Realistic Tornadoes — Changelog

All notable changes to Realistic Tornadoes are documented here. Paste the section for the version you are releasing into CurseForge's Changelog field when you publish a file, and keep appending new sections below as you update.

[1.0.1] — Initial Release (November 2026)

First public release. Target: Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47.x (built against 47.3.0), Java 17. Mod ID: realistictornado.

Added — The Storm

• Fully animated supercell tornado entity: a multi-layer rotating condensation funnel, narrow at the tip and widening into a wide rotating wall cloud.
• Dark storm-blue cloud sprites, a churning brown ground debris cloud around the base, and drifting ash at the storm's edge.
• Occasional lightning: visual-only bolts around the cloud base (with vanilla thunder) plus flash particles inside the funnel — no fires.
• Natural roaming movement with gradual steering, terrain-following base height, and a pause when it reaches ungenerated chunks.

Added — Destruction & Physics

• Layer-by-layer terrain destruction: the tornado samples the ground inside its destruction radius and peels the surface off (roofs → walls → floors).
• Removed blocks spawn as FlyingDebris entities — real tumbling 3D block models that are pulled into the funnel, orbit it, rise, and get flung out at the top. High strengths throw debris far over the horizon.
• Debris physics: air drag, gravity, bouncing on impact (up to 3 bounces), a ~45-second lifetime cap, and a chance to settle back down as a real placed block where it lands (debrisDeposit).
• Entity lifting physics: entities are dragged inward, spun around the funnel, lifted, and ejected from the cloud top; standing in the core deals periodic damage (creative players are immune to damage, not to being thrown).
• Destruction scales with hardness: soft blocks go first, stone and metal ores follow at higher strengths; bedrock and obsidian-class blocks are immune, fluids untouched.

Added — Commands

• /tornado — spawn a tornado 11–15 blocks in front of the player (strength 5, size 5), placed on the ground surface.
• /tornado strength <1-10> — destruction intensity: bigger radius, harder blocks, stronger winds, faster debris, more lightning.
• /tornado size <1-10> — visual funnel size: wider/taller funnel, bigger wall cloud and debris cloud.
• /tornado remove — discard the active tornado.
• /tornado stop — toggle freezing the storm in place / resuming movement.
• Colored in-chat feedback for every action; only one tornado active per dimension.

Added — Audio

• Deep synthesized 13-second stereo wind-roar loop with seamless looping and distance-based volume (the closer you are, the louder it howls).
• Debris impact sounds and block-break effects during destruction.

Added — Configuration (config/realistictornado-common.toml)

• destructionEnabled (default true) — master switch for block destruction.
• debrisDeposit (default true) — landed debris can place itself as blocks.
• requireOp (default false) — restrict /tornado to permission level 2.
• maxDebrisAlive (default 90, range 10–400) — debris entity cap per tornado.

Performance

• Budgeted destruction loop: bounded terrain-scan samples and block removals per tick instead of unchecked destruction.
• Hard cap on simultaneous debris entities per tornado (maxDebrisAlive), with a budget system that throttles launches under load.
• Client particle counts scale with the in-game particle setting (ALL / DECREASED / MINIMAL) and the storm's size.
• One active tornado per dimension keeps server tick time predictable.

Multiplayer & Technical

• Server-authoritative design: destruction, movement and entity lifting run on the server; clients only render effects.
• Strength, size and inventory data synchronized through SynchedEntityData; thrown-entity velocity synced on launch.
• Works in singleplayer and on dedicated servers; client-only mod list safe (visuals and sound are client-side, logic is common).

Fixed during development (internal polish)

• Funnel particles now orbit the tornado's live axis position every tick, so the vortex no longer drifts behind a moving storm.
• Lifted entities get their velocity synced on throw, removing rubber-banding when players/mobs are yeeted.
• The wind loop now follows the moving tornado's coordinates, so audio falloff stays correct as the storm roams.
• Damage/throw behavior for the tornado core made safe for creative players.

[Unreleased] — Roadmap (planned but might not be made, not yet implemented)

Ideas under consideration for future versions — not part of 1.0.0:

• Natural tornado spawns tied to vanilla thunderstorms (with config weights).
• Structure-aware destruction presets (special handling for villages, etc.).
• More ambient storm audio layers (distant rumble variants, debris whooshes).
• Additional debris behaviors (burning debris, deeper block deposits).