Builder's Balloon

Tired of falling from your janky scaffolding or jumping just one block to the wrong side? But you don't want a jetpack mod, because it makes you lazy and you just end up flying everywhere? I've got the solution for you!

Now you can build high above the ground and (not quite) into the sky with a balloon carrying you upwards, while firmly attached to the ground (or a wall, or a ceiling, or...). Builder's Balloon adds tethered creative-style flight to survival building.

With a Balloon Tether, you double-tap to jump into flight and build within its (configurable) range. If you reach the edge of the tether's boundary, your movement is stopped, while the balloon stays intact.

Never was it easier to build the towers of your dreams!

What's in the mod?

Functional blocks

• Builder's Balloons with colored-top bollards in all 16 dye colors; the balloon matches the color.
• Metal variants of the Builder's Balloon that are more expensive, but are longer range and survive explosions; they are also available in all 16 dye colors, with matching balloons.

Wooden tethers have a configurable range of 8-32 blocks, with the default being 16; metal tethers have a larger range of 8-64 blocks, with a default of 32.

Decorative blocks

• Wooden bollards with colored tops in all 16 dye colors.
• Metal bollards with colored tops in all 16 dye colors.

Bollards can be toggled between "rope" and "no rope" by right-clicking with any rope.

All blocks (functional and decorative) can be recolored with any dye.

Integrations

• Create Mod: Wrench-able! Sneak-right-click any of the blocks with a wrench to instantly pick it up. Additional recipes for the metal tethers use Industrial Iron Blocks, making them cheaper to craft.
• Supplementaries, Farmer's Delight and Quark: these mods' ropes work in tether recipes and on decorative bollards. Mixed rope ingredients are supported.
• Sable: tethers support stationary and moving Sable sublevels. This is a notoriously hard-to-test feature, so, while it works, compatibility with every ship or physics mod cannot be guaranteed.

Getting started

Craft a tether with wool above a log (wooden) or iron block (metal), two leads or supported ropes beside the body material, and an iron ingot below.

Place the tether on the ground to activate your Builder's Balloon. Double-tap jump to start flying with the usual controls. Regular tethers allow flight in a range of 8-32 blocks, while metal tethers have an increased range of 8-64 blocks.

Assign Pop Balloon under the Builder's Balloon controls category to release your tether at will. DANGER: You will start to fall immediately, so land before doing so.

One tether can serve one player at a time, but players can connect to inactive tethers from other players.

About this mod

This mod was created using AI as a tool for all steps, coding, artwork, and sound design; I used ChatGPT Sol 6.1 Medium on a premium tier subscription. All textures and sounds were created with the same AI setup, using royalty free inspiration from Pixabay*. The mod was tested by real players. It was developed on Minecraft 1.21.1, Java 21, and NeoForge 21.1.252. This release is considered Beta. While gameplay and optional compatibility were tested during development, including packaged server automation, extended and intensive multiplayer gameplay was not within the test scope. All bug reports are welcome.

Known issues

In testing, using the mod A Good Place and its stock-supplied resource packs led to some graphical bugs; when placing tethers, the balloons would sometimes show up at the location of the player instead of overhead. This was especially noticeable during rapid placement. Naturally, this does not cover every A Good Place setup or configuration and is also by no means a fault of that mod's author.

License

Project-authored code, models, textures, and documentation are MIT licensed. The edited inflation/pop recordings retain separate Pixabay terms**; the source distribution contains their credits and licence notices.

* Pixabay artists:

• "Balloon Pop" is based on the sound effect by Otto from Pixabay.
• "Inflating a balloon [...]" is based on the sound effect by freesound_community from Pixabay.

** Pixabay license terms: https://pixabay.com/service/license-summary/

This mod is powered by AI. It was tested by real players.