Technicman's Incredible Tentacle System

A system that implements tentacle psychics using datapack .mcfunction. Suitable for making Origin mod datapacks with tentacle-like powers.

Avaible examples

• Tentacles (default) - A simple example with power, that gives the player 6 tentacles that attack all the living entities in range
• Omni-Gazer 2.0 - A close to original recreation of a origin made by youtuber NotPog (that for some reason, was not posted by him). Most of its functionality was taken from the latest version uploaded by him (before the 2.0). Just like the original, it implements the power called terror tendrills that spawn 6 tentacles attacking anything alive in range simutenously.

Frequently faced problems

• P: When I activate the terror tendrils on a server, I can see the circle animation, but the tentacles don't appear
  S: It's likely that there are errors (specifying a path to a non-existent function) in function tags in other datapacks. It means, that the functions tags list has file paths that don't exist in the datapack which causes an error that disables all function tags in other datapacks, including the one with the tentacles that needs those tags to function properly. One solution to this problem would be deleting them from these other datapacks (data/minecraft/tags/functions, tick.json and load.json). You can find out whether a datapack is problematic, by temporarily disabling it with /datapack disable command and then checking if the tentacles work correcly now.
• P: I'm making an origin which uses the tentacles datapack and when I activate, the tentacles won't appear
  S: There are 2 possible problems which may occur that I can think of:
  • Mistake when changing namespace: Make sure that when changing the tentacle's "tech" namespace to your namespace you did change all the namespaces within power files and function files
  • "Accidently" removing function tags: The tentacle datapack contains function tags located in data/minecraft/tags/functions directory which are crucial for their proper functioning, so make sure you do not remove it!

Usage

Picking the example Origin

To pick the origin, use the Origin Orb or type this command: /origin set @s origins:origin tech:tentacles

Basic Overview

Different files are responsible for different things (ofc)

1. Powers

   • toggle_power.json is working like a switch, giving you tentacles by giving you terror_tendrils power or removing tentacles by removing that power
   • terror_tendrills is responsible for: attaching the tentacles to your body, dealing damage to targets and tagging entities in range with the potential_target tag (that is self-explanatory)

2. Functions

   • manage scoreboards (each tentacle consists of nodes represented by marker entities. Each node has tent_id and node_id scores that differentiate tentacles and nodes in one tentacle accordingly)
   • spawn particles in-between the nodes (_particle_ray.mcfunction in 1.20.2 version or settings/ray_particles.mcfunction in 1.19 version)
   • choose specific targets from the entities marked by the terror_tendrils (_choose_target.mcfuntion)
   • make the tip (end) of the target move towards the target (update.mcfunction)
   • make the whole tentacle move with move with its tip (by recursively calling _update_loop.mcfunction for each node from the tip to base and then from base to tip). The movement consists of 2 parts: first the tip pulling consecutive nodes towards itself, then the base pulling them back, so it stayes attached

Usefull functions

You can invoke them by typing: /function tech:tentacles/<function name here>

1. summon - summon tentacle in this spot facing direction of player. By default it is not attached to the players, so it does not teleport to them, when they move and the tip of the tentacle doesn't move either.
2. remove - removes closest tentacle (its base must be in range of 2 blocks, as specified in the function)

Simple parameter configuration

Most parametes and effects you can find in tech/functions/tentacles/settings/:

1. main - specifies node count and distance between those nodes (the second one uses macros, 1.20.2 only)
2. node_particles - and tent_end_particles - vfx visible at: nodes, last nodes, and between them. All the commands in these functions are executed at the place of specific nodes.
3. *ray_particles - series of commands, that spawn particles along the way from one node to the other (particle count depend on the distance from the base of the tentacle)

Example

Example origin and power both use functions in util folder (you can delete it, if you are not using the example). Default example consists of: one origin, and one power, that makes 6 tentacles, which target, hit and knockback 6 different enemies.

Structure of tentacle

As said earlier, single tentacle is a set of markers. Each marker has tent.node tag. Base of tentacle has tent.base tag, end the tip-node of tentacle has tent.end tag additionally. Each tentacle node has 2 scores: tent.uuid, unique to all tentacles and tent.node_id unique to all nodes in a tentacle (base node has 0, and last node last). More explanations you may find in load.mcfunction.