Material catalog and crop storage

NeroAgriculture resolves one deterministic, server-authoritative material catalog after item tags and datapacks load. The precedence is:

1. data/<namespace>/neroagriculture/materials/*.json
2. server blacklist and overrides
3. Neroland Core meteor-material metadata
4. explicit vanilla/Core defaults
5. discovered c:ingots/*, c:gems/*, c:raw_materials/*, c:dusts/* and c:ores/* tags; unknown third-party materials default to the configured discovery.default_tier (Orbite unless changed; unknown gems are always Orbite)

Core metadata is adapted read-only. Conflicts and validation failures are retained for operator diagnostics rather than silently discarded.

Sample-based definitions cover string, leather, slime balls, gunpowder, blaze rods and ender pearls. Each requires its real item for extraction, research and seed synthesis. The first four use Forgite; the latter two use Orbite. Pack authors can replace or disable these definitions.

An entry in the catalog does not by itself guarantee a way to make a seed. Automatic extraction and synthesis fallback applies to explicit material definitions and selected common metals; other discovered tags need suitable recipes or an explicit definition. For example, NeroCreatures' ore slurry and refined crystal can be discovered through their common material tags, but those tags alone do not grant seed fabrication. Its stalker hide and sinew have explicit optional definitions. Event salvage is not given a default seed recipe. Pack authors can opt in to additional materials with a datapack definition.

An optional visual_family field selects the planted crop's shape: generic, metal, crystal or carbon. On Minecraft 26.1.2 and newer, newly produced non-curated seeds and fragments also use that family and the catalog color. Omitted values use the curated material's family or the generic fallback. An unrecognised value rejects that definition with a catalog diagnostic rather than silently selecting a different shape. Existing items keep their saved appearance data; after an appearance change they may occupy separate stacks from newly produced items.

Datapack format#

The file path defines the material id. For example, data/example/neroagriculture/materials/osmium.json defines example:osmium:

{
  "input": { "tag": "c:ores/osmium" },
  "output": "example:raw_osmium",
  "tier": "orbite",
  "yield": { "minimum": 1, "maximum": 5, "ramp_harvests": 96 },
  "conversion": 16,
  "display_key": "material.example.osmium",
  "color": "#7A94A8",
  "enabled": true,
  "dimension": "nerospace:station"
}

input contains exactly one item or tag. gate is optional and defaults to no hard gate; explicit null also means no gate. dimension, enabled, and gate are optional. Invalid identifiers, missing items/tags, impossible yield ranges, conversion values, colors, and oversized display keys produce an actionable catalog error.

An optional requires_item identifier skips a definition when that item is absent, allowing a pack to ship compatibility definitions without requiring the other mod. An invalid present definition is still reported. When more than one definition accepts a sample, catalog source priority is applied before the material id, so an explicit definition takes precedence over generic tag discovery.

color accepts a 24-bit RGB value in any of #RRGGBB, 0xRRGGBB, bare hex, decimal-integer, or JSON number form — datapack material and food definitions and the config override color= field all share one parser, so the same input never parses differently by source.

The blacklist is a comma-separated material-id list. Overrides use semicolon-separated entries:

example:osmium|tier=colonite|gate=neroagriculture:transmutation|yield=1:6:128|conversion=20|enabled=true

Use /neroagriculture catalog list, show <material>, or errors as an operator. These commands expose material metadata only and contain no player data.

Client and save safety#

Clients receive the id, display key, tier, color, base yield and ramp, conversion count, and any configured gate or world restriction. Seed tooltips show these values; growth modifiers and actual progression state remain server-authoritative. The packet is capped at 4,096 entries and 256 KiB. The configured discovery cap and blacklist apply before entries are exposed or synced. The revised catalog packet requires the same overhaul build on clients and servers.

Seeds and crops store the literal material identifier, never a numeric catalog index. Removing or disabling a definition therefore preserves the item/crop and its harvest history, displays a warning, and prevents growth. Re-adding the same id makes it usable again without migration.

The resource-crop block entity has no ticker. The Gate 3 Java Object Layout benchmark modeled the incremental retained crop entity/variant state for 4,096 crops at 352,296 bytes (86.0 bytes/crop). Across the two supported versions, the 200,000-iteration empty idle loop measured 1.437–1.478 ms versus 1.648–1.997 ms for the equivalent crop-architecture loop, with zero scheduled crop block-entity ticks; reading all 4,096 identities took 0.086–0.498 ms. Run it with:

./gradlew :neoforge:26.2:cropStorageBenchmark

The memory figure covers the crop block-entity shallow layout plus the deep variant-state graph; shared Minecraft block states and normal chunk-container overhead are baseline engine costs.