Modding:Content Tutorial Item Variants: Difference between revisions

So far the tutorials have only scratched the surface of creating new assets. To make your modding more efficient, you can utilize the variant system to create numerous similar objects from a single json file, and allow each object to have minor (or major) differences.  

In this tutorial, you will create a set of items using variants, each with independent textures. Our items will not have any functionality, however this tutorial should give you a good understanding of what variants are and how to use them.  

All work on this tutorial will be done in the itemtypes/''advancedwand.json'' file. Open it in your IDE and you can get started.

Before you can utilize any variant systems, you will need to define the variants for your item. To do this, you use the ''"variantGroups"'' property. This is usually placed directly below the ''code'' property, but it can be placed anywhere in the object.<syntaxhighlight lang="json">

Before adding any textures to the object, you should change the shape. Find the "''shape"'' property and make it use "''item/advancedwand"'' instead of the current value.

Currently, your item is using a single texture. Remember, the new shape contains two textures, so you will now need to define both textures within the item. Replace the entire "''texture"'' property (including the value and { }'s) with the following property:<syntaxhighlight lang="json">

</syntaxhighlight>However, notice here that a lot of content is duplicated, as all the wands use the same handle, and have head textures that are in the same folders.

The advantage of using ByType is that it is considerably versatile - If you wanted to add a completely separate texture to a specific wand, you could easily achieve this by using ByType. It is also worth noting that ByType can be used on ''any'' property within an item, block, or entity, except from the main code and variant properties.

The other option is to substitute part of the texture path with each wands variant.<syntaxhighlight lang="json">

Evidently, this method uses considerably less code, however it does have some drawbacks. Variant substitution can only be used in properties that accept strings, usually limiting it's functionality to textures, shapes, and sounds. As well as this, it offers less customizability of what textures you can use, as they would all have to be located in very specific file paths.

Honestly, it doesn't matter which method you choose, as both achieve the same result. In a lot of cases, a mixture of using both ByTypes and substitution is the best option, as you can specify a unique texture for a more unique variant, but then use substitution on all of the other variants. By using the ByType method, you could choose to have completely different handle textures as well, however the substitution method offers considerably neater and shorter code.