EdgeRender

A Minecraft Bedrock addon that renders glowing edge outlines around selected blocks. Designed for programmatic use by other addons via IPC — highlight blocks per-player with smart edge culling.

Block highlighting logic inspired by Utilities-Vein-Miner

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
• IPC-driven — simple create / remove commands via @mcbe-mods/ipc

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.

Usage

For addon developers

Install the IPC library:

pnpm add @mcbe-mods/ipc

Then call EdgeRender from your addon:

import type { Vector3 } from '@minecraft/server'
import { IPC } from '@mcbe-mods/ipc'
import { world } from '@minecraft/server'

const ipc = new IPC({ namespace: 'edge_render' })

// Show outlines for one or more players
const createResult = await ipc.invoke<
  { playerIds: string[], locations: Vector3[] },
  PromiseSettledResult<void>[]
>('create', {
  playerIds: [player.id],
  locations: [
    { x: 10, y: 64, z: 10 },
    { x: 11, y: 64, z: 10 },
  ]
})
for (const result of createResult) {
  if (result.status === 'rejected') {
    console.warn(result.reason)
  }
}

// Remove outlines for one or more players
const removeResult = await ipc.invoke<
  { playerIds: string[] },
  PromiseSettledResult<void>[]
>('remove', {
  playerIds: [player.id]
})
for (const result of removeResult) {
  if (result.status === 'rejected') {
    console.warn(result.reason)
  }
}

// Clear all outlines (equivalent to the old clearAll)
const clearResult = await ipc.invoke<
  { playerIds: string[] },
  PromiseSettledResult<void>[]
>('remove', {
  playerIds: world.getPlayers().map(p => p.id)
})

Development

Prerequisites

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

Setup

pnpm install    # Install deps & auto-generate manifest.json

Dev mode

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

Changes are synced to development_behavior_packs/edge_render and development_resource_packs/edge_render.

Build

pnpm build      # Package into .mcaddon

Output: pack/edge_render-0.0.1.mcaddon

License

MIT