TechTree

My guidebook-ish mod. Depends on LibPiston

What does this mod do?

This mod adds customizable guide pages for tech trees in mod packs. It has a dependency system similar to TC's research system, but it simply unlock entries as the player gets items. It has no complicated stuff like quest, rewards, etc.

Usage

The mod adds a single guide book item and opens the GUI when used. You can navigate through the category and items in the GUI.

When making the modpack, you can use /techtree reload to reload the config without restarting the game.

Concepts

The entries in the tech tree is broken into categories, and each category has items. The categories and items are identified by their paths in the config directory. You will see this referred to as the category id and the item id.

Item Entry

Each item entry consists of a list of items that, when obtained, completes the entry. Each entry also has a list of dependencies - a list of other item entries that need to be completed before this entry is completable.

The full states for each item entry are:

• Hidden:
  • This is the default state for every entry
  • The entry is hidden in the guide book
• Discovered:
  • All its dependencies are Unlocked or above
  • Entry is displayed as a dark square, with the darkened texture and ??? name
  • Entry content is not readable
• Unlocked:
  • All its dependencies are Completable or above
  • Entry is displayed as a dark square, with normal texture and readable name
  • Entry content is not readable
• Completable:
  • All dependencies Completed
  • Entry is displayed as normal square
  • Entry content is readable
• Completed:
  • Entry must satisfy all requirements to be Completable
  • The player has obtained an item that can complete the entry

Category

Items are grouped into categories. Each category also has an index entry that describes what the category is. Categories also follow a similar state system, but they are progressed automatically with item progression:

• Hidden:
  • This is the default state for every category
  • The category is hidden in the guide book
• Discovered:
  • At least one entry in the category is Discovered or above
  • Category is displayed as a dark block, with darkened texture and ??? name
  • Category content is not accessible
• Unlocked:
  • At least one entry in the category is Unlocked
  • Category is displayed normally
  • Category content is accessible
• Progressed:
  • At least one entry is Completed
  • Category will have its total number of entries and number of completed entries displayed
• Completed:
  • All entries in the category are Completed

Tutorial Categories

Each category can be marked as a tutorial category. Before all tutorial categories are completed, there are several things to note:

• The guide book item will be kept in the inventory when player dies ("Beginner Protection")
• The guide book won't show the number of categories in total

Config Format

File Format

This mod uses a custom config text format for its entries. The format is similar to TOML or INI, where [] are used to denote a section. Section orders are not significant with one exception being [text]. Whitespaces are also trimmed except for the text section

Item Format

Items in the config are specified as modid:name:meta. meta is optional, and can be:

• wildcard * (any meta). This is the default when meta is not specified
• A single value 42
• An interval (41-43), both ends are inclusive
• A list of values or intervals (35,37-40,42)

When specifying an icon, the first valid value in meta is used (0 if wildcard)

Text Format

The main text for item entries, categories and the index entry are denoted in the [text] section. [text] must be the last section in the config file, and all content afterwards are part of the text.

The text section has automatic line break and pagination. You can also control the line breaks in a way similar to markdown, where one newline doesn't break a paragraph, but multiple does. Consecutive newlines are also kept as empty lines.

For pagination, you can manually insert page breaks with --- on a line by itself.

You can also display items in the text section. The syntax is:

<|>modid:name:meta+NBTxstackSize<|>

Examples:

<|>minecraft:stone<|>
<|>minecraft:stone:1+{"display":{"Name":"Stone"}}x64<|>
<|>minecraft:log:1<|>
<|>minecraft:logx2<|>
<|>minecraft:log:2x2<|>

Multiple items can be put in the same line following the same line break practice.

Comments

With the exception of the text section, content after the first # is ignored on all lines.

Config Structure

The config root is at .minecraft/config/TechTree. The paths below are relative to this root.

Localization

Each locale needs its own copy of the pages stored at /<locale> (for example /en_US). If a locale is not found, it defaults to en_US.

Index

The index is /<locale>/index.txt. This is what you see if you open the index book. Its format is

[title]
Title
Subtitle

[text]
A long long time ago, ...

The [title] section will become the item name of the guide book. The first line is the name and the rest are tooltips.

Category Index

The category index entry is displayed when a category is clicked but no item entry is selected yet. Each category index is stored at /<locale>/<category_id>.txt. Its format is

[title]
Category Title

[tutorial]

[icon]
<item>

[text]
Your text goes here
...

The icon item will be displayed in the category. The [tutorial] section will make the category a tutorial. Leave it out if it's not a tutorial. Completing all tutorials will show how many categories are completed vs total.

Item Entry

Item entries are stored at /<locale>/<category_id>/<item_id>.txt. Its format is

[title]
Item Title
Item Subtitle

[icon]
<item>

[items]
<item>
<item>

[after]
<item_entry>
<item_entry>

[text]
Your text goes here

There are 2 extra sections compared to category:

• [items]: each line should be an item (with modid, name and meta range) that can complete this entry
• [after]: each line should be an item entry that this item depends on. The id can be category.item, or .item to use the same category as this item

Hidden Dependencies

An item can specify hidden as one of the dependencies:

[after]
hidden
<modid>:<name>

Item entries with hidden dependencies will remain in the Hidden state until it can be in the Completed state (i.e. actually obtaining the item). This can be used to lock subtrees behind certain discovery, for example a boss drop.

Completion-in-advance

It's possible that the player obtains an item that is meant to be obtained later in the game. In this case, the entry won't be completed until the prereqs are satisfied. Once they are, the entry will automatically be Completed upon being Completable.

Error Handling

If the config data is invalid, the error will be displayed as a chat message when you log in or when you reload.

Data Structure

Each player's progress is stored in the players data directory as <player_name>.techtree.txt The stored data is a list of items the player ever picked up that is can be used to progress the tech tree. This means:

• If the tech tree changes slightly without adding new items, the progress will still be valid
• If a new item not previously reference in the tech tree is added, it is assumed that the player has not picked it up, since only items in the tech tree is added to the save data.

Debug Support

There is a debug guide book item available that has several features:

• Automatically reload the config when used
• Displays all pages (including hidden), and all pages can be read.
• Displays additional debug info
• Allows completing a category or item entry in the GUI.

There are also some commands which could be handy:

• /techtree reload to reload config
• /techtree hand to print the name of the item in your hand

Multiplayer Support

Multiplayer (i.e. dedicated server) is supported. The config needs to be both on the client and server side.

In the future, the config maybe downloaded directly from the server, but there's no plan to do it now.