GlymeraLumberTower - Automated Tree-Felling Tower with Built-In Chests

Place a single tower block and watch it shoot bolts at nearby trees, fell them, vacuum the wood into its built-in chests, and replant a sapling of the same species - all on its own.

What is GlymeraLumberTower?

GlymeraLumberTower adds a static 9-block-tall tower (17 gold-brick blocks + 4 built-in chests) that automates tree harvesting completely. Place it, then walk away. Every five seconds it scans a 60-block cube around itself, fires a green energy bolt at the nearest tree, fells the entire trunk column, sucks the drops into its own chests, and plants a replacement sapling of the matching wood type. When all chests are full, the tower pauses until you make space.

Single JAR, no setup. Drop it into your server's mods/ folder and craft the tower at a workbench.

Features

Fully Automated Tree Harvesting

5-second fire cycle per tower - scans, fires, fells, vacuums, replants
60-block Chebyshev cube range (3D cube, not sphere - matches the way players think about block ranges)
Picks the nearest tree when multiple are in range
Visual bolt: bright green particle trail from the tower tip to the trunk plus an impact strike, with shot/impact sound effects

Smart Trunk Felling

Fells the entire trunk column in one shot, not just the bottom block
Triggers Hytale's native physics cascade for branches and leaves (breakBlock(x, y, z, 0x100))
Spawns the trunk's natural item drops (the programmatic break path otherwise loses them)

Drop Vacuuming

1.5 seconds after impact, the tower scans all item entities in its fire radius
Tree-drop filter: only picks up wood, leaves, branches, and saplings - unrelated drops on the ground stay where they are
Round-robin insertion across the four built-in chests, falling through full ones
Visual feedback: a small green particle burst at the tower tip on each successful vacuum

Automatic Replanting

On each successful chop, plants a Plant_Sapling_<WoodType> on the nearest soil block (Type=Soil tag, broader than just Soil_*)
One-sapling-per-tree rule: skips the replant if any sapling already sits within 10 blocks - so multi-shot chopping of one tree never produces a forest of saplings
Species match: an Oak trunk replants Oak, Stormbark replants Stormbark, etc. (species without a matching sapling - Burnt, Fir - are silently skipped)

Atomic Tower Break (Exploit-Proof)

The four chest blocks and the floor directly underneath them are protected from being broken or damaged - undermining the floor would otherwise physics-drop a chest as an item
Breaking any tower block (chest, gold-brick, ornate top) demolishes the entire tower atomically and returns a single tower item to the player
All chest contents are spawned as item drops at the tower's base - survival players never lose stored items when picking up the tower
Non-owners cannot break the tower; OPs override

Built-In Chests

4× Furniture_Dungeon_Chest_Epic blocks form the tower's foot - right-click to open like any native chest
Tower pauses firing when all four chests are completely full - no items are destroyed by an overflowing tower
Chest contents survive server restarts (native Hytale persistence)

Recipe Toggle

Workbench recipe is enabled by default
Set recipesEnabled: false in config.json to disable crafting and let admins gate distribution via /give

Crafting

The tower is crafted at the Workbench (Crafting → Workbench_Survival category):

Ingredient	Quantity
Concentrated Life Essence (`Ingredient_Life_Essence_Concentrated`)	3
Gold Bar (`Ingredient_Bar_Gold`)	5

Output: 1× GlymeraLumberTower (5 second craft time)

Admins can also use /give <player> GlymeraLumberTower to hand them out directly.

Commands

All sub-commands of /lumbertower are OP-only by design (world-modifying or admin commands).

Command	Description
`/lumbertower spawn`	Place a tower at your feet (the NW-bottom-chest is the anchor)
`/lumbertower remove`	Remove the nearest tower in this world (clean removal, no item drop)
`/lumbertower list`	Show the tower count in this world (yours / total)
`/lumbertower capture <halfWidth> <height>`	Re-capture the structure around you as a new tower template
`/lumbertower captureat <x> <y> <z> <halfWidth> <height>`	Same, with an explicit anchor position

Configuration

Config file: mods/de.glymera_GlymeraLumberTower/config.json (auto-generated on first start)

{
  "_info": "GlymeraLumberTower v1.0.0 - Automated lumber towers.",
  "fireRadius": 60,
  "cooldownMs": 5000,
  "fireTickMs": 1000,
  "maxTreeHeight": 32,
  "projectileSpeed": 50.0,
  "recipesEnabled": true
}

Field	Description
`fireRadius`	3D Chebyshev half-edge in blocks (default 60 → 121×121×121 search cube)
`cooldownMs`	Milliseconds between shots per tower (default 5000 = 5s)
`fireTickMs`	How often the tower's fire-tick loop runs (default 1000 = 1s)
`maxTreeHeight`	Maximum trunk-column height the felling walks up (default 32)
`projectileSpeed`	Bolt flight speed in blocks per second (default 50 → ~1.2s at 60 blocks)
`recipesEnabled`	If false, the workbench recipe is blocked - admins distribute via `/give`

Installation

Drop the single JAR into your server's mods/ folder:

mods/GlymeraLumberTower-1.0.0.jar

That's it. The JAR contains everything: plugin code, the default tower template, block + recipe definitions, particle systems, sounds, icon, and language files. Config, template, and tower-data files are auto-generated under mods/de.glymera_GlymeraLumberTower/ on first start.

Technical Details

All-in-one JAR with IncludesAssetPack: true - no separate pack folders required
Default tower template is shipped as /default-template.json inside the JAR and extracted to the data directory on first start (matches the GlymeraObelisk pattern)
Trunk felling uses world.breakBlock(x, y, z, 0x100) to trigger Hytale's native neighbour-update cascade (the setBlock("Empty") low-level path would silently delete blocks without propagating updates to branches and leaves)
Trunk drops are spawned manually via ItemComponent.generateItemDrops because the programmatic break path does not produce the natural drop pipeline output
Bottom-trunk detection filters trunks whose block below is not the same trunk type (natural Hytale trees have Wood_*_Roots with Material:Empty beneath the bottom log)
Soil detection uses the Type=Soil tag rather than the Soil_* name prefix - this also catches Pathway_* and other tagged blocks that saplings will accept
Sapling re-validation gap: Hytale does not validate Support.Down at setBlock time, only at the first growth tick. The 10-block radius check on existing saplings ensures one tree → one sapling regardless of how many bolts hit it
Atomic protection is tracked in two maps: blockPosToLumberTower (the 21 tower blocks) and supportPosToLumberTower (the 4 floor positions under the chests). Break/Damage events on either map trigger atomic demolition; on demolition all chest contents are extracted via ItemContainerBlock.getItemContainer().getItemStack(i) and spawned as item drops
Persistence is atomic (.tmp + ATOMIC_MOVE) to prevent zero-byte files on crash

Good to Know

Towers do not aim across worlds. Each tower scans only its own world.
Towers do not aim at branches or leaves. Only bottom-trunk blocks are targeted - branches and leaves come down via the physics cascade after the trunk is broken.
Multiple towers in overlapping range all fire independently. The chest contents may end up redundantly populated if both towers vacuum the same drops - that's fine, items are not duplicated.
Tower placement uses the player's foot position as the NW-bottom-chest anchor. Make sure you have a 3×3 footprint of clear space at your feet when using /lumbertower spawn.
The recipe is identical to the GlymeraObelisk recipe (3× Concentrated Life Essence + 5× Gold Bar at Workbench Survival). Both items appear as separate craftable entries in the bench - the player picks which one to craft.

Made with care by Glymera for the Hytale community