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):

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).

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
}

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