Hello Hive Gaming! It's been some time since I have been active around and this because I was busy with other things. In this article I will explain exactly what I have been doing and how it's going so far.

To begin the first "State of The Mods" I will first explain how I plan to do these.

SOTM (State of the Mods) will be a weekly development blog for the “Better Than Wolves: Remastered!” a mod pack that I’m developing for Minecraft. They will contain information on the current development state and functionality of the side mods for the project, as well as the mod pack itself later on.

These blogs are mostly aimed for developers alike, people who are interested in helping with the project itself, or simply anyone who might be interested in how my developer journey unfolds :)

1. Introduction

Before we continue any further let me start with quickly explaining what “Better Than Wolves: Remastered!” or BTWR(for short) is about.

Following the progression path of the original Better Than Wolves mod for Minecraft 1.5.2; BTWR

tries to recreate the survival experience of the early game in the mod as well as use an alternative mod for the technological part of the mod. This will happen by developing a few early game modifications(mods) combined with the Create mod and a custom addon for it to make it work in the style of Better Than Wolves tech.

With BTW(the original mod) being probably the biggest single mod by itself, the BTWR Project had to be split into few different mods that will contain their own additions to the game, thematically combined by following the original mods functionalities.

2. Deliverance

To finally deliver a report on the project I will first list all the ongoing projects for the mod-pack to come that have either been released or are close to being released & need some work.

This post was initially inspired from me wanting to share the mod’s overall state to the BTW Mod Discord, but I welcome anyone who shows interest towards the mods & the pack as a whole.

(For context this discord is where I mainly have been residing for the past almost a year and this partly overlaps with when I decided to stop posting here on hive. I gladly hope to be able to combine both activities because I love making posts and definitely need to come back to it.)

Before I give you the mods I want just to say that I welcome everyone who wants to help me and contribute to this mod and push it closer to release. Any help is welcome, but right now mostly I need people who are good with data packs & java development in general.

I will give a brief overview of each mod available and it’s current development state. The first mod to begin with is…

BTWR: Core

This is the core mod and it contains functionalities that were either needed for more than one mod or couldn’t be assigned/ weren’t appropriate for any other side mod.

Development state:
This mod is currently released (version 0.22) and contains few additions to the game for survival and some quality of life ones. I have an upcoming update for it (v0.23) and it balances the mod, adds configuration options for customizing some options, and overall adding more blocks & items.

Sturdy Trees

The Sturdy Trees mod directly attempts to bring the way that trees function in the original mod to modern Minecraft.

It’s a tougher way of acquiring wood based materials from trees & initially when the improper axe/hand is used to break them they only give lesser drops & require a modern axe to get planks. Also the mod adds stumps to the bottom of blocks and makes them an actual obstacle for the player.

This mechanic overhaul in turn makes the player feel a bigger sense of achievement generally when he is finally able to get full logs/planks or remove stumps. In fact, the whole progression thematic of the original BTW mod revolves around sensible progression.

Development state:
This mod is currently released (version 1.2) and contains the necessary additions for a stripped survival experience, but still has some major updates to come down the line.
To name a few are: Charred logs when burned, Saplings growing in stages, more refined breaking mechanic.

Tough Environment

Tough Environment does exactly what the name says. Tough(er) Environment!

Almost all blocks like Dirt; tough blocks like: Stone, Granite, Andesite & Ores, etc… has been overhauled to be tougher and break in layers depending on what they’re harvested with. Comes with new blocks called “Loose blocks” for each block that has been overhauled. This makes the early game building & moving around significantly harder and a challenge for players, because Loose blocks are affected by gravity.

This in turn is complemented with a new mechanic called “Mortaring”. The player can use certain items(by default slime balls & clay balls) to right click and mortar loose blocks in place so they don’t fall anymore.

These are the main additions to the mod so far with a few more smaller ones that I’ve decided to not list here.

Development state:
This mod hasn’t been released yet, but all the above are working with slight bug fixing/ troubleshooting needed.

1.Still needs adding of some models to new blocks/ new dropped items for loose drops.

2.Refinement of the breaking speeds of player/tools logic.

Self Sustainable

Self Sustainable is again a mod name that does what it’s named after. It tries to make the player sustainable by himself instead of the game handing out easy resources.

The main change for Self Sustainable would be the way the player is healed & how the hunger/ saturation system works. He can no longer heal by simply having his food bar full, but instead needs to keep a certain level of it and this will make him slowly heal over time.

The starting saturation has been minimized & hunger costs for most activities has been bumped up. This makes the player count almost every action of his, considering when to walk, run or jump.

Adds a semi-working Brick Oven block which is to be used in place of the oven. It’s a cooking/smelting type block which has no GUI interface and is used all through interaction with the block itself. Currently only the add/retrieving of the items and cooking them works.

Development state:
The main hurdle for the mod preventing it from coming close to release are the lack of proper logic fire starting items like the Fire Plough and The Bow drill. I’m having problems with those.

The Brick oven works on retrieving and adding of items, but there’s some problems with generating recipes for it, which is very inconsistent in what happens. Also the fuel adding logic is not working properly and I’ve been struggling with it for quite some time.

3. Conclusion

It can be hard to begin sometimes, but starting small is a step towards something big. As my good friend Mike told me: “Don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress”.

I’m glad I made this article, for me and for the community that has been showing interest in this mod. I want to let you know that I will be making these posts weekly and they will have similar format where I will list changes that have happened to the different mods & what’s the state of the mod-pack.

I’d also like make a fully fledged introduction post to my mod pack’s vision, but this will come at a bit later stage as right now I’m still story building and many things are subject to change.

State of the Mods #1 - My Game Development Journey! 🎮