Introduction

Tile-Entities are blocks that have additional data and logic attached to them.

Creating a Tile-Entity

Before registering the NovaBlock for a tile-entity, you'll need to create a class that extends TileEntity:

class ExampleTileEntity(
    pos: BlockPos,
    blockState: NovaBlockState,
    data: Compound
) : TileEntity(pos, blockState, data) {

    // ...

}

Now, you can register the block:

@Init(stage = InitStage.PRE_PACK) // (1)!
object Blocks : BlockRegistry by ExampleAddon.registry {

    val EXAMPLE_TILE_ENTITY = tileEntity("example_tile_entity", ::ExampleTileEntity) {
        behaviors(
            TileEntityLimited, // (2)!
            TileEntityDrops, // (3)!
            TileEntityInteractive // (4)!
        )
        tickrate(20) // (5)!
    }

}

1. Nova will load this class during addon initialization, causing your blocks to be registered.
2. Enables tile-entity limits. (Note that if this behavior is not present, tile-entity limit tracking will also be disabled and placing this tile-entity will not count towards global limits.)
3. Delegates the drop logic to TileEntity.getDrops.
4. Delegates interactions to TileEntity.handleRightClick. This is also required if your tile-entity has a GUI.
5. The rate at which TileEntity.handleTick function is called. This defaults to 20, so you wouldn't need to specify it in this case.

Tile-Entities are instantiated off-main

Tile-Entities are constructed off-main, so you cannot interact with world state during object construction.
Also, it is not guaranteed that the chunk the tile-entity is in is loaded at the time of construction. For such cases, use TileEntity.handleEnable() and TileEntity.handleDisable().

Additionally, especially concerning tile-entites that are in spawn chunks, Nova might not be fully initialized when the tile-entity is constructed. As such, you cannot rely on anything that is not initialized pre world to be available during tile-entity construction. (Such as RecipeManager for example, which needs to wait for the initialization of supported third-party custom item plugins.)

Accessing Tile-Entity data

Tile-Entity data is stored in our CBF Format, so make sure to check out the CBF Documentation.

Default Nova Binary Adapters

Nova provides binary adapters for the following types by default:
NamespacedCompound, Color, Location, NamespacedKey, NamespacedId, ResourceLocation, VirtualInventory, BlockPos, ItemStack, NetworkType, AbilityType, AttachmentType, RecipeType, Table, ItemFilter, NovaBlock, NovaItem, ToolCategory, ToolTier

You can register binary adapters for your own types as explained in the CBF Documentation.
If you require a binary adapter for a type from Java / Minecraft / Paper, please request it on GitHub.

To access tile-entity data, you can use the storedValue function to retrieve a MutableProvider<T> to which you can delegate:

storedValue (not null)

private val someInt: Int by storedValue("someInt") { 0 }

storedValue (nullable)

private val someString: String? by storedValue("someString")

And that's it! When the tile-entity gets saved, those properties will automatically be saved with it.

Providers are lazy

Since Providers are lazy, it is safe to use them to access things that are initialized post world, as long as their values are not resolved immediately.

Alternatively, you can also use retrieveData and storeData functions to manually read and write data. For that, you may also want to override the saveData function.

Utility functions for commonly stored data types

There are a few utility functions available in TileEntity for storing commonly used data:

• storedInventory - Creates or reads a VirtualInventory from internal storage. Also registers a drop provider that drops the inventory's contents when the tile-entity is destroyed.
• storedFluidContainer - Creates or reads a FluidContainer from internal storage.
• storedRegion - Creates or reads a DynamicRegion from internal storage.