For mod developers

Body Language posts an event on NeoForge’s event bus, on the server, whenever a player starts or stops an emote. Your mod can react to it: a pet that copies its owner, a statue that bows back, a quest that wants a wave.

The events

Both are in com.taylorgibbs.emotes.api and extend EmoteEvent, which has getPlayer() (a ServerPlayer).

Event	When	Extra
EmoteEvent.Started	A player starts an emote. For a hug or high-five, it fires for both players.	getEmote(): the emote’s id, such as tgemotes:wave, tgemotes:dance_disco or tgemotes:hug. Emotes from resource packs have their own namespace.
EmoteEvent.Stopped	A player’s emote ends: a one-off one played to the end, or they moved.	None.

Starting a different emote in the middle of one doesn’t send Stopped; you get a new Started instead.

The events only fire where the server has Body Language (including singleplayer). On a server without it, emotes stay on each player’s own game.

Adding it as an optional dependency

1. Put the Body Language jar in your project and add it as a compile-only dependency, for example:

   dependencies {
       compileOnly files('libs/bodylanguage-1.21.1-1.0.0.jar')
   }

2. Declare it as optional in your neoforge.mods.toml:

   [[dependencies.yourmod]]
       modId = "tgemotes"
       type = "optional"
       versionRange = "[1.0.0,)"
       ordering = "NONE"
       side = "BOTH"

3. Only touch Body Language’s classes when it’s installed. Keep the listener in its own class, so the game never loads it otherwise:

   // In your mod's constructor:
   if (ModList.get().isLoaded("tgemotes")) {
       EmoteHooks.register();
   }

   import com.taylorgibbs.emotes.api.EmoteEvent;
   import net.neoforged.neoforge.common.NeoForge;
   
   /** Only loaded when Body Language is installed. */
   final class EmoteHooks {
       static void register() {
           NeoForge.EVENT_BUS.addListener(EmoteEvent.Started.class, e -> {
               if (e.getEmote().getPath().equals("wave")) {
                   // e.getPlayer() just waved
               }
           });
           NeoForge.EVENT_BUS.addListener(EmoteEvent.Stopped.class, e -> {
               // e.getPlayer()'s emote is over
           });
       }
   }

The package is com.taylorgibbs.emotes and the mod id tgemotes, as they’ve always been: the move to Hardline Interactive didn’t change them, so nothing that already uses them breaks.

That’s the whole API. If you’d like more from it, email hello@hardlineinteractive.com.