The Offhand Mod

About

The Offhand Mod is a minecraft mod based upon Mine&Blade Battlegear 2’s dual wielding mechanics that aims to change it in order to add a permanently playable and usable offhand mechanic to the game. Please do note, that this mod does not perfectly work with multiplayer. It was made with multiplayer in mind, but I most likely have missed something (please do report multiplayer bugs if found).

Note: Battlegear 2 is licensed under GPLv3, which allows me to modify and distribute modified versions of it but also obligates me to license this mod under GPLv3.

Disclaimer: Early beta. Bugs may be found. If so, please report to the issue tracker.

Changes

Reworked controls:
Left click always triggers the main hand action, right click always triggers the offhand action. The action is swinging for a weapon, shooting for a bow, eating for food, placing for block, etc.
Pressing left/right click and the Alt key (configurable) allows you to reverse an action and swing a bow, block a sword, etc.
The above two changes mean that you can use any item you want, in any hand.
Made the offhand independent from the mainhand (this was my biggest issue with battlegear)
Added third-person swing animations
Added ability to mine blocks with the offhand.
Added ability to use items/place blocks when the other hand is occupied with a usable item.
Removed any and all limitations to what you can put in the offhand and in the mainhand that were present in battlegear2.
Instead of two pairs of three slots, there are two pairs of four slots available.
Made it so you can shoot two bows (vanilla, does not work with modded bows) simultaneously
Having weapons in both the mainhand and the offhand actually provides a gameplay benefit, similar to how it’s done in wildycraft dual wielding (as opposed to the original battlegear dual wielding where using two swords was basically useless)
Changed rendering of the hotbar: instead of adding to it, the mod now replaces it.
Instead of the added slots being completely separated, they are now interchangeable with the vanilla hotbar. As a consequence, removed the GUI that was previously required to place items in the offhand.
Turned off battlegear items, as you wouldn’t expect a bunch of weapons from a dual wielding mod (but they can be re-enabled through the config)
Removed feature that turns off dual wielding (as turning it off would provide no actual gameplay benefit anymore: see above

To get a feel of if you like these modifications or not, I would recommend trying them out in-game. I am also open to suggestions.

TODO

Rework shield mechanics, add compatibility with RPGStamina

F.A.Q

Q: When port to version x.x.x?

A: If you want to do it, go ahead. It’s opensource, after all.

Q: Modpacks?

A: Of course! No need to ask.

Q: There is a crash! / This mod doesn’t work with X! / I found a bug!

A: You can always report it on the issue tracker and I’ll try and take a look.