IDs and Ranges Overhaul

[Rongmario]

Summary

Unlock the limited range identifiers of game objects

Goals

• Replace all non-long registry IDs with long equivalents across all game objects
• Replace 4-bit block metadata with a typed, unlimited property system; deprecate getMetaFromState / getStateFromMeta
• Replace ItemStack metadata with a typed property/state system, separating variant identity from durability as independent typed properties
• Replace 2D byte biome IDs with long-width IDs backed by a named registry, and introduce 3D biome sampling at configurable per-world resolution
• Move entity instance IDs away from int and widen all affected fields
• Move potion effect IDs from byte in both NBT and packets to long
• Introduce a Cleanroom protocol version header in the connection handshake
• Provide automatic legacy upgrade paths for vanilla and conventional game objects with no required mod-side changes for the common case

Non Goals

• Compatibility with vanilla 1.12.2 clients or servers
• Breaking the existing Forge mod API at the source level, old mods run unmodified where possible, upgraded transparently with patches
• Removing TileEntity - it remains for stateful, ticking block logic
• Changing world generation algorithms or biome content
• Addressing remaining "identifier" systems (paintings, villager professions, horse variants, map data, gui packets)
• Addressing rendering stuffs, such as texture IDs

Motivation

Minecraft 1.12.2's identifier system was designed around storage constraints that no longer apply. Blocks are int, biomes are byte, block metadata are 4-bit nibbles, and item damage is a short. These ceilings are not theoretical and are actively hit by different mods

• GregTech packs material and form combinations into a single (sometimes multiple) item's metadata, exhausting the short range and making the encoding completely opaque to tooling and other mods.
• Biome mods are capped at 256 total biomes globally across all mods combined, less than you think.
• Blocks with more than 16 states must split across multiple block registrations, wasting IDs and complicating logic. (GregTech hits this limitation as well with ores and such)
• getMetaFromState and getStateFromMeta require mod authors to manually bit-pack and unpack properties which makes the whole process error-prone, undocumented, and impossible to introspect at runtime.
• Item damage doubles as both durability and variant discriminator with no declaration of which role it plays for any given item.
• Biomes are strictly 2D, making distinct Y-level sensitive biomes impossible without dimension-level hacks.
• Entity instance IDs wrap on long-running servers, causing two live entities to share an id simultaneously with no crash (sometimes) with issues happening in silent ways.

Description

Description coming soon...

Dependencies

No response

References

• Minecraft 1.13 block state palette format
• Minecraft 1.16 biome format
• GregTech for its metaitems and metablocks

Guidelines

• I have and will continue to adhere to the guidelines