Nillachoco
Lead Programmer and Lead Designer
(March 2023 - December 2023)
Programming responsibilities: Gameplay programming, technical design, data-driven systems and behaviors
Team Size: 2 developers, 1 contributor
Misc. responsibilities: Pixel artist, project management, team coordination, game design, quality assurance
Nillachoco is a mod for Minecraft Forge 1.20.1 coded in Java which adds vanilla- and chocolate-themed items to the game, including a new crop to farm, a new type of flower, 15+ new food items, 2 new weapons, new blocks, new potions, and more in order to add a little extra flavor to the Minecraft gameplay experience.
Development history and retrospective
During the summers of 2022, 2023, and 2024, I worked as a coding camp counselor for iD Tech Camps teaching campers between the ages of 8 and 17 how to code; more specifically, I specialized in teaching Java, and one of the courses offered during camp was Minecraft modding using the Forge modding framework. As a lifelong Minecraft fan, I enjoyed teaching the campers and sharing our passion for the game in a way that resulted with them creating a small mod of their own at the end of the five-day sessions of camp. However, I had not released or finished a Minecraft mod at that point; I created plenty of examples and looked into ways to implement specific mechanics and interactions for my students, but nothing I made could be publicly downloaded or played with. With one of the many ideas I had written down and fleshed out over the course of the years since I started teaching, alongside the motivation fueled from watching some Minecraft YouTubers talk through the process of creating and showcasing their own mods, I committed to making a smaller mod as to not overwhelm myself with work while introducing enough new gameplay elements to vary one’s Minecraft experience.
I worked off of a simplified game design document for the game detailing the different items and mechanics introduced in Nillachoco, balancing and modifying values as the mod developed and expanded. Development included the creation of custom item, block, armor, and potion behavior in Minecraft, which includes handling things both client-side and server-side. It was also a major dive into using .json files to handle interactions in-game, including adding new item tags to be changed through said files. To lighten the workload and to ensure quality for the mod, I hired some help with programming and other help with pixel art, both of which required communicating my ideas and concepts clearly and managing a shared repository. The mod saw a release in winter of 2023, but given it was for a version of Minecraft Forge that was recently outdated, not many have gotten the opportunity to play it. Interest has been mentioned to port the mod to future versions and other mod-loaders for Minecraft, and I hope to collaborate with somebody to make that happen eventually.