one of my more recent projects is chromatic arsenal, a minecraft mod for 1.16+ which adds equipable items using the curios api.
but how did it end up like this? what caused the mod to come into existence? to answer that, i need to start this story from a few
years ago...
part 1: trinkets and baubles
back in 2018, i first got my hands on minecraft: java edition. i was always fascinated by old mod showcases, and therefore one of the
first things i did was install a modloader (in this case, forge on 1.12.2). i then began searching for, downloading, and playing mods.
at one point, i found a mod on curseforge that looked interesting. i was looking for mods that utilized the baubles api, and this one
seemed promising. it was called trinkets and baubles.
the main thing that drew me into it was the mention of transformation rings on its mod page, which at the time were just the fairy and
dwarf ring (and the reason it drew me in definitely wasn't for any unordinary reasons or anything). i installed
this mod, used it, and had fun with it.
at one point, i joined their server. i made a few friends there over the years, and even ended up making contributions such as the faelis
transformation. however, just making suggestions wasn't enough for me. eventually, i began wanting to implement them.
part 2: trinkplus
at one point, i was playing on a friend's modded server which contained a lot of mods, trinkets and baubles included. the modpack was
configured to make all damage brutal, making one-shots frequent and otherwise minor hits extremely punishing.
trinkets and baubles has an item, the shield of honor, which allows blocking every fourth attack. what if, however, i made an item
which had a time based restriction rather than a number-of-hits based restriction? this was the basis of my idea for the glass shield.
with the help of the trinkets and baubles developer XzeroAir, i ended up creating a small minecraft mod known as trinkplus, which added
more trinkets to trinkets and baubles. on its initial release, it had three items. however, this increased over time to about 7
items in version 1.2 of the mod.
after 1.2, i began work on 1.3 as XzeroAir was working on version 0.32. the update was going to add only a couple new items, however
it was then expanded to include a new transformation, the solarborn transformation. this is the species which i later reworked my own
character, chromanyan into. however, this transformation depended on 0.32. so as i was waiting for that to release, the update grew.
pretty much every item was overhauled in some way, either internally or functionally. super trinkets were introduced. the version number
changed to 2.0. this update kept growing and was held back from releasing due to the dependency on 0.32. however, as i waited, a new
project was beginning...
part 3: chromatic arsenal
the problem with a hard dependency on trinkets and baubles is that a mod like that is quite large and needs time to port between versions.
trinkplus, in its current state, would take ages to port to future versions. i decided the best course of action would be to completely
remake the mod from the ground up using the curios api instead.
therefore, that was what i did. the 7 main curios were ported to 1.16 and new crafting materials were introduced to replace trinkplus'
ender ingots. new super curios were added to this new version to make up for the inability to port the vicious claw and shield of wrath
from trinkplus. some curios were even made enchantable. the mod has been updated over time to optimize the code, add new items,
and port to newer versions, the last of which was only truly possible by breaking away from trinkets and baubles. this is why
chromatic arsenal was created, to break away from the trinkets affiliation.
part 4: what about trinkplus?
2.0 did eventually get released, however, there were frustrations built up related to trinkets and baubles that made this release nearly not happen at all. trinkplus is now dead. the 1.12.2 version will never be updated again, and was even removed from curseforge entirely after an argument with XzeroAir got out of hand. if trinkets ports to later versions, i will NOT be adding compatibility with it. the solarborn will become a chromatic arsenal feature or part of an origins addon, if it returns at all. but as it stands, this is how chromatic arsenal was created, and how trinkplus faded.