How to avoid BlockBase, ItemBase etc?

[Jummit]

I recently looked at the common issues and recommendations and saw why base classes are bad. I can't seem to find any mod that has no ItemBase and BlockBase classes. How would I do it differently?

Edited March 12, 2019 by Jummit

[Cadiboo]

Taken from https://gist.github.com/Cadiboo/fbea89dc95ebbdc58d118f5350b7ba93

 

What: Not using an object base class.
Why: Using an object base class (commonly called BlockBase or ItemBase) is unnecessary and is an anti-pattern. There is already a BlockBase class, it’s the minecraft Block class. Making a class just to have its children inherit default implementations of methods goes against the OOP principle of Composition over Inheritance.
Consequences: Using a class like this stops you from extending other classes and because lots of minecraft code uses instanceof checks to specially handle logic, you are likely to encounter weird and hard-to-fix bugs.
How: Instead of putting all your common logic in one class and extending it, extract the logic to utility methods. For example: Instead of calling setRegistryName, setTranslationKey, etc. inside your object base’s constructor, extract it to a helper method and call it on every object when you create it. In this example setup calls the above methods..... (Can’t past the rest because mobile)

[Jummit]

Thanks for the answer! My only question left is: Why do so many mods still use this method if it means tons of copied code and many inconveniences?

[DavidM]

10 minutes ago, Jummit said:

Why do so many mods still use this method if it means tons of copied code and many inconveniences?

Because:

1. Terrible tutorials (Like loremaster).

2. Some people want to make Minecraft mods but don't want to take the time and learn programming tend to "I don't care how it works. Just gimme the code for it".

[Cadiboo]

Also, it seems like a good idea initially when you’re adding super simple blocks. Write some code once and have it done nearly automatically & keep your registration super simple. However once you start trying to do more complicated things like adding logs or stairs (stuff with multiple blockstates and variants) it’s not feasible as you now need to recreate all the logic from the vanilla class rather than just extending it. And because minecraft handles a lot of stuff based on class and using instanceof, your copy might not work the same way as vanilla’s. Now you have a game breaking bug that logically shouldn’t happen. The alternative to this is to add 1 method in your registry class and call that method on each of your objects. Using this way, you write less code and don’t run into unexplainable bugs.