What is a theme?
A theme is something allowing the user to change the look of MCreator by different elements like images, the color scheme and fonts used by MCreator. It is similar to resource packs of Minecraft, but it is for MCreator and only one theme can be selected currently. If an element in the theme is not changed, MCreator will automatically take the element of the default theme, which is default_dark.
The folder
To create new themes, you will have to add a themes the folder at the base root of the plugin. Then, each theme needs to have its own folder. The name you will give to the folder will be the ID of your theme. It is this ID that will be shown in the drop-down list, on the UI themes panel in preferences.
Icon
If you want to give an icon to your theme for the UI themes panel, you can add a PNG file inside your theme's folder named icon.png. However, this icon is optional and will not cause errors if you decide to not make one.
JSON file
To use your theme, MCreator needs to detect a specific file inside the folder of your theme. This file can be used to define basic values of the theme, re-define the color scheme of MCreator and change the default font. The file has to be theme.json.
Basic properties
Name
(Mandatory) The name of the theme.
Description
(Optional) Explain shortly what is this theme. The description can also be translated by using the texts.properties files. The ID of a theme's description is theme.theThemeID.description.
Credits
(Optional) If someone helped you to create something in the theme, you can give him the credit here.
Version
(Optional) The version of your theme
ColorScheme
A color scheme is an optional object, inside the theme.json, defining the look of MCreator in general. This object contains only the 5 main colors used by the software and the possibility to override the interface accent color selected by the user. In addition, a color scheme can also define the style and colors of the Blockly panels and the code editor, if files are inside the theme.
JSON file object
These parameters are the 6 parameters the colorScheme object can take inside the theme.json. All colors have to be in a hexadecimal format and follow this template0x...... (each .is a letter or a number).
BackgroundColor
Background of UI panels
AltBackgroundColor
Background of components (e.g. text fields, checkboxes and sound selectors)
SecondAltBackground
Second background color used (e.g. workspace background)
ForegroundColor
Color used for most texts
AltForegroundColor
Secondary text
InterfaceAccentColor
(Optional) Overrides the interfaceAccentColor defined by the user in preferences.
Style files
The style folder contains the CSS file defining colors used by the Blockly panels. This folder can have the XML file changing colors of the MCreator's code editor.
Fonts
A theme can also change the 3 fonts of MCreator. However, if fonts are not defined, MCreator will use the default fonts from the default dark theme.
Default font
The default font will always be used with a language having problems with some languages. This font needs to be installed by default on all OS types. For example, in the normal MCreator, when a user selects an Asian language, MCreator will use the "Sans-Serif" font for these languages because the normal font has problems with these languages. However, you can also decide to use this default for the secondary font by setting to true the parameter.
Secondary font
Although the name describes it as secondary, this font will be used everywhere, except in the console, by all languages using alphanumeric characters, like English, French or Spanish. To use a custom font, you need to rename your TTF file secondary_font.ttf and place it inside a fonts folder. However, if you want to use a font from the OS, you can use the default font and add a boolean parameter useDefaultFontForSecondary in the theme.json. Then, set its value to true.
Console font
The console font is used for the console and can only be a custom font. You have to rename it for console_font.ttf and place it inside a fonts folder.
Example
Default dark
The following example is the theme.json of the MCreator's default dark theme.
{
"name": "Default Dark",
"colorScheme": {
"secondAltBackgroundColor": "0x1e1e1e",
"backgroundColor": "0x323232",
"altBackgroundColor": "0x505050",
"altForegroundColor": "0xc2c2c2",
"foregroundColor": "0xf5f5f5"
}
}Second example
The following JSON file is an example of a file defining all parameters.
{
"name": "Second Example",
"description": "A second example for the Wiki page",
"credits": "My dog",
"version": "1.0",
"defaultFont": "Calibri",
"useDefaultFontForSecondary": true,
"fontSize": 13,
"colorScheme": {
"backgroundColor": "0x323232",
"altBackgroundColor": "0x505050",
"secondAltBackgroundColor": "0x1e1e1e",
"foregroundColor": "0xf5f5f5",
"altForegroundColor": "0xc2c2c2",
"interfaceAccentColor": "0xf5f5f5"
}
}Images
As Minecraft resource packs, you can change the images of MCreator, by adding an image with the same name and inside the same folder. Images need to be placed inside a images folder. To get the exact names of each image folder and image, you can check the default dark theme here, the theme containing all images. If you want to change only one image, it is possible. MCreator will get images from the default dark theme.