Creating a new similar Item vs Replacing an existing Vanilla Item

[Thretcha]

I am in the process of creating a fishing mod. While doing my research I have stumbled upon two things.

First a lot of fishing mods create their own fishing rod but end up copying all the vanilla code of the fishing rod anyway.

Second in some instances people made their own fishing rod to avoid using the loot table system which is rather complex to use.

I understand that I should be using the loot table system and already found a helpful implementation by Draco18.

Now my question is should I be making my own fishing rod and fishing hook or should I replace the vanilla one.

The only changes I wish to make is to add additional Loot Conditions for biome specific fishing loot and biome type specific fishing loot. (There is a mod that dose this but dose it using a hacky way of avoiding the loot tables.)

In the end I will be giving fish some additional properties like weight and some fun treasures to find. Which means I will be completely changing the fishing loot tables.

The reals reason I am asking this is, that people probably will only use either one of the fishing rods and it doesn't make sense to keep both active in a back.

 I fear that by altering the fishing loot tables and the fishing rod I could cause compatibility issues for other mods and modpack makers.

I am aware that loot table changes are possible on a per world bases without a mod already but I still think it's a valid mod idea.

 

I hope you can help my with my best practices question

Link to my repo for further reading on the idea that caused the question.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Thretcha

[MDW01]

Yea I agree, If your goal is to have compatibility you should create a separate fishing rod. Although you could add a config option to remove the vanilla one if the player chooses so if a mod requires it it could be reenabled.

Edited September 15, 2017 by MDW01

[Busti]

Since editing item drops can be done through LootTables nowadays I would suggest that you add one or multiple new fishing rods that either provide benefits over the vanilla fishing rod or make fishing harder with the reward of getting rarer item drops. That's what modding is all about after all!