Minecraft just made an invisible change that might just be a game-changer for mods: “They made modding like 20x easier”

It’s not just armadillos and wolf armor

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MinecraftJava Edition 1.20.5 just launched, and while there’s some neat new content for everyday players to enjoy, it looks like modders are the ones getting the real benefits of this patch.

“This update is good on the casual side,” modder TealSquid says onTwitter, “but INSANE on the technical side. They made modding like 20x easier. I can’t wait to get into modding with the new component system.” In afollow-up tweet, they explain “Before this update, items' behaviours are hard-coded into each item individually. Now the new component system attaches the behaviours to components. Those components are then attached to the items.”

This update is good on the casual side,but INSANE on the technical side. They made modding like 20x easier. I can’t wait to get into modding with the new component system https://t.co/WBbFYVZVviApril 23, 2024

As an example, modders can now simply add the ‘food’ component to an item to make it edible. Then there are a list of additional effects that can be tweaked through numbers, like the amount of hunger that item restores, how long it takes to consume, and so on.

There are tons of these components - seriously, you’ll wear something out scrolling through thepatch notes- and while the average player will likely never have a reason to take notice of the change, it looks like modders are going to be able to build more interesting mods more quickly than ever before.

The headline additions for most players are the new armadillos, wolf armor, and wolf variants, all of which areextremelycute. But modding is the heart of Java Edition for many players, and it looks like we’ve got a special treat on that front.

After 13 years, Minecraft’s most legendary journey to the Far Lands has just passed the final milestone before the end.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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