Creating effects with AI
Describe the effect you want, copy the prompt, and paste the answer into effects.yml.
Writing an arrow effect by hand means knowing twenty-six shapes, forty parameters, five triggers and why a trail is written to a budget a hit is not. You do not have to. The prompt below carries all of it — the step language, the triggers, the budget, the three rules that save an afternoon, and two shipped effects in full — so the only thing left for you is the idea.
Write the idea first
The prompt is only as good as what you put in it. "Something cool" produces something generic; a paragraph produces the effect you pictured. Say:
What it is made of
Real blocks and items, named. MAGMA_BLOCK, BLUE_ICE, ECHO_SHARD. This is what gives an
effect its silhouette — particles are only the light around it.
What the trail does
What comes off the shaft, and what happens to it once it is behind the arrow: it tumbles and burns out, it falls, it orbits, it hangs. One or two small objects, nothing more.
What the impact does
This is the payoff. A ring that flattens outwards, debris thrown up and dropped back, a pillar, a burst. Give it a direction and a size.
Whether landing on a player differs
hit-entity and hit-block are the same moment told apart. Say so if hitting somebody deserves
a different picture to hitting the ground; otherwise one hit answers for both.
Whether the shot leaving the bow shows anything
launch is optional, short and quiet. Most effects skip it — say if you want one.
"An arrow made of ice. The trail leaves two small BLUE_ICE chips behind it, spinning and shrinking,
with a little frost particle glow. On impact a flat PACKED_ICE ring spreads out about a block and a
half, six shards are thrown upwards and drop back, and a sharp cracking sound. On a player, add a
white glow around the shards."
Copy the prompt
Write your idea
The prompt around it is already written — the step language, the limits, and effects that ship. Copy it, paste it into your AI, and paste the answer into effects.yml.
Write the idea in the box, copy the prompt with your idea already inside it, paste it into whichever AI you use, and send it.
Then
Paste the answer into effects.yml
Open plugins/ExyliaArrows/effects.yml and paste the block under arrow_effects:, at the same
indentation as the effects already there. Make sure its category is one that exists.
Reload
/arrowsadmin reload. Every player picking that effect is re-checked against the new catalogue,
so an effect that stops existing is dropped from whoever had it.
Read the console
A step that cannot be read is dropped and printed with the line that caused it. That is your proofreader: if nothing appears, every line was understood.
Shoot it far, and shoot it with company
A trail only shows its cost across a full flight with several archers firing. If four arrows in
the air is enough to notice, raise trail-interval to 2 or cut a step from the trail.
It writes a material that does not exist, or a parameter a shape does not understand, and the console says so. It cannot break the plugin — a bad line is dropped, the rest of the effect still plays — but it can waste an afternoon if you do not read the console. Give the error back to the AI and it usually fixes it in one turn.
The key you paste becomes exyliarrows.effect.<key>, so nobody sees the new effect until they are
granted it. See Permissions.
Everything the prompt knows is documented here too, if you would rather write the effect yourself: Sequences is the full step language, and Effects and categories is the file around it.
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