Render glitch with custom block boundaries minecraft - minecraft

Question

I'm creating a mod for Minecraft. Recently, I've tried to make a custom block, and I'm having two issues with it.
My main issue is that the block is rendering incorrectly. I want the block to be smaller in size than a full block. I successfully changed the block boundaries with setBlockBounds(), and while that did make the block render smaller and use the smaller boundaries, it causes other rendering issues. When I place the block, the floor below is becomes invisible and I can see through it, either to caves below, blocks behind it, or the void if there is nothing there. How do I fix that block not rendering? Here's a screenshot:
Additionally, my goal for this block is to emit an "aura" that gives players around it speed or some other potion effect. I have the basic code for finding players around the block and giving them speed, but I can't find a way to activate this method every tick or every X amount of ticks to ensure that it gives players within the box speed in a reliable manner. There are already some blocks in the normal game that do this, so it must be possible. How can I do this?

Answer 1

For your first issue, you need to override isOpaqueCube to return false. You'll also want to override isFullCube for other parts of the code, but that isn't as important for rendering. Example:
public class YourBlock {
// ... existing code ...
/**
* Used to determine ambient occlusion and culling when rebuilding chunks for render
*/
#Override
public boolean isOpaqueCube(IBlockState state) {
return false;
}
#Override
public boolean isFullCube(IBlockState state) {
return false;
}
}
Here's some info on rendering that mentions this.
Regarding your second problem, that's more complicated. It's generally achieved via a tile entity, though you can also use block updates (which is much slower). Good examples of this are BlockBeacon and TileEntityBeacon (for using tile entities) and BlockFrostedIce (for block updates). Here's some (potentially out of date) info on tile entities.
Here's an (untested) example of getting an update each tick this with tile entities:
public class YourBlock {
// ... existing code ...
/**
* Returns a new instance of a block's tile entity class. Called on placing the block.
*/
#Override
public TileEntity createNewTileEntity(World worldIn, int meta) {
return new TileEntityYourBlock();
}
}
/**
* Tile entity for your block.
*
* Tile entities normally store data, but they can also receive an update each
* tick, but to do so they must implement ITickable. So, don't forget the
* "implements ITickable".
*/
public class TileEntityYourBlock extends TileEntity implements ITickable {
#Override
public void update() {
// Your code to give potion effects to nearby players would go here
// If you only want to do it every so often, you can check like this:
if (this.worldObj.getTotalWorldTime() % 80 == 0) {
// Only runs every 80 ticks (4 seconds)
}
}
// The following code isn't required to make a tile entity that gets ticked,
// but you'll want it if you want (EG) to be able to set the effect.
/**
* Example potion effect.
* May be null.
*/
private Potion effect;
public void setEffect(Potion potionEffect) {
this.effect = potionEffect;
}
public Potion getEffect() {
return this.effect;
}
#Override
public void readFromNBT(NBTTagCompound compound) {
super.readFromNBT(compound);
int effectID = compound.getInteger("Effect")
this.effect = Potion.getPotionById(effectID);
}
public void writeToNBT(NBTTagCompound compound) {
super.writeToNBT(compound);
int effectID = Potion.getIdFromPotion(this.effect);
compound.setInteger("Effect", effectID);
}
}
// This line needs to go in the main registration.
// The ID can be anything so long as it isn't used by another mod.
GameRegistry.registerTileEntity(TileEntityYourBlock.class, "YourBlock");