Palette Swap for MineColonies

Palette Swap for MineColonies

Tired of every MineColonies village being built from the same vanilla blocks? Palette Swap lets you re-skin the block palette of any MineColonies, SlimColonies or Structurize blueprint — change materials block-by-block with an in-game picker, or define automatic rules in a datapack. It’s non-destructive and applied at placement, so your original schematics and packs are never modified.

Need help? Please don’t ask in the MineColonies Discord. Their team doesn’t support addons. Report problems on GitHub or in the comments; see Support & bug reports below.

Disclosure of AI generated content

This mod contains code written with AI assistance. No other assets were and will never be generated using AI.

Features

• 🎨 In-game palette editor. A Replace button on the Structurize build wand and on MineColonies’ Build Options window opens the Edit Block Palette picker — one row per material in the build. Pick a replacement from a candidate pool and the holographic preview updates instantly. A Reset button puts everything back to default.
• 🏘️ Per-building palettes (MineColonies & SlimColonies). Set a building’s palette once: your picks are saved to the colony, synced to everyone, and re-applied every time the builder builds or upgrades it. A Current / Upgrade toggle lets you edit the tier you already have or the tier you’re about to build.
• 📜 Datapack rules. Define automatic substitutions in JSON — fixed swaps or interactive “pick from a pool” rules, matched by block or block tag, with blockstate property carry-over and priorities. Perfect for modpacks that want builds to use their own materials.
• 👷 Full builder support. The colony’s builder, miner and quarrier all place through Structurize, so substitutions apply to everything they build — material requests, placement, and build-progress tracking all stay in sync.
• 🧱 Domum Ornamentum aware. DO “materialized” blocks (panels, bricks, framed blocks, …) have their stored materials swapped too, not just plain blocks.
• 🔄 Non-destructive. Blueprints are never altered on disk; substitution happens only as blocks are placed.

Optional: ready-made palettes

The mod ships an opt-in default datapack — off by default (enable it from the world’s Data Packs screen, or use /datapack enable structurizereplacements_defaults command to enable while already in world) — that adds interactive pick pools for common vanilla families:

wood (planks, logs, stairs, slabs, fences, gates, doors, trapdoors, buttons, plates, signs) · wool · terracotta · glazed terracotta · stained glass · concrete & concrete powder · beds · flowers (small & tall) · leaves · saplings · mushrooms · potted plants · sand & sandstone

Turn it on for an instant working picker, or leave it off and ship your own rules.

For modpack & datapack authors

Drop rules in data/<namespace>/block_substitutions/<name>.json:

{
  "replacements": [
    { "from": "minecraft:cobblestone", "to": "minecraft:mossy_cobblestone" },
    { "from_tag": "minecraft:planks", "to_tag": "minecraft:planks" }
  ]
}

"to" is an automatic swap; "to_tag" is an interactive pool the player chooses from in the Replace GUI. Optional apply_properties / copy_properties carry blockstate values across, and priority lets one pack override another. Everything is /reload-able.

Compatibility

• Minecraft 1.20.1 · Forge | NeoForge 1.21.1
• Requires: Structurize (plus BlockUI and Domum Ornamentum — Structurize’s own dependencies)
• Optional: MineColonies or SlimColonies (1.20.1-17.4+) — when either is present, the per-building Build Options editor and the builder integration activate. Without a colony mod, you still get the full Structurize build-wand experience.

Support & bug reports

Please don’t ask for help with Palette Swap in the MineColonies Discord. Their team doesn’t support third-party addons (which is fair), so they can’t help with problems this mod causes. Bring them here instead:

• 🐛 Bugs & crashes: open an issue on GitHub. Include your Minecraft and mod versions, plus your logs/latest.log or crash report.
• 💬 Questions & feedback: the Comments section on this page.
• ✉️ Direct message: message me on Discord.

Not sure whether a problem comes from Palette Swap? Remove it and try again. If the problem goes away, report it here. If it still happens without Palette Swap, then it’s one for the MineColonies team.

Links

• 📦 MineColonies
• 🏙️ SlimColonies
• 🏗️ Structurize
• 🐙 Source code & issue tracker

Palette Swap for MineColonies is an independent addon and is not affiliated with the MineColonies or SlimColonies teams.