PackToModNotice.md

Content Packs to Content Mods

Mirroring the new feature of Flan's Mod 1.12, you can now convert your Flan's Mod content packs to Forge mods. This document will explain why this is a big deal, how to do it, and what to expect.

Why does this matter?

Flan's Mod has loaded content packs from its own directory for nearly a decade, why bother creating a Forge mod to accomplish the same thing?

Truth is, Flan's method works fine. We will continue to support loading content packs from the Flan folder for as long as necessary, and we don't expect a large majority of content creators to spend a lot of their time reworking their content packs that work perfectly fine as-is.

However, that being said... There's a lot of features Forge provides that Flan's doesn't implement itself, such as dependency management, mod checking when connecting to a server, or update checking.

How do I convert my content pack?

This will require a little coding knowledge (but not too much, I promise!).

Assuming your content pack is already configured in this repository, all you need to do is create a new package (like for example com.flansmod.ww2). Inside your new package, create a new class with the title of your mod (such as WW2PackMod.java).

Inside your newly created class, we'll add the following:

//Note that you can add more dependencies, separated by a comma.
@Mod(modid = NewContentMod.MODID, name = NewContentMod.NAME, version = NewContentMod.VERSION, dependencies = "required-after: " + FlansMod.MODID)
public class NewContentMod implements IFlansContentProvider {
    public static final String MODID = "new_content_mod";
    public static final String VERSION = "1.0";
    public static final String NAME = "New Content Pack";

    @Override
    public String getContentDirectory() {
        //Return the name of your content pack directory.
        return "Content Pack Directory";
    }

    @Override
    public void registerModelLocations() {
        //Your models will now be located inside this mod package instead.
        //This means you'll need to define where your models are located, using a shorthand prefix.
        FlansMod.registerModelLocation("ww2", "com.flansmod.ww2.client.model");
    }
}

...and voilà! Now your content pack has become a content mod!

Want your content pack to automatically check for updates? Check the Forge docs. Need to add the Simple Parts pack to your dependencies? Just add its mod ID to your @Mod() declaration, and you're good!