Banner Mode Legacy
Loominary started life as "Banner Mod", which smuggled an entire image through nothing but item names. You rename banners at an anvil, right-click them with a map, and the server stores every name as a map decoration; the mod on the other side reads the names back and reconstructs the image, without placing a single block or touching a schematic.
That original mode still works, and it remains the right tool when you can't place blocks: protected areas, plot borders, anywhere a 128×128 carpet platform isn't an option.
| Carpet (default) | Banner-only | |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity per tile | ~15,400 bytes | ~5,290 bytes |
| Building required | 128×128 carpet platform | none |
| Banners needed | 1 manifest + overflow (often 0) | up to 63 |
| XP cost | 1 level per banner | 1 level per banner (×63) |
5.3 KB fits simple, bold images (and short animations) after compression, but photographs and dithered art usually need the carpet channel.
From the web editor: pick the Banner codec on the export page. The ZIP contains only the state JSON, no schematics.
In-game: add banners to imports: /loominary import <file> banners or /loominary import steal banners.
Then the placement flow is just the anvil half, covered in depth on Anvil & Banners:
- Open an anvil with unnamed banners, empty bundles, and XP. The mod renames one banner per tick with the payload chunks (each name: a 2-char index + 48 CJK characters ≈ 84 bytes) and bundles them up.
- Place the banners anywhere inside the 128×128 area the map covers.
- Hold the map,
/loominary click, and let it register every banner. - Lock the map at a cartography table, frame it, done. Banner pins are suppressed client-side; the mod decodes the names into your image.
An anvil name holds 50 characters. Base64 would carry ~36 bytes per banner; the CJK Unified Ideographs block (U+4E00 onward) survives server text normalization untouched and packs 14 bits per character, for 84 bytes per banner (2.33× denser). This encoding is what made the original Banner Mod viable, and the same alphabet still carries the carpet mode's overflow banners today.