Butterflies have been taking over. There have been reports that thousands have been spawning, overwhelming servers and lagging out game worlds. So I have spent a large portion of this week working to reduce the butterfly population and ensure that Minecraft servers remain safe.
Bok’s Banging Butterflies
My first real mod for Minecraft that adds butterflies to the world.
Let’s Bottle Caterpillars!
I’ve been focusing a lot on caterpillars these last few weeks, and a thought occurred to me. Wouldn’t it be cool to have bottles with caterpillars in as well.
Naturally Spawning Caterpillars
Originally the butterfly mod was supposed to be a simple mod that adds butterflies to the world. It’s growing a little beyond that, with the butterflies actually having a complete life cycle. Unfortunately it’s actually pretty rare that a player will stumble upon a caterpillar right now.
Improving Caterpillar Interaction
This week I’ve been focusing on improving caterpillars. Right now they are very hard for players to come across. However, with a few extra features and tweaks, caterpillars will be just a little bit more interesting.
Small Eggs and Better Buckeyes
I’ve talked about how details matter before. So this week I’ve focused on a couple of things that have been bugging me for a while now. These aren’t major features, but they do help to make the mod feel like it’s been crafted by someone who cares.
ItemCraftedEvent Doesn’t Do What You Think
I got a bug reported near the beginning of the month about recipes not working properly. Shift-clicking on one of the custom recipes would cause a whole bunch of useless items to be created.
Books With Butterflies In Them
I’ve finished the last feature and released version 2 of the mod. The last feature I implemented was a book where you can store butterflies and gain information about them. The book has dynamically generated content, depending on which butterflies you store inside it.
Updating the Butterfly Stats
I’ve been playing a game with the mod installed for a while now, and there are a few things I want to improve upon. First, I wanted to tweak the butterflies a bit to add some extra variety. Second, I’ve noticed that butterflies tend to grow in population exponentially.
It’s All About the Little Things
It’s always worth taking some time to focus on the details. Small things can make a huge difference to a mod. I spent some time this week working on small features and little improvements. In the long run, these things will make a huge difference.
Screwing Up the Life Cycle
Well, I screwed up. It turns out a major selling point of Bok’s Butterflies wasn’t working at all. The life cycle of the butterflies wasn’t working at all. It all boils down to a misunderstanding on my part. So this week I have a new release that fixes this feature.