UnseenLight

UnseenLight

UnseenLight is a Minecraft Paper plugin that adds craftable invisible light to survival: players craft the vanilla light block (minecraft:light) on a workbench, place invisible light sources in any dark spot and take them back down with a right click. Hidden lighting for builds, farms and mob-proofing with no commands, no creative mode and no resource packs.

Crafting

8 glass panes + 1 torch -> 1 invisible light (level 15).

The shape, ingredients, yield and light level are all configurable. The recipe shows up in the recipe book on join (also configurable).

Using it

| Action | How | |---|---| | Place | Hold the light item and right-click any dark spot - plain vanilla placement | | Remove | Hold any block and right-click the spot the light occupies; the light pops back as an item instead of your block being placed | | Remove behind chests/doors | Sneak + right-click (a plain click opens the container, like vanilla) | | See placed lights | Hold a light item - vanilla renders them - or run /ul show for a particle highlight |

A light block is invisible and has no hitbox, so your crosshair passes through it; aim so that the block you are "placing" would land in the light's spot.

What the plugin guards against

minecraft:light is replaceable, so in vanilla almost anything overwrites it silently. UnseenLight intercepts every such path - the light either pops properly (permission checked, land protection consulted, item returned) or stays protected:

• block placement into the light's spot, from either hand, in any game mode;
• lava and powder snow buckets (water just waterlogs the light and is left alone);
• falling blocks landing in the spot (the item is compensated);
• the vanilla break while holding a light item (lights have no loot table - drop-mode is honoured);
• Crafter blocks crafting the recipe with nobody's permission to check (optional, recipe.allow-crafter);
• /minecraft:reload wiping plugin recipes (the recipe re-registers itself).

Land protection plugins (WorldGuard, GriefPrevention, …) are consulted through a BlockBreakEvent before any light is removed, and CoreProtect-style loggers see the removal.

Commands

Alias: /ul

| Command | Description | Permission (default) | |---|---|---| | /unseenlight reload | Reload config.yml | unseenlight.command.reload (op) | | /unseenlight give <players> [level] [amount] | Give light items | unseenlight.command.give (op) | | /unseenlight show | Highlight nearby lights with particles | unseenlight.command.show (everyone) |

Permissions

| Node | Default | Grants | |---|---|---| | unseenlight.craft | true | Crafting the recipe (and seeing it in the recipe book) | | unseenlight.place | true | Placing light blocks | | unseenlight.remove | true | Taking placed lights down |

Configuration

Everything lives in config.yml: the recipe (shape, ingredients, yield, light level 0-15), sounds and particles for placing/removing, the highlighter (radius, duration), and every player message in MiniMessage format.

The most consequential switch is what a removed light turns into:

removal:
  drop-mode: GROUND     # GROUND: drops as an item
                        # INVENTORY: goes straight to the inventory
                        # DESTROY: disappears without a trace

Installation

1. Requires Paper 26.2+ and Java 25+.
2. Drop UnseenLight-x.y.jar into plugins/ and restart.

Building

./gradlew build        # -> build/libs/UnseenLight-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar (shaded, ready to deploy)
./gradlew runServer    # spins up a local Paper 26.2 test server with the plugin

Metrics

Anonymous usage stats are collected via bStats. Server owners can opt out globally in plugins/bStats/config.yml.

License

MIT