For the last few weeks I have been on and off tyring to code a generic solution that allows me to register groups of blocks of any kind to overcomes the 16 metastates per-block limit. My first attempt was an enumeration that holds all the states, and my code would just register as many blocks as needed to hold all states. But Java Enum cannot be extended so this would be a massive copy&paste for each class of block.

 

My second attempt to overcome the enum limits was to simulate extensible enums via abstract classes. But here I ran into the next limit - you can't extend from, or define abstract static methods.

 

Before I redo it all again, has perhaps already someone solved this limitation in a generic way? Or is there perhaps a software pattern I could use here?

 

What I more or less want to get to is to be able to define a list of blocktypes and the code manages the registering of blocks and setting the metadata for each type, but with the simplicity of java enums, where I could do a call like EnumFlower.Peonia.getBlockState() or EnumFlower.getStateFromMeta(block, meta)

I added a group of colored stone blocks

 

in my block class

public static BlockIndexed[] colorstone=new BlockIndexed[numstones];

 

int the init method

 

  for(int s=0;s<numstones;s++){
colorstone[s]=new BlockIndexed(Material.rock);
String ns=""+(s+1);
String tname="colorstone"+ns;
String name=tname+"_";
colorstone[s].setBlockName(name);
colorstone[s].setBlockTextureName(tname);
colorstone[s].setCreativeTab(LoonBlocksTabs.colorblock_tab);
colorstone[s].setHardness(2.5F);
colorstone[s].setResistance(15.F);
colorstone[s].setStepSound(Block.soundTypePiston);
GameRegistry.registerBlock(colorstone[s], ColorItem.class, name);

using this method I also added slabs, wall, and steps for each stone

 

 

hope this gives you a good idea

Mmm, code tags...