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Assets are protected under the terms in the LICENSE_ASSETS.txt on the code repository.

MCT Resource Data Pack Loader

One folder that changes what Minecraft and your mods provide, adds new content from plain JSON, and controls what generates. It applies to every world, in singleplayer and on dedicated servers, and there is nothing to switch on.

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Why it exists

Minecraft 1.12.2 has no data packs. Advancements, loot tables and functions live inside each world's save, so changing one means copying files into every world. Recipes only load from mod jars, so short of repacking a jar there is no way to touch them. Adding a single ore or a single biome means writing a mod.

This mod gives all of that one folder.

Getting started

Start the game once. The mod creates rdploader next to mods and config, and writes a readme.txt into it that covers the basics.

Files go in by the same path they have inside a jar. To replace the iron ore texture, the file inside the Minecraft jar is assets/minecraft/textures/blocks/iron_ore.png, so your version goes at:

rdploader/assets/minecraft/textures/blocks/iron_ore.png

That is the whole rule. You can also group files into named packs, as folders or zips, with a priority order, and turn any of them off by adding .disabled to the name. HOWTO.md has the full folder list, every block and item type, every worldgen shape, pack priority, resource pack precedence and the commands.

Replacing files

Anything a mod keeps in its assets folder: textures, models, blockstates, language files, sounds, fonts, splash texts, guide books.

Beyond assets, a pack can also replace or add advancements, loot tables, recipes, functions and structure templates, and they work on dedicated servers too. Recipe removals delete recipes by name, namespace or output. Loot injections add a pool to an existing table instead of replacing the whole thing. Player loot gives players a loot table of their own when they die. Registry renames keep old worlds working after a mod renames a block. Ore dictionary names, furnace recipes, fuel burn times, creative tabs and sound events round it out.

Changing what already exists

An overrides/ file changes the properties of a block, item or potion that is already in the game, vanilla or modded, without replacing any of its files. The path names the target, so overrides/minecraft/stone.json changes minecraft:stone.

Blocks take hardness, blast resistance, light, light opacity, slipperiness, sound, harvest tool and level, and flammability. Items take stack size, durability and a container item, and any item can be made edible, with food values and effects, so wood can be eaten if a pack says so. A potion's effects can be rewritten outright.

These are live: disable the pack and run /rdpl reload, and every value snaps back to what it was, no restart needed.

Adding new content

A pack can define blocks in every common shape: basic, ore, falling, slab, stairs, fence, fence gate, wall, pane, door, trapdoor, banner, ladder, torch, log, leaves, sapling, crop, flower, cane, vine and portal. Items come as basic, food, drink, tool, armor, seed, potion and potion bottle. Fluids, tool and armor materials, potion effects, potion types, brewing recipes, villager professions with trades, game rules, biomes, village plots, entity variants and whole dimensions are all files too.

The file's path is its name: assets/mypack/blocks/ruby_ore.json registers mypack:ruby_ore. There is no name field to get wrong, and if a real mod already registers that name, the mod wins.

A few of these go further than a list can show. Saplings grow into trees built from your own log and leaves, or into your structure templates. Portal blocks link two dimensions and remember who built them. Gates lock a portal or a dimension, vanilla ones included, behind an item held or paid, a recipe crafted, an advancement earned, or a mob slain. An entity variant is a new entity built on an existing one, with its own name, skin, stats, equipment and loot, while the original is left exactly as it was.

Anything needing a tile entity, a GUI, an inventory or per-tick logic still needs a real mod. A machine is out of reach; an ore, a fence, a food or a fluid is not.

Generating it

Worldgen is a shape and a spread. Shapes cover ore blobs, long wandering veins, plates, geodes, bowls, spires, nodules, vents, surface decoration, whole trees, vines, multi-chunk belts for stone regions, and your own .nbt templates. Spreads place them evenly, weighted toward a height, fractally, along the terrain, on cave floors and ceilings, or under water.

Every entry filters by height, attempts, target block, dimension, biome, temperature, rainfall and distance from spawn, and can generate into chunks that already exist.

Controlling what generates

• Block ore generation by mod or by ore type, in either direction
• Block biomes by mod or by name, with unwanted ones replaced on the finished biome map, so oceans, mesas and hill variants are reached too
• Block other mods' world generators outright, or by what they make
• Suppress vanilla structures, or set their spacing, biomes, distance from spawn, and what their spawners hold
• Set mob spawn rates and caps per biome
• Swap blocks out of existing chunks, so an ore that leaked into a world can be cleaned up
• Block crafting and furnace recipes by mod, with CraftTweaker and GroovyScript additions always surviving
• Flatten bedrock, per dimension and per biome
• Shape the overworld itself: sea level, lava oceans and terrain noise, applied only as a world is created
• Generate the overworld as a void with a platform
• Seat structures into the terrain as they generate, with villages graded, surfaced and lit properly. This one is experimental, changes terrain permanently, and stays off unless asked for

A world template gathers these into one file, so a pack ships a whole world shape at once. Every group also answers to a config switch that lets the pack decide, forces the config's value, or turns the group off entirely.

World intro

A pack can put a sequence of pages in front of a player entering the world: scrolling or still text over pictures, backgrounds that cycle, music behind the run. The player gets Next Page and Skip All, and the world stays paused behind it in singleplayer. It can play once per player per world or on every join.

Pregeneration

A pack can hand a player a world whose land is already there. pregenOnNewWorld makes every chunk around spawn the moment a world is created, for the overworld, a list of dimensions, or every dimension registered. A dimension can instead be made the first time somebody enters it.

While it runs, everybody is held as a spectator with progress and an ETA on screen, then released with a greeting when it is done. A finished dimension is written into the world and never made again. A stopped run resumes where it left off. It makes a few hundred chunks a second without a single cascading chunk load, and the engineering behind that is written down in HOWTO.md.

CoFH World

Mods that require CoFH World load without it. Their generation files can be read straight out of their jars and generated through this mod, covering every CoFH generator and distribution that produces anything. Off by default, and it stands down when the real CoFH World is installed.

Good to know

A pack whose name starts with RDPLO always overrides the player's selected resource packs, one starting with RDPLN never does, and anything else follows the overrideResourcePacks config.

/rdpl unused lists files in your packs that nothing has asked for, which is usually a typo in a path. /rdpl biome and /rdpl oregen report what generated and what was blocked. /rdpl which names the pack serving any file.

Grave mods need nothing set up: player loot is put down as an ordinary death drop before any of them looks.

A pack can stay on the server alone, with every player on a plain vanilla client, as long as it registers nothing. The vanillaClients config switch enforces exactly that. HOWTO.md's Server-side packs section has the steps.

The mod's own report goes to logs/rdpl.log rather than the main log.

Requirements

Requires MixinBooter and MCT Blast Plaster. Both are hard dependencies; the game will not start without them.

Reporting issues

Attach logs/latest.log and logs/rdpl.log, plus your mod and Forge version.

Help translate the mod

Feel free to translate the mod and put it in a pull request.

License

Resource Data Pack Loader is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3. You may use it in modpacks, reviews or any other form as long as you abide by the terms.