Basic Blocks

For our first block, we are going to make a Copper Ore to go along with our Copper Ingot.

Base Block

We’re going to do something similar to what we did for Basic Items, create a base class for all of our blocks to extend to make our life a bit easier.

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package net.shadowfacts.tutorial.block;

import net.minecraft.block.Block;
import net.minecraft.block.material.Material;
import net.minecraft.creativetab.CreativeTabs;
import net.minecraft.item.ItemBlock;
import net.shadowfacts.tutorial.TutorialMod;

public class BlockBase extends Block {

	protected String name;

	public BlockBase(Material material, String name) {
		super(material);
	
		this.name = name;
	
		setUnlocalizedName(name);
		setRegistryName(name);
	}
	
	public void registerItemModel(Item itemBlock) {
		TutorialMod.proxy.registerItemRenderer(itemBlock, 0, name);
	}
	
	public Item createItemBlock() {
		return new ItemBlock(this).setRegistryName(getRegistryName());
	}
	
	@Override
	public BlockBase setCreativeTab(CreativeTabs tab) {
		super.setCreativeTab(tab);
		return this;
	}

}

This is almost exactly the same as our ItemBase class except it extends Block instead of Item. It sets the unlocalized and registry names, has a method to register the item model, and has an overriden version of Block#setCreativeTab that returns a BlockBase.

The one additional method that BlockBase has (createItemBlock) is added to make dealing with ItemBlocks a bit easier. The ItemBlock for a given block is what is used as the inventory form of a given block. In the game, when you have a piece of Cobblestone in your inventory, you don’t actually have the Cobblestone block in your inventory, you have the Cobblestone ItemBlock in your inventory. We’ll be using this method when we register our ItemBlocks, just to make dealing with them a bit easier.

We’ll also create a BlockOre class which extends BlockBase to make adding ore’s a little easier.

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package net.shadowfacts.tutorial.block;

import net.minecraft.block.material.Material;
import net.minecraft.creativetab.CreativeTabs;

public class BlockOre extends BlockBase {

	public BlockOre(String name) {
		super(Material.ROCK, name);
	
		setHardness(3f);
		setResistance(5f);
	}
	
	@Override
	public BlockOre setCreativeTab(CreativeTabs tab) {
		super.setCreativeTab(tab);
		return this;
	}

}

`ModBlocks`

Now let’s create a ModBlocks class similar to ModItems to assist us when registering blocks.

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package net.shadowfacts.tutorial.block;

import net.minecraft.block.Block;
import net.minecraft.creativetab.CreativeTabs;
import net.minecraft.item.Item;
import net.minecraft.item.ItemBlock;
import net.minecraftforge.registries.IForgeRegistry;

public class ModBlocks {

	public static void register(IForgeRegistry<Block> registry) {

	}

	public static void registerItemBlocks(IForgeRegistry<Item> registry) {

	}

	public static void registerModels() {

	}

}

We’ll need to add a new event handler method to our RegistrationHandler to call ModBlocks.register.

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@Mod.EventBusSubscriber
public static class RegistrationHandler {

	@SubscribeEvent
	public static void registerBlocks(RegistryEvent.Register<Block> event) {
		ModBlocks.register(event.getRegistry());
	}
	
	// ...

}

We’ll also need to update the two previously-created RegistrationHandler methods to handle registering our ItemBlocks and our block models.

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@Mod.EventBusSubscriber
public static class RegistrationHandler {

	// ...

	@SubscribeEvent
	public static void registerItems(RegistryEvent.Register<Item> event) {
		ModItems.register(event.getRegistry());
		ModBlocks.registerItemBlocks(event.getRegistry());
	}
	
	@SubscribeEvent
	public static void registerModels(ModelRegistryEvent event) {
		ModItems.registerModels();
		ModBlocks.registerModels();
	}

}

Copper Ore

Now, because we have our BlockBase and ModBlocks classes in place, we can quickly add a new block:

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// ...
public class ModBlocks {

	public static BlockOre oreCopper = new BlockOre("ore_copper").setCreativeTab(CreativeTabs.MATERIALS);

	public static void register(IForgeRegistry<Block> registry) {
		registery.registerAll(
				oreCopper
		);
	}
	
	public static void registerItemBlocks(IForgeRegistry<Item> registry) {
		registry.registerAll(
				oreCopper.createItemBlock()
		);
	}
	
	public static void registerModels() {
		oreCopper.registerItemModel(Item.getItemFromBlock(oreCopper));
	}

}

This will:

Create a new BlockOre with the name oreCopper and set the creative tab to the Materials tab.
Registers the block itself with the block registry.
Registers the ItemBlock with the item registry.
Registers the item model.

Now, in the game, we can see our (untextured) copper ore block!

Copper Ore Screenshot

Next, we’ll look at how to make a simple model for our copper ore block.