Anthill Inside

A Minecraft (Java Edition) mod adding Red Ants, which provide natural automation. Additions of blocks, items, and recipes are reduced to a minimum, the Look & Feel is designed vanilla-like. Features include item transport and sorting, crafting, cooking/smelting, brewing, composting, farming, fishing, shearing, fertilizing (bone meal), wood chopping, block braking, block placing, disenchanting, fluid collection.

Note for coders/modders: Please take a look into the MC version branches to view/clone the source code.

Distribution file download

Main distribution channels for this mod:

• Curse: https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/anthillinside/files
• Modrinth: https://modrinth.com/mod/anthillinside

Description

The mod adds only a few things to the game:

• Red Ant Hive: Ant breeding and processing block.
• Red Ants: Workers in Hives, or placed as Ant Trail for item transport.
• Red Sugar: Hive colony growth and work accelerator.
• Covered Ant Trail: Hollow wood log for unidirectional item transport.
• Queen's Lair: Starter nest with pygmy ants. Feed it with Red Sugar to make a grown Hive.

Getting Started

Red Ant Hives can be found when mining Redstone Ore (low chance, but you'll eventually get one). This is then a new colony with no workers yet, so place it down and give it some time to produce worker ants. By putting Red Sugar the left-side GUI slots of the Hive, you speed up this process.

Once a few worker ants are there, you can give the colony a task, or take some workers out to use them for item transport as Red Ant Trails. At the beginning you will be short on ants, and processing will be slow, but the colony steadily grows to its full size (3x64 ant "units").

Red Ant Trails

Trails are, in short, item conveyors:

• To place Trails, click with Red Ants on the ground or wall (latter for transporting items up). The transport direction is by default the direction that you are looking.

• Ant Trails transport items by chucking them in the transport direction, so that items jump on trails. Long straight paths are accelerated, while the speed is reduced when the Trail direction changes.

• Ant Trails insert items into inventories they are facing to.

• Ant Trails allow transported items to be picked up (yes, that is intentional).

• To correct the transport direction, sneak-click an Ant Trail with Red Ants (means Ants are their own rotation wrench).

• Ant Trails can bridge one block in case you accidentally break a supporting block under a Trail, or like to replace it.

• To make an Ant Trail self-supporting (and also down-inserting), click the Trail with a Ladder (or formally a Scaffolding). This will consume the Ladder. To remove the support, either break the Trail block or click again with a Ladder.

• Ant Trails allow mundane item sorting via Item Frames. If you place an item frame into the space of a Trail, items will get diverted away from the item displayed in the Frame. This may be used to divert to another Ant Trail, or off the cliff. By placing the Item Frame above the Trail (facing down), then the Trail will insert the shown item into an inventory underneath it. See Credits and References.

• Ant Trails are water resistent.

• Ant Trails itch mobs, animals, villagers, and players. Mobs also get a bit of damage in the process.

• Ant Trails do not need Block Entities (to whom it may concern), and do only consume game performance if an item fall on them.

Covered Red Ant Trails

Simple trails running inside hollow wood logs. They have one main input side (big hole) and one output side (small hole).

• Covered trails are placed like logs, and by default transport items away from the face you clicked. By sneak-clicking, this direction is reversed (transport into that direction).

• Covered trails transport faster than Red Ant Trails.

• Covered trails have an inventory of one stack.

• Items can be inserted into Covered Ant Trails from the sides.

• Covered trails insert items into inventories. If there is no inventory on the output side of a covered trail, the item is dropped in the world if possible, or stuck (filling up the stack in the log).

• To check how full (or clogged) a covered trail is, click on it, and a hollow wood sound will be hearable. The the higher the tune, the more full is the log.

• Covered trails do not allow item pickup.

• Red Ant Trails can be placed on Covered Ant Trails.

Red Ant Hives

Hives do the actual processing (the grunt work), which can be either recipe based crafting, or interacting with the world. For the latter, the Hive placement direction (input and output holes) are important.

Placement and UI

Placing Hives without sneaking will always place them upright - input at the top, output at the bottom. For directional placement, sneak-click. The Hive will then be directed in the direction you are facing.

Clicking the block will open its GUI. The screenshot shows the plain UI, where a Hive is used for 3x3 crafting. At the right, some ranges explained later on are marked.

There is no in-game "Manual" for the hive, however, the GUI provides extensive explanations with tool tips when hovering slots and images, as well as a help tool tip when hovering the items with the Control+Shift keys down.

• The three green marked slots are your colony's worker ants. New ants are slowly but steadily bred there. If no ants are yet in a Hive, it cannot do its work.

• The work instruction for hive is given by placing a corresponding item (marked yellow, there are more actually) slot in the center of the UI (where the yellow arrow point to). Read on to see what can be processed and how. Right next to that is a display for the currently crafted item (not always visible).

• Below the work instruction 3x3 slots (marked purple, not always visible) for detailing the work instruction. E.g. for normal crafting, it is the crafting grid, for smelting it is used to specify allowed fuels, and so on.

• The orange colored slots mark the output range. Extracting will pull items from this slot range.

  • Placing a Hopper into the bottom-right (output-control) slot will instruct the Hive to automatically move items into adjacent inventories at the output hole side.

  • Alternatively, a Dropper can be placed into the output-control slot to indicate that the hive ants shall (gently) drop items from the output slot range into the world.

  • Placing a Dispenser will instruct to chuck/throw the items instead of gently dropping them in front of the output hole.

• The blue colored slots mark the input range. Inserting into the Hive will place items there.

  • Above, a Hopper can be placed to automatically pull items from inventories at the input hole side, or picking up items from the world accordingly.

  • The small arrow symbol below the input slot range is a on/off button for item by-passing. This means the items that are not usable in the current recipe are directly forwarded from the input to the output slot range if there is space. This helps preventing clogging if incorrect items are inserted, but can also be used for chain processing.

  • The small lock symbol allows to enable item filtering. When locking the input slot range, the current items are reserved for their slots, also if the stack is empty. Empty slots are still free for inserting everything. While the input lock is active, manually placing items into the input range will overwrite the filter.

Hive Features and Control Slots

General Hive Features

• With a Redstone signal the hive processing and item output stopped/paused.

• Hives are water-loggable (see e.g. farming).

• In the UI, if a no workers are there yet, a strike-through ant symbol is shown to indicate that.

• If no recipe can be found, a strike-through-recipe-book symbol will be shown in the preview slot.

• If not all needed ingredients are in the input slot range, a "missing ingredient" symbol (strike-through egg) will be shown.

• If fuel is missing, in the input slot range, a "missing fuel" symbol (strike-through coal) will be shown.

• The more worker ants are in the hive, the faster the work progresses.

• Crafting result items will be placed into the output slots, or if there is currently no space, held back until it can be inserted. Processing is paused/clogged in this case.

3x3 Crafting (Command Item: Crafting Table)

Placing a crafting table into the command slot will show the 3x3 crafting grid, and the output item preview.

• Arrange items as you do it in a normal Crafting Table to specify which recipe shall be used.

Smelting/Cooking (Command Item: Furnace/Blast Furnace/Smoker)

Placing one of the cooking blocks into the command slot will instruct the hive to smelt or cook.

• The 3x3 grid slots can be used to select the fuel items that are allowed to be used (if none specified, any fuel will do).

• The first acceptable fuel will be used (top-left to down-right).

• If not all fuel is consumed, the ants extinguish the flame, so that no fuel burn time is lost.

Composting (Command Item: Composter)

Placing a composter into the command slot will instruct to convert compostable items to Bonemeal, with the same probability as a normal Composter does it.

Potion Brewing (Command Item: Brewing Stand)

Placing a Brewing Stand into the command slot will instruct to use the first possible brewing recipe that can be found based on the ingredients in the input range (in other words "brew anything you can with the stuff you have there"). Blaze Powder, or also Blaze Rods (count as two powder) are needed as fuel.

Item Pass-Through (Command Item: Hopper)

Placing a Hopper into the command slot will simply move items from the input side to the output side of the hive. See Loading/Unloading and item filtering for ideas ;).

Disenchanting (Command Item: Grind Stone)

Placing a Grind Stone into the command slot will instruct to remove enchantments from items in the input slot range.

• If there are Books in the input slots, the enchantments are transferred into these books (one enchantment per book).

• If there are no Books in the input slots, the enchantments are gone.

Farming (Command Item: Hoe)

Placing a Hoe into the command slot will instruct the hive to use it. Means that grown plants will be harvested and replanted if seeds are dropped while harvesting.

• The range is a square area around the hive.

• The better the Hoe, the more blocks "radius" are farmed (minimum is Iron Hoe).

• Hoes are kept in shape by the ants.

• Harvested items are placed into the output slots.

• Bone Meal in the input slots will be used.

• Pumpkins, Melons, Sugar Cane, and Nether Wart can be farmed as well.

Fertilizing (Command Item: Bone Meal)

Placing Bone Meal into the command slot will instruct the hive to use Bone Meal in the input slot range to fertilize plants (except grass) around the hive, but only in a limited volume above/in direction of the input hole.

Animal Feeding (Command Item: Wheat/Seeds/etc)

Placing animal food into the command slot will breed the corresponding animals, like done manually.

• If too many animals are in the vicinity, feeding is paused.

Fishing (Command Item: Fishing Rod)

Placing a Fishing Rod into the command slot will instruct the hive to use it. Therefore, the input hole outside of the hive has to face a full ("source") water block. Enchantments on the Fishing Rod are applied. Ants also keep the rod repaired.

Block Breaking (Command Item: Pickaxe)

Placing a Pickaxe into the command slot will instruct the hive to break blocks in front of the input hole.

• Blocks are dropped in front of the input hole.

• Use a Hopper in the UI input-control slot to directly collect the items.

• (No Tiers or Enchantments implemented yet).

Tree Chopping (Command Item: Axe)

Placing a Axe into the command slot will instruct the hive to make use of it.

• Trees are chopped with leaves.

• Placing a Hopper in the input control slot will collect chopped items in front of the input hole.

• Chopped items are slowly transported/chucked to the input hole by small (and of corse therefore not visible) ant squats.

Block Placing (Command Item: Dispenser)

Placing a Dispenser into the command slot will instruct the hive to place blocks or plant Saplings from the input slot range.

• Blocks are placed at the output side of the hive.

• Saplings can be spike-planted from below. E.g. place the hive facing up under surface Dirt, and the sapling will be planted at the surface.

Sheep and Plant Snipping (Command Item: Shears)

Placing Shears into the command slot will instruct the hive to use it.

• Sheep in front of the input hole will be sheared.

• Plants like Vines will be snipped.

• Use a Hopper in the input-control slot to collect the items directly.

Minecart loading/unloading (Input/Output slot Hopper)

If a Hopper is placed in the input or output control slot, respectively, Minecarts or similar "non-living entities" with inventory will be loaded or unloaded.

• For loading (output side), Minecarts get tossed/accelerated if the output hive slots are empty or no more items can be inserted into the Minecart.

• For unloading (input side), Minecarts get tossed/accelerated if the cart is empty.

Fluid Collection (Command Item: Bucket)

Placing a Bucket into the command slot will instruct the hive collect water or lava from full ("source") blocks in front of the input hole.

• Empty Buckets are filled and placed into the output slot range.

• Empty Bottles are filled and placed into the output slot range, see Brewing.

• (Milking not implemented yet).

Some Answers

• Where does the mod name come from? Read Terry Pratchett. The name is an homage to the Discworld novels, even it does not remotely have anything to do with +++ HEX +++.

• Introduce Power units, or I/O directional config? No. This is intentionally kept simple.

• Lore? No. If we had to make one up, I'd probably phrase it like "Red Ants are living fossils, born of Redstone, Fire, and Steel, made by the mighty god Cinnabar himself, when the server world was young, crashing, and covered glowing red, with particles of course, enduring the dark ages, until they are found in the remains of creation, and put to unmeaningful work. [...]".

Credits and References

The mod has - "from the author's perspective" - a some sources of inspiration, which are worth noting. There may have been even earlier occurrences, but these are unknown to me.

• The idea using Item Frames for sorting is based on the Hopper Hock flower behavior of Vazkii's Botania.

• The concept of conveyor belts I know from Blu's Immersive Engineering (Ant Trails are something between water streams and conveyor belts). Thinking of it, the expression "Covered" (Ant Trail) is also likely inspired by IE.

• The concept of block breakers and block placers I know from Lothazar's Cyclic.