FancyMenu guide for FTB Skies 2 1.0.1 to 1.7.0

FancyMenu is a menu customization mod. It lets you change how Minecraft's menus look and behave, from a clean, simple style to animated or dynamic elements. It's a purely visual and interface mod, so it doesn't add blocks, items or machines.^[1]

This pack ships FancyMenu 3.6.4 for Minecraft 1.21.1 on NeoForge. It has been in the pack since version 1.0.1 or earlier.^[2]

What it can do

• A built-in editor that lets beginners and experienced users tweak layouts and customize menus visually.^[1]
• Animated images, with support for formats like GIF and APNG.^[1]
• Dynamic menu designs for advanced users, using conditional statements (called loading requirements), variables and placeholders.^[1]
• Client-side use with no server install needed. An optional server-side install lets admins remotely open GUIs for players who have FancyMenu on their client.^[1]

Who it's for

If you like making your game look personal, this is your mod. It's also useful for pack makers who want custom menus. The mod has its own documentation and a community Discord where people share full menu setups as layout templates.^[1]

The project also has addons. Drippy Loading Screen customizes the game's loading screen, and SpiffyHUD customizes the in-game HUD, including the hotbar. Showing player entities in menus needs the optional Fancy Entity Renderer mod.^[1]

Unverified Where FancyMenu fits in this pack's progression is not confirmed by the available sources, and they show no quests tied to it. Whether any of its addons are installed in this pack is also unconfirmed.

Good news: FancyMenu is not a mod where you craft your way through a tech tree. It customizes Minecraft's menus, so there's no first item to make. It's a client-side mod, which means you can use it without installing it on a server.^[1]

Unverified The sources I have don't show any quests or crafting recipes for this mod in this pack, so I can't give you an item order or a recipe to follow. I also can't confirm from them how to open the editor in this pack, so check the in-game controls or the mod's official documentation.

What to know before you start

• FancyMenu has a built-in editor for tweaking layouts and customizing menus. It's meant for both beginners and experienced users.^[1]
• Menu backgrounds can be an image, a plain color, a moving panorama, an image slideshow, or an animation. Images work with JPEG, PNG and APNG, and they can be local or from the web.^[3]
• Animated image formats like GIF and APNG are supported, so you can put moving images in your menus.^[1]
• A video background needs the MCEF mod to work. Whether MCEF is in this pack is unverified, so don't count on video backgrounds.^[3]

Handy tips once you're in the editor

• If your elements (images, custom buttons and so on) don't look right after you change the GUI scale or certain options, use the Update Screen action. It does basically the same thing as resizing the window and rebuilds the screen's elements.^[3]
• To get the identifier of a background, right-click the editor background and choose Copy Background Identifier. Actions that control Video backgrounds need that identifier.^[3]
• If you make a custom cursor, use a PNG RGBA texture that isn't too large. The mod says 32x32 or 64x64 pixels should be enough.^[3]

Heads up: FancyMenu is a menu customization mod, not a tech or magic mod. The sources here describe it as a tool for visually customizing Minecraft's menus and do not mention machines, multiblocks, power, fluids or item automation. So this page covers how its actual systems work instead.^[1]

Editor, layouts and dynamic logic

Everything runs through a built-in editor where you tweak layouts for menus. For more advanced setups, FancyMenu supports conditional statements (called loading requirements), variables and placeholders, which let a menu react to what is going on.^[1]

It works as a pure client-side mod. You can optionally install it on a server too, which lets admins remotely open GUIs for players who have FancyMenu on their client.^[1]

Building blocks you can place

• Backgrounds: a simple color, an image (JPEG, PNG, APNG and more, from local files or the web), a moving panorama cube, an image slideshow, or an animation. Video backgrounds need the MCEF mod to work.^[3]
• Image parallax: the intensity is a value from 0.0 (no movement) to 1.0 (maximum movement). If you enable the invert option, the effect moves in the same direction as the mouse instead of the opposite one.^[3]
• Text element: renders multi-line text and supports Markdown. The content can be typed directly, loaded from a local TXT file, or pulled from a website as plain text. Changing the source mode resets the text content, but you can undo that with CTRL + Z.^[3]
• Input fields and sliders: both can be linked to a variable by name, either new or existing, so user input sets the variable's value. A slider is either a list type, which switches through text values, or a range type with a min and max number.^[3]
• Custom cursor: replaces the default cursor. Use a PNG RGBA texture, and 32x32 or 64x64 pixels should be enough. The hotspot is the pixel where clicks register, with X0 Y0 at the top-left corner of the texture. Cursor behavior may vary between operating systems.^[3]

Actions and tickers

Buttons and other elements can run actions. Audio actions can skip to the next track, go back to the previous track, toggle play and pause, or set an Audio element's volume by its identifier. Volume is a value between 0.0 (0%) and 1.0 (100%), and the volume actions take the identifier and volume separated by a colon. Video elements and Video backgrounds have matching pause-toggle and volume actions.^[3]

Two utility actions are handy too. One opens the last screen that was open before the current one. The other updates the current screen, which rebuilds elements like images and custom buttons. It's basically the same as resizing the window, and it's useful after changing the GUI scale.^[3]

A ticker element executes actions every tick. It can run asynchronously in a separate thread, and you can set a delay between ticks in milliseconds. Its modes are: Normal ticks every tick, Session ticks once per game session, and On Load Screen ticks once each time the screen loads. Screens also reload when you resize the game window, so keep that in mind. A ticker is only visible in the editor.^[3]

What this pack ships

The pack includes a saved Audio element controller entry in . It has a single entry with its volume set to 1 and one element identifier attached.^[4]

It also includes the editor's dark and light UI themes. In the dark theme, screen_background_color.hex is #3C3F41FF and element_background_color_hover.hex is #539CD4FF. In the light theme, screen_background_color.hex is #B2B2B2FF. These only change how the editor looks, not how any menu behaves.^[5][6]

FancyMenu doesn't have a progression path or tiers in this pack. The only material available for it is its in-game guide, which contains credits, localization notes and licensing information. It describes no tiers, unlockable stages or upgrade steps.^[7]

Unverified No pack quests or crafting recipes involving this mod could be confirmed from the available material, so there is nothing to follow step by step and no recipe to show. If you spot a quest or recipe for it in your own game, treat it as unconfirmed until it is documented here.

Same as in the FTB Skies 2 1.10.2 guide

FancyMenu has very little gameplay-facing config in this pack. What the pack ships for it is two editor UI themes, dark and light, plus one file of audio element controller data. Nothing here changes how the game plays. It only affects how the FancyMenu editor and its menus look and sound.^[8][9][10]

UI themes

Each theme file is a list of colour values in RGBA hex form. The most visible ones are the screen background, the element backgrounds (normal and hovered) and the text colours.^[9][10]

• Dark theme: identifier is "dark". The screen background is #3C3F41FF via screen_background_color.hex. Elements are #474747FF normally and #539CD4FF on hover, set by element_background_color_normal.hex and element_background_color_hover.hex.^[9]
• Light theme: identifier is "light". The screen background is #B2B2B2FF via screen_background_color.hex. Elements are #CBCBCBFF normally and #AFAFAFFF on hover, set by element_background_color_normal.hex and element_background_color_hover.hex.^[10]
• Text colours differ too. Normal element labels are #CEDDEDFF in the dark theme and #2D2D2DFF in the light theme, set by element_label_color_normal.hex and element_label_color_normal.hex.^[9][10]

Audio element volume

The file contains a single entry. It sets the volume to 1 for one audio element, identified by its element ID.^[8]

Unverified The sources show the pack's values but not the mod's defaults, so it is unconfirmed which of these values the pack changed from the FancyMenu default.

FTB Skies 2 1.7.0 ships with FancyMenu 3.6.4, using the NeoForge build for Minecraft 1.21.1. The mod has been in the pack since FTB Skies 2 1.0.1 or earlier, so it's a long-standing part of the modpack.^[2]

Unverified The detailed entries from the FancyMenu changelogs for versions 3.6.4, 3.6.2, 3.6.0 and 3.5.0 were not available to this guide, so what changed in each of those releases is unverified. The pack's own changelogs also have no entries for this mod.