Client side mods I use on Fabric

I use a few client side mods when playing on vanilla servers that help immensely with either performance, understanding the current state of the game, or planning large projects. In streams and video’s I get asked which ones I’m using for a specific task, and that’s not always the easiest thing to explain on the spot because I’ve grown so used to using them that I’m not 100% sure which mod does what. So I’ve finally decided to compile a list of what mods I use and the basics of what I use them for.

This won’t be an extensive list of their features as most mods have a list of their own, but rather a list f the features I primarily use. So if a mod looks interesting to you, please check it out and see if it fits your use case. I’ll be linking each mods primary download location so that you can find it easier.

Tweakeroo

Tweakeroo can be found on CurseForge and Masady’s dev build site.
You will need MaliLib from CurseForge or Masady’s dev build site.

Tweakeroo is probably the mod I use the most. To put it incredibly simply, it’s a mod developed by and for the technical community to control aspects of the game on the fly. It offers a number of tweaks that I use nearly constantly, including but not limited to,

  • Toggle Sneak
  • Periodic Attack
  • Periodic Use
  • Fake Sneak
  • Aim Lock
  • Breaking Grid
  • Placement Grid
  • Hand Restock
  • Hold Attack
  • Hold Use
  • Auto Tool Repair
  • Shulker Box Display
  • Map Preview
  • Remove Own Potion Particles

Tweakeroo is built to allow players to either automatically perform some menial functions like holding down a key or repeatedly attacking, as well as making it much easier to build on a large scale by giving fine tuned control of placement, breaking, and movement mechanics. There are some relatively complicated “tweaks” that it offers in relation to the control of placement mechanics that make large scale and repetitive placement far more enjoyable than it would be otherwise. It does require quite a bit of configuration though.

Something to note is that some of the tweaks it offers may, and generally do, violate modification rules of some servers. The major example is that it offers the use of Free Cam. You can not use that on a server like CapeCraft where we have a strict policy against that kind of modification, but on servers like my SubServer it may be allowed. Always make sure you read the rules of a server before using mods.

MiniHud

MiniHud can be found on CurseForge and Masady’s dev build site.
You will need MaliLib from CurseForge or Masady’s dev build site.

MiniHud is another mod from Masady but this one’s focused on displaying information. Like Tweakeroo it has an incredible amount of options, though I primarily use it for plotting out complex shapes out of circles or spheres, showing the light level, and getting a miniature f3 screen with just the information I need.

MiniHud does an amazing job at keeping up with new information added to the game and is primarily made to make it easier to see the information in contexts where it’s needed. So if you find yourself having to look at the f3 screen a lot, I highly recommend it.

Litematica

Litematica can be found on CurseForge and Masady’s dev build site.
You will need MaliLib from CurseForge or Masady’s dev build site.

Wait a sec, another mod from Masady?? Yup, Massady is an absolute bastion of technical mod development. Either way, litematica is the modern rebuild of the older Schematica mod and allows you to save Schematics of builds and then preview them elsewhere. I primarily use it for displaying builds that I drafted in creative on a survival world or for showing the mechanism of a farm.

If you want some details on how it works and how to use it before hopping into it, Massady links a very helpful Reddit post that explains most of it.

Item Scroller

Item Scroller can be found on CurseForge and Masady’s dev build site.
You will need MaliLib from CurseForge or Masady’s dev build site.

Item Scroller is a mod that’s been around as long as I can remember. It’s reactively simple and tends to have a few versions running around at any given moment. The current one that I use is maintained by, you guessed it, Masady. In general it adds a number of extremely useful ways to move items around in your inventory and the inventory of other containers. You can easily take out all items but 1 in a stack, you can move every stack of a specific item type into or out of a container, you can move one item at a time by scrolling, and at least a dozen other things. If you every get frustrated with inventory management, use this.

Smooth Boot

Smooth Boot can be found on CurseForge.

If you’re using Fabric for anything, use Smooth Boot with it. As far as the user is concerned it’s an incredibly simple mod, it works right of the box and requires little to no configuration. But the impact it can have on your experience in unquantifiable. Smooth Boot does what it says, it makes the game boot up in a more smooth and predictable way.

In my case Minecraft would cause major hitching on my PC for the 45 seconds or so that it was starting, so even if I was ok with it taking a bit longer to load it would affect other applications and in general just be annoying until it finished starting. Now that wouldn’t be all that bad unless I’m putting my PC under intense load by streaming, rendering, or running multiple instances of the game. So after adding Smooth Boot the game takes a small amount longer to start up when my PC is under load, but it’s nearly imperceptible since my computer doesn’t have a stroke every time. Absolute life saver.

Quickcraft

Quickcraft can be found on CurseForge.

Quickcraft replicates the Bedrock Edition crafting system that was built for controllers. You can craft items without having to move your mouse away from the recipe book by pressing either CTRL or SHIFT to do a single item or a stack of items. While that may sound like a small change, when you’re crafting large amounts of items that motion back and forth really adds up. This is a really good quality of life mod that I wish was just added to Vanilla.

Bounding Box Outline Reloaded

Bounding Box Outline Reloaded can be found on CurseForge.

Bounding Box Outline Reloaded is a little clunky to be honest, but it offers a set of features that can’t be beat. It’s similar to MiniHud in that it allows you to visualize details about the game that are either hard or impossible to do otherwise. The difference between the two is what the specifically offer. My specific use case with Bounding Box Outline Reloaded lies in it’s ability to render the effect distance of beacons, conduits, and spawners as well as the fact that it has a server side plugin that can send bounding box data to clients running the mod. It’s definitely worthwhile to still have MiniHud because there are a number of things that it offers that Bounding Box Outline Reloaded doesn’t, but when connected to a Paper server or needing to work with effect rangers, Bounding Box Outline Reloaded takes the cake.

Cherished Worlds

Cherished Worlds can be found on CurseForge.

Cherished Worlds is a neat little utility mod that allows you to favorite specific worlds in your singleplayer menu. It’s really as simple as that, the worlds that you favorite will stay above other worlds so that you can get to them faster.

WorldEdit

The Fabric version of WorldEdit can be found on CurseForge.

WorldEdit is one of those mods that has been around for years and almost everyone has at least heard of, so I won’t get too much into it here. All I really want to note is that WorldEdit does have a client side version for SinglePlayer worlds, which is what this is. It makes it a bit easier to create a new world and test something out instead of having to spin up a server to do the same. It doesn’t affect what I can do on a server at all though, so keep that in mind.

WorldEdit CUI

The Fabric version of WorldEdit CUI can be found on CurseForge.

WorldEdit CUI is a Client Side 3D Visualizer for WorldEdit selections. It works if you just have WorldEdit CUI on your client but Have WorldEdit on your server, so is an amazing tool for any level of WorldEdit work. To describe what it does a bit clearer, it outlines the WorldEdit selections you make using a grid and gives you a few option on how you want to display that grid. It’s incredibly simple on it’s face, but having that extra bit of information can make defining selections a walk in the park.

Minecraft Capes

Minecraft Capes can be found on CurseForge and James090500’s Website.

Minecraft Capes is a cosmetic mod Developed by one of my bet friends, James090500. It’s goal is to replicate the vanilla capes that Mojang gave out at past Minecon events and allow more players the ability to enjoy them. If that interests you, go check it out!

Replay Mod

Replay Mod can be found exclusively on their Website.

Replay Mod is truly a ubiquitous name in Minecraft Content Creation. It’s been used to create incredible timelapeses of projects for as long as I can remember and has been used by professional build teams from around the globe. It allows you to record the world as you interact with it and then when you’re done, define any number of custom camera paths for a final render. The render can be sped up, have different video settings, use shaders when you weren’t before, and can be output as a regular video file to be used anywhere you like. I highly recommend checking it out, even if you just want to use it for personal recording.

keep in mind though, not all servers allow it to be used because the replay editor allows you to fly around in the recorded area as if you were in spectator mode. Effectively granting you free cam. Always read the server rules before using mods.


Why Minecraft means so much to me

It’s been a while since I’ve made a blog post, but today Mojang released a video that really hit me and I wanted to get the words out while I had them. I would strongly recommend watching that video, it’s extremely short but it does a great job of capturing a person’s experience with Minecraft and their disability.

The video tells a story about a person by the name of Join Chris who was born with underdeveloped corneas which are what focuses the light into your eyes so you can see. His story about how Minecraft assisted in his adaptation to his disability is incredible and amazes me to no end, so I don’t want to downplay the differences between what he did and is doing by telling y own story. However, I feel it’s important to bring multiple angles up in this conversation because Minecraft, and games in general, have so much to offer.

The idea that games can be more than just something fun to do is something I strive to live by, and I feel Minecraft is such a perfect example of that. It’s so open to interpretation and the player that it can be a great stand-in for things the player may be in danger doing otherwise. I think that’s why I love it so much, I’ve mentioned before that Minecraft is what taught me how to control a character when I was younger and I always get laughed at about it (not in a bad way lol), but it couldn’t be more true. Like most people with autism I have/had a very poor spatial sense and would manage to hurt myself by trying to make it better. Minecraft gave me a place with known limits and a way to try something again with my surroundings exactly the same as they were, meaning that I could make mistakes and learn from them without injuring myself or others.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in as bad of a situation as Join Chris was, at least not one that can be attributed to what Minecraft taught me, but with how basic of a skill that perception is I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that what I learn in-game is what gave me my IRL reflexes Well… what little I have. When I was younger (<10) I was attending Physical Therapy 3 times a week so that I could learn how to write, run, catch things, throw things, or even walk without hurting myself. There are so many situations IRL that can result in extreme injury if you can’t remember how to move properly, and that was me.

When I turned 14 or so my best friend at the time got me into Minecraft. Up until then, I had been playing basic flash games that didn’t require me to move a character. Every time I would try a game that had a character to control I wasn’t able to move the way the game wanted me to and it just resulted in my frustration. But I took on to moving in Minecraft quicker than anything I ever had. Every limit was visible and static, I knew what I was looking for and I could track it as I moved.
If you’ve never had to re-learn how to walk or had issues with moving in general you may not know how essential of a thing that is. When you move you have to keep a visual in your head, however unconsciously, of your body and the area directly around you. Everyone has a different amount of skill with that, being good at it results in a good sense of direction, and being poor at it results in clumsiness. I was on the very low end of that spectrum in that I couldn’t keep track of myself at all, I basically had no balance and would always slam myself into things because I forgot something about where I was. Always covered in bruises and marks from missing my target.

With how simple Minecraft is, even in 3D, I was able to learn how to think relative to what I saw better than what my Physical Therapist could explain. That’s not to say they didn’t help me at all, not in the least! But Minecraft is what made it click for me, and I feel like it was a similar situation for Join Chris. You can tell someone that the sun rises in the East and that you can use that to orientate, but you never know how to use that information effectively until you get the chance to put it into practice. Minecraft was the perfect place for me to do that and I still do to this day.

Even watching my content, you wouldn’t notice how much Minecraft has changed my life. Most of the struggles I had when I started I’ve learned to work around and if you didn’t know me then you wouldn’t be able to see the difference. If you are interested in seeing how Join Chris plays Minecraft through his disability with other blind Minecrafters he does have a YouTube channel where he does just that and more. I’ve only watched a small amount of his content but he seems like an amazing person who is taking a challenge I could never imagine in stride.
Also, check out the video Mojang posted, they do an amazing job at making Minecraft accessible to people who need it.


Minecraft Resource Packs

Below is a list of and links to the resource packs I use in my vanilla Minecraft streams. I’ll keep this updated with the ones I use and any updates/information associated with them.

Alternate Netherite Gear

I wasn’t too fond of the normal Netherite texture, even though I understand Jappa’s reasoning I wanted to change it up a bit. While browsing through Reddit I found this post that linked this texture pack. I was really happy with how it looked and incorporated it into my regular game play.

Vanilla Tweaks

Vanilla tweaks is a tool developed by Xisumavoid’s dev team with the goal of providing useful and unobtrusive changes to vanilla minecraft. I use their resource pack tools to create a more enjoyable experience for myself. This link is to my shared resource pack link and will show all of the packs I use from them. If you want to edit the packs selected upload the pack from the link above to their main resource pack page.


How to get your crash logs – Vanilla Minecraft launcher

When Minecraft runs into an issue the best way to get down to it’s cause is to take a look at the games logs. You will almost always find the problem mentioned in there, albeit very abstractly. Crash logs are very useful when trying to pin down why the game is acting weird or just plain crashing and will almost always be asked for when you try to get support with a mod or other game feature. Even reporting vanilla bugs requires the a crash or game log.

First things first, where is the log file. With the assumption you are using the vanilla minecraft launcher you will want to navigate to your .minecraft folder. In windows you can do so by typing %appdata%/.minecraft into the address bar. This will take you directly to the folder that your default game installation is stored in.

As seen in image1 there are two main log directories, crash-reports and logs. You’ll find a different kind of log in each folder, first we are going to look at the crash-reports folder and the logs within.

Image 1

Highlighted here are the primary log folders for vanilla Minecraft.

Crash Report

Let’s start with the crash reports folder, the actual process for getting the logs is very similar between the two folders but the trick is getting the right one. Crash reports are named with a set of key criteria. An example crash report name would be crash-2020-04-17_19.33.41-client. When you look at it a few things will jump out at you, but let’s go through each section one by one.

crash-2020-04-17_19.33.41-client
This states that the game actually crashed, should always say this.
crash-2020-04-17_19.33.41-client
This is the date as it is set on your computer. The generated log will always have the date on which it was generated.
crash-2020-04-17_19.33.41-client
This is the time in the 24-hour format as it was on your computer when the log was generated. It will always be in the timezone your computer is set to.
crash-2020-04-17_19.33.41-client
This simply specifies whether it was the server or client that crashed.
You can get still server crashes when playing in single player as the game runs a local server for you.

Now that you know what the file name means, we need to make sure that you grab the log with the most useful information. If you know the date and time the crash happened you should be able to use the file name to find the correct report. If you don’t know when it happened and you are able to reproduce the crash then you can cause the crash and grab the new crash report it generates. If it’s not generating a crash report or someone requests it then the log file will most likely have the information needed.

Game log

latest.log

This log file is generated every time you start the game, it displays debug information about nearly every startup step that the game has to go through. It will almost always get the event or action that crashed the game. If your bug is not creating a crash report or you need more information you should take a look at the latest.log

Now the log file isn’t as cleanly laid out for the average user as the crash reports are. The file you generally need is named latest.log as each time you run the game the previous log file is archived. So reproducing the crash is generally easier than figuring out which archived log contains the crash.
Latest.log will always be the information from the last time the game was run, so you want to make sure that the issue you are trying to debug happened the last time you opened the game. Once you are sure that you need information from your last game launch you can navigate to the logs folder in your .minecraft folder. To go directly to the logs folder type %appdata%/.minecraft/logs into the windows explorer address bar. Once in the folder you can either open the latest.log file and either upload the file itself or use a text hosting site.

Archives

Every time you open the game it loads a new latest.log file. However the old one is not removed. It is automatically compressed and named based on the date. The file format is far simpler than the crash reports and that can make it hard to get the right one. An example log archive would be like so,
2020-04-17-6.log.gz
It starts off with the date in order of Year-Month,Day and is followed by the number of logs generated that day. So in the example case this was generated the 6th time minecraft had been launch on april 17th 2020.

Upload and share

Both crash logs and latest.log are way to long to post in conventional messaging sites. Most of the time it will just result in a massive block of text that 90% of people will be forced to scroll through. Lucky for us there are sites made with the purpose of hosting large amounts of text and making them easy to read. If you are looking for help online you will almost always be asked to upload your log to a site that doe sso. People have started hosting their own text hosting sites for various reasons, and if the community you are looking for support from asks you to use theirs then the procces is almost identical between them.

Pastebin

I’m going to start with pastebin as it’s the first one I ever used and started the push for this type of site. To go to the site use this link. Once there you should see a landing page close to the one in image 2.


In image 2 you can see a large text box labeled New Paste, now each website built for this purpose will always start you out on a page with that textbox. It is as simple as taking your log/text, pasting it into that text box, and clicking the sites equivalent to New Paste.

Once you click the New Paste button you should be sent to the link that now hosts you text. As seen in image 3 this page shows the user that posted it (Guest if the user did not create an account prior to posting), a syntax highlighted version, and the raw paste text. This page is exactly what someone looking to read the paste will see and need, so all you have to do is copy the website address from your browser and give it to whoever asked. The link should look like this is you used pastebin https://pastebin.com/h3QyffkA and should be similar on other sites.


My minecraft adiction

What is it

Minecraft, at the surface, is a simple game. You are given simple items and objects with easy to understand mechanics that, at face value, don’t do much. Much of the game play and story is left up to the player, there is no set meta or overarching style to the game that can be defined by any one person. It really is a game where every person is left to do what they want.
It’s a gameplay style that has flaws, sure. But at its core it’s designed to be open and welcoming to as many people as possible. A place for anyone to find a friend, where anyone can find meaning in the digital age.

Modding

The allure of Minecraft combined with Mojangs openness to modding allows for an even larger community with completely different styles of play than if it were just vanilla, even just on the semi-vanilla landscape. Anyone, with any mind set can find a place when it changes so drastically.
The modding community that has been enabled by Mojang has found amazing ways to push people to be creative and express themselves in the game. From simply enabling vanilla servers to hold more people with moderation tools and performance optimization (no small feat mind you) to creating whole new stories and sub games in minecraft with tools Mojang doesn’t even have. Every day its inspiring people to take on jobs in game development and design as well as giving them a taste of what they can do with it.

The community

You hear a lot about this or that games community, and it’s similar for minecraft. People will point to the community for why they enjoy the game, well, any game. But the big thing I want to point out here is how varied the communities here are. We’ve touched on how different play styles can be, so far apart that players of one style may not even know the other exists. Because of the massive number of ways you can play Minecraft and the variety of players that play, there are communities for literally everything in minecraft. All of the different styles, lifestyles, and real life niches come together to enjoy what can just be a simple game.

Emergence

Even in vanilla, just the game as Mojang releases it, shows how open ended things can be when you want it to be. This is my favorite part, and if you’ve watched my streams you have definitely heard me mention it. Emergence. The idea that an object is greater than the sum of its parts. If you look anywhere in minecraft, whether it be co-op survival, anarchy, plots, grand scale creative, or modding, this holds true for me. I see players all over the place taking the simple pieces minecraft provides and using them to make massively complex things. Farms, machines, mobility devices, traps, doors, terrain, songs, buildings all the way to entire worlds! It goes on and on. Each of these things made up of single meter by meter cubes with simple, easy to understand rules.

From my perspective, most of the minecraft world interacts via some intermediary. Something that tells it what to do or how to react. There are 4 that I can think of, inventories, redstone power, mob location, and block location/state. This generally relates to redstone mechanics, but is also true when it comes to interacting with the world by most other means such as shearing sheep or trading with villagers. There is some step in between that causes the interaction.

To simplify a bit, when every a player has to control or change the world, they to use at least one intermediary. They coexist in such a way that you can use them together to create machines that control or use all 4 to accomplish a task. Using a workstation to interact with a villager, updating a comparator with a chest inventory, locking a hopper with a redstone torch, and shearing a sheep with a dispenser, and updating an observer with a block state are examples of the 4 I listed.
Each intermediary have an effect on the world that is defined, but the block itself does not generally cause it. There are exceptions of course, and there are technically more intermediaries. I don’t have this down to an exact science, but the general idea that there exists an entire world based on such simple rules that we know inspires me every time.

But why tho

This has been rather lengthy, so lets get down to it. why do I enjoy Minecraft so much? Well, its a culmination of everything here of course. I wouldn’t write about it if it didn’t inspire me. The fact that Mojang has worked with their community from day one to build a game that fits everyone’s needs and and allows the community to help is mind boggling to me. The amount of dedication and thought that they have put into every step inspires me to do that in my own projects. To take feedback and adjust my ideals to be more open to those who support me.
This game has given me so much, inspired me, and taken me out of my darkest times. It gives me the connections and testing grounds for my career and hobbies of the future. Minecraft, for me and thousands of other players, is more than a game. It’s what we have built ourselves around as a community, as an art style, and an outlet for our whole self.