I'm making a mod with randomly generated blocks, so I need them to be registered just before entering a world. This way I can use the world seed as the seed for my generation code. Otherwise block id's are going to get screwed up, especially with multiplayer worlds.

 

When are blocks registered, and is there any way for me to do this?

You could register it as one block and just change the properties on generation? It would conserve block id's and so forth.

Would it be possible to do that? I mean, if that were the case, we wouldn't really have an issue with Block ID's at all. We could just have one Block class, and just modify it's properties to be any other block. I think I need them to be registered because they will be used in crafting recipes and such. I can't imagine being able to keep track of all the properties as they move around.

With the use of NBT tags and metadata there should be a way to do it on generation. What exactly is the mod supposed to do and what properties are randomly generated?

The goal is to add more ores by randomly generating the base values of the ore (Harvest level, name, resistance, the strength of tools and armor, etc.) and also giving them "magical" effects similar to ARPGs like Diablo and Torchlight. I can already take a lot of effects from potions and enchantments, but I also plan to add other effects which are still a little nebulous at the moment. I should be getting some people together to plan the effects and rarities out this week; I just started writing intial backend code yesterday.

 

I think I see what you're saying, I can use up a few IDs just for the things that need to be changed at registration, and I think the rest I can allow variation in the code. I just need to worry about how they are going to stack in inventory and stuff like that. Also, they probably won't show up in the creative menu, and giving yourself an item through commands would be totally random. But I think that that's a reasonable price to pay to not use an absurd amount of Block IDs.

 

Hopefully that explains a little bit about what I'm trying to do, I tend to ramble a lot when I explain things like this.

 

EDIT: Also, what exactly are NBT values? Is there somewhere I can go to learn more about how to use them in Minecraft? I've only just started modding Minecraft, so I'm still getting the hang of how things work.

NBTs are Minecraft's in-game storage format, and you can use a TileEntity (not sure about blocks) to save data directly to them. So you really only need one block, and all the properties can be set via NBT.