Pandorical

Install this if a server asked you to. It lets that server draw screens, overlays and blocks vanilla Minecraft has no way to show you.

Normally a modded server means every player installs every mod, matched version for version. Pandorical replaces that with one install. The server keeps its mods, you keep Pandorical. Its mods send the screens, overlays, blocks and keys; your client draws them. Add a mod to the server and you see it next time you log in, with nothing to download.

What a server can show you

• Real interfaces, instead of everything pretending to be a chest. Quest dialogue, a mailbox, a trade window, a crafting station with its own layout.
• HUD overlays that sit alongside your hotbar or replace a vanilla bar outright, and update live.
• Custom blocks and items that arrive when you join, with no resource pack to install and no download prompt.
• Rebindable keys the server defines. They appear in your normal controls screen under "Pandorical", and rebind like any other key.
• Moving structures, like a ship built out of blocks that sails as one piece.
• Camera control, when a server wants to pull the view back.
• Cosmetic overlays on particular mobs or chests, so you can tell one from another.
• One block at one place a different colour, so two of the same block in two places can be told apart on sight.
• Extra squares and buttons on your own inventory screen: a slot that only takes a map, a compass slot beside it, a button that tidies your pack. They sit in the vanilla panel and behave like the rest of it.

None of this is Pandorical's own content: no items, no blocks, no recipes, nothing added to a world. Everything you see through it comes from a mod on the server.

Do I need it?

• Playing on a server that uses it: yes, and you will usually be told. Without it, a mod built on Pandorical either degrades quietly (an item shows a raw name instead of a proper one) or refuses outright, telling you in chat that Pandorical is required.
• Playing on a vanilla or unrelated server: it does nothing. The handshake never happens and nothing draws. The one trace it leaves is eight rebindable "Pandorical Action" rows in your controls screen, which sit there unused until a server names them.
• Running a server: install it on the server too, alongside whichever mods depend on it. It is the one mod in this suite that belongs on both sides.

The Mod Menu

Every mod on the server, in-game. A Mods button on the pause menu and the options menu opens it on a Pandorical client: the mods down the left, and the chosen one on the right with its description, its settings if it has any, and its readme, read straight out of its jar - every mod in this suite ships its README beside its licence. /pandorical mods opens the same screen, or lists the mods as text on a vanilla client. The screen is built to the size of the window it will show in, so a readme gets the room the window has. The readme is rendered by block: titles with a rule beneath, list items hanging off their markers, code in an inset with its spacing kept, quotes with a bar down their side, tables as a list of their rows.

A mod's settings sit in sections by whose they are: Your settings, kept on this server for the player alone; Your client's settings, kept by the player's own game wherever they play; and Server settings, one value for everyone, which only an op is shown. /pandorical settings opens the menu on a mod with settings, or lists them as text on a vanilla client, where /pandorical settings <mod> <key> <value> changes them.