Minecraft Itemedit
Sean Vaidhyanathan
In Minecraft, we can create custom items, which can be dropped, traded, crafted, and otherwise used like a normal item. There is a lot of power in the system, including the ability to make food, fuel, and tools.
To make an item we will need a way to identify it and define how we want it to behave. To do this we will be making a file which tell Minecraft to apply certain behaviors to a specific item of our choice.
Different items behave differently; you can eat a porkchop, enchanted items glow & eggs can only stack to 16. These are all examples of how the item behaves. We are able to define how our custom item will behave by using behavior components.
Components contain information which tells the game what our item should do. For example the component "minecraft:foil" determines whether the item should have an enchanted foil to it, so setting it to true will apply it. All components have a value attached to it which we can edit to get the behaviour we want.
The namespace is unique to your addon and you will use it throughout the project. This is to reduce issues if someone adds two packs to your game which both add an ectoplasm item; the namespace reduces the chance of the identifier being the same. The namespace that Minecraft use is minecraft. Your namespace should be unique to you, for example the authors initials or an abbreviation of the pack name. We will use the namespace wiki in our example; for more information on making a namespace check out our page here.
Together our custom identifier becomes wiki:ectoplasm. Note that we use a colon, :, to spilt the namespace and id. When we want to reference our item we will use this identifier, for example using the /give command.
Now that we have our components and identifier, we can now start defining our item. We define an item by creating an item definition file in our behavior pack. This is where all our information will go.
All item definitions go in BP/items/. The name of your file doesn't affect anything, but for ease of navigation it's recommend to name it after your id. We will create a file BP/items/ectoplasm.json. Here is the the basic layout of the file:
Most files in your pack will have 2 top level definitions, "format_version" and "minecraft:". The format version defines which version of the Addon system Minecraft will use to read this file. For our item, we will be using 1.16.100 to allow us to use the experimental features. For more information on format version you can check here.
The second definitions defines what kind of file this is. In our case, as this is an item definition, it is minecraft:item. Under this is where we will put all our information. This will always contain a description key.
The description key contains the identifier and any other information required. The identifier allows the file to know which item to apply the components to. The category key defines which tab of the creative inventory the item would show up in. There are four tabs to choose from: "Nature", "Equipment", "Construction" and "Items". If this key is not included, then the item will not show in the creative inventory, but you can still get the item by using /give.
Now we can actually define the behavior of our item, under components. Here we simply place any components we want our item to have. This will be our "minecraft:max_stack_size" component. For other components you can use, check out our more in depth guide on Items here.
All item textures are stored in RP/textures/items/. From here, you can create any subdirectories you wish. It's best to name your texture image files with the items' id, in our case it will be ectoplasm.png. It is recommended to have your images in .png format and be of size 16x16, though Minecraft will accept other formats such as .jpg or .tga.
Here we have 3 top level definitions, texture_data is where we will define our shortnames, the other two define the type of file this is. The resource_pack_name is simply our resource pack's name and texture_name is what kind of texture file this is. Since this is for items, this will always be set to atlas.items.
Here wiki.ectoplasm is our shortname and under textures we have the path to our item. Notice that this is relative to the resource pack, and does not include the file extension. Your shortname should be short and unique. We recommend setting it as the namespace and id for the item we are assigning it to.
The last thing to add is a nice name to your item. Currently it will look like item.wiki:ectoplasm. This is the translation key for your item name, and it is used to allow for localization. To set it, we just have to define it in our language files.
Now your first custom item, Ectoplasm, is complete! If everything has been done correctly, the item should now be obtainable through the /give command in-game, as well as appearing in your creative inventory.
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Make sure you have cheats enabled, to test this you can press [ENTER] and type "/gamemode creative" (Without the quotes). If that works then you can continue! If not and you own the world, you can also go into the escape menu, press open to LAN, and enable cheats under the LAN menu. This will give temporary access to commands until the world closes down again.
Fairly simple step, but needed. The block-based game Minecraft has thousands of blocks and items, all can be used in this tutorial, so be creative! Once you have a block or item in mind, feel free to move to the next step.
To make a gradient or coloured name, first you need colours! If you want some inspiration, visit: to find nice combinations, but keep in mind for the sake of this tutorial only two colours can be chosen. Once done, make sure to keep the tab open, we're going to use it later.
With the code in your clipboard, open notepad, click in the text area, and press the ctrl / command key and v at the same time. This should import the code into notepad and leave you with something similar to the first picture. If you want the text in italics, stop and move onto the next step, otherwise continue. To make the name of the item in-game straight and not italicized, we need to edit a small piece of the code, but don't worry, it's easy. Just press edit and then replace in notepad, and it should bring up a window and look like the second picture. Where it says Find what: type "true", where it says replace with: type "false" (both without the quotes.) Then press replace all and close the replace window. Keep notepad open and continue.
This step is a little harder, so stay with me. First, go to: and fill in your minecraft player name. (This is what other people see in multiplayer or on the tablist). Then type in whatever block or item you want, and it will show up looking something like minecraft:your_item (dirt would be minecraft:dirt_block). After that you can fill out any enchantments you would like on the item and their level (Picture 1). Finally, go to where it says Custom Item Name Add/Edit, click it, and type: Placeholder in the box and press save (Picture 2). Then go and copy the code at the bottom to your clipboard (Picture 3).
This part is the most daunting, but also quite simple once understood. To begin, go into creative and type: /give Your-Player-Name minecraft:command_block, put it in your hotbar and place it in the world (Picture 1). Next, right click it and it will bring you into the console, press ctrl/command v again and it will paste in the code from step 6 (Picture 2). Now, delete the section highlighted in picture 2 and you should be left with ...display:Name:''} 1. Next, remember the notepad that's open? Well go back to it and copy all the code in there, and paste it in-between the two apostrophes (the underlined part: ...display:Name:''}). The text should still be yellow, if so press done and go to the final step (Picture 3).
Add a button to the command block press it, and presto-chango you have a gradient item! Please Please remember that the name of the item CANNOT have a ' in it or the code will break. Any Questions? leave them for me to answer!
This is the method that we will initialize the item's variable we will create now. To do this, you'll want to create an item object that will actually create the instance of the item that we can edit in the code. Think of it as the raw item that properties such as material, lighting, etc. can be added to. In the ModItems class, create an Item object and call it whatever you want. Make sure to import it and select the net.minecraft.item.Item option if it gives you a choice.
We will use this uninitialized variable in the init method to give it an UnlocalizedName. This is the name that the code uses to reference the item. This is not the name that the item will have in-game. Enter this line of code within the register method:
Now we are going to create the register method, which is the method used to give the item a place in the GameRegistry and allow us to see it in-game, as well as let us give it properties. Below the init method somewhere, put this method into the code and register the item with an UnlocalizedName:
Now that we have the item registered and ready to render, we need to tell the mod to do so when the game starts. To do this, go into the ModClass and call the register and init methods inside the preInit method:
Since the items are rendered automatically through the registerRender method in the items class, we need a command that will tell the mod to also render the items to render on a server, hence the proxy.registerRenders line.
Since this is a testing instance of Minecraft, your player is given a random number to use commands. You can get your player number by pressing TAB after the space after 'give', and be sure to replace the modID and item name with your modID and item name.
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