Getting Started with Quilt

Basic Requirements

In order to start modding Minecraft, you’ll need to know a couple of things.

  • Basic Java knowledge. This includes understanding its syntax, object-oriented programming, and some essential design patterns.
  • Basic Git knowledge. While technically not necessary, it’ll make your life a lot easier. This includes understanding how to clone repositories and make commits. Some great resources include the Git docs and the GitHub docs.

How to Use this Wiki

This wiki contains pages that are best read in order. Many of the articles, especially at the beginning, suggest other articles sensible to continue with. Most pages will contain code snippets, with full examples planned to be provided in example mods. (This is not done yet)

In the next article, you will set up your first mod to get started with mod development.

After that, it is recommended to look into Creating your First Item. Then, you are ready for adding blocks, or creating advanced items, like food, tools and armor.

For more general explanations, you can look into the Concepts category:

  • In QSL and QFAPI Overview you get an overview on Quilt Standard Libraries and Quilted Fabric API, Quilt’s official APIs.

Many more articles are planned, but not done yet (Issue #69). This section will be updated later.

How to Learn Modding, for Beginners

Minecraft modding can get complicated. We aim to provide a resource to help you learn fundamental modding concepts. However, there are some things that we can’t do and expect you to learn on your own.

Never be afraid to ask questions, we’re always willing to help, and we don’t judge.

When asking questions, try to include the necessary context in your first message. State your problem, what you have already tried to solve it, and how those attempts failed. Giving full context to your problem will help others solve it faster. When debugging, include your latest.log and when your game crashes, a crash log. Additionally, full access to your source code can be really helpful, ideally uploaded to a website such as GitHub.

You can ask development related questions in our Forum, as well as in the mod-dev-help forum channel in our Discord

Many problems have been solved in modding before, and are publicly available for you to see and use as most mods for Quilt are open source. We recommend that you look at examples of how to do things in open source repositories and sometimes “steal” code. Open source repositories are there for you to learn from and use, don’t be afraid of them!

There are many topics in modding lacking relevant tutorials. In those cases you may have to read the relevant Minecraft code, or look at other mods and see how they implemented similar ideas, methods or solutions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help with understanding how Minecraft’s systems work! If you want to look into the Minecraft source code, run the genSourcesWithVineflower Gradle task in the fabric category or open any Minecraft source file and click the download sources button in IntelliJ IDEA.