Classic GUI Technique

The traditional technique for creating custom GUIs that can be found almost univerally across many plugins, both public and private, is to blank out unused slots with  Black Stained Glass Panes or to simply leave them blank. Various items are used for buttons and interactive elements. This technique remains the only technique used in most of the gamemodes within Chaotic United outside of Survival.

Slot Mask Technique

An early attempt to raise the bar for custom GUIs was to leverage a series of 'Slot Mask' items. Most commonly used was the GUI Slot Mask item, which is used to block out an entire inventory slot. Several additional items were also created to act as buttons and other GUI elements, which are listed below. While this technique has largely been succeeded by the GUI Overlay Technique, it is still used on rare occasion for specific use cases.

Generic Buttons	Back  Next  Cancel  Confirm  Refresh
Generic Icons	Arrow Left  Subtract  Add  Pointer
CUMarketplace Add Buttons
CUMarketplace Subtract Buttons
CUMarketplace Miscellaneous Buttons	Browse Listings  Browse Listings (Alternate)  Add New Listing  My Listings  Price Hover Button (Unused)  Set Custom Listing Price
CUMarketplace Preset Price Buttons
Generic Icons (Unused)	Arrow Left (18px)  Pointer (Alternate)

GUI Overlay Technique

The most advanced GUI technique is the GUI Overlay Technique. This is used exclusively in Survival, as it relies on the use of the server resource pack in order for GUIs to display properly.

This approach relies on overriding the textures of specific text characters in the in-game font with various "alignment helpers", as well as the actual textures of GUIs themselves. These characters are strategically placed within the title of a container, and can result in GUIs of a significantly higher quality than would usually be expected from a container-based GUI, despite being technically identical under the hood. Some examples of this technique can be found with the Upgrade Station GUI along with Crafting and Furnace recipe previews in the Recipe Guide (accessible by using /recipes ingame).