This week I fixed a few bugs that had made it into Bok’s Banging Butterflies. Two have been present for a while, but I was unable to reproduce or fix them. The third was a bug introduced by my recent changes to texture generation.
Bok’s Banging Butterflies
A simple mod that adds butterflies to the world.
New Images in the Pipeline
Every time I add a new butterfly to the mod, I need to create multiple textures for them. Recently, I developed a method generating spawn egg textures so I didn’t have to do them manually.
The New Butterfly Pipeline
I use a Python script to help generate code, data, and textures for Bok’s Banging Butterflies. However, this script was starting to get unwieldy. At more than 500 lines it was getting harder to find certain sections when modifications needed to be made.
Doing Spawn Eggs Properly
Spawn eggs were almost an afterthought in Bok’s Banging Butterflies. They worked, but the experience was rough. Not all entities had spawn eggs, and most eggs looked identical. With 61 butterfly and moth species, it was almost impossible for players to know what they were spawning.
Butterfly Creative Mode Tab
One detail I’ve been struggling with while developing Bok’s Banging Butterflies is where to put the items in the Creative Inventory. While playing other mods for inspiration, I saw many create a dedicated Creative Tab just for their content. A tidy, mod-branded spot that makes everything easier to find.
Improving the Publish Script
Recently I implemented some scripts to automatically publish new versions of Bok’s Banging Butterflies to several platforms. In order to support this, I added a new step where I needed to update the version in the publish script itself.
Moving the Config Options
Modpack authors are always on the hunt for ways to optimize performance, and that means giving them the right configuration options. A recent bug report revealed I’d made those options impossible to find in Bok’s Banging Butterflies.
Variants of Peacock Pansies
There was a butterfly I spotted in the Buddha Park in Vientiane that I somehow forgot about. It was an old Peacock Pansy Butterfly, its wings shredded and worn. So this week I worked on adding this butterfly to the mod, as well as yet another unique feature for it.
Butterflies in Mud Puddles
I recently learned about mud-puddling, a behaviour where butterflies and other insects will gather nutrients from puddles, soil, and decaying organic matter. I immediately thought, “That would make a great feature for Bok’s Banging Butterflies.” So I set out to implement it.
The Automation of Releases
Every time I make a new release of Bok’s Banging Butterflies, I have to manually upload it to multiple sites. While this doesn’t take too long to do, it is tedious and repetitive, especially now I’m updating the mod more frequently.