Templates 2

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Slopes?

This mod is open source and under a permissive license. As such, it can be included in any modpack on any platform without prior permission. I appreciate hearing about people using my mods, but you do not need to ask to use them. See the LICENSE file for more details.¹

If a Template block is placed in the world and right-clicked with a full-size block, it will take on the appearance of that block, including whether it emits light and redstone. Adding a redstone torch will make them emit redstone power, glowstone dust will make them emit light, and popped chorus fruit will make them intangible.

While Templates itself adds a handful of common shapes, it's not too hard for other mods to interface with Templates and add their own templatable blocks.

For addon developers

Creating a block entity

All templates need a block entity to store what block they look like. Templates registers one under templates:slope², but as an addon developer you can't add additional blocks to my block entity. (Don't try, please.)

To that end, nothing in Templates relies on the specific block entity ID, so just re-register the TemplateEntity class under your own name. You are free to extend TemplateEntity as well.

The only hard requirement on the block entity is that it implements ThemeableBlockEntity. (This implies it returns a BlockEntity from getRenderAttachmentData.)

Creating your block

There are various block interactions in Templates, like adding redstone to make the block emit power. To make your block fit with the other Templates, you'll want those behaviors to apply to your block as well. There's a couple options, depending on the complexity of the block you'd like to "template-ify".

If you simply registered a Block or a simple vanilla class like WallBlock, use the corresponding class in io.github.cottonmc.templates.block.

If you registered something different (like a MyFancyBlock), the simplest approach is to leverage TemplateInteractionUtil, which is where all of the interaction code lives in a mildly "pluggable" form. Here are the suggested steps:

• Create a TemplateMyFancyBlock class that extends your block class.
• Copy-paste the body of TemplateBlock into it; adjust the constructor as needed. (It was designed to be copy-pasted in this way; this is how i filled out most of the other classes.)
• Make sure it instantiates your block entity type.
• Check that the methods are implemented the way you'd like.
  • Particularly you might want to look at the redstone emission methods; the default ones don't call super.

And if all else fails, just reimplement whatever interactions you'd like, or simply don't bother. None of this is important for the actual retexturing part of the mod, apart from returning a suitable block entity.

Creating the custom model

(TL;DR look at assets/templates/blockstates and the bottom of TemplatesClient)

Of course Templates leverages custom baked models. All of Templates's baked model implementations find and retexture quads from an upstream source that you will need to provide.

Templates needs three pieces of information to perform retexturing:

• the quad to be retextured
• whether you actually want to retexture it or just pass it through unchanged (see the Lever Template, which doesn't change the lever arm);
• what face of the block it corresponds to (which is sometimes different from "the direction it points" - see the Door Template, the textures "stick" when you open the door)

The last piece of information is important because Templates tries hard to retain the orientation of blocks placed inside of them - you can place specifically an east-facing log into a Template, for example, and some faces get the cut wood while other faces get the bark. (Some other mods just use the same texture on all faces of the block, like the particle texture.)

Pick a model implementation that suits your needs:

Auto retexturing

• the quad: Sourced from a JSON model.
• whether you want to retexture it: "Yes". All quads will be retextured.
• what face of the block: Automatically determined by facing direction.

Construct with TemplatesClientApi.getInstance().auto. Pass the ID of the model you want to source quads from.

There's no way to configure this, so if you want to skip retexturing a face, try the next model implementation instead.

TODO: this does not work well with multipart models with differently-rotated parts, like the fence model (consisting of 1 fence post and 1 fence-side model that gets rotated around to fill all 4 sides)

Special texture-based retexturing

• the quad: Sourced from a JSON model.
• whether you want to retexture it: Determined from the texture applied to the quad.
• what face of the block: Determined via the texture applied to the quad.

Construct with TemplatesClientApi.getInstance().json. Pass the ID of the model you want to source quads from. All quads textured with the special textures templates:templates_special/east will be textured with the east side of the theme, all quads textured with templates:templates_special/up will be retextured with the top side of the theme, etc. Quads textured with any other texture will be passed through unaltered.

Regarding texture variables:

On the off-chance your blockmodel already has texture variables for north, south, etc, you can simply apply Templates's special textures to it:

{
	"parent": "mymod:block/my_model",
	"textures": {
		"north": "templates:templates_special/north",
		"east": "templates:templates_special/east",
		"south": "templates:templates_special/south",
		"west": "templates:templates_special/west",
		"up": "templates:templates_special/up",
		"down": "templates:templates_special/down",
	}
}

Sadly, many models don't specify completely separate textures for all six sides. If you have a setup like an "ends" variable which gets applied to "the top and bottom" or something, please don't use the texture-variables approach. Instead, see if the UnbakedAutoRetexturedModel suits your needs, or make a second copy of the json model that does separately fill in all faces.

(This one works better with multipart models.)

Mesh retexturing

• the quad: Sourced from a Mesh.
• whether you want to retexture it: Quads with a nonzero tag.
• what face of the block: Determined from the tag.

Construct with TemplatesClientApi.getInstance().mesh, passing a Supplier<Mesh>. To mark a face "retexture this with the EAST side of the block", call .tag(Direction.EAST.ordinal() + 1) on it; same for the other directions. (So, the valid tags are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, corresponding to down, up, north, south, west, east.) Give these faces UV coordinates ranging from 0 to 1.

A .tag of 0 (the default) will be passed through unchanged. This is a little useless since you still need to provide UV coordinates, so instead of passing a Supplier<Mesh> you can also pass a Function<Function<SpriteIdentifier, Sprite>, Mesh>; you will be provided with a Function<SpriteIdentifier, Sprite> that you can query for sprite information, including their UVs.

(To construct this type, you will also need to pass the identifier of a "base model", which can be a regular JSON model. Miscellaneous BakedModel properties like rotations, AO, isSideLit, etc will be sourced from it. See Template's models/block/slope_base. You may need to set "gui_light": "front" to avoid a flat look in the ui.)

A secret, fourth thing

Templates doesn't actually care about the implementation of the UnbakedModel you pass in. It won't work unless you reimplement the retexturing, but if you have your needs I won't stop you.

All the models are supposed to be extensible (if i left a stray private let me know). All the UnbakedModels are backed by the same abstract class called RetexturingBakedModel which actually does the retexturing; feel free to extend it.

Registering your model

After you've decided on and constructed your special model, you should tell Templates about it. Pick an ID that's different from the base model. (If your base model is mymod:block/awesome_template, a good name might be mymod:awesome_template_special). Register your special model under that ID using TemplatesClientApi.getInstance().addTemplateModel.

To assign the block model, using a vanilla blockstate file, simply point your block at that model ID as normal. (See this mod's blockstates folder.) You may also use the x, y, and uvlock properties.

To assign the item model, since items don't have the "blockstate file" level of indirection, call TemplatesClientApi.getInstance().assignItemModel, passing your special model's ID and the items it should be assigned to. Or if you'd rather use a vanilla json model (that won't be retextured) just make one the vanilla way.

Most important attribution in the whole wide world

COOL RIVULET is by mev, this is the most important block in the mod & perhaps the most important block in any mod ever since incorporeal:clearly

License

MIT, which is unusual for me (usually i write LGPL). It's the upstream project's license.

Footnotes

1. This is inherited from a CottonMC project, which inherited the ElytraDev template, which might explain if the readme layout looks familiar. ↩

2. Yes, even the blocks other than slopes use templates:slope. The slope was the first block added to Templates and I forgot to change the block entity ID, and now I can't change it without breaking worlds. At least it demonstrates how the block entity can be used for more than one template? ↩