Ability: Hotbar
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Gives the Tensura RPG pack one configurable hotbar for every combat ability, from Tensura skills and magic to Iron's Spells spells and battlewills, beside the vanilla hotbar.
Ability Hotbar
Ability Hotbar gives the Tensura RPG pack one bar for every combat ability: Tensura skills and magic, Iron's Spells spells and battlewills, all assigned, selected and triggered from a single configurable hotbar that sits alongside the vanilla one, never on top of it.
What it does
(Design phase, no release yet. The open issues on this repository hold the full plan, research tables and open design decisions.)
- Nine-slot ability bar - vanilla-style slots with dynamic ability icons, cooldown and resource overlays, and both direct-slot and selected-slot activation on configurable keys.
- Management menu - search, filter, preview and reassign abilities; your layout persists per player.
- Tensura skills and magic, ISS spells and battlewills share the bar through one contract. If an ability or its provider goes missing, the bar handles it.
- Optional spellbook hotbar - a separate, independently toggleable bar for the spells of your equipped Iron's Spells spellbook (with ISS installed).
- The vanilla controls are untouched: the modifier keys only claim the wheel and the number keys while they are held.
Controls
All keys are rebindable in vanilla's Controls screen under the Ability Hotbar category. Defaults (from SPIKE-hot-3):
| Action | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Select slot | Ctrl + wheel | Moves the selected-slot cursor only; plain wheel still drives the vanilla hotbar, and the wheel is only claimed while Ctrl is held. |
| Activate slot 1..9 | Ctrl + 1..9 | Activates that slot directly. Plain 1..9 still switches the vanilla hotbar. |
| Activate selected slot | G | Fires the ability in the selected slot. |
| Open ability menu | K | Menu flow lands with the management menu. |
| Toggle ability mode | Right Ctrl | Aligned with Tensura's native mode key. |
Selecting a slot never fires an ability. Activating uses the selected slot and leaves the selection where it was. Empty, restricted, unaffordable or on-cooldown slots fail with no resource consumed.
Our controls never steal vanilla or chat input: with any screen open (chat,
inventory, a mod GUI) nothing is intercepted, and without the modifier held the
plain wheel and 1-9 behave exactly as if the mod were absent. The in-game
verification matrix is in docs/input-gating-matrix.md.
Configuration
The bar's look is a CLIENT config (display.*) - display-only, never
policy; it is never synced to the server and cannot widen server rules. It
opens in NeoForge's own configuration screen (config UI mods are bypassed for
this mod so their editor cannot reset values you did not edit). The
slot count is two-tier: the client's preference is clamped to the server's
ceiling (see Persistence).
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
display.slotsPerBar |
9 |
Preferred slots (clamped to the server's hotbar.maxSlots, hard cap 10). |
display.horizontal |
true |
Bar orientation: true = left-to-right, false = top-to-bottom. |
display.anchor |
ABOVE_HOTBAR |
Named position: aboveHotbar, aboveXp, aboveStatus, leftEdge or rightEdge. Each is a full 2D placement rule, so every value works with either orientation. |
display.statusAnchorMode |
DYNAMIC |
Height used by aboveStatus: DYNAMIC tracks the player's hearts, armor and oxygen; FIXED uses the vanilla baseline and never moves. Read only for aboveStatus. |
display.opacity |
1.0 |
Bar opacity (0.0–1.0). |
display.showCooldowns |
true |
Draw the cooldown overlay on slots. |
display.showCosts |
true |
Draw the resource-cost badge on slots. |
display.offsetX / display.offsetY |
0 |
Pixel offset from the bar's anchor. |
display.scale |
1.0 |
Uniform render scale (0.5–2.0). |
display.showIcons |
true |
Draw ability icons (falls back to a placeholder when none resolves). |
Persistence
Your assignments are per-player data, stored in a server-authoritative attachment and kept on death. The format is versioned so a pack update never destroys a bar. Stored NBT keys:
| Key | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
schema_version |
int | Format version (currently 1). A newer version than the mod supports loads as a valid empty bar instead of crashing. |
slot_count |
int | Number of slots. Written explicitly, so lowering the config later never truncates stored slots. |
selected_slot |
int | The selected-slot index (clamped into range on load). |
slot_N |
string | The ability id in slot N. Absent = empty slot. |
Upgrade and preservation rules:
- A compound written before
schema_version/slot_countexisted upgrades forward with its values retained; the slot count is inferred from the highestslot_Nkey present. - A stored id whose provider is missing is preserved raw, so the slot renders as diagnosed-inert rather than being dropped (REQ-HOT-21).
- An id that cannot even be parsed is logged and left empty, never crashing the load (REQ-HOT-15).
Dependencies
| Mod | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Required | Minecraft / NeoForge | 1.21.1 / 21.1.259 |
| Required | Tensura Ability Core | The ability contracts the bar reads and activates |
| Optional | Tensura: Reincarnated | Skills and magic appear in the bar when installed |
| Optional | Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks | Spells and the equipped-spellbook hotbar appear when installed |
| Optional | Tensura Battlewills | Battlewills appear in the bar when installed |
Credits
- Built on NeoForge.
License
GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 - see LICENSE.
Copyright (c) 2026 Bitwise Madness.
AI disclosure
Parts of this project were written with the assistance of AI coding tools. AI-assisted code, data and documentation ship only after human review by the maintainers.
Ability: Hotbar Team
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