Okay, let’s talk about this “trail mask” thing I was fiddling with in Minecraft the other day.
So, I got this idea stuck in my head. You know how sometimes you see cool particle effects in servers or maps? I wanted something like that, but personal, like a trail that follows you, maybe shaped kinda like a mask floating behind. Don’t ask me why a mask, just sounded cool at the time. Seemed simple enough, right?
First thing I did was just mess with the basic particle command. You know, `/execute as @p at @s run particle flame ~ ~1 ~ 0 0 0 0 1`. Yeah, it puts a particle effect right on you. Easy peasy. But that’s not a trail, it just sits there. If you move, it moves with you instantly. Kinda boring.
Getting Things to Follow
My next thought was, how do I make it lag behind? Like, leave a trail where I was? My brain immediately went to armor stands. Yeah, those trusty, invisible helpers. The plan was simple: summon an armor stand, make it teleport to me constantly. Then summon another one, make it teleport to the first one. And another teleporting to the second, and so on. Like a conga line of invisible armor stands chasing each other, chasing me.
- Summoned the first stand: Gave it a tag, like `trail_marker_0`. Made it invisible, no gravity, the usual stuff.
- Used a repeating command block: `execute as @p at @s run tp @e[type=armor_stand,tag=trail_marker_0] ~ ~ ~`.
- Then added more stands: `trail_marker_1`, `trail_marker_2`, up to maybe 5 or 6.
- Set up more repeating/chain command blocks: `execute as @e[tag=trail_marker_0] at @s run tp @e[tag=trail_marker_1] ~ ~ ~`, then `execute as @e[tag=trail_marker_1] at @s run tp @e[tag=trail_marker_2] ~ ~ ~`, etc.
This kinda worked! When I moved, the stands followed in a line, each one a step behind the last because of the tiny delay in command blocks activating. It created a basic trail path.
Making the “Mask” Part (or trying to)
Now for the particles. I just made each armor stand (except maybe the very first one) spawn some particles. `execute as @e[tag=trail_marker_1] at @s run particle crit ~ ~1.5 ~ 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.01 10 force`. Did this for all the trailing stands.
The “mask” idea though? That was tougher. A simple line of particles isn’t really a mask. I played around with the particle command’s spread parameters (`dx dy dz`). Tried using different particles, like `totem_of_undying` or colored `dust`. I spent ages tweaking the offsets (`~ ~1.5 ~`) and the spread trying to get some kind of wider shape at each point in the trail. Maybe spawning multiple particle types per stand?
Honestly, it never looked quite like a mask. It was more like… a wiggly ribbon of particles? Sometimes cool, sometimes just messy. Especially when turning fast, the armor stands would bunch up weirdly. And having like 6+ armor stands constantly teleporting and spitting particles? Probably not the best for performance, felt a bit clunky. It’s the classic command block problem, you keep adding more blocks, more entities, and suddenly your simple idea is this Rube Goldberg machine that barely holds together.
End Result and Thoughts
So, what I ended up with was a particle trail system using a chain of armor stands. You could trigger it by maybe holding a specific item. It works, kinda. It leaves a trail. It uses particles. But the “mask” part? More like an abstract particle cloud following you. Still looks neat in its own way, I guess.
It’s funny how you start with one idea, and the limitations of the tools (or maybe just my patience with command blocks) push you somewhere else. I spent a whole afternoon on this. Could probably do it way better with a datapack, storing positions and using functions. Less entity mess. But hey, this was a command block experiment. It’s a decent enough effect for messing around. Just don’t look too closely at the pile of command blocks running it all.
