Balloonatic
- By
Description
Balloonatic brings the hot air balloon to Minecraft: an aircraft that needs no engine to fly, invented by brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier in 1783.
This project was created for ModJam 2026, following the Echoes of the Past theme. I hope you enjoy taking to the skies with these hot air balloons. If you liked my work, please consider voting for me. Your support would mean a lot to me!
Flying a hot air balloon is not a magic trick. It works on Archimedes' principle: an object floats in a fluid if it weighs less than the volume of fluid it displaces. Heat the air inside the balloon, make it lighter than the air around it, and up you go.
Features
- A fully functional hot air balloon.
- A texture pack for the item visuals and burner sounds (TEXTURE PACK REQUIRED)
- Realistic horizontal and vertical movement for the balloon
- Fire animation when the burner is working.
How it works
Place the hot air balloon down and right-click its seat to sit in it. Above the seat sits the burner, built using a tripwire-style interaction: right-click it to light it and get the principle working. This heats the air inside the balloon, and that's what lets you climb. (Download the resource pack for the burner sound.)
To move horizontally, since Minecraft has no wind, we use the closest thing the game has to it: Breezes. Craft the Breeze Directioner with 3 breeze rods and 2 string, replacing the fishing rod's behavior. Hold right-click with it and the balloon moves exactly in the direction you're looking.
Sit back, enjoy it, hit F5 and take in the view. Don't expect to go fast, though; hot air balloons were never about top speed.
Cheats
/function globo:testspawns a hot air balloon on the spot (same effect as using the Magenta Airballoon item)/function globo:deletekills all the balloons./function globo:dar_magenta_airballoongives you the Magenta Airballoon item/function globo:dar_breeze_directionergives you the Breeze Directioner item/function globo:debugprints debug info about the balloon
Why this project
I made this for a "historical facts" themed event, and hot air balloons turned out to be a great fit: their history is one long chain of "well, actually, it was someone else first." Unknown lighter-than-air lanterns show up in China on the 3rd century, used for military signaling long before anyone thought of getting on one. Centuries later, in the 1700s, several different people in Europe start claiming pieces of the idea for themselves, until the Montgolfier brothers finally get a manned flight off the ground in 1783, only for other inventors to immediately start racing each other with their own balloon designs. It's basically one long history of people building on, borrowing from, and discusing over each other's work, which felt like a fun bit of "history" to bring into a Minecraft data pack. I've always liked hot air balloons anyway. This are also shown on museums and have larger exhibitions that often bring big crowds.
The "Plan"
The data pack is still a work in progress. Things I want to add or fix:
- More hot air balloon designs
- Support for having more than one balloon at a time (almost finished)
- Better balance between speed, gravity and horizontal movement
- Functions and comments written in English (currently minimized; proper in-code documentation is coming in a future version) + on github
- Larger balloons that can carry more than one person
- A weight system to let the balloon stay static, working like a floor in the sky, similar to how a Happy Ghast carries player
- More items in order to make the crafting more realistic
Please bear with me, this is my first data pack, so if you have any suggestions or think something is broke, please tell me!!
Credits
- Thanks to Dr. Macak for publishing this sound for free!!
- Huge thanks to doodles_art for helping me with the model
The Balloonatic Team
