This week I’ve been working on a new block that should help fix the issues with crafting a Butterfly Book. The new block will allow players to learn about butterflies without having to craft the book, but it will also allow players to add and remove pages to Butterfly Books.
The method used to craft Butterfly Books using the default Crafting Table is a little hacky. There have been comments about mod interactions (notably Mouse Tweaks) that break the crafting as well. Crafting Butterfly Books at the moment is a little buggy, so to fix that I’m working on a new way of crafting the books with the Butterfly Microscope.
Form
I decided the model for the microscope would be based on the Spyglass so it ties in with the vanilla game. I created a simple model that also represents its recipe: a stone slab, with a stick holding the spyglass.
I’m quite happy with the result, but I couldn’t make part of the spyglass smaller as it is in the real model. Unfortunately with blocks you are limited to the size and position of pixels, and if I tried to emulate the item model this way it would look out of proportion. But it works, and represents both what it is meant to be and how it is crafted.
Function
The block can now be crafted, placed, and broken in-game, but I am still working on it’s actual function. The block will be interacted with, opening a menu that allows people to inspect Butterfly Scrolls. If one is placed in the Microscope, it will show the image of the scroll, but will also allow the player to view the butterfly’s information as well.
The Microscope will also accept either a Book or a Butterfly Book as part of a recipe. In this case, the player can either craft a new Butterfly Book or add pages to an existing one. I’m also working on an interface that will allow players to remove pages from Butterfly Books as well.
Checklist
The Block Checklist came in handy when I was working on this new block. It reminded me of the steps needed to implement a new block in Minecraft, which is often easily forgotten. In fact, I spotted a couple of things I’d forgotten to include in the checklist, so it’s been updated to include them as well.
I’ll keep updating the checklists as I work on mods, so watch this space if you’ve been finding them useful so far!
