Projects of the Month

It's time to look at our editor-picked projects of the month! These are a small selection of our personal favourites that came out recently - this is by no means an exhaustive list, go look for yourself as well!

Do you know of any cool projects that you would like to be featured in next month's issue? Let us know on Discord at https://mod-magazine.github.io/discord.

Cobblemon

OK...so it didn't come out this month...or last month...or the month before that. Cobblemon came out in October last year, but we wanted to give it a mention since it has been gaining popularity recently.

Cobblemon is the modern alternative to Pixelmon, and with its large team and support for both Fabric and Forge, I can see it continuing to develop and gain steam. It's open source and designed to integrate better with Minecraft than previous Pokémon mods.

The community around Cobblemon seems ever-growing, so I'm sure we will see constant work and community contributions to the project. Unless Nintendo takes a dislike to it, that is. Hopefully that won't happen, but if it does, I wouldn't be surprised.

e4mc

e4mc did come out this month, so we're off to a good start. This project is interesting both technically and for regular players: it allows you to open a LAN game to the whole wide world. That doesn't sound too special, until you learn that only the host needs e4mc installed. Your friends can connect with a vanilla client. Gone are the days of those terrible free server hosts. I wish.

When you open a game to LAN, the mod will automatically send you an IP in chat; you can give it to your friends for them to be able to join your world like any other server! On the backend, e4mc uses a websocket server implemented in Rust, which automatically makes it blazingly fast and better than every other piece of software ever created (I use Rust btw).

Species

Species is a mod that adds more mobs, a mob mod if you will - say that as fast as you can 10 times. It is being developed by a large team who plan to release updates each with a specific theme. I wish more mods did this - it creates a really nice community and feel.

Documentation is still a work in progress, but my personal favourites are the Birt and Limpet. The Birt is so cute and reminds me of Flappy Bird, while the Limpet is just goofy. Look at those silly eyes!

I'm excited to see what comes next for Species. Hopefully it will involve more silly-eyed creatures.

Physics Toys

This one is seriously cool. Physics Toys lets you play with physics entirely server-side (you could even use e4mc to set up a testing game for your friends). I'm not sure what Patbox does to the server to make it do these things, but I do know that it's awesome. A picture is worth more than 1000 words:

All this madness is powered by Rayon (a well known physics library), a lot of packets, and the new display entities added in a recent snapshot.

These new entities come in 3 variants: block, item, and text. It'll be exciting to see what datapack-ers, mod creators, and server-side modders will do with these new tools in the coming months.

I, for one, cannot wait to see what the resident server wizard does next - I hear a tech mod is on the horizon at some point.

Aged

Aged is a modpack revolving around medieval times, with mods added for realism - both water and temperature are factors to look out for if you want to survive.

Food can spoil, you can freeze to death, you need to purify water to drink - the list is never ending if you want to achieve basic survival in Aged, but that sort of thing appeals to many players.

If you decide to play Aged, you will be subject to all 4 seasons of the Minecraft world. In addition, you will able to earn XP points to level up alongside the monsters in the world, who will also get stronger with time. You will also be able to simulate the hardest survival challenge of them all: a job.

Aged also has an official multiplayer server, for those of you who want to freeze to death with the power of friendship by your side. I think Aged might be my choice next time I want to play Minecraft - it seems well crafted and polished.

Entity Model Features

Entity Model Features is a multiloader mod available for Fabric, Quilt, and Forge that adds support for Optifine's custom entity model (CEM) format, which allows resource packs to modify entity models.

EMF is only in beta at the moment, and many resource packs won't work, but in my opinion we're well on the way to Optifine being phased out for better alternatives.

FTB Skies

Feed the Beast make a lot of modpacks, but their latest offering seems like one which will be used and remembered for a while. Much like SkyFactory, players of Skies will spawn on a floating island with limited resources and plenty of challenges.

Skies includes the staple mods: Mekanism, Botania, RF Tools, and Create - amongst many others. It also includes a Feed the Beast exclusivee in-game event system to surprise (or terrify) you with new experiences.

With a perfect blend of magic and technology, quests, and custom events, the experience is unforgettable. - FTB Team

Power Networks

Power Networks is another example of server-side magic. It adds coils and wires that can be used to build energy networks, all server-side.

VECTOR

VECTOR! A shader that describes itself as a way to pretend like it's the 1980s. Fire up the old IBM or Apple II, it's gamin' time!

Here's a screenshot without Vector enabled:

And the same scene with Vector:

You just got vector-ed. Ohhhhhhhh yeahhhh!!! Are Despicable Me references still cool?

Regions Unexplored

Adding extra biomes to your Minecraft world is one of the best ways to enhance your experience. Lets face it: no matter how sandbox-ey a game is, there's always potential for new content to spice it up. Regions Unexplored is a new multiloader mod that adds over 70 new biomes.

These projects were picked solely by me, Jamalam. We want to expand our reach for next time; do you have suggestions for projects to be featured in the next issue? Contact us on Discord at https://mod-magazine.github.io/discord.