I'm trying to make a custom fence gate, which extends BlockFenceGate, but has slightly different behavior through overriding its onBlockActivated() method. This is all fine and working. The problem is that it doesn't visually connect to fences. Looking through the code, I see that BlockFence#canConnectFenceTo() specifically checks for either normal, opaque blocks, BlockFence, or Blocks.fence_gate. That means it'll never connect to any subclasses of BlockFenceGate. I can make it work by overriding my class's renderAsNormalBlock() method to return true, but then it blocks light, causing odd lighting "glitches".

 

Is there any way to allow a custom fence class to retain its transparency while still allowing fences to connect to them? For instance, is there a way (perhaps through reflection?) to override the default BlockFence#canConnectFenceTo() method so I can have it check for my custom fence gate as well? (I don't know much about how reflection works, but from the little I do know, I haven't seen anything about overwriting methods...) Or is there another way?

That's not really possible for this. I need this mod to be compatible with being run next to several other popular mods which haven't updated to 1.8 yet, meaning I can't update, either. Is there a way to make it work in 1.7.10?

Not without serious hacks.

Ugh. That's annoying. Well, I suppose it's not the worst thing in the world if these gates block light, then. Thanks for your help.

By "serious hacks" we probably mean ASM coremodding.  Should be a simple enough thing to insert an extra comparison statement into fences without completely wrecking everything.  Java bytecode is not for the weak, however.

Well, I have a little experience with ASM in general, but no experience with ASM coremodding nor with Java bytecode. On a scale from "1=a beginner can do it" to "10=you practically need to write the binary bits yourself", where would ASM coremodding rank?

Okay, then...I think I'll be saving that for a learning experience test mod rather than trying to do it for this actual mod Thanks for all the help!