For those who follow my Minecraft mod, you know the custom mobs are the most iconic, important part of it.

In my studies for updating to 1.20 from 1.15, I finally arrived at custom mobs, and it was a bit unsettling to see what I found in the changes; they may paint a grim future for my modification.

Mojang implements an entirely new system for mob animation

The tutorial I followed on custom entities heavily references Camels, which apparently reinvent how mobs are animated. It is so drastically different that I had a moment of panic realizing all the work I've done prior would be completely incompatible with this new style.

But then I checked the code for other mobs, starting with wolves (which all of my work started from) and found it was mostly unchanged and still looked how I remembered it. I checked Zombies, Horses, and Ender Dragon and found them still following the old logic. So for 1.20 at least, I should be fine.

It is unsettling if they decided to take their work on camels and implement it on everything in the future. It's really my doomsday scenario I dreaded all these years they might do. And ironically, the new style of code is very similar to what I was thinking they might do; I just didn't think it was possible.

If this new style of handling mobs and their animations becomes the only way, it will force me to have to rebuild all my models from scratch and create new coding for all animations. And worst of all, not all animations my current mod has would be possible. Namely the last news ones I added: jumping, falling, and turning. These would be impossible under the new system.

I'll be brutally honest. I told myself if something like this happens, I would legit quit modding, or at least quit for newer versions of Minecraft.

So permanently quitting will be on the table.

My guess on what will actually happen

Now in my opinion, how likely is it to become the only way mobs are animated? I have doubts. There are some quirks with wolves for example I don't see how it could work in the new system, and definitely not the Ender Dragon. I feel like those options will leave it open to original styles of animation.

There is another instance where a big implementation change happened but there was a backdoor that left a way around it.

Back in 1.8, how blocks and items were rendered in the game was changed from Java coding to JSONs files (basically crude text files). In 1.7, I had all sorts of custom modeled and animated blocks which were completely incomparable with the new JSON style. I thought they were sunk. But then I discovered a loophole. The Enchantment Table still utilized a custom model and animation outside of JSON files. So messing around with that, I got around the JSON dilemma.

The new mob animation coding they are implementing strongly reminds me of JSON files in how they are structured. This comparison gives me hope there will continue to be a loophole around it. It will just be a matter of finding the instance of something that doesn't use the new system.

A good change with newer Minecraft

In at least some good news about changes they made, I am happy to see attack animation coding is properly implemented in the game now. Now I no longer have to use my clumsy, custom written logic that had to use weird tricks to work. Their animation coding looks almost exactly the same as to what I have written in 1.15 so it should be an almost seamless conversion.

My mod did have a great implementation of attack animations back in the day but I didn't really call it iconic as several of mods did it too. And mine was based on Mutant Creatures originally.

The real magic of my mod was the Idle and Movement animations. Its almost a seamless transition between walking, running, falling/jumping, and turning that made them feel incredibly organic. And I had almost perfect logic to transition them from those movement/idle animations to attack animations and back. At one point, I was even attempting to code animations for characters moving backwards and sideways but I had huge issues with the understanding of the math to make it work and shelved that feature.

From what I can see, the new style Minecraft is implementing makes the seamless transition impossible and makes falling/jumping/turning impossible. I do see there is a distinction between walking and running in the new system though so that would still be around.

Why the change?

Now why is Mojang making these changes to mob animation? It's very obvious why.

It is very, very, incredibly easy to work with.

Basically anyone can do it. If you can do Blender, you can easily do it with a certain software intended for Minecraft modeling. (blockbench I think its called). It opens up mobs and animation to so many people.

Now the stuff I do? To do what I do you have to have a STRONG understanding of Trigonometry and College Algebra to do. And you have to be an Artist too. That is such a narrow skill set for a person to have.

Knowing this, I can't be mad them for making the change. It's absolutely a move intended to help with accessibility.

So there is an update on where I am with things. I'll hope for the future that loophole is possible so I can keep doing what I do. >w>

~Eclipsis/Spikybum Jolteon