How to turn blocks into sand?

[Corbin Matheson]

Hey all, decently skilled at Java, but new to minecraft modding.

I'm wanting to create a mod that randomly turns blocks into sand. I was considering trying to inject code into net.minecraft.block.randomTick() to the effect of if( ! (sand || air) { replace with sand}). 

I also saw there were BlockEvents, but I wasn't sure if I could filter the type of trigger or not. Would either of these approaches work and/or is there a better way to slowly turn the world to sand? 

[warjort]

See this thread for a recent discussion: https://forums.minecraftforge.net/topic/113123-1182-change-vanilla-minecraft-blocks-that-have-a-custom-tag-to-my-custom-block/

But you are seriously going to break worlds if you do this indiscriminately. What if you replace end portal blocks? No more access to the end. 😞

[Corbin Matheson]

hummmm... maintaining a list using chunk loader/unloader events, and then iterating over that list every worldtick event sounds straight forward enough for my purposes. (famous last words 😁) 

In any case, I'm going for a alternate skyblock start / inverted regrowth concept. Trashing the end portal is the least of my worries. I need to figure out what to do if the world around spawn has decayed into a gapeing hole over the void.....

Thanks for the assist!