[1.9.4] Extended Blockstates, how do they work?

[DavidTriphon]

Hello again,

 

After spending that last week and a half finalizing my understanding of the item and block registration and render loader functions, I'd love to learn about how extended blockstates work. I see the term used on the forge documentation, but its section hasn't been written yet. I'd love to learn how it works, since I can't seem to easily find any up to date resources through google.

 

I'd like to add a block that is made up of 8 smaller cubes, and they fill up as rocks are placed into the various spaces. This would affect the hitbox for the block and the model shown. I know how to use make models use sub-models based on variants, but I can't make it store more than 4 boolean values, due to the 4 bit nature of metadata. Is there any reasonable way to get around that using extended block states? Would this require having multiple blocks in the same space like I have seen other architecture themed mods do?

 

Any help, advice, or links to useful material is appreciated.

[Draco18s]

You need a TileEntity in order to store more than 4 bits of data.

[DavidTriphon]

I'll begin researching those. Thanks for the heads up.