Tutorial: Configuration Files

It is assumed that you are familiar with Json. If you wish to learn some internet searching on “json tutorials” will give a wealth of information.

It is also assumed that you have some familiarity with Java regex notation. Regular expressions are used by the configuration system to match up configuration entries with biomes and to select with effects to play based on player environmental conditions.

Feel free to experiment with the configuration. You can’t break anything and it is pretty easy to try new and different acoustic combinations.

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Dynamic Surroundings will load configurations from three general locations:

• Internal configurations. These are Json configuration files that are contained with the Dynamic Surroundings JAR archive file. These configurations provide “built-in” support for various mods.
• Resource Packs. These are the packs that you can download and install that can customize things like graphics and sound.
• External Configuration Files. These are configuration files contained in the ./minecraft/config/dsurround directory and are typically provided by other players or modpack authors to customize the experience based on their vision.

Loading of these configurations occur in the order listed above. It is possible for a given configuration file to override/modify the settings of prior configuration files. This means that a modpack author can fully redefine the configuration based on what is needed.

Steps to “hook in” an external configuration file:

STEP 1 Create a text file in the ./minecraft/config/dsurround directory that will contain your settings. Make sure it has the file extension of “.json”. For the purpose of this tutorial call it “tutorial.json”.

STEP 2 Edit the content of the file so that it looks like the following and save it.

{
    "biomes":[
    ],
    "blocks":[
    ],
    "dimensions":[
    ],
    "footsteps":{
    },
    "forgeMappings":[
    ]
}

Please note that the “footsteps” entry has curly braces {} instead of brackets []. This is intentional and not a mistake.

STEP 3 Edit the ./minecraft/config/dsurround/dsurround.cfg configuration file. Locate and modify the “External Configuration Files” under “general”. Put in the “tutorial.json” file name. If there is more than one configuration file each name must be on a separate line. NO BLANK LINES PLEASE!

# Configuration files for customization [default: ]
S:"External Configuration Files" <
    tutorial.json
 >

STEP 4 Startup up your Minecraft client. If you did things right you should see something like the following show up in the trace log:

[08:01:43] [Client thread/INFO] [dsurround/dsurround]: Executing script for mod [E:\minecraft\config\dsurround\tutorial.json]

STEP 5 Edit the tutorial.json file with the changes you wish to make. You can reload the configuration without exiting the client by issuing the /ds reload command. Note that you will have to be in creative mode to execute the command.

As mentioned prior Dynamic Surroundings uses the same style configuration file to provide support for Vanilla blocks as well as the common Forge ore dictionary names. You can look at that file here.

For detail on the various entries can be found in other Tutorial pages:

• Tutorial: Condition Strings
• Tutorial: Biome Configuration
• Tutorial: Block Configuration
• Tutorial: Dimension Configuration
• Tutorial: Footstep Configuration
• Tutorial: Forge Mappings

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For those that have created configuration files for previous Dynamic Surroundings versions migration to the new format is pretty straight forward:

• For biome configurations, the elements under the older “entries” tag get placed under the new “biomes” tag.
• For block configurations, the elements under the older “entries” tag get placed under the new “blocks” tag.
• For dimension configurations, the elements under the older “entries” tag get placed under the new “dimensions” tag.
• “footsteps” and “forgeMappings” are new to this release and information related to those entries can be found in other tutorials.
• Look at the Ender IO support file for a fairly minimal Json that has the upper level tags declared.