Better Slab

Better Slab

Vertical slabs, selective mining, different-type slab merging, and enhanced slab placement for Minecraft.

Features

Vertical Slabs

• Place any slab vertically — occupying half a block horizontally, just like real vertical slabs should.
• 48 dedicated vertical slab blocks for all vanilla slab types, each inheriting the correct material properties (hardness, sound, tool requirements).
• Generic vertical slab system for modded slabs — no extra blocks needed, works automatically with any slab from any mod.
• Double vertical slabs: Place two vertical slabs facing opposite directions to merge them into a full block.

Different-Type Slab Merging

• Combine two different slab types (e.g. Oak + Birch) into a single block position — horizontally or vertically.
• Stored persistently in a BlockEntity with NBT, surviving server restarts.
• Each half renders with its correct texture and drops the right item on break.

Selective Mining

• When breaking a double slab (horizontal, vertical, or merged), you only break the half you’re looking at — the other half stays in place and drops the correct item.
• Works with all slab types: vanilla doubles, vertical doubles, and merged different-type slabs.

Enhanced Placement

• 8 placement modes: Auto Horizontal, Auto Vertical, Left, Right, Front, Back, Top, Bottom.
• Switch modes instantly with Alt + WASD (hold Alt while holding a slab item).
• Lock a mode with C so you don’t have to hold Alt.
• Toggle default orientation between horizontal and vertical with R.
• Movement input (WASD) is suppressed while Alt is held, so directional keys control placement instead of walking.

Perfect Placement

• Full blocks placed on slab surfaces are offset by half a block (straddling the slab edge), creating flush alignments — no more awkward gaps.
• Slab side shapes report as full squares, so adjacent blocks attach cleanly to slab faces.

Other Features

• Waterlogging support for all vertical and merged slabs.
• Placement preview — a cyan wireframe shows exactly where the slab will appear before you place it.
• Creative mode aware — no item drops in creative.
• Client-server sync — placement mode is synchronized via custom network packets.
• Configurable — toggle each feature independently in config/betterslab.json.

Controls

| Key | Action |
|—|—|
| Hold Alt + W/A/S/D | Set placement direction (Front/Left/Back/Right) |
| Hold Alt + Space | Place top slab |
| Hold Alt + Shift | Place bottom slab |
| C | Lock/unlock current placement mode |
| R | Toggle default orientation (Horizontal / Vertical) |

Requires

• Place Anywhere Core (for the free-block placement system)
• Fabric API

Active Version

Only the 1.21.1 Fabric build is actively maintained. Legacy versions (1.18.2 through 1.20.6) for both Fabric and Forge are available as historical releases but will not receive further updates.

License

LGPL-3