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Sablednah edited this page Nov 12, 2026 · 2 revisions

Add your own buildings to the cities: the folders, the sidecar, and a worked example. Source: SCHEMATICS.md.

Your own buildings: custom schematics

CityWorld drops ready-made buildings (schematics) into its cities between the ones it generates: the Statue of Liberty, the Winchester Tavern, gas stations, a pagoda and about thirty more ship with the mod. You can add your own. Build it in game, save it, drop the file in a folder named after the kind of district it belongs in, and new cities start using it. You don't need a datapack, a mod or a restart of the world, just a restart of the game or server.

A building can hold blocks from any mod you have installed. A Cobblemon Pokémon Center with a healing machine and a PC, a Create workshop or a Farmer's Delight kitchen all work, because a schematic stores each block by its id.

The short version

  1. Build it. Save it with a structure block (.nbt), WorldEdit (.schem) or Litematica (.litematic).
  2. Put the file in config/cityworld/schematics/<Family>/, where <Family> is one of the folders below.
  3. Optionally, put a sidecar file beside it (pokecenter.nbt.yml) to set how often it appears.
  4. Restart the game or server. Check that it loaded: /cityschem list names it, and /cityschem pokecenter pastes it at your feet.
  5. Explore new land in a world with Schematics on. Chunks already generated never change.

Where the folder is

You play The folder
Single player <your instance>/config/cityworld/schematics/ (CurseForge: right-click the profile → Open Folder)
A server config/cityworld/schematics/ on the server. Players don't need the files.
A modpack ship config/cityworld/schematics/ in the pack's overrides

CityWorld creates the folder, with a README.txt in it, the first time it runs. The path is the same on every Minecraft version and both loaders.

The family folders: which district a building appears in

The folder name decides where the building can land. Capitals don't matter (Lowrise, lowrise). A building may go in more than one folder: put a copy in each (the bundled gas station is in Lowrise, Municipal and Neighborhood).

Folder Where it appears Biggest footprint
Highrise downtown: the skyscraper core 4 × 4 chunks (64 × 64 blocks)
Midrise the ring of mid-height blocks around downtown (and the Maze style) 4 × 4 chunks
Lowrise high streets: shops, diners, banks, small offices 4 × 4 chunks
Municipal civic districts: city halls, hospitals, churches, landmarks 9 × 9 chunks
Industrial factories, warehouses and yards 6 × 6 chunks
Construction building sites 4 × 4 chunks
Neighborhood the suburbs: houses and gardens 4 × 4 chunks
Park city parks 4 × 4 chunks
Roundabout the centre of a roundabout: a statue or fountain 1 chunk (16 × 16)
Farm farmland outside the cities 4 × 4 chunks
Outland the rough edge where the wild begins: works, yards, camps 4 × 4 chunks
Nature the deep wild, and the open sea for Ocean: true builds (at most two per map square) 9 × 9 chunks

A file in any other folder name is ignored. So is a building wider than its family's limit. A footprint is counted in whole chunks, so a 17-block-wide building takes two. Modern and Apocalypse worlds have every kind of district. The other world styles have some of them.

How a building is picked. CityWorld plans its world in squares of 10 × 10 chunks (160 blocks), and each square is one kind of district. In each square, every building in that district's folder rolls its own OddsOfAppearance. A building that wins is placed on a clear, flat spot if one exists, and CityWorld generates the rest of the square around it. The roll is seeded from the world seed, so a seed always builds the same city. Many buildings with high odds in one folder can leave little room for CityWorld's own buildings. Keep the odds modest.

The sidecar: odds, depth and a title

The sidecar is a plain text file with the building's own name plus .yml: pokecenter.nbt.yml, or just pokecenter.yml. Every key is optional, and a building without a sidecar takes the defaults.

Key Default What it does
OddsOfAppearance 0.1 The chance (0 to 1) it appears in each square of its district. 0.3 is common, 0.05 rare, 0.01 a landmark.
GroundLevelY 0 How many of the building's bottom layers are below ground: a basement or a buried foundation. 0 puts the bottom layer on the pavement. Ground is the pavement in a city family (Highrise, Midrise, Lowrise, Municipal, Industrial, Neighborhood, Park, Construction, Roundabout: one block above the road, the kerb's height) and the natural surface in a wild one (Farm, Nature, Outland, Astral), so the same file sits a block higher in a city folder than in a wild one. A forecourt or car park that should meet the road flush wants GroundLevelY: 1 in a city family (the shipped gas stations and bank), so its floor replaces the pavement block and sits level with the road.
Title the file name The name /cityfind and the landmark announcements use, and the CityWorld Compass lists.
FlipableX, FlipableZ false Allow a mirrored copy across X or Z. Leave them off for anything with writing or a deliberate front.
Decayable true Whether Apocalypse and Destroyed worlds may ruin it. false keeps it whole.
PristineChance world default This building's own chance of being spared that ruin, 0 to 1.
BroadcastLocation false Announce it in chat when it generates (the world's broadcastSpecialPlaces setting must be on too).
KeepAir false Place the schematic's air too, so a cellar or hollow stays open instead of filling with ground. Trim dead air off the build first.
Ocean false An offshore build (a rig, a ship): placed only in deep open sea, floating at the waterline. Put it in Nature. GroundLevelY is then how far the hull or legs go under water.
Anchor false With Ocean: run each leg down to the sea floor.
Loot — A loot table for every container in it, e.g. Loot: mypack:chests/pokecenter. Without it, see Loot.
Driveway — Where the build's own ground meets its edge for vehicles (a car park, a forecourt, a drive): a side, then the blocks along that edge, e.g. Driveway: south 16-22. CityWorld turns and sites the build so that a driveway meets one of the district's roads wherever its roads allow (a build without one lands anywhere it fits, facing any way); the road there surfaces its sidewalk like the road — with a slab ramp at the kerb when the build's drive is floored at the pavement's height, or the sidewalk cut down to the road when the drive is at road level (its floor sunk by GroundLevelY) — and CityWorld paves from the build's edge out to the road. Several on one line with commas (north 2-6, north 9-13, west) or on more lines; a side alone opens its whole edge. Counted in the schematic as built (before any turning or mirroring), from the west end of a north or south edge and the north end of an east or west one, starting at 0. 
# pokecenter.nbt.yml
Title: "Pokémon Center"
OddsOfAppearance: 0.3
GroundLevelY: 0
Decayable: false
Driveway: south 16-22

Lines starting with # are comments. Quotes around a value are optional.

A worked example: a Pokémon Center and a gym

You want a Pokémon Center to turn up in most towns, and a gym now and then.

  1. Build the Center with its healing machine and PC, on a floor one block thick. Make it no more than 48 blocks each way, the most one structure block saves.

  2. Save it. /give @s minecraft:structure_block, place it at one corner, set Save mode, name it pokecenter, size the box to the building (switch Show bounding box on), and press Save. The file is written to <world>/generated/minecraft/structures/pokecenter.nbt.

  3. Drop it in. Copy it to config/cityworld/schematics/Lowrise/pokecenter.nbt, and the same file to config/cityworld/schematics/Neighborhood/pokecenter.nbt so the suburbs get one too.

  4. The sidecar. Beside each copy, pokecenter.nbt.yml:

    Title: "Pokémon Center"
OddsOfAppearance: 0.3
Decayable: false

  5. The gym, the same way, as config/cityworld/schematics/Municipal/gym.nbt with a rarer sidecar:

    Title: "Pokémon Gym"
OddsOfAppearance: 0.05
BroadcastLocation: true

  6. Restart, then test. /cityschem list should name both, and /cityschem pokecenter pastes one at your feet to check it looks right. In a new world, /cityfind pokecenter (or /cityfind tp gym) finds the nearest one generated.

Odds of 0.3 in two districts give roughly one Center for every two or three city squares. If they come up too often or too rarely, change the number. It only affects land that hasn't been generated yet.

Good to know

  • Schematics must be switched on for the world. They are on in the Modern (the default CityWorld type) and Apocalypse presets and off in the other styles. Turn them on with Schematics in the Customize screen when you create the world, or in a settings datapack: "features": { "includeSchematics": true } (see Configuring CityWorld).
  • Only new chunks. CityWorld reads the folder when the game starts and uses it for land generated after that. Explored land never changes.
  • A building may face any way. Each one is turned a random quarter-turn when placed, so a front door can face away from the road. A door on two sides, or a building that looks right from every side, sits best.
  • Modded blocks need their mod. A block from a mod that isn't installed places as air, so a Pokémon Center without Cobblemon is a room with gaps. Blocks with contents keep them: chests, signs, a PC, a healing machine.
  • Entities are not placed. Mobs, villagers, armour stands, item frames and paintings in the file are skipped. Item frames can be hung by a fit-out, and a mod that spawns its own NPCs (a nurse, a gym leader) has to do that itself.
  • Palettes don't change a schematic, substitutes do. A block substitute swaps a block in schematic buildings too. The per-part palettes are for CityWorld's own buildings only.
  • Old files are upgraded. A schematic saved on an older Minecraft version is brought up to date as it loads. Very old MCEdit .schematic files can lose blocks that were renamed since (they place as air). A modern format (.nbt, .schem, .litematic) avoids that.
  • A broken file is skipped, with a SchematicLibrary: failed to load line in the log naming it. SchematicLibrary: +N custom schematics from … at startup says how many were found.

Loot, and what is inside

Every container in a schematic gets a loot table when it is placed:

  1. the table named by the sidecar's Loot: key, if it has one;
  2. otherwise cityworld:chests/schematic/<name>, if a datapack provides it. The name is the file name in lower case, with spaces as underscores: data/cityworld/loot_table/chests/schematic/pokecenter.json (loot_tables on 1.20.1);
  3. otherwise the usual loot for the district it stands in.

A datapack can also change what is inside a building without a new schematic: swap blocks and hang item frames with a schematic fit-out. See Loot Tables for the tables.

Commands

  • /cityschem list lists every schematic, bundled and yours. /cityschem <name> pastes one with its corner at your feet, whether or not the world places schematics.
  • /cityfind <name> and /cityfind tp <name> find the nearest one in the world, by file name or Title.
  • /cityinfo names the schematic you are standing on.

/cityschem and /cityfind are for ops by default; /cityinfo is for everyone. See Commands and Permission Nodes.

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