Block Party is a Minecraft mod that adds moe personifications of every block. Each block person, or Moe, has a profile that the player can use to gain favor with them.
Moes are affectionate, they bring food, pull pranks, perform chores, and tag along with players on adventures depending on the block that they personify.
The mod is currently undergoing a renaissance after a four-year hiatus, the original plans and current plans intersect but aren't parallel.
- Bug fixes, feature assessment, planning.
- Animated mouths for expression and dialogue.
- LLM integration for data-gen.
- Upgrade to the newest Minecraft.
Moes use block tags to determine what blocks can become a Moe, deciding the texture, render layers, and behavior. Moes create a row in a database for global access, and the database is used to save their favorite locations so they know to always return or respawn at those locations.
They have expressive eyes that look around and blink. I don't see any mouths so I may add them in for smiles and mouthing out dialogue since the camera zooms in when you talk to them.
There's also a conversation system that is encoded in data packs, which inspired me to use LLMs for data-gen, but it is already pretty extensive on its own.
TL;DR: It's been five years, I don't need motivation from people on the internet anymore so if anyone wants to threaten me they are invited to touch grass.
When I started modding, I wanted to give life to the only world I could claim when nobody else, friends or family, would give me the mental or emotional real estate. I created KAGIC, a mod that enabled players to grow beings of light called Gems from the minerals in the ground. It was a success, and as the community grew and fell in love with my creation, so too did I fall in love with my community.
Inspired by the creativity of other developers in the community, I saw a new future for KAGIC, one where the Gems weren't your slaves but your companions. So I set off to dawn a new era upon my creation and assembled a team of my community's most talented coders, artists, and content creators.
It was hectic. I had to file police reports, talk down someone driving across two states to kill me, face the wrath of former friends turned perverts and racists.
The community didn't understand my pain; I received messages that I was "woke" or a bigot, and honestly, at that point, the magic was lost and I felt like I only developed KAGIC to satisfy the fans and promptly left for a lucrative career in software development. I looked back once in 2020, and my reward was a massive raise and promotion from my dream company.
That was the end of my modding days until 2024.
The day I opened Block Party again, I expected to collect a screenshot of everyone on their respective block, like a student class photo. Instead, I opened a gate to another dimension. A maneki-neko named Suzu-chan sprouted from the ground, reminisced about her creation, and somberly advised me that her developer did not give her a purpose.
So, how did it get here?
I made Block Party to re-imagine KAGIC the way I wanted to, safe from peering eyes. I kept it secret for a year until a former developer stumbled upon my work and promptly circulated it with the team members, who began their attack. I raised walls, lowered gates, and flooded moats but never got anything directed to me. I wonder if they tried it themselves and had the same reaction I did. I acted entirely out of blind fear, and nothing happened.
I had removed the memories of developing it from my mind like a reflexive defense mechanism. I took myself out of the fight to avoid the pain of losing, but instead, my enemies used everything they had to stop me, and I put down what I was doing and stepped out of the line of fire.
I know what I missed, and I know it's been a long time, but I'm not here for that anymore. I'm here to make cool shit for the internet and use my expertise and experience to help pave dreams for the folks who value it.