Particles

Particles are 2D effects that polish the game and add immersion. They can be spawned both client and server side, but being mostly visual in nature, critical parts exist only on the physical (and logical) client side.

Registering Particles

ParticleType

Particles are registered using ParticleTypes. These work similar to EntityTypes or BlockEntityTypes, in that there's a Particle class - every spawned particle is an instance of that class -, and then there's the ParticleType class, holding some common information, that is used for registration. ParticleTypes are a registry, which means that we want to register them using a DeferredRegister like all other registered objects:

public class MyParticleTypes {
    // Assuming that your mod id is examplemod
    public static final DeferredRegister<ParticleType<?>> PARTICLE_TYPES =
        DeferredRegister.create(BuiltInRegistries.PARTICLE_TYPE, "examplemod");
    
    // The easiest way to add new particle types is reusing vanilla's SimpleParticleType.
    // Implementing a custom ParticleType is also possible, see below.
    public static final DeferredHolder<ParticleType<?>, SimpleParticleType> MY_PARTICLE = PARTICLE_TYPES.register(
        // The name of the particle type.
        "my_particle",
        // The supplier. The boolean parameter denotes whether setting the Particles option in the
        // video settings to Minimal will affect this particle type or not; this is false for
        // most vanilla particles, but true for e.g. explosions, campfire smoke, or squid ink.
        () -> new SimpleParticleType(false)
    );
}

info

A ParticleType is only necessary if you need to work with particles on the server side. The client can also use Particles directly.

Particle

A Particle is what is later spawned into the world and displayed to the player. While you may extend Particle and implement things yourself, in many cases it will be better to extend TextureSheetParticle instead, as this class provides helpers for things such as animating and scaling, and also does the actual rendering for you (all of which you'd need to implement yourself if extending Particle directly).

Most properties of Particles are controlled by fields such as gravity, lifetime, hasPhysics, friction, etc. The only two methods that make sense to implement yourself are tick and move, both of which do exactly what you'd expect. As such, custom particle classes are often short, consisting e.g. only of a constructor that sets some fields and lets the superclass handle the rest. A basic implementation would look somewhat like this:

public class MyParticle extends TextureSheetParticle {
    private final SpriteSet spriteSet;
    
    // First four parameters are self-explanatory. The SpriteSet parameter is provided by the
    // ParticleProvider, see below. You may also add additional parameters as needed, e.g. xSpeed/ySpeed/zSpeed.
    public MyParticle(ClientLevel level, double x, double y, double z, SpriteSet spriteSet) {
        super(level, x, y, z);
        this.spriteSet = spriteSet;
        this.gravity = 0; // Our particle floats in midair now, because why not.

        // We set the initial sprite here since ticking is not guaranteed to set the sprite
        // before the render method is called.
        this.setSpriteFromAge(spriteSet);
    }
    
    @Override
    public void tick() {
        // Set the sprite for the current particle age, i.e. advance the animation.
        this.setSpriteFromAge(spriteSet);
        // Let super handle further movement. You may replace this with your own movement if needed.
        // You may also override move() if you only want to modify the built-in movement.
        super.tick();
    }
}

ParticleProvider

Next, particle types must register a ParticleProvider. ParticleProvider is a client-only class responsible for actually creating our Particles through the createParticle method. While more elaborate code can be included here, many particle providers are as simple as this:

// The generic type of ParticleProvider must match the type of the particle type this provider is for.
public class MyParticleProvider implements ParticleProvider<SimpleParticleType> {
    // A set of particle sprites.
    private final SpriteSet spriteSet;
    
    // The registration function passes a SpriteSet, so we accept that and store it for further use.
    public MyParticleProvider(SpriteSet spriteSet) {
        this.spriteSet = spriteSet;
    }
    
    // This is where the magic happens. We return a new particle each time this method is called!
    // The type of the first parameter matches the generic type passed to the super interface.
    @Override
    public Particle createParticle(SimpleParticleType type, ClientLevel level,
            double x, double y, double z, double xSpeed, double ySpeed, double zSpeed) {
        // We don't use the type and speed, and pass in everything else. You may of course use them if needed.
        return new MyParticle(level, x, y, z, spriteSet);
    }
}

Your particle provider must then be associated with the particle type in the client-side mod bus event RegisterParticleProvidersEvent:

@SubscribeEvent // on the mod event bus only on the physical client
public static void registerParticleProviders(RegisterParticleProvidersEvent event) {
    // There are multiple ways to register providers, all differing in the functional type they provide in the
    // second parameter. For example, #registerSpriteSet represents a Function<SpriteSet, ParticleProvider<?>>:
    event.registerSpriteSet(MyParticleTypes.MY_PARTICLE.get(), MyParticleProvider::new);
    // Other methods include #registerSprite, which is essentially a Supplier<TextureSheetParticle>,
    // and #registerSpecial, which maps to a Supplier<Particle>. See the source code of the event for further info.
}

Particle Descriptions

Finally, we must associate our particle type with a texture. Similar to how items are associated with an item model, we associate our particle type with what is known as a particle description. A particle description is a JSON file in the assets/<namespace>/particles directory and has the same name as the particle type (so for example my_particle.json for the above example). The particle definition JSON has the following format:

{
    // A list of textures that will be played in order. Will loop if necessary.
    // Texture locations are relative to the textures/particle folder.
    "textures": [
        "examplemod:my_particle_0",
        "examplemod:my_particle_1",
        "examplemod:my_particle_2",
        "examplemod:my_particle_3"
    ]
}

A particle definition is required when using a particle that takes in a SpriteSet, which is done when registering a particle provider via registerSpriteSet or registerSprite. They must not be provided for particle providers registered via #registerSpecial.

danger

A mismatched list of sprite set particle factories and particle definition files, i.e. a particle description without a corresponding particle factory, or vice versa, will throw an exception!

note

While particle descriptions must have providers registered a certain way, they are only used if the ParticleRenderType (set via Particle#getRenderType) uses the TextureAtlas#LOCATION_PARTICLES as the shader texture. For vanilla render types, these are PARTICLE_SHEET_OPAQUE, PARTICLE_SHEET_TRANSLUCENT, and PARTICLE_SHEET_LIT.

Datagen

Particle definition files can also be datagenned by extending ParticleDescriptionProvider and overriding the #addDescriptions() method:

public class MyParticleDescriptionProvider extends ParticleDescriptionProvider {
    // Get the parameters from GatherDataEvent.
    public AMParticleDefinitionsProvider(PackOutput output, ExistingFileHelper existingFileHelper) {
        super(output, existingFileHelper);
    }

    // Assumes that all the referenced particles actually exists. Replace "examplemod" with your mod id.
    @Override
    protected void addDescriptions() {
        // Adds a single sprite particle definition with the file at
        // assets/examplemod/textures/particle/my_single_particle.png.
        sprite(MyParticleTypes.MY_SINGLE_PARTICLE.get(), ResourceLocation.fromNamespaceAndPath("examplemod", "my_single_particle"));
        // Adds a multi sprite particle definition, with a vararg parameter. Alternatively accepts a list.
        spriteSet(MyParticleTypes.MY_MULTI_PARTICLE.get(),
            ResourceLocation.fromNamespaceAndPath("examplemod", "my_multi_particle_0"),
            ResourceLocation.fromNamespaceAndPath("examplemod", "my_multi_particle_1"),
            ResourceLocation.fromNamespaceAndPath("examplemod", "my_multi_particle_2")
        );
        // Alternative for the above, appends "_<index>" to the base name given, for the given amount of textures.
        spriteSet(MyParticleTypes.MY_ALT_MULTI_PARTICLE.get(),
            // The base name.
            ResourceLocation.fromNamespaceAndPath("examplemod", "my_multi_particle"),
            // The amount of textures.
            3,
            // Whether to reverse the list, i.e. start at the last element instead of the first.
            false
        );
    }
}

Don't forget to add the provider to the GatherDataEvent:

@SubscribeEvent // on the mod event bus
public static void gatherData(GatherDataEvent event) {
    DataGenerator generator = event.getGenerator();
    PackOutput output = generator.getPackOutput();
    ExistingFileHelper existingFileHelper = event.getExistingFileHelper();

    // other providers here
    generator.addProvider(
        event.includeClient(),
        new MyParticleDescriptionProvider(output, existingFileHelper)
    );
}

Custom ParticleTypes

While for most cases SimpleParticleType suffices, it is sometimes necessary to attach additional data to the particle on the server side. This is where a custom ParticleType and an associated custom ParticleOptions are required. Let's start with the ParticleOptions, as that is where the information is actually stored:

public class MyParticleOptions implements ParticleOptions {
    
    // Read and write information, typically for use in commands
    // Since there is no information in this type, this will be an empty string
    public static final MapCodec<MyParticleOptions> CODEC = MapCodec.unit(new MyParticleOptions());

    // Read and write information to the network buffer.
    public static final StreamCodec<ByteBuf, MyParticleOptions> STREAM_CODEC = StreamCodec.unit(new MyParticleOptions());

    // Does not need any parameters, but may define any fields necessary for the particle to work.
    public MyParticleOptions() {}
}

We then use this ParticleOptions implementation in our custom ParticleType...

public class MyParticleType extends ParticleType<MyParticleOptions> {
    // The boolean parameter again determines whether to limit particles at lower particle settings.
    // See implementation of the MyParticleTypes class near the top of the article for more information.
    public MyParticleType(boolean overrideLimiter) {
        // Pass the deserializer to super.
        super(overrideLimiter);
    }

    @Override
    public MapCodec<MyParticleOptions> codec() {
        return MyParticleOptions.CODEC;
    }

    @Override
    public StreamCodec<? super RegistryFriendlyByteBuf, MyParticleOptions> streamCodec() {
        return MyParticleOptions.STREAM_CODEC;
    }
}

... and reference it during registration:

public static final Supplier<MyParticleType> MY_CUSTOM_PARTICLE = PARTICLE_TYPES.register(
    "my_custom_particle",
    () -> new MyParticleType(false)
);

Spawning Particles

As a reminder from before, the server only knows ParticleTypes and ParticleOptions, while the client works directly with Particles provided by ParticleProviders that are associated with a ParticleType. Consequently, the ways in which particles are spawned are vastly different depending on the side you are on.

• Common code: Call Level#addParticle or Level#addAlwaysVisibleParticle. This is the preferred way of creating particles that are visible to everyone.
• Client code: Use the common code way. Alternatively, create a new Particle() with the particle class of your choice and call Minecraft.getInstance().particleEngine#add(Particle) with that particle. Note that particles added this way will only display for the client and thus not be visible to other players.
• Server code: Call ServerLevel#sendParticles. Used in vanilla by the /particle command.