Target Highlight

A small client-side Forge mod for Minecraft 1.20.1 that highlights the enemy nearest your crosshair
with a soft ground ring and a marker above its head.

What it does

• Picks the enemy closest to your crosshair within a cone in front of you, up to your weapon reach (plus a configurable bonus)
• Keeps the current target “sticky”, so the highlight doesn’t flicker when two enemies are close together
• Ignores enemies hidden behind solid cover, while fences and other thin obstacles don’t hide them
• Draws a ring on the ground under the target and a diamond marker above its head
• Shows when the target is inside your real weapon reach: the ring brightens or changes colour, so you can tell whether a hit will land
• Drops the highlight as soon as the target dies

It highlights only. It never moves your camera, changes your attacks, or alters what you hit.

Fully configurable

Everything lives in config/targethighlight-client.toml):

• Targeting: hostile-only or any creature, reach bonus, cone angle, how sticky the target is, how long it lingers, scan rate, line-of-sight on/off
• Ring: on/off, size padding, thickness, smoothness, height above the ground
• Marker: on/off, height above the head, size
• Look: colour (hex) and opacity
• Tiers: bosses are detected from the `forge:bosses` tag plus your own list, and a separate list gives minibosses or elites a colour of their own
• In-reach indicator: brighten the ring, switch its colour, or turn it off, with a range tweak and Better Combat weapon ranges
• Weapon-only mode: optionally show the highlight only while you hold a weapon, so it stays quiet when mining or building
• Blacklist: a list of entities that are never highlighted (entity ids, or `modid:*` for a whole mod)

Prefer a subtle highlight? Lower the opacity or turn off the marker. Want it bolder? Raise the opacity or change the colour.

Keybind

A “Toggle Target Highlight” key is available under Controls > Target Highlight. It is unbound by default so it won’t clash with your other mods.

Compatibility

• Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47.x
• No dependencies
• Client-side only
• Works with modpacks. If you see a conflict or odd rendering (for example with a shader pack), please report it.

Feedback

This is an early release and feedback is very welcome. Please report problems with your logs/latest.log (or crash report), your Forge version, and whether you use shaders: github

Inspired by the target-assist idea in the Visceral Combat mod.