Hi, I want to ask you for some tips and best practices on how to proceed correctly in some cases of making a modification.
I am new to Java and modifying, I have experience with PHP programming and development of plugins for the content management system. So I apologize in advance if anyone finds my questions Noobic.
Before I decided to write here, I spent a lot of time searching for information on Google. The answers I found and looked like the right ones for my questions were often on version 1.12.2. This means often unusable for version 1.13+.
Many of you certainly know the Gregtech mod (loved and hated), it is a modification that adds a lot of types of machines, blocks, materials and fluids. I do not intend to make another copy of this mod, I use it only as a comparison to understand my questions.
Additional components are then formed from the individual materials (for example: tiny / small / pure dusts, ingots and plates). If I read correctly then since MC 1.13+ a JSON file is created for each item, so the procedure from 1.12.x when one "uni-dust" was created with many variants or metaitems based on the getDamage method is now unusable.
By going through the existing modifications on GitHub, I found that most moders register each item separately and use so-called object holders. So then the item can be treated like this ModName.ITEM_NAME.get(). Suppose GT has about 500 types of materials, each material would have about 40 variants of components - ore, block, some dusts, plates, ingots (+ doubled, ...) gears, screws ... Yes, some materials have fewer, this is just a consideration. That's around 20k items ?, keeping it in object holders probably won't be easy. Cycle registration is offered, but these items will not be easily accessible.
And since adding 20k items (+20k JSONs) is also hardcore, it occurs to me that the solution would probably be to create one item (like a colorable backpack). This would actually create only those 40 variants, and their properties would be somewhere in the NBT. Unfortunately, I read somewhere that it is less efficient to create a separate item than an NBT "God" item precisely because of the amount of data associated with the manipulation of such an object.
I went through many mods, small and familiar, and I didn't get satisfactory answers. And as I wrote above, I'm a beginner in this and some procedures so far there is nowhere to look, because a lot of mod is still in the version for 1.12.2
How to solve such a problem, which way to go? Again, I use GT only as an example, because it is a well-known mod.
Textures can be colored, but how to subsequently solve JSONs in assets. I know you can use a datagen, but 20k JSONs are overkill.
