Overview#
WTHIT (What The Hell Is That?) is a modern fork of the popular HWYLA (Here's What You're Looking At) mod, which itself was a fork of the original WAILA (What Am I Looking At). It serves as an essential information tool for both vanilla and modded Minecraft, allowing players to identify any object in the world simply by looking at it.
Unlike its predecessors, WTHIT is designed with a focus on performance and extensibility, offering a robust API for other mod developers to add their own custom tooltips. It is available for Fabric, Quilt, and Forge/NeoForge loaders, making it a staple in almost every modern modpack. While primarily a client-side mod, installing it on a server enables advanced features such as viewing the contents of inventories and detailed NBT data.
Core Mechanics#
The mod operates using a raycasting system that detects the block or entity currently under the player's crosshair. Once an object is identified, WTHIT queries the game's registry and any active plugins to display a tooltip overlay.
Client vs. Server Functionality
- Client-Only: Displays basic information such as block names, mod origins, and simple entity health.
- Server-Side Required: To display complex data like the specific items inside a chest, the progress of a furnace, or the amount of energy in a machine, WTHIT must be installed on the server to sync NBT data to the client.
Information Display: Blocks#
When looking at a block, WTHIT provides a wealth of data points. The following table outlines the standard information provided for various block types:
| Feature | Information Displayed |
|---|---|
| Identity | Name of the block and the mod it belongs to. |
| Harvestability | Shows if the block can be harvested with the current tool and the required tool level (e.g., Diamond, Iron). |
| Crops | Growth percentage for wheat, carrots, potatoes, and modded crops. |
| Fluids | Name of the fluid (Water, Lava, etc.) and the amount in buckets or millibuckets. |
| Inventories | A grid view of items inside chests, barrels, and shulker boxes (requires server-side). |
| Furnaces | Remaining fuel time and smelting progress. |
| Beehives | Number of bees currently inside and the honey level. |
| Redstone | Current power level of wires and components. |
Information Display: Entities#
WTHIT provides critical survival information when aiming at mobs and other entities. This is particularly useful for identifying dangerous creatures or tracking the health of pets.
Entity Stats and Behavior
- Health: Displayed as a numeric value (e.g., 20/20) or as a row of heart icons.
- Armor: Shows the current armor value of the entity.
- Status Effects: Lists active potion effects and their remaining duration.
- Child Growth: For baby animals, it displays the time remaining until they reach adulthood.
- Villagers: Shows the profession and level of the villager.
- Mod Origin: Identifies which mod added the creature, helping players navigate complex modpacks.
Configuration and Customization#
WTHIT features an extensive in-game configuration menu. By default, the config menu is accessed via the 'N' key (though this may need to be bound manually in the Controls menu).
Key Settings
- Overlay Position: Move the tooltip to any corner of the screen or center it at the top/bottom.
- Appearance: Adjust the background transparency (Alpha), border colors, and text scaling.
- Themes: Choose between 'Dark', 'Vanilla', and 'Light' UI themes.
- Visibility: Set the tooltip to only appear while sneaking, or toggle it off entirely with a hotkey.
- Modules: Individually enable or disable specific data points (e.g., hide health but keep block names).
Keybindings
| Action | Default Key |
|---|---|
| Open Config Menu | N (or Not Bound) |
| Toggle Overlay | Not Bound |
| Show/Hide Recipes | Not Bound (Integration with REI/JEI) |
Commands#
While most interactions occur through the GUI, WTHIT includes several administrative and utility commands:
/wthit reload: Reloads the configuration files and plugin data without restarting the game./wthit identify: Forces an identification check on the object currently being looked at (useful for debugging)./wthit toggle: Quickly enables or disables the HUD overlay.
Mod Integration and Plugins#
WTHIT is designed to be the "glue" of a modpack. It has native and third-party support for many other popular mods:
- Inventory Management: Integrates with Roughly Enough Items (REI) and Just Enough Items (JEI) to show recipes for the block you are looking at.
- Megane: A popular plugin for WTHIT that adds deep integration for technical mods, showing energy levels (FE/EU), fluid tank capacities, and machine progress.
- Waila Harvestability: Often used alongside WTHIT to provide more detailed breakdowns of mining requirements.
- Bad Packets: A required dependency for WTHIT that facilitates communication between the client and server for NBT data syncing.
