Turret TaCZ 0.8.5-beta

All changes since 0.8.3-early-beta, the last public release (May 1, 2026).

The early beta was playable but unfinished: four turrets, some temporary textures and borrowed sounds. 0.8.5 is the first full beta. It adds two turrets, final textures for the whole lineup, dedicated sounds and new muzzle effects, and reworks ballistics, maintenance and stability.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Forge 47.x (built on 47.4.10)
• GeckoLib 4.8.2 or newer
• TaCZ 1.1.7 or a later 1.1.x build. TaCZ 1.2 is not supported yet; Forge reports it clearly at startup instead of crashing in game.

Renamed turrets

The turrets have proper names now. Their registry IDs are unchanged, so turrets and items from 0.8.3 keep working.

New turrets

• M20 Bastion: a 20 mm explosive autocannon with alternating barrels. It fires 20 mm HE shells and avoids firing when its own blast would catch an ally.
• M134 Guardian: a rotary saturation turret firing at 1,200 rounds per minute.
  • Barrel spin-up and braking.
  • Barrel heat with automatic cooling, and a heat cutoff you can set in the GUI.
  • Extra wear when firing at high heat.
  • The barrels glow dull red, then red-orange, as they heat up, and cool down visibly.
• Both craft in the TaCZ gun smith table.

Visuals and sound

• Final commissioned textures for every turret (apart from Sentinel and Marksman).
• New muzzle effects, in pixel art like the rest of Minecraft:
  • a flash (flame, star and halo) scaled to each calibre, which flickers and briefly lights up the turret;
  • dedicated muzzle smoke particles;
  • dust lifted from the ground block under the blast;
  • side jets from the M20's muzzle brake.
• Tracers leave exactly from the barrel, and stay aligned with it while a turret swings to follow a moving target. Each calibre has its own tracer, and 20 mm shells look heavier than rifle rounds. Tracers cool from white-yellow to orange-red as they travel.
• Reworked ejected casings:
  • they fall straight down whatever the barrel angle, bounce and spin as long as they carry energy, then slide, settle on their side and rest on the ground;
  • they sink slowly in water, and fall again if the block under them is removed;
  • up to 160 casings per turret stay on the ground for 30 seconds, then shrink away instead of vanishing; the number and duration can be lowered in the settings for slower computers;
  • they cost much less to draw, especially from a distance;
  • they no longer glow in the dark.
• Suppression: the screen edges darken when rounds pass close to you, more for heavy calibres, and the view flinches on the closest passes. A turret firing right next to you gives a lighter, shorter pulse on top of the camera shake, and the M134's sustained fire now rumbles the camera. Both can be turned down or off in the settings screen.
• Dedicated sound design: M134 mechanism and firing (including a cohesive A-10-style burst), M20 ammunition feed, a full M81 mortar set (firing, reload, tube elevation and traverse) and shared turret rotation.
• Room-aware reverb tail when the M134 stops firing, with options: volume, enable/disable, and automatic muting when Sound Physics Remastered is installed.
• In-game settings screen: Mods > Turret TaCZ > Config, for the screen effects, the casings and the M134 reverb.
• Smoother idle scanning and turret rotation.

Ballistics

• Material-aware penetration and ricochets. Rounds can pierce blocks and entities depending on material and impact angle, and lose speed, damage and brightness as they spend their energy.
• Ricochets follow the impact angle; spent rounds stop instead of flying on at full strength.
• Thin blocks resist less: panes, trapdoors, doors and slabs are easier to shoot through than full blocks, and rounds leave from the real back face.
• Rounds skip off the ground: grazing shots can ricochet off soil, sand and gravel, as they do in reality.
• New impact effects, in pixel art: glowing ricochet sparks, a small impact flash, earth plumes when a round skips off the ground, and debris thrown in the right direction.
• Block tags for modpacks (turrettacz:ballistics/*) to classify modded blocks as soft, wood, stone, metal, armored or bulletproof.
• Impact effects are decided by the server, so no duplicated or misplaced sparks.
• The penetration profiles can be tuned in the new server config.

M81 Thunder mortar

• Fixed the mortar getting stuck in a slight up-and-down motion without ever firing.
• The muzzle flash and the shell now leave from the mouth of the tube, instead of almost a block above it.
• The tube follows moving targets smoothly instead of in jerks, and leads them: it fires where the target will be when the shell lands.
• Range increased from 96 to 120 blocks.
• Aiming, target validation and shell launch share the same drag-aware trajectory.
• Clearer fire-control status: out of range, impossible arc, or path obstructed by terrain.
• Manual fire missions (X/Z coordinates, salvo size, safe range) were reworked.
• New reload cycle, launch pressure effects and camera shake.
• New sound set: new firing sounds, a reload synced with its animation, a tube motor that follows every elevation change and locks with a clunk at the end of its travel, and its own traverse sound when it turns.

Maintenance and repairs

• Component damage: frame, optics, servo and weapon. Damaged optics slow down aim lock, damaged servos slow rotation, and a damaged weapon fires slower.
• Field maintenance panel in the GUI, with repairs paid in materials.
• Destroyed turrets leave a recovery chest with their inventory and the turret item.

Targeting and allies

• Allied-fire protection: owners, teams, tamed companions and mod-provided allies are neither targeted nor hit.
  • Turrets hold fire when an ally crosses the line of fire, including the M134 during continuous fire.
  • Mortar shells and rounds deflected by a ricochet stay dangerous on purpose.
• Better targeting of modded hostile mobs.
• For modpacks and other mods: an API and two datapack tags:
  • turrettacz:force_hostile_targets forces entities to be treated as targets;
  • turrettacz:protected_from_turret_fire protects entities from turret fire.
• Better target filters, player access rules, whitelist controls and live diagnostics.

Ammunition and supply

• 20 mm HE shells, and 81 mm mortar shells, delivered through the built-in TaCZ gunpack.
• Compatible TaCZ ammo boxes can go straight into a turret's ammo slots.

Compatibility and stability

• Servers and clients must run the same Turret TaCZ version: the network protocol changed, and a mismatched client is refused at login with a clear message.
• Dedicated servers: turrets no longer touch client-only code on the server. All six turrets are checked on a real dedicated server with automated tests.
• Safer gunpack handling:
  • the built-in ammo pack never overrides data from other TaCZ gunpack addons;
  • the game log reports clearly when a gun or ammo a turret needs is missing;
  • worlds that ran pre-release test builds get TaCZ's gun smith table restored automatically, with a backup.
• Pistons: a turret follows its support block when a piston pushes or pulls it.
• Stale impact effects are dropped after network lag instead of bursting at once.

Languages

• Chinese (zh_cn) added, alongside English, French, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

Known issues and upcoming polish

• Volume balancing of the new sounds, based on your feedback.
• Dedicated ricochet, distant-shot and near-miss crack sounds.

As with any beta, back up your world before updating.