🐕 Better Dogs

• Compatibility Notice Added: ⚠️ Incompatible with Jade >= 26.2.11+ | Works on Jade < 26.2.10 or without Jade (Fix available in version 4.24.37+ on early access)

Make Wolves Worthy Companions. Smarter, Safer, Livelier.

Every Minecraft player knows the pain: you spend hours finding a wolf, tame it, and five minutes later it jumps into lava or walks off a cliff. Better Dogs overhauls wolf AI to make them effective partners. Powered by a high-performance Event-Driven AI Scheduler, they act efficiently without sacrificing performance.

Part of the Vanilla Outsider Collection — mods that refine the vanilla experience with modern standards.

✨ Features

🧠 Personality Intelligence

When tamed, wolves develop one of three permanent personalities:

• 💢 Aggressive: The Guardian. Proactively attacks hostile mobs and scouts ahead. Emits red dust particles (0xFF3333) on patrol.
• ❤️ Pacifist: The Healer. Avoids combat unless you are hurt. High health, low damage. Emits green/teal dust particles (0x00FF88) on patrol.
• ✨ Normal: The Classic. Balanced stats and standard vanilla-plus behavior. Emits gold/yellow dust particles (0xFFD700) on patrol.

🛡️ Tamed Wolf Guard Mode

Right-click a tamed wolf with a bone while sneaking (Shift + Right Click) to toggle Guard Mode (consuming exactly 1 bone) and anchor the wolf to its current spot. Guard Mode is locked to the owner.

Guard Mode Particles: To help you easily identify a patrolling or guarding wolf's personality from a distance, they emit tiny, custom-colored dust particles only while actively in Guard Mode (no particles are emitted during normal following or sitting):

• Patrol Patterns:
  • Aggressive: Paces in a circular/polygon shape along its outer perimeter sweep (80% range), pausing to scan outward for threats.
  • Normal: Sentry posture at the guard post (range = 0), or radial patrols outward and back (range > 0).
  • Pacifist: Close protective orbital circular pacing around the post.
• Auto-Targeting & Chase Caps: Normal and Aggressive guards automatically attack hostiles within their range but are capped from chasing targets too far to prevent them from being lured away.
• Watchdog Alarms & Alert Stance: Pacifist sentinels whine, freeze in a pointing/alert stance facing the direction of detected threats, and emit warning note particles when hostiles approach, applying Regeneration and Resistance to owners/allies if enabled.

📄 Wolf Ownership Transfer (Adoption)

Easily transfer ownership of your tamed wolves to other players using standard, vanilla-only Paper:

• Pending Adoption State: Shift + Right-Click your tamed wolf with a sheet of Paper to put them up for adoption. The wolf will sit down, halt pathfinding, clear all aggression, and emit a beautiful, sparkling trail of Rose Pink particles.
• Claiming the Wolf: Any non-owner player can right-click the adoptable wolf with an empty main hand to claim them as their new companion, instantly triggering heart particles and mutual overlay notifications.
• Safety Checks: The adoption state is automatically cancelled if the wolf takes any damage, or if the owner simply right-clicks the dog again normally to cancel, preventing accidental claims.

📏 Dynamic Size & Attribute Scaling

In the 26.2+ release stream, physical size is integrated directly with genetics and health using Minecraft's native Attributes.SCALE:

📏 Dynamic Follower Spread Scaling

Follow/spread spacing of wild and tamed wolf packs scales dynamically based on the number of active followers to prevent visual overcrowding.

🤝 Advanced Social AI

• Social Bonding (Affinity): Dogs form relationships within their pack. Socializing builds trust and reduces accidental infighting.
• Adult Correction: Aggressive adults discipline misbehaving puppies, preventing death loops.
• Pack Genetics: Puppies inherit personality traits and stats from their parents.
• Litter System: Wolves can produce multiple puppies in a single breed — each with independent personality rolls and stats.
• Unrelated Mate Prioritization: Tamed wolves prioritize breeding with unrelated pack mates in range.
• Selective Ground Food Refusal: Selective lineages can persistently refuse to eat food scavenged from the ground.

🛡️ Smart Survival AI

• Cliff Safety: Wolves detect fatal drops and airborne targets, stopping dangerous chases.
• Hazard & Magma Avoidance: Wolves intelligently pathfind around lava, fire, drowning hazards, and magma blocks.
• Collision & Push Safety: Tamed wolves colliding with an endangered packmate halt navigation to prevent pushing them into danger.
• Creeper Awareness: Wolves flee from hissing Creepers!
• Dog Feeding: Tamed dogs scavenge dropped raw or cooked food from the ground to restore health.
• Dynamic Whimpering Thresholds: Low-health whining is dynamically scaled based on max health (< 50% max HP).

📡 Behavioral Specialization & Commands

• Scouting: Aggressive dogs proactively range ahead to clear your path.
• Silent Alarm: Pacifist dogs emit a high-pitched whine and freeze to point toward nearby monsters.
• Select-and-Ride Command System: Sneak-right-click a tamed wolf with a standard Stick (or Blaze Rod / Breeze Rod) to command them to sit or ride inside vehicles, mounts, boats, minecarts, or modded chairs, forcing a proper visual sitting pose.

🎬 Video Tutorial: Select-and-Ride Command System
Click the thumbnail or button below to watch the feature showcase on YouTube

• Gift System: Loyal dogs bring you treasures based on their personality.
• Debug Tools: Use /betterdogs debug to test pack interactions and behaviors (gated behind OP permissions).

🏆 Custom Advancement System

A collection of custom advancements rewards exploring all mechanics:

🔍 Jade Mod HUD Integration

• Dynamic Health Display: Overrides Jade's default health bar to render exact numeric values (HP: X / Y) and hearts.
• Inbred Tag Indicator: Displays genetic inbred status directly in the Jade HUD tooltip.
• Favorite Treat Tooltip: Displays the dog's hidden Favorite Treat in Jade tooltips once discovered.

🌤️ Immersive Events

• Zoomies: Dogs burst into hyperactive sprints in the morning or when it starts raining.
• Restored Soundscapes & Group Howl: Under a full moon, wolves trigger pack-wide howling sessions.
• Storm Anxiety: Thunderstorms make dogs anxious — they whine, tremble, and pace nervously until comforted or sheltered.

🏰 Wild Wolf Territoriality

Wild wolf packs are dynamic, territorial entities led by a dominant leader with personality-driven outcomes (War, Merge, or Retreat) and 1v1 Leader Duels.

💻 Server-Side Optional & Client Gating

• Server-Side Optional: Fully compatible with vanilla clients!
• Dedicated Server Support: Client-only rendering logic is isolated to prevent server crashes.
• GUI Config Integration: Supports ModMenu + Cloth Config / YACL v3 in singleplayer mode.

  

• Performance Hardened: All AI logic is performance-optimized using DasikLibrary.

⚙️ Configuration (Native Game Rules)

💡 Config vs. In-Game GameRules: The global configuration file only defines default values for new worlds at creation time. If you have already created/opened a world, change settings in-game using the Edit Game Rules UI screen or the /gamerule command.

No messy config files. Better Dogs uses the Native Minecraft Game Rules system. All mod parameters are grouped into a dedicated "Better Dogs" category in the official UI.

If the game rule screen feels cluttered, we highly recommend installing Collapsible Game Rules to group settings into clean folders.

☕ Support

🇮🇩 Indonesian Users: SocioBuzz and Saweria support local payment methods (Gopay, OVO, Dana, etc.) if you want to support me without using PayPal/Ko-fi!

📜 Credits

📦 Modpack Permissions & Distribution:
You are free to include this mod in any modpack on any platform. However, the mod itself must be downloaded from its official distribution pages on Modrinth or CurseForge. Re-uploading or redistributing the mod jar file to third-party sites is strictly prohibited unless explicitly permitted by the creator.

License & Forks:
Since the source code is licensed under GNU GPLv3, you are fully permitted to fork the repository, make modifications, build your own versions, and distribute them under the terms of the GPLv3.