How this template can save you a lot of time

Read the documentation below to know how to initialize your mod from this template. It's fast as you just have to search and replace text.

Don't lose time setting up your project, everything is ready is this template, including:

• 📂 All your code in the same repository: Multi module gradle project set up and ready to use including forge, fabric, and common code
• 🆕 Gradle 8: Project is ready and uses Gradle 8, for both fabric and forge
• ⚙️ Mod settings: For both fabric & forge, mod settings template is ready, you just have to define the settings of your mod. Powered by cloth config.
• 👷 Continuous integration: On each push / pull request (customizable), github triggers a workflow that will check and build both fabric and forge. The artefacts are downloadable from the web interface
• 🚚 Continuous delivery: On each tag pushed on the main branch (customizable), github triggers a workflow that builds and automatically creates a release with the artefacts and the changelog.
• ⏩ Easy to update: All the versions are stored in one file Versions.kt. It allows you to update the project without modifying gradle files.
• ✅ Linting: Linting is included and automatically checks your code to make sure you follow kotlin coding conventions. It can be customized as it relies on ktlint.
• 🇰 Kotlin: Be more productive by using Kotlin instead of Java. Try it out, you won't come back to Java.

Versions:

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Gradle 8.1.1
• Kotlin 1.9.10 More details in Versions.kt

How to use this template for your mods

1. Open project with intelliJ

It should work with other IDE, it only depends on gradle, I did not test it

Load gradle project, it may crash because of SDK errors, in that case:

• Make sure that you are using java jdk 17 (File > Project Structure > SDK > Select JDK 17 & language level SDK Default)
• Make sure that gradle uses jdk 17 (File > Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Gradle > Gradle JVM: Select Project SDK)
• Reload gradle project

2. Search & remplace:

• {license}: The mod license. Example: GNU-LGPL-3.0
• {githubUser}: The user that owns the github repo. Example: lilmods
• {githubRepo}: The name of the github repo. Example: kotlin-minecraft-mod-template
• {author}: The author of the mod. It will be in the mod description (forge & fabric)
• modid (and not modId !!!): The mod id. Has to be unique across mc mods. Make sure to also rename modid.mixins.json
• com.example.modid: The mod package. Has to be unique across mc mods to prevent conflits on runtime. Make sure to also rename filenames.
• ModName: The mod name. Make sure to also rename filenames.
• ModDescription: The mod description
• Replace LICENSE file with your license
• Make sure Versions.kt is correct.

Now you can reload gradle project. You should be able to build and run clients. If it's not the case, you renamed something wrong. You can see an example here: https://github.com/lilmods/aim-assistance/commit/44743e66f04cde44ad8ccb9490b680069f874c1d.

Troubleshooting:

If the build below says "passing" and it does not work in your environment, it means that you did something wrong because the CI built the project properly.

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If you have an issue, it could be because of:

• Wrong rename:
  • Take a look at https://github.com/lilmods/aim-assistance/commit/44743e66f04cde44ad8ccb9490b680069f874c1d to see an example of template init
  • Open git diff with intelliJ, to check every change you made, something may be wrong
  • You may have forgotten to rename something (folder or filename for example)
• Caching issues
  • Try to stop gradle daemon: ./gradlew --stop
  • Try to restart intelliJ: Files > Invalidate caches & restart
  • Delete gradle cache: ~/.gradle/caches (you will need to re-download everything)

3. Updating versions

All the versions of libraries are stored in Versions.kt. The file is documented for you to know how to bump versions.

4. Releasing new versions

Put a tag on any branch following this format:

• fabric: 1.0.0-MC1.19.x-fabric
• forge: 1.0.0-MC1.19.x-forge

The CD workflows are defined in .github/workflows folder. The release will then be "deployed" on github. In the releases tab, you will see your new version with a changelog that contains everything you did put on CHANGELOG-forge.md (for forge) and CHANGELOG-fabric.md (for fabric).

You can see example of releases published from this repo here https://github.com/lilmods/kotlin-minecraft-mod-template/releases

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5. Put the common code in the common module!

If you have common code between forge and fabric, you can put it in the common module (you can rename it if you want). The code will then be packaged in the .jar produced by fabric and forge.

6. The project has a linter

It forced you to follow some conventions. In the root build.gradle.kts, ktlint is imported. You can remove it if you want, in that case, you have to remove the step in the CI workflows .github/workflows. There is an IntelliJ plugin to help you. You also can customize the ktlint configuration by looking on their official documentation.

7. The project automatically builds .jar

Everytime the CI runs and succeed, produced artefacts are stored in the workflow run summary. For example, as you can see in https://github.com/lilmods/kotlin-minecraft-mod-template/actions/runs/5111050925, there is an "Artifacts" block. You can click on it to download the produced .jar files.

8. Fabric specific stuff to know

This project uses Kotlin. However, mixins does not work with Kotlin for now, so it's written in Java. There are some examples. The template uses modmenu & cloth-config to manage the mod settings. Everything is ready.

Run client: execute runClient gradle task.

9. Forge specific stuff to know

The template uses cloth-config to manage the mod settings. Everything is ready.

Run client: execute runClient gradle task

10. Done !

You can delete everything in the readme from this line, you are ready to go, have fun :)

ModName