Tutorial Series

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A yearly tradition of mine is to create a Minecraft Hunger Games map to play at my birthday party. With my inevitable transfer from Xbox Minecraft to Java Edition on PC, the avenue to scripted events was open. And so the next year a Hunger Games map was created, scripting with command blocks was introduced to the game flow. While the command blocks worked effectively, it was tedious to code them individually, and also not in an ergonomic setting (one command line per block).

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It was at this point I realized I would have to redo the command string in its entirety for every year after, and I sought an alternative. Introducing datapacks, which utilize all of Minecraft's base features through the standard commands, but exist in the background, stored in your personal world file. Scripting a map is as simple as copy-pasting a file, and tweaking some settings.

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HG ChestDev can be used as a standalone software component to aid in map creation. The long-term goal of these packs is to make development tools for amateur map makers (but not coders) readily and easily available. The pack itself comes with a brief info section and a chat-based UI to navigate the features of the pack, in addition to a fully written documentation README.

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The pack itself is a data-matrix, and its purpose is to replenish chests in an arena at the end of a game so the map can be replayed. The datapack will pull randomly from a loot pool generated by the map creator. These chests also have a tiering system, so some determinism to loot distribution can be achieved for those harder-to-reach chests. Chest locations in the arena and respective 'holding chests' can be marked using the dev mode built into the pack.

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Each chest type has it's own individual behavior, which can be edited beyond default in the settings menu. Chests come in Tiers 1 through 3, in addition to Neutral chests which pulls from Tiers 1 through 3 equally, Cornucopia chests which have their own loot pool, and Static Chests, which have a one-to-one pairing for selection and placement. There are additional settings for stopping chests from filling or being selected, as well as a refill system that can be activated mid-match for single chest type refills.

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Please understand that external support for the pack at this point is minimal, but the files will be updated as they are prepared for a full public release.