Overview#
The Selectable Painting Mod is an essential decoration utility designed for Minecraft Forge and NeoForge. It addresses one of the most persistent frustrations in vanilla Minecraft: the inability to choose which painting design appears when placing a painting. Instead of repeatedly breaking and replacing paintings to find a specific piece of art, this mod introduces a specialized item and a custom GUI that gives players full control over the aesthetic of their builds.
Key Features
- Design Selection: Manually pick any painting design available in the game files.
- Size Control: Filter paintings by their dimensions (e.g., 1x1, 2x1, 4x4).
- Mod Compatibility: Automatically detects and lists paintings added by other mods or resource packs.
- Persistence: Paintings broken while using this mod retain their selected design when picked back up.
- Placement Validation: Real-time error reporting if a selected painting is too large for the target wall space.
Items#
The mod introduces one primary item that acts as the catalyst for all selection mechanics.
Selectable Painting
The Selectable Painting is a modified version of the vanilla painting item. It functions identically in terms of placement but holds additional NBT data regarding the specific art piece and size currently selected by the player.
| Item | Description | Stack Size |
|---|---|---|
| Selectable Painting | A painting item that allows for manual design selection via a GUI. | 64 |
Tooltips
When hovering over a Selectable Painting in the inventory, the tooltip displays the currently selected painting's name and its dimensions (Width x Height). This allows players to quickly identify which painting is ready for placement without opening the menu.
Mechanics#
The mod operates through a simple set of interactions that integrate seamlessly with standard gameplay.
Opening the Selection GUI
To choose a painting, the player must hold a Selectable Painting item and Right-Click in the air (not targeting a block). This action opens the Selection Interface.
Placing Paintings
Once a design is selected in the GUI, the player can Right-Click a block to place it. The mod will attempt to center the painting based on the block clicked. If the selected painting is too large for the available wall space, the painting will not be placed, and an error message will appear on the screen: "The painting is too big for this place!"
Randomization
For players who still enjoy a bit of variety, the GUI includes a "Random Painting" checkbox. When enabled, placing the painting will select a random design from the pool of paintings that match the currently selected size.
Recovery
When a painting placed via this mod is broken or removed, it drops as a Selectable Painting item that remembers the design it previously displayed. This prevents the need to re-select the art if you are simply moving a decoration to a different wall.
User Interface#
The Selection GUI is the heart of the mod, designed for ease of use and quick navigation.
GUI Components
- Size Selector: A series of buttons or a dropdown menu that filters the available paintings by their block dimensions (e.g., 16x16, 32x16, 64x64 pixels).
- Painting Gallery: A scrollable list of all paintings matching the selected size. Each entry shows a preview of the artwork.
- Random Toggle: A checkbox to enable random placement within the chosen size category.
- Search Bar: (In newer versions) Allows players to type the name of a specific painting to find it instantly.
Recipes#
The mod provides easy conversion between vanilla paintings and the selectable variant, ensuring players can use the mod's features at any time.
Crafting Selectable Paintings
Place a standard vanilla Painting into any slot of a crafting grid to convert it into a Selectable Painting.
| Input | Output |
|---|---|
| 1x Painting | 1x Selectable Painting |
Reverting to Vanilla
If you wish to return a Selectable Painting to its vanilla state, place it back into any slot of a crafting grid.
| Input | Output |
|---|---|
| 1x Selectable Painting | 1x Painting |
Configuration#
The mod is designed to work "out of the box," but it includes configuration options for server administrators and players.
This mod must be installed on both the Client and the Server to function correctly in multiplayer environments. This is because the server needs to handle the custom NBT data associated with the Selectable Painting item and validate the placement logic.
Technical Specifications
- Mobs/Creatures: This mod does not add any new mobs or creatures.
- Biomes/Dimensions: This mod does not add any new biomes or dimensions.
- Structures: This mod does not generate any new structures.
Development History#
The mod has undergone several major iterations to improve stability and feature sets across different Minecraft versions.
Version History
- 1.X.X: Initial release focusing on basic size selection and placement.
- 2.X.X: Introduced the dedicated GUI and improved mod compatibility for custom paintings.
- 3.X.X: Added the "Random Painting" toggle and refined the error messaging system for invalid placements.
- 4.X.X (Current): Optimized for Minecraft, featuring a modernized UI and enhanced search capabilities.
