New Inventory Manipulation model

[Xhamolk_]

I've been looking through mods that (like Buildcraft) can manipulate the inventories of the TileEntity's marked as IInventory.

 

It occurred to me that IInventory is simply a static (passive) inventory; this theory was then supported with the fact that vanilla uses IInventory for slot-based containers (GUIs).

But how come there is not an inventory variation designed for dynamic (active) TileEntitys? We can't just assume that all the IInventory implementations are basic chests. This feature is not available on vanilla, and neither through Forge.

 

In order to have active inventories, first there needs to be a standard manipulation model. As of now, every inventory-manipulator mod do it they way they want. Downside of this is that there is not even a guarantee that IInventory.onInventoryChanged() will be called.

 

For that matter, I've created a very small framework that offers the following features:

 

• A unified inventory-manipulation model.
  
• An easy way to insert/extract/count items in inventories. Basically does the dirty work for you.
  
• Get's rid of the paradigm that all inventories are slot-based, but still maintains backwards compatibility.
  
• Introduces the concept of dynamic inventory, which can decide on what types/amounts of items go in or out
  
• Opens the possibilities to create any kind of self-handled inventories, through the ICustomInventory interface.
  

 

This framework will allow mod-makers (inventory-implementations) to be more creative when creating new types of inventories. Some mods (like factorization) have figured a way to restrict what kinds of items can go inside... but that is not the best way to go.

The benefits for inventory manipulators are pretty much that they no longer need to do the heavy lifting.

 

The possibilities, really, are endless.

Unfortunately, even if this framework is accepted into forge, inventory-manipulators would require to take this model into account. (For testing purposes, I've patched Buildcraft and ThermalExpansion. It works like a charm).

 

Please consider the addition of this framework into forge. I'm open to feedback.

I believe the 1.5 update is a very good time to throw this in, as mods will need to update anyway.

 

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The framework can be found at my GitHub repo: https://github.com/Xhamolk/InventoryAPI

 

For this matter, I have opened a Pull Request on Forge's repo. It can be found here: https://github.com/MinecraftForge/MinecraftForge/pull/435

[endershadow]

I took a look at all of the code and stuff on the github. I think it's an amazing idea. It also makes it easier to understand for those who don't understand what ? and : fully mean in java.

[ScottKillen]

Nice idea!

[Xhamolk_]

Hmm... i'm looking at the changes on IInventory for MC 1.5... I'll have to update this framework accordingly.