I'm working on creating an item that spawns an entity that looks like the player that used the item. This entity just runs forward for about 5-10 seconds then disappears. I want this entity to be targetable by hostile mobs.

I'm thinking of creating a custom entity for this, how would I go about giving it the player model and texture? If this is too complex for me atm then I will just give it a default model and texture for now.

My main concern is how I get hostile mobs to target this entity. It seems like hostile mobs AI have an attack nearest attackable target that selects an EntityPlayer. Extending from EntityPlayer requires a gameprofile, so I don't think I can make that work.

I don't really want to replace all hostile mob AI just to add a single line of code to them all.

It seems like I can add the task on LivingUpdateEvent. Will this mess up any of the hostile mobs AI?

		if (event.getEntityLiving() instanceof EntityMob)
		{
			EntityMob mob = (EntityMob) event.getEntityLiving();
			
			mob.targetTasks.addTask(3, new EntityAINearestAttackableTarget<>(mob, CustomMob.class, true));
		}

 

UPDATE: So I tested this with EntityAnimal instead of custom mob, which I haven't made yet, and it was pretty hilarious, so it seems the AI does work fine like this. Now to figure out how to set the entities texture to the players texture on spawn, if this is even possible.

To give the custom mob the players texture I had my mob extend EntityTameable and using preRenderCallback I get the owner from the entity, and set the texture using AbstractClientPlayer#getLocationSkin() 

This works in single player for sure, for servers further testing is required.

Edited February 23, 20178 yr by Kriptikz

Well run minecraft and try it!

Edited February 18, 20178 yr by Leomelonseeds

When you test your AI task, besides succeeding at tracking when you want,also check that it doesn't track when it shouldn't (e.g. spawn a chicken or sheep to see if they now flock to your custom mob too).