global and per-player color overrides
• Channels — Sub-page for RP channel management, dual visibility, cull distances, and yell ranges
• Hidden & Muted — Sub-page for managing hidden, muted, and animalese-muted players
• Voice — Sub-page for animalese toggle, volume, and preview
• Reset All — Restore all settings to defaults
• Undo / Redo — Full action history (up to 50 steps)

Commands

Chat Prefixes

Compatibility

• BusyBubble — Full bidirectional priority: speech bubbles clear any active thinking bubble on send, and thinking bubbles won't spawn while a speech bubble is active. When a UI opens, any active speech bubble is also cleared.

Installation

1. Drop BubbleChat-1.6.8.jar into your Mods folder
2. All player settings are per-player via the in-game GUI — no setup required

Server Configuration (Optional)

On first run, BubbleChat creates a bubblechat-config.json in the plugin data directory (Saves/<WorldName>/plugindata/BeyondSmash/BubbleChat/). Server hosts can edit this to customize server-wide defaults:

{
  "defaultBubbleColor": null,
  "rpChannelsEnabled": true,
  "animaleseEnabled": true
}

Known Issues

[AssetUpdate] message on first chat

The first time a player sends a chat message on a server with BubbleChat, they may see 1 [AssetUpdate] log message in chat:

[AssetUpdate] ParticleSpawners: Starting AddOrUpdate

This is a Hytale client behavior, not a bug. The client logs this message whenever a plugin sends custom particle definitions. BubbleChat sends its custom bubble particle configs lazily on first chat (rather than on join), so players who never chat see no messages at all.

This will likely be resolved in a future Hytale update as the game matures past Early Access.

Head rotation animation

Currently, BubbleChat cannot add a subtle "talking" head bob animation while a player speaks. Hytale's animation system uses a Face slot that completely overrides camera-driven head rotation — there is no additive blending mode to layer a small animation on top. This will be revisited if Hytale adds animation blending support in a future update.

Voice chat proximity indicator

There is no server-side API to detect whether a player is in a Hytale voice chat. The native voice system is handled entirely by the C# client. A "voice active" indicator above players would require client-side API access that doesn't currently exist.

Font customization

BubbleChat's text is rendered using the vanilla Nameplate element (the same system that displays player usernames above their heads). This means the font, text color, and text styling are controlled entirely by Hytale's built-in nameplate renderer — there is currently no server-side API to change these properties.

My hope is that Hypixel adds more support for Nameplate customization (text color, font changes, styling, etc.) in a future update. Once that API exists, I'll update BubbleChat to support those features.

Troubleshooting

Players unable to join the server

If some players can't connect and you see texture-related warnings in the server log like:

Texture dimensions are not multiples of 32: SomePlugin/SomeIcon.png (140x140)

This is caused by another plugin on the server having improperly sized textures (PNGs that aren't multiples of 32x32). BubbleChat sends custom particle definitions to each client on connect, which triggers the Hytale client to re-validate all particle textures server-wide — surfacing errors from other plugins that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Fix: Check the warning messages for which textures are flagged — they'll belong to another plugin. Resize those PNGs to multiples of 32x32 (minimum 32x32) and the join issue will resolve.

Texture warnings from vanilla assets

You may also see warnings for Hytale's own thought bubble textures (AppleThought.png, PotatoThought.png, etc.) which are 140x140 — Hypixel's own assets failing their own validation. These are harmless and can be ignored.

This happens because the Hytale client re-validates all particle textures server-wide whenever any plugin sends custom particle definitions, rather than only validating the textures referenced in that specific update. Ideally, Hytale would fix the vanilla texture sizes and scope the re-validation to only the assets being updated — which would also eliminate the [AssetUpdate] log messages on connect.

API — Plugin Integration

Other plugins can trigger speech bubbles programmatically using the BubbleChat API.

Your manifest.json:

"Dependencies": { "BeyondSmash:BubbleChat": "*" }

Usage:

import com.bubblechat.BubbleChatAPI;

// Show a speech bubble above a player
BubbleChatAPI.showBubble(playerRef, "Hello world!");

// Clear/dismiss a player's active bubble
BubbleChatAPI.clearBubble(playerRef);

// Check if BubbleChat is loaded and ready
BubbleChatAPI.isReady();

// Check if a player has bubbles enabled
BubbleChatAPI.isEnabled(playerRef);

// Check if a player currently has an active bubble
BubbleChatAPI.hasActiveBubble(playerRef);

Bubbles triggered via the API use the speaker's own theme settings (color, light/dark mode) and respect all viewer-side preferences (color overrides, mute, hide, cull distance).

Changelog

1.7.1

Fixed

• Bubble backgrounds not showing for other players in multiplayer — particle configs are now sent as a single combined packet per viewer
• Mouth expressions (visemes) not playing — switched to a compatible animation slot that properly supports dynamically registered animations on player entities
• Mouth expressions not appearing on first chat after joining — added a brief delay so the client finishes processing entity/particle setup before animations play
• Yell particle effect not firing — fixed a silent crash caused by accessing world-thread-only data from the scheduler thread
• Text occasionally appearing above the bubble background on first chat — custom color spawner registration no longer sends asset updates during entity spawning
• Yell particle spawners missing for remote players who join after the speaker

Added

• Instant text mode — /bchat text instant toggles word-by-word reveal vs. all words appearing at once

Improved

• Reduced login stutter — particle configs are no longer sent on connect; all asset updates are deferred to first chat
• Single [AssetUpdate] on first chat — all particle spawners, systems, yell configs, custom colors, and mouth animations are merged into one combined packet per viewer

1.6.8

Fixed

• [AssetUpdate] messages no longer appear on join - particle configs are now sent lazily on first chat, so players who never chat see zero asset update messages
• Entity tool props not restoring their scale after the first chat message - scale restoration now applies on every chat, not just the first
• Item entity props (e.g. sword drops) placed via the entity tool never having their scale restored
• Scale restoration is now effectively instant

Credits

• EQNOX — Testing & feedback
• BannerWolf — Testing & feedback
• sai3rina — Testing & feedback
• zenkuro — Testing & feedback
• Matt_97 — Testing & feedback
• WalnutOwl — Testing & feedback
• Joey475574 — Testing & feedback
• AZB — Testing & feedback
• Jalatxe — Testing & feedback
• DontActLikeMe — Testing & feedback