Arcane Beam is a client-side visual and audio replacement for Vault Hunters' Arcane and Arcane Rail abilities on Minecraft 1.18.2 Forge.

Instead of rendering long streams of particles, Arcane Beam draws clean configurable beams that follow the player's crosshair, stop on collision, and preserve the original behavior of both abilities. Arcane remains a held beam, and Rail remains a short single-shot beam.

Features

Replaces Arcane and Arcane Rail particle lines with rendered beams
Separate settings for Arcane and Rail
Four beam colors and four glow colors per ability
In-game color picker with live preview
Intensity, opacity, glow radius, glow opacity, glow rotation, and color shift controls
Configurable fade/grow-in and fade/shrink-out transitions for both abilities
Configurable fade in / fade out timing per ability
Main hand or offhand origin selection
Fine XYZ origin offset controls
Mouse wheel adjustment for origin offsets, sound volume, and transition timing fields
Shader compatibility toggle
Custom sound selection for both abilities
Per-ability custom sound volume control
Arcane option support for startup + loop sound behavior
Suppresses default Vault cast sounds when custom ArcaneBeam sounds are selected
Live beam preview behind the translucent config screen
Client-side config saved to config/ArcaneBeam.json

Requirements

This mod is intended for Vault Hunters 3rd Edition and requires:

Minecraft 1.18.2
Forge 40.x
Java 17
The Vault

0.1.4

Release Copy

## 0.1.4

- Fixed beams being pulled straight north in some vault themes
- Hardened beam direction rendering so theme particles and collision endpoints cannot rotate the rendered beam away from the caster's aim
- Kept block collision behavior intact: beams can still stop early on blocks, but collision can only shorten the beam instead of changing its direction
- Added fallback handling for brief invalid look-vector frames so beams keep their last valid aim instead of snapping to a world direction

0.1.3

Release Copy

## 0.1.3

- Improved Arcane beam stability in multiplayer while moving, strafing, and jumping
- Improved local Arcane activation tracking so nearby players are less likely to trigger a beam or sound from your character
- Fixed Arcane release timing so the local beam and custom looped sound stop much more quickly when the cast key is released
- Kept remote player beam rendering through particle detection while separating it from local-player ownership
- Smoothed the beam origin when entering or leaving sneak so the start point transitions instead of snapping vertically
- Improved beam color cycling so transitions blend more smoothly through all configured colors

0.1.2

Release Copy

## 0.1.2

- Fixed Arcane beam and glow jitter caused by fade-out/shrink-out starting too early during active refresh
- Added a fade-out grace window so active Arcane beams stay visually rigid between particle refreshes
- Replaced the square beam core geometry with an 8-sided tube for a rounder look
- Replaced the square glow shell geometry with an 8-sided tube
- Updated shader compatibility rendering to use the same 8-sided beam and glow geometry

0.1.1

Release Copy

## 0.1.1

- Added per-ability sound volume controls
- Added configurable `Fade In` / `Grow In` transition mode per ability
- Added configurable `Fade Out` / `Shrink Out` transition mode per ability
- Added per-ability `Fade In Ticks` and `Fade Out Ticks` fields
- Added mouse wheel support for transition tick fields
- Added mouse wheel support for sound volume fields
- Added live preview support for the newer transition and origin settings
- Fixed Arcane option 2 startup sound so it stops immediately when Arcane ends
- Fixed false local beam/audio triggering from nearby players casting through the local player
- Restricted local ownership attribution to the beam origin area instead of the full ray
- Fixed default/custom sound suppression so Vault sounds only suppress when a custom ArcaneBeam sound is selected
- Fixed Rail `Default` sound fallback
- Refined config screen layout for color rows, hex box alignment, transition buttons, and tick labels

0.1.0

Release Copy

## 0.1.0

Initial public release.

- Replaced Vault Arcane and Arcane Rail particle streams with rendered beams
- Added separate Arcane and Rail settings
- Added beam and glow color controls
- Added in-game color picker and live preview
- Added hand-based origin selection and XYZ origin offsets
- Added shader compatibility toggle
- Added custom Arcane and Rail sound selection
- Added suppression for default Vault cast sounds when custom ArcaneBeam sounds are selected
- Added client config persistence in `config/ArcaneBeam.json`

Credits

Arcane Beam’s renderer was built with direct reference to VaultLootBeams by JustAHuman, with additional credit to that project’s listed contributors shiroroku (elise) and amo, and to the upstream Loot Beams renderer lineage.