Note: This mod is intended for map makers. If you just want to play, it will do nothing for you.

Overview

OreShards adds variant ores to Minecraft. These produce "shards" which then can be crafted into the real ores.

It is highly configurable:

All ore variants can be freely configured:

Texture is composed from foreground texture, alpha mask and background texture. They can be taken from any texture in the game or be provided in a ResourcePack. A couple of alpha masks is included.
Drop rates and chances for shards. Each block will drop a certain number of shards of two configured types (e.g. ore shard and cobble shard).
Hardness, HarvestLevel and -Tool can be configured to that of any block in the game.
There's no limit on the number of blocks you configure.

All shards can be freely configured, too:

Texture is composed from foreground texture, alpha mask and background texture. They can be taken from any texture in the game or be provided in a ResourcePack. One set of alpha mask and background texture for shards is provided.
Shards will craft into one configurable item, you can specify how many (1 to 9) shards are needed.

Please note that there is no OreGen in this mod (at this time). You can either hand-craft your map, or combine it with a mod that provides generic OreGen.

This is the demo configuration that comes with the mod:

Top row: Original ores

Bottom row: Shard blocks using all included demo patterns.

Front: The matching shards, with Netherrrack on the left and Cobblestone on the right, using the included demo pattern.

Henry Loenwind's OreShards