HELLOOOOOOOOOOO

this is another EPIC devlog of the best Minecraft mod in the world –

index.

and today…

I FINALLY DID IT.

the scary part is here.

the part where the mod actually starts doing something. >w<

WAIT… IT ACTUALLY WORKS???

YES!!!

after a lot of debugging, confusion, and staring at Minecraft code for way too long…

the core functionality of index is now working!

the mod can now:

• track chests — index can now find and keep track of the chests that are part of the system.
• search through chest contents — the mod can actually check what items are inside the tracked chests.
• show items above chests — when a chest contains an item you’re searching for, the item appears above it!
• particles!!! — added particles to make the chest indicators feel much more alive.

is it cool????

YESSSSS!!!

WHY IS THIS A BIG DEAL???

because before this, index was mostly just a collection of screens and UI.

the search screen worked.
the color picker worked.
the buttons existed.

but now…

the mod actually has a brain. :D

the UI is no longer just a pretty menu — it connects to actual Minecraft data and does something useful.

WHAT WAS THE HARD PART???

honestly…

a lot.

Minecraft modding is still very confusing sometimes TwT

getting the UI working was one thing, but connecting everything together was a completely different challenge.

figuring out how to:

• detect chests
• store their data
• check their contents
• render things above blocks
• make particles appear correctly

took a lot of experimenting.

but seeing a chest actually tell me “hey, I have the item you’re looking for” was 100% worth it.

WHAT NOW???

now that the core functionality exists, it’s time to make everything better.

things i want to work on next:

• improve chest coloring
• make the chest indicators prettier
• optimize the searching system
• add more polish to the UI
• maybe add some more QoL features and stuff i didnt think of
• fix all the bugs i probably created while making this lol

the hardest part is finally done.

now comes the fun part:

making index actually feel like a finished mod.

thank you for reading EXTREMELY cool person!!

see you in the next devlog >w<

HELLOOOOOOOO AGAIN!!!

welcome back to another episode of me fighting Minecraft’s rendering engine and somehow winning.

today’s victim:

index.

the mod where I thought:

“yeah, i’ll just color some chests”

and Minecraft replied:

“no ❤️”

anyway…

after many hours of staring at confusing renderer code, here are the things that happened. >w<

SO WHAT DID I ACTUALLY DO???

Chest colors are no longer just a pretty menu

The chest color screen is now connected to the actual game world.

When you pick a color and press apply, index stores that color for that specific chest position.

Meaning:

• chest A can be red
• chest B can be blue
• chest C can be whatever weird RGB combination you create at 2 AM

Every chest gets its own identity.

How does the coloring actually work?

This was the scary Minecraft part.

Instead of making a custom chest block (which would mean recreating a lot of vanilla behavior), index now hooks into Minecraft’s existing chest renderer.

The process is basically:

you pick a color
↓
ColorChestScreen saves it
↓
ChestColorManager remembers the position + color
↓
Minecraft starts rendering a chest
↓
index checks if that chest has a color
↓
the renderer applies the tint

So the chest is still a normal Minecraft chest.

The grayscale chest problem

Turns out Minecraft does not magically replace colors.

The tint system works by multiplying colors together.

So trying to color a normal brown chest gave some very questionable results.

The solution?

Make the chest texture grayscale.

Now Minecraft has a neutral base color that can actually be transformed into whatever color index wants.

RGB go brrrr.

A lot of behind-the-scenes work

Most of this update is invisible stuff:

• learning how Minecraft’s block entity rendering works
• dealing with render states
• connecting saved data with the rendering pipeline
• fighting mixins
• getting destroyed by method signatures
• fighting mixins again

classic modding experience.

SO… DOES IT WORK???

Mostly!!

The foundation is there.

The chest renderer now understands:

“this chest might have a custom color”

which is a huge step compared to before where the color picker was basically just a fancy RGB calculator.

WHAT’S NEXT???

Now that chests can finally have their own colors, it’s time for the actually useful features:

Chest searching

• scan chest contents
• compare items with the player’s search list
• know where your items are hiding

Chest indicators

• show which chests contain what you’re looking for
• make finding items faster

Better saving

• make colors survive restarts
• handle worlds and chunks properly

More polish

• improve the UI
• make everything feel more Minecraft-like

The menus are slowly turning into a real system.

Now it’s time to make index actually do the thing it was created for.

Finding stuff.

Because honestly…

opening 50 chests looking for one random item is pain.

Thank you for reading this extremely cool and long devlog!!

See you next time >w<

HELLOOOOOOOOOOO

this is another EPIC devlog of the best Minecraft mod in the world –

index.

are you ready to see the BEST changes a developer has ever made?

probably not.

but here they are anyway. >w<

YES!!1 WHAT CHANGED???

• Most of the GUI stuff is finished — you can now search for items, select them, and add them to the list of items you want to find.
• Search list screen — all the items you selected are now shown in their own little list. simple, but useful!
• Chest coloring screen — i made a very simple color picker that somehow actually works lol. you can open it using CTRL + SHIFT + Right Click.
• Various UI improvements — the interface is now more organized and feels much nicer to use.
• A preview of item detection — in one of the screenshots, you can see a rough idea of how i want chests to notify you that they contain an item you’re searching for.

is it cool????

YESSS!!!

WHAT NOW???

now that most of the UI foundation is done, it’s time for the scary part…

making the mod actually work. TwT

the next things i want to focus on:

• detecting and tracking colored chests
• actually coloring the chests (the texture is now grayscale and will be altered on the client side)
• searching through chest contents
• making the chest indicators actually function
• improving the overall polish

the fun UI part is mostly here. now comes the part where i make the magic happen.

oh! and i almost forgot –

if you’re interested, you can check out the GitHub repository and try out the latest development releases to see how index is coming along!

thank you for reading EXTREMELY cool person!!

see you in the next devlog >w<

its 11pm… im sooo tired…

i finally did it!

the first part of my index mod is semi-finished!

this screen is supposed to be the place where you search for a block/item and find out which of your tracked chests contain it.

is it neat?

yes!!!

is it useful?

hopefully!!! >w<

it’s not doing the actual searching yet, but getting the first custom screen working already feels like a huge step.

WOA! what next?

well… i still don’t really know :(

there are a few things i want to work on next:

• chest coloring — i was thinking about adding a keybind (something like CTRL + SHIFT + Right Click) that opens a menu where you can choose a color for your chest.

  the main question is: how do i actually change the chest texture?

  my current idea is to use a black and white version of the normal chest texture and replace the white parts with the color chosen by the player.

• search list button — currently it does nothing, but the idea is that it will show a small popup containing all the items the player wants to search for.

• actual chest tracking/searching — probably the most important part. eventually the mod needs to know what chests exist and what items are inside them.

• and more things i haven’t thought of yet because that’s how development works TwT

small progress is still progress

minecraft modding has been a pretty interesting learning experience so far. the documentation can be confusing sometimes, but seeing something you made appear inside the game is really motivating.

thank you for reading cool person!!

see you in the next devlog >w<

heya!

before i can get to the fun stuff, i need to learn how Minecraft’s UI works.

so far i’ve managed to create a custom Minecraft screen.

…this is how it looks…

it doesn’t do much yet, but getting something on the screen already feels like a nice first step. ^^

i’ve been reading the Fabric documentation and looking through tutorials, but honestly they’re a bit confusing TwT. a lot of them assume you already know how Minecraft’s GUI system works, so i’ve been spending a lot of time experimenting and reading the source code.

next up is making the screen actually useful and fixing that horrible list

it’s definitely a learning experience, but i’m having a lot of fun with it!

thanks for reading, and hopefully i’ll have something much cooler to show in the next devlog! >w<

hello everynyan.

so i found mikuOS a bit boring to work on and i’ve been wanting to learn more Java for a while, so i decided to look more into Minecraft modding and came up with this!

index

index is a simple QoL Minecraft mod that lets you organize your chests by color and search for items inside your storage.

the idea is that you can assign colors to chests based on what they contain, like for example:

• blue → building blocks
• green → farming
• red → redstone
• yellow → ores

then you can use the search feature to quickly find where your items are stored instead of opening every single chest.

the great sketch below should give you a better idea of how it could work.

goals

for now i want to focus on:

• learning Java
• learning Minecraft modding
• creating custom screens
• making a useful QoL mod

this is my first Minecraft mod like this, so expect lots of experimenting and probably breaking things along the way :)