What makes a mod vanilla style?

Modding has always been an integral part  of the Minecraft experience. But mods that   attempt to emulate vanilla’s own style of  content have only recently become popular.   Starting with 1.13, the recent ambitious  updates have provided a model for other   developers to follow, giving rise to  a new definition of vanilla+ modding.

Apart from mods like Quark, previous vanilla+  mods often imitated vanilla content to a tee,   adding bland ores and tool tiers.  Suggestions for Mojang about the   vanilla game are often even smaller,  such as gameplay polishes and tweaks,   or various “obvious” inclusions like  the enchanting table storing lapis.

While taking elements straight from the source  might seem like a safe way to make a vanilla+ mod,   it actually proves to be rather ineffective,  since it produces features that are redundant   with vanilla’s, either by overshadowing  it or adding very little to the base game.  

Mods are supposed to add content that creates new  gameplay value, the same way that vanilla updates   bring unique features. These may even feel  “modded” at first, but the player base adjusts,   and eventually can’t imagine living without  them. Mods can take the same approach.

Of course, not every feature has to be new and  game changing, and their mechanics can certainly   be inspired by the base game. But to think of  something completely new, a good place to start   would be Minecraft’s official design principles,  or at least the ones we currently know of.

To ensure the gameplay experience isn’t  compromised, Mojang adheres to specific   design principles. We’ve been told some of them  outright – for instance Jeb wants Poisonous   Potatoes to never have a purpose. Others we can  glean from Minecraft’s design trends, such as the  

Loose fantasy vibe it gives off. High-tech stuff  wouldn’t fit in with this verbatim, but it could   be themed after redstone and the end, as long  as the functionality is simple and intuitive. The first official rule we learnt about  was mentioned during Update Aquatic’s  

Snapshot cycle. When discussing why  sharks didn’t come in the update,   Bedrock Developer Tanner Pearson mentioned  that hostile animals can’t be based on real   life. There are a few edge cases – spiders  are big enough to be considered fantasy,   silverfish deviate significantly from their real  world appearance, and goats do not immediately  

Attack the player on sight, making them  technically neutral. Many neutral mobs   can also be aggro’d by things other than direct  damage, like bees, polar bears and dolphins are. These decisions tie into Mojang’s greater attitude  towards ecological and societal issues. They don’t   want to misrepresent animals, especially  endangered ones. But giving real life mobs  

Unmistakably fantastical elements is permissible,  such as turtle shells being a potion ingredient,   dolphins increasing a player’s swim speed,  or cats scaring off creepers and phantoms.   Additionally, since all mobs are genderless, and  great care was taken to make the new villager   textures inspired by Minecraft-based fashion,  instead of real life cultures, we can assume  

That new features should also avoid association  with such topics, especially points of contention. This year at Minecraft Live, Jeb showcased a book  he had written about Minecraft’s game design.   No one but Mojang developers  have access to this book,  

But we were shown two pages, each having a design  principle. The first is “One Block at a Time! “The primary principle is that all actions  interact with one block at a time. You break one   block, pull one lever, and till one block of dirt.  There should not be any copy-paste functionality,  

Building templates, or similar convenience tools.  Interacting with a block may impact multitudes of   other blocks of course, such as planting a tree,  blowing up a TNT, or activating a network of   redstone, but from the player’s perspective, it’s  (sic) all starts with that singular interaction.

“Why is this important? It allows us [Mojang]  to maintain the interaction model of Minecraft,   but it also sets an essential constraint to how  you build things with other players. I [Jeb]   want[s] a player to understand what is  happening when they see someone else play.  

Instantaneously placing buildings with templates  would make it hard for an observer to assist.” This design principle was also mentioned by  Tanner much earlier, and was the source I used   in my video on the cave update. To reiterate,  this rules out 3×3 mining tools, tree-fellers,  

And ore vein miners. It may seem like an arbitrary  rule, but it’s important and quite fun to think of   ways to work around, in my opinion. Instead  of a tree feller, for example, logs created   upon world generation, or grown from a sapling,  could fall like sand and gravel, allowing you to  

Chop a whole tree down one block at a time, but  without moving your mouse or having to pillar up   to reach the top. This also prevents floating  trees, while allowing the old log behaviour if   the block is mined and placed again, similar  to how player-placed leaves will not decay.

The second rule mentioned is “Bad things happen… “…but it’s technically the players’  fault. Disaster is common in Minecraft,   be it falling in lava or having your house blown  to pieces by a creeper. The point is that these   accidents happened when there were players there  to see them happen. Avoiding such dangers is done  

By playing differently and more carefully.  The game should not create situations that   are impossible to avoid, and when it does,  they should have a reasonably small impact. “Making sure the player is treated fairly  is one reason why the worst natural disaster  

Is a (relatively tame) lightning strike,  and the list of blocks the endermen take   is limited to natural – and plentiful  – blocks such as dirt and stone.   If a game mechanic is going to destroy hours  of players’ hard work, players should be the  

Ones initiating it, and players should be  able to stop, or even prevent it entirely. “One practical example is how  iron golems ignore creepers,   because otherwise the creeper would explode and  destroy buildings without any player interaction.” This one has been brought up  many times over the years,  

Often in response to adding natural disasters  like tornadoes, floods or volcanic eruptions,   or mobs that significantly grief a world, such as  breaking blocks to get to a player. Some believe   this principle rules out incentive to build better  defences, if a couple blocks can stop all danger.  

But as I said in my video on more survival  mechanics, flipping this on its head can allow   for the same thing. The environment could affect  mob behaviour, instead of the other way round,   such as mobs phasing through some blocks, climbing  on ceilings or jumping across large gaps. This  

Would also encourage creative functional building,  without the need to constantly repair structures. Tying into this, we can be relatively sure that  new blocks should almost always be breakable –   since the only naturally occurring unbreakable  blocks are Bedrock, End Portals and their frames.  

And these are unbreakable for good reason. Bedrock  serves as a physical boundary to the void or the   roof of the Nether, and also comprises permanent  features such as the end crystal platforms,   the exit portal and end gateways. End Portals  and their frames create permanent access points  

To the End, so if those could be broken,  the end could be irreversibly locked off.   An alternative solution is to have  endermen rarely spawn holding endstone,   and allow end portal frames to be  craftable, like from my video on Quasilore. While this rule is not explicitly mentioned,  comments from developers point out  

That unbreakable blocks being too common makes it  harder for the player to shape the environment.   It also makes structure design more interesting  – ocean monuments have Elder Guardians that give   mining fatigue, the challenge in bastions  comes from their state of disrepair,  

And nether fortresses have long corridors  that are easier to travel through than mining.   Of course, mining through these isn’t impossible,  but this is a good thing as it allows for new   creative ways for players to conquer structures.  It also inspires new structure design ideas – a  

Building with boomstone (which explodes when  mined, explained in my cave update video),   observers detecting when the walls are broken and  unleashing mobs or lava hidden in the walls are   just a few ways to encourage exploring a structure  as intended without completely ruling mining out.

These design principles were likely developed  around the time of Microsoft’s acquisition of   Mojang just after the release of 1.8, since  rabbits were the last real life mob to have   useful drops upon death. This means the  rules were likely retroactively designed to   accommodate would-be exceptions, since Creepers,  Ghasts, Endermen and Lightning were all added  

Relatively early in development, and come close  to breaking the “no unavoidable destruction” rule.   Lightning rods are being introduced in the Caves  and Cliffs update to redirect lightning away from   flammable blocks, but the creeper is simply  too iconic for the vanilla game to change.  

It was one of the few textures that Jappa  didn’t touch, its explosion doesn’t drop   all blocks like TNT now does, its Minecraft:  Dungeons texture was merely toned down, and the   Creeping Winter DLC was going to introduce blue  creepers before the green was deemed too iconic.

This leads us to an interesting point. If  the creeper was added today, would it be   considered a vanilla style feature? Would it act  differently? After all, its destructive nature   makes it antithetical to the sandbox of Minecraft.  There are likely many other legacy features  

That would’ve been implemented differently  if they were added in modern versions.   But changing any feature can invite backlash –  players might have incorporated old mechanics   into their playstyle or simply consider  legacy content as ‘classic’ or ‘nostalgic’,   and even trivial changes can be risky.  I’m looking at you, Zombified Piglin.

However, mods can get away with changing  vanilla, if the changes can be disabled.   Perhaps then, the only way to make minecraft  more vanilla is to mod it. Update its legacy   features to better fit modern versions,  so that developers can experiment with  

Changing the very fundamentals of vanilla – for  that is, in many ways, unexplored territory. Changing vanilla features isn’t the only  way to improve upon vanilla, however.   You can also try giving them more purpose. One  good example would be the campfire – in the Buzzy  

Bees Update its functionality wasn’t changed,  but the new Beehives and Bee nests require its   smoke to pacify bees and allow honey to be  safely harvested. This is how Cory Scheviak,   another gameplay developer, put it in  response to my question at Minecon last year.

“Yeah, so when, when you’re kind of thinking  of ideas, uh, when we think of ideas,   we try to think, first off, would this fit in with  the original game? Does it add something to it?   And then we think, does it work with other  features, that are already in the game?  

We really try to add things that will interact  with the game loop and try to bring everything   together. Um, so when you’re thinking of features  to suggest, try to think about how does this   interact with features that are already in the  game? How would this enhance them, for instance?”

Plenty of mods often neglect this note, and  instead have their own systems that can make any   existing vanilla solutions obsolete. Building a  contraption in a tech mod is usually a lot simpler   than making the same thing using redstone,  for example. Other modded content doesn’t  

Interact with vanilla at all, such as magic mods  being completely independent of vanilla’s magic.   Not every mod has to interact with vanilla  to be good, but a tech or magic mod aiming   to be vanilla style should definitely  fold vanilla mechanics into its design.

The technical game meta is determined by emergent  gameplay, which is where a few simple features   come together to create something more complex  than the sum of its parts. Since Minecraft is a   sandbox, many different play styles emerge from  its mechanics. These are extremely hard for a  

Designer to foresee and account for, but if the  base components are designed well, it can lead   to a lot of unique scenarios, such as Piglin  and Hoglin interactions; as well as a lot of   player creativity, such as a few simple redstone  components making a calculator; or a system with  

A high skill ceiling, like 1.8 PvP’s strafing,  block hitting and W-tapping strategies. Of course,   this can come at the cost of intuitivity, so  some of the more esoteric or unintended technical   innovations could be simplified. For instance,  a vanilla style tech mod could replace TNT  

Duping with its own method for TNT production and  transportation that are renewable and automatable. If you take one thing away from this  video, let it be that vanilla style mods   should aim to have content Mojang might add,  instead of clones of pre-existing features.  

Striders one-upping Obsidian boats, the Elytra  surpassing simple gliders, and the savage   bartering of Piglins over Pigmen Villagers,  are just some of the ways Mojang has developed   a unique take on a popular but plain idea. And,  Mojang is only continuing to expand their vision,  

With complex additions such as the Warden and  entirely new systems like Archeology. These   features don’t “feel” vanilla at first, but this  sentiment is largely subjective and arbitrary.   Mojang doesn’t need to let this constrain them –  so we shouldn’t either. As long as we add content  

To extend vanilla, instead of merely imitating it,  and stick to their design principles, which are: Ideas should fit with the fantasy theme  of minecraft, real life animals shouldn’t   be misrepresented or hostile, and stereotypes,  gender, and unbreakable blocks should be avoided.  

Players can only change one block at a time,  and are the cause of all disaster in the world.   And most importantly: Poisonous Potatoes  should never, EVER, be given a use. What do you think a vanilla style mod should  be? Feel free to comment below. Do you disagree  

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