The Patchouli Page-Turner Update

Hamster Tips guide book graduates to Patchouli, and your game now gets a special update notes system that can pull live from my GitHub repo.

THe Hamster Tips guidebook is completely overhauled with Patchouli's built-in tools + my own custom UI, smarter text wrapping, and automatic upgrades from the old guide book. A physics-simulated notification bell (with hamster ears) flags unread notes— all configurable and snoozeable— and virtual entries in Hamster Tips open the new markdown viewer without leaving the game. Under the hood, a new smart ownership algorithm ends pet-on-pet friendly fire, and translators also get a tidier language file.

Added

• New Patchouli Guide Book
  • Replaced the original vanilla written book with a comprehensive, feature-rich guide book powered by the Patchouli library.
  • Features a completely custom user interface, including a unique book texture and a custom-coded landing page layout with a wrapped, multi-line subtitle for a more polished presentation than what Patchouli offers by default.
  • Implemented a dynamic text wrapping and pagination system for entry titles, ensuring that long or translated titles do not render off the edge of the page.
  • Includes a robust backwards-compatibility system that automatically detects and upgrades any old guide books found in a player's inventory or any opened container to the new Patchouli version.
• Client-Side Announcement & Update Notification System
  • Implemented a robust client-side notification system capable of fetching a manifest.json and individual markdown files from a public GitHub repository.
  • This allows for the delivery of announcements and "What's New" update notes to players without requiring a mod update.
  • The system intelligently compares the player's installed mod version against the latest version in the manifest to create "Update Available" notifications, which can be snoozed.
• Dynamic HUD & GUI Notification Icon
  • Added a new notification icon (a bell with hamster ears) that appears on the main game HUD and compatible GUI screens when unread notifications are pending.
  • The icon is driven by a custom, render-frame-timed physics animator using a spring-damper model to create organic, natural motion. When moving between positions (e.g., when opening the recipe book), the icon smoothly accelerates and decelerates, with a slight rotational kick and overshoot for a more dynamic feel.
  • Upon reaching its destination, it performs a brief "settle wobble" before coming to a rest. The icon also features a periodic idle wiggle animation, and smoothly scales up on hover for satisfying tactile feedback.
  • The icon dynamically repositions itself to remain anchored to the corner of inventory screens, organically transitioning to its new location when the GUI shifts, such as when opening or closing the recipe book.
  • Its tooltip is dynamic, displaying context-aware text like "New update available," "New announcement," or "What's new in vX.Y.Z."
• Custom Markdown-Powered Announcement Viewer
  • Created a new, custom GUI screen for displaying announcement and update content, replacing the standard Patchouli entry page for these notifications.
  • The viewer features a full Markdown renderer that supports headings, bold/italic text, lists, code spans, clickable links, and dividers.
  • Includes a set of vanilla-style buttons for actions like "Mark as Read," "Remind Me Later" (snooze), "Disable These," and "See Changelog," with dynamic positioning depending on which buttons are present.
• Virtual Patchouli Integration for Notifications
  • Virtually injects two new categories ("Announcements" and "Update Notes") and their corresponding entries into the Hamster Tips guide book at runtime.
  • This leverages Patchouli's list-rendering and unread-marker system without requiring any physical json files in the mod's JAR.
  • Clicking a virtual entry opens the custom announcement GUI instead of the entry (because there is no entry), and mixins have been added to prevent the "Mark All Read" button from affecting these virtual entries, and to prevent them from showing up in main "Entry Index" list.
• New Announcement Icon Configuration Options
  • Added extensive new settings to the config to control the announcement system, including toggles for the HUD and in-GUI icons.
  • Players can customize the HUD icon's screen position, scale, and offset, as well as the offset for the in-GUI widget icon.
  • New ConfigAction buttons allow players to reset their entire announcement history or re-enable optional announcements if they were previously disabled.
• New Configuration Options for Health and Mounting
  • Added Wild Hamster Max Health and Tamed Hamster Max Health settings, allowing players to customize the health pools for both wild and tamed hamsters independently.
  • Added an Enable Force-Mount Keybind option (disabled by default) that, when enabled, allows players to mount a nearby tamed hamster by pressing a dedicated keybind, without needing to hold a specific item.
  • Added a Consume Shoulder-Mount Item toggle (enabled by default) that controls whether the item used to lure a hamster onto the player's shoulder is consumed in the process.
• Farmer’s Delight Cutting Board Compatibility
  • Added cutting board recipe support for cucumbers → sliced cucumbers.
  • Thanks to Cashhew for the contribution!
• Smart Pet-Ownership Algorithm (under the hood)
  • New logic that recognizes your pets across Minecraft’s many creatures (wolves, cats, parrots, horses—and most modded pals).
  • It doesn’t just “check a box” — it can figure out ownership even when a pet only stores a hidden ID instead of a visible owner link.
  • Built to prevent friendly-fire even with all the chaos: thrown hamsters, indirect hits, and weird edge-cases from other mods. (See "Fixed" section for more details)
  • Designed to be fast and lightweight so it won’t slow your world down.
  • Future-proofed: works across loaders and should play nicely with most other mods out of the box.

Changed

• Optimized Language File Generation
  • Refactored the data generation process for the en_us.json language file to eliminate the creation of redundant, prefixed translation keys for the configuration screen.
  • This results in a smaller, cleaner, and more efficient language file with no impact on in-game text. Easier translating!

Fixed

• No More Pet-on-Pet Drama
  • Thrown hamsters now bounce off your own tamed pets (wolves, cats, parrots, horses—and most modded pets) instead of hurting them.
  • I designed a friendly-fire smart ownership algorithm that figures out who owns what—even when a pet only remembers you by an internal ID.
  • Works both ways: your other pets can’t hurt your tamed hamsters either.
• Resolved Server Crash on Hamster Throw
  • Fixed a NullPointerException that would crash dedicated servers when a player used the "Throw Hamster" keybind.
  • The crash was caused by server-to-client sound packets being registered only on the client, leading to an error when the server attempted to send them.
  • All network packet registrations have been consolidated into a single, common method, ensuring both the server and client are aware of all packet types.
• Corrected Configuration Synchronization
  • Replaced the incorrect @ClientModifiable annotation with the appropriate @NonSync annotation for all client-side settings in the configuration file.
  • This change prevents a potential issue where clients could modify server-synced settings without permission and ensures that client-only settings (like UI and animation options) are handled correctly.