[1.20.1 & 47.3.3] [SOLVED] Issues with BlockStates not updating

[Dealman]

Long story short, my girlfriend found a mod for Minecraft she wanted but it was for Pocket Edition. So I took it on myself to try and port it over and it has gone fairly well until the point I had to work with particles.

Basically, I had it working using animateTick but I was checking if the block name contained a certain value to specify the lantern's color and as such choose which particle to spawn. I was initially trying to do this via the constructor, but this value hasn't been initialized that early and I can't seem to find some event or method to override which ideally happens when the block is loaded/placed.

Performing upwards to 16 string comparisons per tick isn't exactly efficient so I want to try and optimize this. By the time animateTick starts executing, the name is properly initialized and I can use that to set my property accordingly. But this is where I'm starting to run into a weird issue.

This is my current code;

public void animateTick(BlockState state, Level level, BlockPos pos, RandomSource randomSource) {
    // It's not fully initialized yet... I guess?
    if (this.getName().toString().contains("air"))
        return;

    if (!state.getValue(COLOR_SET)) {
        // This method doesn't work at all, neither states are updated
        var blockState = level.getBlockState(pos);
        blockState.setValue(LANTERNCOLOR, this.getBlockColor());
        blockState.setValue(COLOR_SET, true);
        level.setBlockAndUpdate(pos, blockState);
    }

    double d0 = (double)pos.getX() + randomSource.nextDouble();
    double d1 = (double)pos.getY() + randomSource.nextDouble();
    double d2 = (double)pos.getZ() + randomSource.nextDouble();

    // No idea how to better do this without adding 5 000 new files
    if (level.getBlockState(pos).getValue(LANTERNCOLOR) == DyeColor.WHITE.getId())
        level.addParticle(PaperLanterns.LANTERN_GLOW_WHITE.get(), d0, d1, d2, 0.0D, ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextDouble(-0.10D, 0.0D), 0.0D);

    if (level.getBlockState(pos).getValue(LANTERNCOLOR) == DyeColor.BLUE.getId())
        level.addParticle(PaperLanterns.LANTERN_GLOW_BLUE.get(), d0, d1, d2, 0.0D, ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextDouble(-0.10D, 0.0D), 0.0D);
}

COLOR_SET is a BooleanProperty meant to ensure this is only executed once, for performance reasons. LANTERNCOLOR is currently an IntegerProperty (it used to be an EnumProperty, but been changing stuff around trying to fix the issue) which specified the color.

My issue is that I can only set one of these states, for example like this;

if (!state.getValue(COLOR_SET)) {
    // LANTERNCOLOR is set successfully, but not COLORSET
    level.setBlockAndUpdate(pos, state.setValue(LANTERNCOLOR, this.getBlockColor()));
    level.setBlockAndUpdate(pos, state.setValue(COLOR_SET, true));
}

// OR

if (!state.getValue(COLOR_SET)) {
    // COLOR_SET is set successfully, but not LANTERNCOLOR
    level.setBlockAndUpdate(pos, state.setValue(COLOR_SET, true));
    level.setBlockAndUpdate(pos, state.setValue(LANTERNCOLOR, this.getBlockColor()));
}

So I can only seemingly set one state at a time, I now know that my issue wasn't in my usage of EnumProperty so once I solve this I will be going back to that and using a switch-case. But I would love some pointers as to why I can only set one of these states. Is it because once you set it and update it, that instance of the block is now considered dirty and as such accepts no more state changes or something? I know the code's a bit all over the place with how I retrieve the states. I'm still learning and have been testing a bunch trying to get this to work, but have now found the issue but no idea how to solve it 😅

If there's a better way of setting this LANTERNCOLOR property and ensuring it's only executed once, that would be even better.

The sole purpose of this is to choose which particle to spawn, since the particle colors are hardcoded.

Edited July 19, 2024 by Dealman

[Dealman]

I think I just solved it, I took a break and did some C++ in Unreal - and it kind of dawned upon me that I'm doing this wrong (duh) and should essentially treat BlockState like a struct, where you don't directly manipulate properties. Maybe I'm overthinking it and this isn't really the case, but this works;

if (!level.getBlockState(pos).getValue(COLOR_SET)) {
    BlockState newState = state.setValue(LANTERNCOLOR, this.getBlockColor());
    newState = newState.setValue(COLOR_SET, true);
    level.setBlock(pos, newState, 2);
}

Just looking at that and it's a bit of a facepalm, makes sense.

Edit:

This may be solved, but I'm still open to suggestions if there's a better way of doing this. Alternatively how to dynamically change the color of a particle so I don't have to create one particle for every color.

Edited July 19, 2024 by Dealman