Incubator

#Blocks

Incubator

The Incubator is a laboratory block that allows players to grow and duplicate virus samples.
It uses a brewing‑stand‑style interface with one top slot and three bottom slots, turning raw materials into infection‑carrying items.

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Obtaining

The Incubator is a crafted block. (Recipe to be defined; currently available via Creative inventory.)

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How to Use

1. Place the Incubator in the world.
2. Right‑click it to open the GUI.
3. Place a valid catalyst or virus sample in the top slot.
4. Place one or more consumable items (Nutrient Medium or empty Live Culture Vials) in the bottom three slots.
5. The progress bar (vertical, filling from top to bottom) will begin to fill.
6. When the bar is full, all bottom slots are processed at once, consuming one charge or item from the top slot.

You can use shift+click to quickly move items between your inventory and the incubator.

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Processing Modes

The incubator automatically detects what you have placed in the top slot and chooses the appropriate mode.

Mode	Top Slot	Bottom Slots	Output	Consumption
Catalyst	Catalyst Vial (set with a pathogen, has charges)	Nutrient Medium	Virus Samples (random strain for that pathogen)	1 charge from vial, 1 nutrient per slot
Culture	Virus Sample (contains a strain)	Empty Live Culture Vials	Filled Live Culture Vials (exact same strain)	Virus sample consumed, vials filled
Blood Duplication	Any blood item that carries an infection (Syringe, Needle, Tube, Bone Marrow, etc.)	Empty Live Culture Vials	Filled Live Culture Vials (exact strain from the blood)	Blood item consumed, vials filled

• All bottom slots are processed simultaneously each time the progress bar completes.
• If the top item is a Catalyst Vial with "RANDOM", the pathogen is randomly selected from all available mappings per batch.
• If the top item is a blood sample, the infection must be a true infection strain (containing semicolon‑separated symptoms) – plain blood data will not start the process.

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Creating a Catalyst Vial

A Catalyst Vial is the starting point for growing a completely new virus strain.

1. Obtain an empty Catalyst Vial.
2. Hold it in your main hand, and the desired reagent in your off‑hand.
3. Right‑click – the vial locks onto the corresponding pathogen (e.g. Red Mushroom → FUNGI, Spider Eye → VIRUS).
4. The vial now shows the pathogen name and the number of charges (default 1).

Using a Nether Star as the reagent sets the vial to "RANDOM" – the pathogen will be chosen randomly when the incubator runs.

The valid reagent‑to‑pathogen mappings are displayed in the Catalyst Vial’s tooltip when it is empty.

You can also view all possible mappings in the JSON file data/bioforge/incubator/catalyst_mappings.json.

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Nutrient Medium

Nutrient Medium is a consumable item placed in the bottom slots during Catalyst mode.
It provides the growth substrate that the incubator converts into a Virus Sample.
Stackable to 64.

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Virus Samples

A Virus Sample is the output of the Catalyst mode.
It carries a randomly‑generated infection strain (pathogen, symptoms, infection types) and can be:

• Used directly in the Incubator (top slot) to grow Live Culture Vials.
• Analysed in the Microscope (shows heart rate, lung sound, temperature, infection strength, etc.).

The strain on a Virus Sample is stored in the same obfuscated format as other infection data.

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Blood Duplication

If you already have a blood sample that carries an infection (e.g. bone marrow, blood tube), you can place it directly in the top slot of the Incubator along with empty Live Culture Vials in the bottom slots.

This will duplicate the exact infection strain from the blood sample into all the vials, consuming the original blood item.

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Tooltips & Guidance

Every item involved in the incubator workflow has detailed tooltips explaining its purpose and the next step:

• Empty Catalyst Vial → lists all possible reagent→pathogen mappings.
• Filled Catalyst Vial → shows pathogen, charges, and “Place in Incubator…”
• Nutrient Medium → “Place in the Incubator bottom slots…”
• Virus Sample → shows strain stats, “Place in Incubator top slot to grow…”
• Live Culture Vial → shows strain stats, “Right‑click a filled Syringe to load infection…”, “Right‑click food, water, Petri dishes…”
• Dirty Culture Vial → “Clean with Ethanol or Wipes…”

This ensures a new player can learn the entire workflow simply by hovering over the items.

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Configuration (for pack makers)

The incubator’s catalyst mappings are defined in data/bioforge/incubator/catalyst_mappings.json.
Example:

{
  "mappings": [
    { "item": "minecraft:red_mushroom", "pathogen": "FUNGI" },
    { "item": "minecraft:brown_mushroom", "pathogen": "FUNGI" },
    { "item": "minecraft:rotten_flesh", "pathogen": "BACTERIA" },
    { "item": "minecraft:spider_eye", "pathogen": "VIRUS" }
  ]
}

The random symptom ranges for each pathogen are taken directly from BioForgeSymptoms (the getDefaultRanges() method), so adding a new symptom to the code automatically makes it appear on virus samples.

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Technical Notes

• IncubatorBlockEntity manages the 4‑slot item handler and the three processing modes.
• IncubatorMenu mirrors the brewing‑stand layout and provides shift‑click support.
• The progress bar is rendered vertically (top‑down) in IncubatorScreen.
• All infection data is written and read using NbtObfuscator for consistency with other items.
• The StrainData class is used to generate random strains with all known symptoms.