NeoBackports

A library for using neoforge 1.21.1 features and methods on forge 1.20.1

This mod is intended to be used as a library included with other mods. Currently, the only standalone features are blurred 1.21-style gui backgrounds. Manually installing a newer version than is packaged is only useful for fixing bugs

Current features include:

• Datamaps
• Data components
• Data attachments
• Stream codecs
• Blurred gui backgrounds (enabled with a built-in resourepack)
• DeferredHolders (and their subtypes)
• 1.21.1-style networking
• Recipe serializers with codecs
• useItemOn and useWithoutItem methods for blocks

… and a lot of convenience interface extensions

Q&A

• Why backport to 1.20.1? wouldn’t it make more sense to help devs port up instead of down?
• Making a lib for foward porting is fundamentally pointless, as it carries technical debt and would require porting the lib up every new version. Devs would never get used to new features, even when they are objectively better, and would make laggier and buggier mods. Doing it this way means we can satisfy the 1.20 crowd while still pushing them towards newer version
• This sounds like a synitra connector type mod, could it work that way?
• Theoretically, if I put a lot of work into it, it could make very tiny 1.21.1 mods run on 1.20.1, but the support would be extremely limited so it’s not work the time. TLDR: NO

Installation instructions

Since this lib uses interface injections, switching from ForgeGradle to ModDevGradle Legacy gradle plugin is required. Documentation here and a working MDK here

In build.gradle:

repositories {
    // Some other repositories you might have...
    
    maven {
        url = 'https://nikdo53.github.io'
    }
}


dependencies {
    // Some other dependencies you might have...

    jarJar(modImplementation("net.nikdo53:NeoBackports:${neobackports_version}"))
    interfaceInjectionData("net.nikdo53:NeoBackports:${neobackports_version}")
}

In gradle.properties:

# Set to whatever is latest
neobackports_version=1.4.1

Technical differences

Features aren’t backported 1 to 1 (due to backend differences between versions) but should be similar enough for most mods to just work without major differences

Class names

In order to make the difference between original forge/vanilla classes and backported ones, backported classes get the “neo” suffix, for example:

• SmithingRecipe -> SmithingRecipeNeo
• PacketDistributor -> PacketDistributorNeo
• DeferredRegister -> DeferredRegisterTyped (this ones different cuz i forgot)

Data components/attachments

Unlike 1.21.1, these are just clever wrappers for existing features (item nbt and capabilities respectively), meaning that other mods not using this API should be able to access them like normal.

Datamaps

These have been (with permission) ported directly from neoforges code with minimal differences. Note that the login packet which handshaked known datamaps has been removed and non-mandatory are generally not supported. I might return to this in the future, but since this mod is required on both client and server, it’s probably not very useful (and 1.20.1 login packets are weird)

Stream codecs

The ByteBuf generic has been removed, since everything uses FriendlyByteBuf:

StreamCodec -> StreamCodec