Please add the Armor Statues datapack

[magicus]

If you have watched Hermitcraft, especially ZombieCleo, then you know about Armor Statues.

It is a datapack, available from Vanilla Tweaks, that adds a special book. This book contains clickable text that will manipulate the NBT tags of the closest armor stand.

The effect is that you can create dioramas, statues, and all kind of creative decoration and detailing.

My daughter NinjaSpood is a master of using this on our private server, and she has begged of me to write a wishlist request for this to be added to Cubeville (since she is no good at writing in English herself).

I sincerly do believe this would be a excellent addition to Cubeville. The detailing is often what makes the complete difference for any sofisticated build, and it's generally quite hard to do in vanilla Minecraft. With this small addition, a huge array of opportunities open up. And it's not even a mod -- just a datapack, nor anything that need running on the server -- it's just a simple way to set NBT tags on armor statues in survival that's otherwise only possible in creative.

A suitable way to integrate this in Cubeville might perhaps be to sell the book in the an Admin shop..? I know for sure that NinjaSpood is prepared to pay just about any price to get hold of such a book.

[SergeantEagle]

I'm not really into building, but i do think that the armor statues are a good idea

[ToeMan_]

It isn't a plugin, but it is still a datapack that would need installed on the server correct? Even if it was installed on the server, wouldn't it would require people to download the datapack to their local machine to use properly?

[magicus]

It is a datapack, which mean it is the official Mojang-supported way of enhancing or modifying Minecraft. Yes, it needs to be installed on the server. But in contrast to mods/plugins, this does not change any Java-code, so the risk of instability or unwanted changes is very much more limited, compared to adding a new mod/plugin. All that is needed is that the datapack zip file is downloaded from Vanilla Tweaks, and stored in the "world/datapack" folder on the server (or possibly one copy per world; I'm not fully sure how multiverse works with datapacks -- these did not exist last time I configured multiverse).

It does not need any corresponding changes on the client. The user interface is that the user gets a "magic book", much like how the daily quest journal works. The difference to the journal is that the Armor Statues book contain clickable parts, that when clicked, performs actions on a nearby armor stand. So it works fine with just a vanilla client.

[ToeMan_]

Aha, that makes sense.

[Ptown16]

If you have watched Hermitcraft, especially ZombieCleo, then you know about Armor Statues.

It is a datapack, available from Vanilla Tweaks, that adds a special book. This book contains clickable text that will manipulate the NBT tags of the closest armor stand.

The effect is that you can create dioramas, statues, and all kind of creative decoration and detailing.

My daughter NinjaSpood is a master of using this on our private server, and she has begged of me to write a wishlist request for this to be added to Cubeville (since she is no good at writing in English herself).

I sincerly do believe this would be a excellent addition to Cubeville. The detailing is often what makes the complete difference for any sofisticated build, and it's generally quite hard to do in vanilla Minecraft. With this small addition, a huge array of opportunities open up. And it's not even a mod -- just a datapack, nor anything that need running on the server -- it's just a simple way to set NBT tags on armor statues in survival that's otherwise only possible in creative.

A suitable way to integrate this in Cubeville might perhaps be to sell the book in the an Admin shop..? I know for sure that NinjaSpood is prepared to pay just about any price to get hold of such a book.

I do really like this idea -- I have watched a good amount of HermitCraft videos and I am amazed by what they've been able to do with this. It is honestly really incredible how they've been able to make complex and interesting sculptures in a small area, and it's something that I would be thrilled to incorporate into my own builds.

That being said, there are a few risks associated with adding this datapack to the server, namely:

1. Entity Overload
I know that an issue in past maps, especially in CVC, has been a large number of entities causing lag for a lot of players. I know that I would drop a lot of frames on my PC at spawn on the last map. Armor stands are entities, so adding this book may add a lot more entities in an area and cause more lag, especially for more heavy-duty builds.

2. Protections
For me, there is a lot of uncertainty about how this data pack would interact with region protections, and what that would give regular players access to do. Would you be able to select an armor stand at spawn and edit it however you please? Would another user with the book be able to edit your sculpture, even if it is within your claim? I would be surprised if this data pack interacted with Worldguard in any way, considering it is not a plugin.

Ultimately, while I would love to make awesome armor stand sculptures, in my eyes there is too much that could go wrong with adding it to CV and it definitely has the potential to create chaos if used in the wrong way.

[saemai]

I could be wrong, but I don't believe this interacts with regular armour stands, either. We have to summon in special hax armour stands for the armour stand sculptures we make for the server, and I believe this uses the same. We have to take great care to watch the entity load when making use of them, and as Ptown pointed out, that might be a bit much in the hands of the general population as well. It's also possible for them to fall into bedrock or zip off across the landscape never to be seen again if you're not careful, and these things are worrisome.

At the moment even the ones we use for server decor are restricted to being created only by SA, and commands to utilize them are A+. I'm not dismissing looking into it, but there are definitely a number of concerns.

[magicus]

That's relevant objections, and unfortunately I cannot really reply to them right now. But I could try and setup a paper server locally and install WorldGuard and the Armor Statues datapack to see how they interact. If Worldguard provides some kind of API it might be possible to tweak the Armor Statues datapack to respect it, if this is not already done.

As for risk of entity proliferation. Well. As of right now, you can already mass produce armor stands. I realize the incentive to do so will likely increase with the AS book, but I still doubt it will incite users to create so many armor stands that it does become a problem. As a slightly related side note; I've always heard that "don't use item frame in your base, since item frames are entities, and entities causes lag". I had lag issues on our private, family-only server, and I installed Gnembons carpetmod on it. With carpet, all entity processing could be clearly separated depending on entity types. Despite representing like 50% of the entities, the item frames only took less than 1% of the entity processing time. (Worst in terms of mstp/entity, by a long shot, was villagers -- and second was animals and mobs). So I'm guessing this is a bit of a myth; perhaps a logical fallacy along the lines "some entities cause a lot of lags -- item frames are entities -- therefore item frames cause lag", and I'm guessing the same applies to armor stands. They are "passive" entities, so the amount of processing needed per tick is really minimal, in contrast to items on the ground, or mobs, that require quite a bit or processing. But then again, without testing it's hard to know for sure.

Sae, the AS book does not require any special armor stands. You just create a normal armor stand, place it in the world, and stand next to it. However, it is certainly possible to modify it so it *does* require a special armor stand. If this "Modellable Armor Stand" were sold by admin shops, it cold certainly be a way of making sure we don't get too many armor stands due to the AS book. Either using market forces and a high enough price, or by keeping track of how many are sold and keep some kind of cap on it..?

[magicus]

As for the second point, interaction with Worldguard, I google a bit, and while I found no information on how the AS book works with Worldguard, I did find this alternative plugin, which solves the same problem in a equivalent but somewhat different way, and which do respect Worldguard protections:

https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/armo ... itor.7688/

[dogmatic69]

> For me, there is a lot of uncertainty about how this data pack would interact with region protections, and what that would give regular players access to do.

Is there no dev server CV running to test mods and changes? :O