February 13th, 2025
By: Rainy
Happy New Year! It has been a little while since the last dev-blog and I feel there has been enough progress for a little update on what is happening.
It has been two months since the last dev-blog and I have been busy; some parts of the mod have been redone, and others are starting to get finished.
Behind the scenes I rewrote the way our model system works and gets stored, it's a much more intuitive way of doing things and allows more longevity for the Mod.
Moreover, Ana and I have slowly started to properly name every block in pack; to allow easier accessibility, memorability, and survival support. Eg. “Nether Bricks” is now “Concrete”, or “Mossy Cobblestone” is now “Polished Dark Concrete”. The names now reflect the textures and it will be easier to communicate what blocks are used.
The main thing you were all probably waiting for; “just how far along is the mod?”
To put it simply; 9/34 main block palettes have been added currently, that is roughly 685 unique blocks. Final mod is going to have over 3000 unique blocks, all added manually. It takes around an hour for each palette to be added, and we don't know how long it takes to add all the extra stuff aside from palettes, but I am estimating 40 hours of work left to complete this project.
That 40 hours will get stretched out over months of course as the dev team is still learning modding, and this project is being done entirely during free time.
That being said, its time for some explaining. Palettes are a combination of similarly textured and or colored blocks in a group. Pack itself consists of 34 different palettes which can easily been seen in /warp pack; there's the main palettes like white and black, There's the textured palettes, and then there’s the pastel and vibrant color palettes. The main goal of development was to create a “template palette” which consisted of non textured base version models of all the palette variations. That has since been done and the current progress revolves entirely about porting the rest of the palettes in pack.
What comes after all the palettes are added is everything “else”, things like note blocks, furniture, vegetation, stuff that doesn’t fall within a palette.
While the progress of porting continues development side, the Alpha Testing group has been having fun exploring what the mod has to offer and figuring out what needs to be changed or adjusted before eventual release. Some builds have already started to show up which is beyond exciting.
We would like to inform you that Cubed Pack / Mod won't receive “new content” until after Mod full release. It will be this way to allow the mod team to finish without being confused by new features being added. However that doesn't mean that new content isn't being planned and made in preparation for future content updates. Cubed has a very bright future ahead of it.
As you may have seen, there was a poll at the end of January to let the community decide on what direction Cubed will take, between vanilla 1.21 or modded 1.21. Modded won the vote and now officially Cubed will be taking the Modded route once Mod is ready. There hasn't yet been any progress on server setup but once Mod switches to Beta Testing, then we will also begin figuring out server mods and plug-ins.
Thank you again for reading this months update on Mod development. As we near finish of Mod you can expect to see dev-blogs more regularly. For any questions ask in the #pack-discussion channel on the discord.