Leaderboard

This isn’t about features or content size, but polish. From a player and developer perspective, here’s what consistently separates good mods from great ones. Performance awarenessHigh-quality mods avoid ticking when unnecessary, cache results, and respect server performance. Consistent behaviorItems behave predictably, configs work as expected, and nothing breaks silently. Clean UI/UXMenus don’t lag, text is readable, tooltips explain behavior without external documentation. Compatibility mindsetGood mods avoid hard conflicts, use proper tags, and integrate with existing systems instead of overriding them. DocumentationEven minimal README files or in-game descriptions dramatically improve user experience. None of these are flashy, but together they’re what make a mod feel professional. Interested to hear what others prioritize.

Posting this because I spent more time on it than I’d like to admit, and I’ve seen others hit the same wall. The problemMy custom block registered correctly, appeared in the creative tab, but rendered as a missing texture cube. No errors at runtime, just a purple-black block. What I checked firstRegistry name was correct Blockstate JSON existed Model JSON paths looked fine Textures were in the right folder Everything looked correct. The actual issueThe problem was a mismatch between the blockstate JSON and model file names. Example mistake: blockstates/my_block.json models/block/myblock.json Forge does not warn you when these names don’t match exactly. The fixMake sure naming is consistent everywhere: blockstates models/block models/item registry name Also ensure that: JSON files are lowercase no extra underscores or hyphens exist resource reload cache is cleared Restarting the client after fixing resource paths helped immediately. TakeawayIf your block exists but renders wrong, the issue is almost always: naming mismatch resource path typo cached resource reload Hopefully this saves someone else an hour.