NBT for something other than Items

[Asweez]

I have modules for my armor that I stir in the armor's nbt. I write the id of the module to the NBT and then read it whenever. Each module has a class that defines which armor piece its for, the id, what it does, and the name. I want to add a timer to the module so the player can't spam it. However, if I add a timer to the class, all instances of that module will have the same cool down timer. How would I add timer for specific instances of the modules? For example Player1 has 10 seconds cool down but Player2 has 20 seconds for the same module.

 

Thanks

[Draco18s]

Encode the timer into the armor's NBT.

 

Save the world time that the ability was used, then do

if(world_time - saved_time > some_delay) { //ready }

[Asweez]

Yeah that's what I thought at first. Is it possible without using the item, though?

[Asweez]

Good idea. However (and this is mostly hypothetical), I am wondering how I could have individualized data completely disregarding the item. How does NBT do it so each item can have its own set of data?

[shadowfacts]

Each item doesn't have its own data. Each ItemStack has it's own data. In the game, there is only ever 1 instance of each item.

[Asweez]

Ok you're right but how does the ItemStack do it?

[shadowfacts]

ItemStack has an NBTTagCompound field.

[Asweez]

What I'm saying is: Can you have individual data for each instance of some class?

[coolAlias]

What I'm saying is: Can you have individual data for each instance of some class?

That's what a class instance is - an object containing individual data, whether that data is in the form of integers, Strings, arrays, NBT, whatever, doesn't matter.

 

Are your armor modules items? Store data in the ItemStack NBT like every other Item. Are they some other class? Store data directly in the class. Do you need an instance of that class to be readable and writable to NBT, e.g. for storage and retrieval from the ItemStack's NBT tag? Make some methods that do that and call them when needed, e.g. (in pseudo-code):

ItemStack armor; // from whatever Item method you are in, e.g. onUpdate
NBTTagList modules = getModulesListFromArmorStack(armor);
for each (tag in modules) {
  ArmorModule module = ArmorModule.loadFromNBT(tag);
  // now you have your individual module instance with individual data loaded from NBT format
}

There's nothing magical about NBT - it's just a group of utility classes Minecraft uses to facilitate reading and writing data from and to disk, which also happens to be used frequently with ItemStacks because Items don't have any equivalent to TileEntities.

[Asweez]

Ok that helps a lot. So would it be better to either store the module data in the item nbt and use the same instance of the module for every item OR create a new instance of the module for every item and store the data in the module itself?