Colonial Arms [Fabric]

- Colonial Arms -

Colonial Arms adds 18th-century firearms and cannons to Minecraft: a flintlock musket, a flintlock pistol and a blunderbuss, plus a field cannon and a naval cannon. Each one loads the way the real weapon did. The flintlocks take paper cartridges and a ramrod. The cannons are loaded at the muzzle by a crew and fired with a linstock.

-> The flintlocks

All three flintlocks load the same way. Keep Paper Cartridges in your inventory and hold right-click with the gun in your hand. You tip a cartridge into the muzzle, push it down the barrel with the ramrod, and pull the hammer back until it clicks. If you let go of right-click before the hammer clicks, the charge is not seated and you have to start again.

Once the gun is loaded, hold right-click to raise it to your shoulder and left-click to fire. You can also left-click without raising it to fire from the hip, but the shot is much less accurate. The longer you hold the gun at your shoulder, the more accurate the shot, up to full accuracy after half a second for the musket and a little sooner for the pistol and blunderbuss.

The shot is not instant. When you pull the trigger, the flint strikes and the powder in the pan flashes. The ball leaves a moment later, in the direction you are looking at that point. The gun then kicks back and the muzzle rises.

While you hold a gun, the crosshair becomes four short arms around an empty centre. The gap shows the spread: half of your shots land between opposite arms. The arms stand apart when you fire from the hip and close in as you steady your aim. While you reload, a thin bar under the crosshair fills up until the gun is loaded. A loaded gun shows a gold bar under its icon, and when you take a gun in hand, and after each shot, the action bar shows how many Paper Cartridges you are carrying.

- **Flintlock Musket.** Each ball does 25 damage (12.5 hearts), which kills most mobs in one shot, even a zombie in full iron armour. Reloading takes 4.5 seconds, with four strokes of the ramrod. Raising the musket to your shoulder zooms in on the sights. After a shot from the shoulder, the zoom stays for a second so you can see where the ball lands.
- **Flintlock Pistol.** The pistol is held in one hand. Each ball does 21 damage, enough to kill a zombie, skeleton or creeper without armour in one shot. Reloading takes 3.5 seconds, with two strokes of the ramrod. It is less accurate than the musket.
- **Blunderbuss.** The blunderbuss fires eight pellets at once, and each pellet does 7 damage. Pellets do full damage up to 8 blocks away. After that they weaken, down to a quarter of their damage at 20 blocks, where they stop. Reloading takes 4 seconds, with three strokes of the ramrod. Raising it to your shoulder zooms in a little, less than the musket.

The guns never wear out. If you have no cartridges, the gun gives a single click. When the musket or blunderbuss is not loaded, left-click swings it at the target butt first, for 5 damage. The musket and blunderbuss need both hands: while you hold one, nothing can be put in your off hand, and anything already there is hidden and cannot be used until you put the gun away.

-> The cannons

There are two cannons. The **Field Cannon** sits on a wheeled carriage with a long trail behind it. The **Naval Cannon** is smaller and sits on a low ship's carriage. Place either one on the ground to use it. The barrel is open at the muzzle and has a vent on top of the breech, and the cannon can be rolled around.

Loading a cannon takes several steps. Any player can do any step, so it works well with a crew:

1. Use a **Powder Charge** on the muzzle. It slides into the barrel and waits there.
2. Use the **Rammer** on the muzzle to push the charge down to the breech.
3. Use a **Cannonball** or a **Canister Shot** on the muzzle, and ram it down the same way.
4. A small mound of priming powder appears on the vent. The cannon is ready to fire.
5. Use a lit **Linstock** on the vent. The vent flashes, and the cannon fires half a second later.

To light a Linstock, hold Flint and Steel in your other hand and use the Linstock, or use the Linstock on a fire, a lit campfire or a torch. The match stays lit for about five minutes.

- A **Cannonball** does 50 damage on a direct hit, enough to kill most mobs outright (an iron golem or a ravager takes two), and explodes where it lands. The explosion hurts and knocks back everything nearby, but it never breaks blocks.

- **Canister Shot** is a tin case packed with iron balls. When it is fired, the case breaks open at the muzzle and nine balls spread out in a cone. Each ball does 8 damage. The balls do full damage up to 16 blocks away, then weaken until they stop at 40 blocks. Canister shot is for groups of enemies at close range. Use cannonballs for longer shots.

- **Aiming.** Right-click an empty part of the cannon to become its gunner. You stand beside the breech, and the barrel follows where you look, from 35 degrees up to 10 degrees down. W and S move the cannon slowly forward and back. Sneak to step off. While you aim, a line under the crosshair shows the barrel's angle and about how far the shot will carry on level ground.

- **Recoil.** Each shot pushes the cannon back about a quarter of a block. If there is a block behind it, the cannon stops against the block and then rolls forward to where it fired from. On the Field Cannon, the iron shoe at the end of the trail is the part that touches the block.

If a cannon takes enough damage, it breaks and drops as an item, along with any charge or shot that was loaded in it.

-> Towing the Field Cannon

A horse can pull the Field Cannon. Ride a horse, or lead one, up to the cannon and use a **Lead** on the cannon. The cannon is hooked to a two-wheeled limber cart and follows behind the horse, with the muzzle facing backward. To unhook it, sneak and use the cannon, or use the lead on it again. You get the lead back. The Naval Cannon cannot be towed.

-> Recipes

Every recipe is also drawn out as a crafting grid in the gallery, beside the sheets on the flintlocks and the cannons.

- **Flintlock Musket:** three iron ingots across the top row, a flint in the centre with a plank to its right, and a plank in the bottom-right corner.
- **Flintlock Pistol:** two iron ingots on the right of the top row, with a plank and a flint on the left of the row below.
- **Blunderbuss:** the same as the musket, with a copper ingot in place of the first iron ingot.
- **Musket Ball:** one iron nugget makes one musket ball.
- **Paper Cartridge:** paper, gunpowder and a musket ball, in any arrangement.
- **Field Cannon:** three iron blocks across the top row, three planks across the middle row, and a plank in each bottom corner.
- **Naval Cannon:** the same as the Field Cannon, with two iron blocks on the right of the top row instead of three.
- **Cannonball:** an iron ingot in the centre with eight iron nuggets around it makes two cannonballs.
- **Canister Shot:** iron nuggets down the left column, down the right column and along the bottom row, with two musket balls in the middle column.
- **Powder Charge:** any wool, a string and three gunpowder, in any arrangement.
- **Rammer:** a plank, a copper ingot and a stick, in a column from top to bottom.
- **Linstock:** an iron nugget, a string and a stick, in a column from top to bottom.

Everything is in the Colonial Arms creative tab.

-> Multiplayer

Colonial Arms works on dedicated servers as well as in single player. Other players see your reloading and recoil, and every step of loading and firing a cannon.

-> Credit and license

Colonial Arms is made by Ailewic and released under the MIT License.

The method used to draw the guns in first and third person, and the five musket sound files, are adapted from ewewukek's Musket Mod (MIT, https://github.com/ewewukek/mc-musketmod). Those sounds are based on CC0 recordings. The full credits are included in the jar as THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt. All models and textures in Colonial Arms are original, and are generated from the mod's own geometry code.