EdgeRender

A Minecraft Bedrock addon that renders glowing edge outlines around selected blocks.

Designed for programmatic use by other addons via RPC + Service Discovery — highlight blocks per-player with smart edge culling.

Features

Per-player outlines — each player sees only their own block selections
Smart edge culling — inner edges between adjacent selected blocks are hidden automatically; only outer edges glow
Glow-through-walls — edges remain visible behind blocks using glow_in_walls material
Lighting independent — emissive texture with ignore_lighting for consistent brightness
Zero-collision entities — outlines don't block movement or interaction
RPC-driven, optionally discoverable — create / remove commands via @mcbe-mods/rpc, auto-discoverable via @mcbe-mods/discover

How it works

EdgeRender spawns invisible entities at each selected block position, using a custom geometry model with 12 edge bones to render only the outward-facing edges. If two adjacent blocks are both selected, the shared edge is hidden automatically.

Block highlighting logic inspired by Utilities-Vein-Miner

Usage

For addon developers

Install the required libraries:

pnpm add @mcbe-mods/rpc @mcbe-mods/discover

Option A: Direct RPC call (quick but risky)

If you know EdgeRender is installed, just invoke directly:

import type { Vector3 } from '@minecraft/server'
import { RPC } from '@mcbe-mods/rpc'

const rpc = new RPC({ namespace: 'edge_render' })

// Show outlines for one or more players
const result = await rpc.invoke<
  { playerIds: string[]; locations: Vector3[] },
  PromiseSettledResult<void>[]
>('create', {
  playerIds: [player.id],
  locations: [
    { x: 10, y: 64, z: 10 },
    { x: 11, y: 64, z: 10 },
  ]
})

// Remove outlines for one or more players
await rpc.invoke('remove', { playerIds: [player.id] })

// Clear all outlines
await rpc.invoke('remove', {
  playerIds: world.getPlayers().map(p => p.id)
})

Caveat: If EdgeRender is not installed, invoke will time out — you can't tell whether the service is missing or just slow.

Option B: Via service discovery (recommended)

Discover the service first, then invoke safely:

import type { Vector3 } from '@minecraft/server'
import { RPC } from '@mcbe-mods/rpc'
import { Discover } from '@mcbe-mods/discover'
import { system, world } from '@minecraft/server'

const discover = new Discover()
const rpc = new RPC({ namespace: 'edge_render' })

// Wait for EdgeRender service to be available
const serviceReady = new Promise<void>((resolve, reject) => {
  const cancel = discover.query('edge_render.service', (event) => {
    if (event.type === 'service-resolved') {
      cancel()
      resolve()
    }
  })
  // Timeout after 10 seconds (200 ticks)
  system.runTimeout(() => {
    cancel()
    reject(new Error('EdgeRender service not found — is the addon installed?'))
  }, 200)
})

try {
  await serviceReady
  const result = await rpc.invoke('create', {
    playerIds: [player.id],
    locations: [{ x: 10, y: 64, z: 10 }]
  })
}
catch (e) {
  console.warn('EdgeRender unavailable, skipping outline:', e.message)
  // Graceful fallback — your addon can still work without outlines
}

Benefit: Discovery confirms EdgeRender is actually running. If not found, you can show a user-friendly message or fall back gracefully, instead of waiting for a timeout.

Development

Prerequisites

Node.js >= 18
pnpm (enable via corepack enable)
Minecraft Bedrock 1.21.80+
@minecraft/server >= 1.18.0

Setup

pnpm install

Dev mode

pnpm dev        # Build, watch, and sync to Minecraft dev folders

Dev mode with sync

pnpm devsync    # Dev mode with auto-sync to development packs

Build

pnpm build      # Build addon package

License

MIT