This week I have been working on my first Minecraft Bedrock exclusive addon for Voxel Forge.
Whilst browsing the Minecraft suggestions Reddit, I came across the idea of a Shepherds Crook a tool to help control Mobs on Minecraft, it resonated with me because I am constantly having animals try to escape after opening the fence gates.
After pitching this idea to the team they were all on board. So we got to work.
The Shepherd’s Crook Item
The concept is simple: it pushes and pulls mobs. It can pull mobs toward you and push them away. The challenge was making it feel satisfying to use with the right trade-offs and animations.
I personally find it quite fun to use. There is something very satisfying about pulling animals towards you and pushing them without actually hurting them.
Troubles
With experience in Java data packs and resource packs, along with a background in web development, I found it relatively straightforward to develop my portions of the addon. However, I often found myself frustrated to the point of pulling my hair out while debugging. This was mostly because of the timing, with the upcoming vibrant visuals update looming we needed to test with deferred rendering enabled, which for some reason has a bug with first party animations? However we have decided to push it though into staging and advise turning vibrant visuals off. This was a tough choice but Mojang has a pretty bad reputation of taking a long time to resolve bugs.
Want to try the addon? you can check it out at Voxel Forge Studios Curse Forge.
Wrapping up
Whilst having a few troubles with debugging, it was a very fun and pleasant experience to develop a Bedrock Addon, especially as I have found myself playing Minecraft more and more on Bedrock lately.