I am working on a block that when placed in a custom machine can allow the player to select blocks to change how the block acts in the world. My issue is how i would be able to get the block to store the chosen blocks. I have a tile entiry for the block for when it is placed and what not. Do i use nbt or some other method. Any help is welcome

If I understand correctly - you know how to store data in world - as TileEntity, but you don't know how to store data when block is held - as ItemStack?

 

Well - yes, you can simply store NBT inside ItemStack. Just note that they will not stack or something.

 

As to how to exhange that data between TileEntity and ItemStack - you use various methods inside your Block class - you override method of placing to get NBT from ItemStack and transfer it to TileEntity placed and other way around using breakBlock (or something...).

Override Block#getDrops to create an ItemStack with the appropriate NBT for the existing TileEntity (the TE will still be intact at the time this method is called).

 

Override Block#onBlockPlacedBy to read information from the ItemStack NBT and set it for the TileEntity (which has already been created for you by this point).

The

TileEntity

isn't usually intact when

Block#getDrops

is called, look at Forge's patch to

BlockFlowerPot

to see how it delays the removal of the

TileEntity

until after

Block#getDrops

has been called.

Isn't there a damage to drop method that we can override?

Isn't there a damage to drop method that we can override?

 

Block#damageDropped

is called from

Block#getDrops

, so the

TileEntity

won't be intact when it's called unless you delay its removal. This method doesn't have

World

or position arguments, so you can't use the

TileEntity

anyway.