Name: DialogForge | Menus, Not Chest GUIs
Brand: zArrowTan Resources
SKU: 90
Price: 6.29 USD
Availability: InStock

📜 DialogForge
Write YAML in menus/, players get a real screen, not a chest GUI.
By zArrowTan, part of Arrow Plugins.

📋 Overview

Every menu on your server is a chest. Nine slots across, an item for every option, and a paragraph of text squeezed into item lore. DialogForge uses Minecraft's own Dialog system instead: a real screen with a title, a content area that reads like a page, buttons that look like buttons, and input fields that take typing.

Write a YAML file, get a menu. Four working ones are written out on the first start, so /guide, /rules, /settings and /staffguide all work before you have changed anything.

The shipped rules menu

An acknowledgement the player has to click before it closes

Spoiler: More of the shipped menus

The appeals page of the rules menu

The settings menu, chat page

The settings menu, notifications page

The settings menu, privacy page

🧩 Requirements

No plugin dependencies. Drop the jar in and go.

Paper 1.21.7 build 17 or newer, up to the current 26.x
Java 21
Players need a 1.21.6 or newer client

Paper only. Spigot, Bukkit and Purpur have no Dialog API, so they cannot run this. That is a limit of the server software rather than the plugin.

📂 Menus, Pages and Categories

Every file in the menus folder is a menu, subfolders included, and a menu's id is its path. Copy one of the shipped files, change the command and the pages, and you have your own.

The shipped guide menu

The same menu further down, with its navigation at the bottom

A page inside it, opened from the list

Pages can sit under other pages. Give one a parent and it is drawn indented beneath that category, and only while that branch is the one being read, so a menu with fifty pages still shows a list of ten
Every branch open at once is one setting away if you would rather show the whole tree
A page can carry its own title, so the top of the screen changes as a player moves between categories

🎨 Two Layouts

Stacked is the default and needs no setup at all: content on top, categories as buttons in a grid below, close button in the footer.

Panel draws the categories and the content as text rather than buttons, which is the only way to get them side by side. On its own it lists the categories above the content and needs nothing installed. Turn alignment on and the categories become a left hand column with the text beside them.

Both modes read exactly the same menu file, so switching between them changes nothing you have written.

The aligned column is measured from the whole menu rather than what is on screen, every subcategory counted, so opening a branch never shifts it. It needs a small font that DialogForge writes out for you on first start, either as a zip to serve yourself or merged straight into an ItemsAdder pack you already send.

🖼 Backgrounds

A menu can be drawn on a picture. Drop a PNG into the backgrounds folder, declare it, and name it from a menu or from a single page, so one category can carry its own art.

Code

backgrounds:
  guide:
    image: 'guide.png'
    width: 400
    offset: -20

Any size of image works. DialogForge resizes it and cuts it up for you
Set the width and the height follows your image's shape, set both and it stretches, set neither and it is drawn at a sensible default
The offset moves it up or down, so a negative number pulls the art up over the title
A dialog scrolls, so a background can repeat down the page as far as the text goes, by a number you set or worked out for you

✨ Icons in Your Text

Drop a PNG into the icons folder, declare it, and write its name anywhere a menu file takes text: a page icon, a label, a line of content, a button.

Code

icons:
  island:
    image: 'island.png'
    width: 8
    height: 8
    offset: 1

Size it however you like, or leave it and it is drawn to match the height of the text beside it. Name an icon you have not declared and the text stays exactly as you typed it, so a typo reads as itself rather than breaking the line.

🔐 Permissions Per Menu

Each menu, and each page inside it, chooses how much permission it asks for:

Mode	What it means
`open`	No node at all. Anyone who can run the command opens it and sees every category
`optional`	Everyone has the node, so the menu is open until you deny it
`required`	Operators only, so the menu is shut until you grant it

Set it per menu, per page, or for everything at once. A menu can also name a node you already use, such as a rank group, and DialogForge checks that instead.

The shipped guide, rules and settings menus are open, so they work on a server with no permission plugin at all. The staff one is locked.

A staff tools page, which only appears for players who have its permission

⚔️ Command Conflicts, Handled

EssentialsX already owns /rules, and the first plugin to ask for a command keeps it. DialogForge says so plainly in the console and answers on its own prefixed command instead, rather than failing quietly.

One line in that menu file takes the command over if you would rather it won, and the command is handed straight back when DialogForge is reloaded or disabled. You can set that for every menu at once too.

⌨️ Commands

/dialogforge open <menu> [page] [player] open a menu, optionally for someone else (alias: /df)
/dialogforge list list the loaded menus and their commands
/dialogforge reload reload config, menus and languages
/dialogforge version version and platform information

Your own menus answer to whatever commands their files declare.

📈 Metrics

This plugin sends anonymous usage stats to ArrowStats, nothing that identifies you or your players. You can opt out anytime in plugins/ArrowStats/config.yml.

💬 Support & Docs

Full setup and configuration guides are in the documentation. Have questions, found a bug, or want to suggest a feature? Join the Discord for updates, help, and support.

Read the documentation | Click here to join the Discord

Write YAML. Get a real menu.

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