About
Container Placeholder is a custom item made especially for Blackblock.
The Container Placeholder is used in our custom structure files. During world generation, it is replaced with something else, dependent on its contents.
(So unlike the other placeholder blocks, it always generates.)
Explanation
One way to make our custom structures a bit easier to create and maintain is with the use of Container Placeholders
When the custom structure generator encounters one of these blocks, it will look inside the block's inventory to see what it should generate instead. It does this by picking a random entry from the inventory.
Most of the time, this will be used to generate loot chests. But they can actually contain block item.
In this example you can see a Container Placeholder being used in one of the pieces for our custom dungeons.
In this case it is only meant to create loot chests.
But it can also be used to supply some random decorative building blocks.
The Placeholder Containers in this example contain stone brick variants.
This is the GUI of that block.
Each of these 4 entries have an equal chance of being picked.
The last entry is a special item: in this case it is an item form of a Loot Table.
Not only can (and should) loot tables be used like this to populate loot chest contents, they can also be used to supply block replacements.
Think of it as a dynamic palette: the 3 stone brick blocks are "hard-coded" into the structure file, but the loot table item will be resolved during generation.
This means it can follow our custom loot table logic, and also be changed halfway through a season, or from server to server, without having to modify the structure file itself.
Special items
Only Block Items will actually be selected for replacement, any other type of item will be ignored.
There are a few exceptions to this rule:
- Empty bucket: Add this if you want to add the chance of the placeholder being replaced with nothing
- Water bucket: Will replace the placeholder with a water source
- Lava bucket: Will replace the placeholder with a lava source
- Powder Snow bucket: Will replace the placeholder with a powdered snow block