Mod Garden - Participant Guide

What is a Mod Garden?

Mod Garden is a Minecraft Mod creation event where modders will create mods under a specific theme over a timeframe of two months.

Mod Garden also has a showcase world for everyone to explore the new mods created after development has concluded.

For more information on each stage of Mod Garden, please read the Garden Timeline.

Who can Participate?

Anybody who can provide something towards a mod can participate.

Programmers, artists, musicians, new modders, veteran modders, skill is not a requirement for Mod Garden, only commitment. We’re all learning in some way.

Take things at your own pace and work within a scope you can handle, so you can work towards a finished mod. We’re an anti-crunch environment here, so don’t bite off more than you can chew.

You may work either entirely solo or on a team. Teams can be predetermined before the Garden or you may find people to work with during Mod Garden, there is the #collaboration-requests channel for anybody who wishes to find people to collaborate with.

Artists and musicians may additionally opt into the Artist Stall program, where they will get a small stall to tell people about what they have worked on. Where the artist stalls are located will depend on the Mod Garden’s map. Please read any specific information about the Mod Garden to figure out where this area is.

How to Participate?

To participate, join the Discord server and run the /account create and /link modrinth commands.

When an event starts there will be an announcement in #garden-announcements. You may run the /event register command to give yourself access to the event participant role.

If you ever wish to drop out of the event whilst it is running, you may run the /event unregister command on the Discord bot.

As soon as you are finished with your mod, you may use the /event submit command.

If others worked on the mod, as the person who initially submitted the project, you may run /project invite author to add them to the project.

If you have any additional builders, you may run /project invite builder to add a user to build your project.

To leave a project, you may run /project leave.

Requirements and Rules for Participating

• Your Mod Garden account must be linked with your Modrinth account if you are a developer and your Minecraft account(s) if you are building.
• Projects must be uploaded to Modrinth.
  • Unlisted projects are allowed, just make sure the project is on Modrinth.
• Projects must be original.
  • Assets used from other projects must be credited in the mod’s description. This includes assets used by the same author.
• Projects must be source visible.
  • This is so others besides yourself may take a look at any issues regarding your mod, and to make sure that there are no backdoors/other under the hood content within your mod.
• Projects must be compatible with the event’s Minecraft and Modloader (and API) version.
  • For example, an event running on 1.21.1 Fabric means that to submit you’ll need a version listed compatible with 1.21.1 and Fabric on Modrinth.
• Projects must not violate others’ copyright.
• Projects are not allowed to be heavily reliant on LLMs and participants must make sure that they understand any underlying code that is written within their project if using any sort of AI.
• Projects are not allowed to use AI for assets within the mod and the modpage, please ask to collaborate if you need assets.

Booth Guidelines

Booths are showcases for submissions. These are where players will interact with your mod.

Please read the Claiming Guide as that has pre-liminary information for before you build your booth.

If you do not wish to build a booth, you may ask the team to build your booth or ask be left out of the showcase world.

Booths Must:

• Be connected to the main path in some regard.
• Not be connected to the main path more than once, unless it is a loop in which it may not be connected more than twice.
• Are not allowed to be built in a way where you could skip another booth whilst travelling on the intended path.
• A single author may not take up more than 60% of space of a biomemass.
  • For example, you are not allowed to claim an entire Pale Garden whilst other booths may want/need that spot.
• Not intrude on others’ booths without explicit permission.

Navigation Tips

• All booths will have a warp to make sure that players don’t get lost, make sure what is the entrance of the booth is clear and communicated to players.
• The server has a world map mod, use this to improve spatial awareness within your booths.

Petal Guidelines

Petals are our reflavouring of ModFest’s Scattered Shards mod. Petals are collectibles obtained from visiting the booth, otherwise obtained whilst doing relevant challenges within booths.

Booths will always have a visitor petal, which is always placed at the front of the booth, rewarding a player for visiting your booth. The visitor petal will be of a specific type, and will only be allowed to be used as a visitor petal.

Other than this petal, you may have up to two bonus petals. These are rewarded for interacting with your booth in various ways, such as by using an item from your mod.

Bonus Petals Must:

• Be relevant to the mod at hand.
• Routing for a petal must be obvious to a player interacting with the booth in an intended way.
  • If you wish to make a hidden easter egg, the reward/payoff should be something else.
• Petals should not be intentionally time wasting.
  • For example; Avoid mazes or long term goals such as using an item 1000 times.

How to help out Garden Development?

DM a team member with what you wish to provide to the Garden, and we’ll get in contact with you if we feel you can be trusted with such a task. You may ask to help after any announcement from Mod Garden

If you are not on the team, you may still help with tasks during a Mod Garden.

Pull Requests on GitHub are always welcome to any tooling that we utilize, as well as custom mods to help the showcase world really pop. Custom mods do not get booths unless they are entries themselves.

You may also help with the pre-stage building or any assets for the showcase world. Please DM a team member with any information before the claiming phase, and you’ll most likely be allowed in.

If you are to volunteer to help us…

First of all, thank you so much! It means a lot to us.

We may ask you do to specific things if you are up for it within what you offered us when signing up.

You may also stop volunteering at any point if you wish, we will still appreciate what you have already done if so.