Create Mod Addon Template

A ready-to-use template for building Create mod addons with Java and NeoForge 1.21.1.

What's Included

• NeoForge 1.21.1 with Create 6.0.10 dependency
• Create Registrate — Create's registration system, pre-configured
• Ponder & Flywheel — Create's rendering and documentation libraries
• JEI — recipe viewer integration (optional, compile-only)
• Mixin support — pre-configured mixins
• GitHub Actions — automatic builds on push/PR
• Gradle 8.10 with configuration cache enabled

Examples

The template ships small examples of the most common Create addon additions. All of their recipes and assets are produced by data generation (./gradlew runData) into src/generated/resources — nothing is hand-written.

• SU-consuming kinetic block + goggle overlay — content/kinetics/ExampleKineticBlock + ExampleKineticBlockEntity. An encased-shaft-style block that joins the kinetic network and draws Stress Units. Its stress impact is registered on the block in AllBlocks via BlockStressValues.IMPACTS (from the shared STRESS_IMPACT constant). Its model is an inset casing and ExampleShaftRenderer spins a Create shaft that pokes out of it, so the rotation is actually visible. It overrides addToGoggleTooltip to add a live "Drawing stress" readout beneath the default kinetic stats.

• Kinetic generator + goggle overlay — content/kinetics/ExampleGeneratorBlock + ExampleGeneratorBlockEntity. The counterpart source: it adds stress capacity (BlockStressValues.CAPACITIES, registered in AllBlocks) and produces rotation via getGeneratedSpeed(). Crucially it overrides initialize() to call updateGeneratedRotation() — without that a generator never pushes its speed into the network and nothing turns. It shares ExampleShaftRenderer and adds custom lines to the Engineer's Goggles tooltip (IHaveGoggleInformation#addToGoggleTooltip).

• Display Link source — content/display/ExampleDisplaySource + AllDisplaySources. A DisplaySource that reports a block's kinetic speed onto a Display Board; attached to the generator in AllBlocks via .transform(DisplaySource.displaySource(...)).

• Processing recipes — datagen/Example*RecipeGen for crushing, milling, pressing, cutting, mixing (heated), compacting, filling & emptying (fluids), and deploying, plus splashing and haunting fan processing.

• Sequenced assembly recipe — datagen/ExampleSequencedAssemblyGen. An item is processed through a Deployer then a Mechanical Press, looping twice, using a transitional "incomplete" item.

• Ponder plugin — content/ponder/ExamplePonderPlugin + ExamplePonderScenes. Wires up Create's in-game animated manual for the addon and is registered client-side in ExampleMod#onClientSetup. Ships a worked scene driven by the assets/examplemod/ponder/example_ponder.nbt schematic (two Mechanical Arms and a sign), demonstrating base-plate reveal, camera panning, and outlined captions. Its scene text is generated into en_us.json through Registrate's lang provider (ExampleMod#registerPonderLang), so it appears after ./gradlew runData.

• Create-style item tooltip — the example_item's tooltip is authored as lang keys in assets/examplemod/lang/default/tooltips.json (.tooltip.summary + .tooltip.condition1/.behaviour1). The ItemDescription modifier set up on the Registrate in ExampleMod reads them and adds the "Hold Shift" prompt and highlight styling automatically — no custom Item class needed. Wrap words in _underscores_ to highlight them.

• Lang: keys in code, copy in JSON — like Create, English strings live in hand-authored partials under assets/examplemod/lang/default/ (interface.json, tooltips.json), while Lang holds only translation keys. datagen/ExampleLangMerger merges the partials into the en_us.json that Registrate generates for block/item names, so ./gradlew runData writes a single lang file. Add copy by editing a partial (or dropping a new one and listing it in ExampleLangMerger) — never by putting English in Java.

• Additional languages — assets/examplemod/lang/de_de.json is a worked German translation. Registrate only generates en_us, so every other language is a plain static file (exactly how Create ships its Crowdin translations): copy the keys from the generated en_us.json, translate the values, and Minecraft overlays them when that language is selected, falling back to en_us for any key you leave out. It needs no datagen — the file is loaded as-is. (_underscores_ and %s placeholders must be kept in the translation.)

Item models borrow existing vanilla textures so the template builds with no .png files of its own — swap the textures in AllItems/AllBlocks for your own art.

Getting Started

Quickest: scaffold with create-addon-cli

Use the create-addon-cli tool for quick scaffolding

npm create addon-cli@latest
# or
npx create-addon-cli my-mod --name "Sick Mod"

It clones this template and rebrands every Example / examplemod reference to your mod. The scaffolder lives in its own repo, create-addon-cli. Skip straight to Build and run.

Or: use the GitHub template

1. Use this template

Click "Use this template" on GitHub, or clone and rename.

2. Rename it to your mod

Run the bootstrap task once — it rewrites every Example / examplemod reference, moves the Java package, renames the Example* classes and the mixin config, and clears src/generated:

./gradlew renameMod --name "Sick Mod"
# optional overrides:
./gradlew renameMod --name "Sick Mod" --id sickmod --group com.acme.sickmod

--id defaults to the name lowercased (sickmod); --group defaults to com.example.<id>. Commit or stash first — it edits files in place; review the result with git diff. Once you're happy, delete gradle/rename-mod.gradle and its apply from: line in build.gradle, then regenerate assets with ./gradlew runData.

Finish up in gradle.properties (author, description, version, license):

mod_version=0.1.0
mod_authors=YourName
mod_description=Your mod description.
mod_license=MIT

Prefer to rename by hand?

1. Edit mod_id / mod_name / mod_group_id in gradle.properties
2. Rename src/main/java/com/example/examplemod/ to match your mod_group_id
3. Update ExampleMod.java — change ID to your mod_id
4. Rename src/main/resources/examplemod.mixins.json to {mod_id}.mixins.json and update the package path inside it

Build and run

./gradlew build          # Build the mod
./gradlew runClient      # Launch Minecraft with your mod
./gradlew runServer      # Launch a dedicated server
./gradlew runData        # Run data generators

Where to start?

1. Go into your ExampleMod.java class to get a quick overview over what is defined and where exactly.

License

This template is provided under the MIT License. Your mod built from this template can use any license you choose.