I’ve mentioned before that I maintain a Minecraft modpack called T&A Explore, we’re at stable version 3.1.1 at the moment and working on version 3.1.2. In this post I’d like to talk about the plan for 3.1.2 and some of the little frustrations we’re facing.

The idea for 3.1.2

Version 3.1.1 was started early in 2024 and was released in December 2024. Because it was started early in 2024, and we were trying to reach a stable pack status, the versions of the actual mods in the pack are all from early 2024.

Many of the mods we use have newer versions available. Some of these newer versions have bug fixes in them and some introduce cool new features. Because of this, we decided to create version 3.1.2 of the pack with newer versions of the mods.

An important consideration for us is that this update must not break stuff. Worlds created with version 3.1.1 must work the same in version 3.1.2. In the past, we introduced breaking version updates, usually in the major version, so for example version 2.1.1 Beta is a completely different beast to version 3.0.3 Beta and world created with 2.1.1 will break horribly if loaded with version 3.0.3.

To some extent this world breaking even applies from 3.0.3 to 3.1.0, but with 3.1.2 we don’t want to break anything.

The Minecraft version problem

Starting with version 3.0.3 Beta, we base the pack on Minecraft 1.20.1 with the Fabric mod loader, and version 2.1.3 will also be on Minecraft 1.20.1.

But why not go to the latest Minecraft version?

The core of the reason we are still on 1.20.1 (not even 1.20.6) is the availability of mods in the pack. For example, if you go to Modrinth and select any Minecraft version after 1.20.1 you will find no Create mod. You will find Create addons, but no Create mod. This sets the newest version of Minecraft we can use to 1.20.1.

The mod version problem

When we started working on version 3.1.2, I started off by downloading version 3.1.1 into ATLanucher and then just running a check for updates on all installed mods. This took a while, showing just how many mods had newer versions available.

Then came time to actually run the new version for the first time, and it refused to run due to some mods being incompatible with version 1.15.11 of the Fabric loader and some other mods being incompatible with each other.

The Fabric loader issue was easy to fix, I just changed the pack to use the latest version (1.16.10) of Fabric.

The incompatible mods issue is more sticky and the core of the problem lies with the Create ecosystem. The base Create Fabric mod version is 0.5.1-j-build.1631+mc1.20.1, released 2 months ago. But, we run a bunch of Create addons such as Create: Crafts and Additions, Create: Copycats+, and Create: Storage.

Most of the updates have been updated to work with Create version 1.5.1-j, or at least version 1.5.1-f or later, but Create: Storage specifies version 1.5.1-f and not 1.5.1-f or newer. One of the options the launcher suggested to fix the problem was to just remove Create: Storage, but that would break existing worlds, including our own server.

Fixing it

Step 1 of fixing the problem was to change Create Fabric back to 1.5.1-f to make it compatible with Create: Storage.

Sadly, it wasn’t as easy as that, the next run brought up new mod incompatibilities. This time with Create addons that aren’t compatible with Create Fabric version 1.5.1-f, so I had to change addon versions one at a time until I arrived at a game that actually launches.

A little experiment

When we made version 3 of T&A Explore, we decided not to add any major world generation mods. Having looked at a couple of world generation mods since, I regret not putting Terralith and Tectonic in the pack.

New world generation mods added to an existing world or pack is very much a breaking change. I experimented by adding Terralith and Tectonic to a copy of our server world and the results were rather odd. I made a little 5 minute video showing the result.