Hello everyone, I am making a mod with a taser and I would like it so that when I hit a mob or entity with it, it will spawn particle effects at the point of contact. I have good Java experience, but I am new to modding and don't know where to start on a problem like this. Thanks!

Hi Max

 

I would approach this using the following algorithm:

1) Detect when the sword is being swung- if the sword is your own item, you can probably use onEntitySwing to tell your code "start watching this entity's swingProgress".  Or you could subscribe to PlayerInteractEvent.LeftClickBlock.

2) In a tick event, you monitor the entity's swingProgress to time your effect for when the swing is completed (at the further extent).

3) At the right time, perform a ray trace to determine where the hit location is on the block.  Vanilla code does this already - look at BlockRayTraceResult as a starting point for figuring out how you could leverage vanilla code to do that

4) Spawn particles at the hit location.  (See this tutorial project for a working example of how to spawn vanilla particles or custom particles: https://github.com/TheGreyGhost/MinecraftByExample  see mbe50)

 

-TGG