Texturepacker and Minecraft Beta 1.3

Minecraft Beta 1.3 was released yesterday and it includes some new items, which require support in your custom texture pack if you have one. I was quite pleased that I was able to concoct a usable version of my packs using my texture-pack-remixing work-in-progress, now named Texturepacker.

I started by creating an atlas for Beta 1.3. It looks like this:

- file: beta1_2.tpmaps
- terrain.png:
    - terrain.png
    - source_rect: {x: 48, y: 128, width: 96, height: 48}
      cell_rect: {width: 16, height: 16}
      names:
        - repeater
        - leaves1
        - leaves1_unfancy
        - bed_top_foot
        - bed_top_head
        - "88"
        - repeater_lit
        - "94"
        - bed_foot
        - bed_side_foot
        - bed_side_head
        - bed_head
        - "A3"
        - redstone_mask
        - redstone_line_mask
        - "A6"
        - "A7"
        - "A8"

It works by referencing the existing atlas for Beta 1.2 (beta1_2.tpmaps), and adds an entry for terrain.png that adds extra entries for the new tiles. (Except for the mysterious purple-black-and-blue tile next to the obsidian tile, because I do not yet know what it is.)

Now I can define a version of GroovyStipple like this:

label: GroovyStipple R8
desc: A high-visibility, unrealistic look.
mix:
  - pack:
      file: GroovyStipple
      maps:
        file: maps/stipple.tpmaps
    files:
      - "*.png"
      - file: terrain.png
        replace:
          pack:
            href: minecraft:bin/minecraft.jar
            maps:
              file: maps/beta-1.3.tpmaps
          cells:
            - repeater
            - repeater_lit
            - redstone_mask
            - redstone_line_mask
            - bed_top_foot
            - bed_top_head
            - bed_foot
            - bed_head
            - bed_side_foot
            - bed_side_head

This is the recipe for mixing the new cells from the default texture pack (which is embedded in the file minecraft.jar in Minecraft’s folder). The only actually new part of the recipe is the replace spec.

Don‘t worry about the details of how recipes are written—apart from anything else, I may change the syntax as I work out the details, and in any case I plan to have most recipe-writing done via some nice web app. What is interesting is that the above recipe could be applied to existing Beta-1.2 texture packs to create ersatz packs that allow you to carry on playing while you wait for the artist to draw the new graphics.

About Texturepacker

Texturepacker is a Python module and program for building texture packs for Minecraft.

About GroovyStipple

GroovyStipple and its companion SmoothStipple are texture packs for Minecraft. They are compatible with Minecraft Beta 1.3. You can download them here:

To install them, click on Mods and Textures in the Minecraft main menu, use it to visit the texturepacks folder and copy or move the ZIP files there.