Village Railways

Server-side only or Single Player worlds with Option to control the server from the client.

Villages in Minecraft sit hundreds or sometimes thousands of blocks apart with nothing but wilderness between them. Village Railways joins them with minecart railways. Each village gets lines to up to three of its nearest neighbours. Everything is vanilla blocks, so the railways stay in the world even if you remove the mod later.

It runs on the server and/or Client side. Players can join the servers with a normal vanilla client and don't need to install anything.

What gets built

The track stays level wherever it can. A low hill gets an open cut, a mountain gets a beautiful tunnel, and rivers and ravines get bridges with pillars and railings. If a tunnel breaks into a cave on the way, the line crosses the cave on a bridge. The powered rails run off redstone torches hidden under the track, so you won't see torches every few blocks.

Every village has one station just outside it, where its lines meet. Groups of villages that would otherwise be cut off from the rest are joined by a longer double line, with two tracks all the way, and where one of those comes in, the station may be a large one with a map of the network on the wall. Bridges are double track on every line, and every switch comes with a lever.

On long stretches there are halts, small brick huts by the track with a minecart dispenser, roughly one every 800 blocks. Long tunnels get one at each end.

Sea tubes are off by default. If you enable them, a line that meets open water carries on along the sea bed in a glass tube covering two tracks, with prismarine ribs every 5 blocks standing on columns. With them off, lines stay away from the ocean and only bridge narrow straits.

Old worlds

Out of the box, lines are only generated in newly explored land, so nothing anyone has built gets touched.

If you want lines through the old land too, a server admin, or the player in a singleplayer world, can force the generation on the existing chunks, in the settings screen ("Open the existing land to lines…", then "Backup and Build") or with /villagerailways openland. On the next server start the world is backed up into the backups folder first, then the lines are planned through the old land and built as it loads. Lines still keep clear of villages and other structures the game generated, but they know nothing about what players have built, so houses, farms and redstone in their way get cut through, and only the backup can undo that.

Maps

With starterMap=1 in the settings, every player joining the world for the first time gets one map of the network, and only that once. /villagerailways mapitem gives you a vanilla map of the network that reaches much farther than a normal map would. /villagerailways mapwall gives you a set of them to hang as a wall in item frames, the same kind the large stations have.

Roadmap

Plans for the next versions, in no set order:

• More structures along the lines.
• More styles for tunnels, bridges, stations and the lines themselves, so a line through the desert looks different from one through a snowy forest.
• Compatibility tests with more world gen mods.

Versions

There are files for Minecraft 26.3, 26.2, 26.1, 1.21.11, 1.21.1 and 1.20.1, on Fabric (needs Fabric API) and NeoForge, or Forge on 1.20.1. Mod Menu is optional on Fabric and only adds the settings screen. A Paper plugin is on GitHub.

The generation is optimized to be fast and accurate, and it shows its progress in the log and on the loading screen. Keep in mind that, because of some limitations of Minecraft versions before 26.3, the first start of a world takes a bit longer there (around 40 seconds).

Compatibility with Other World Gen mods

• RoadWeaver 2.3.2+26.3 - compatible. Both mods plan at the first start of a world, so with RoadWeaver that start takes longer.
• Tectonic 3.0.32 - compatible. Tectonic has more ocean and fewer villages, so the network comes out smaller.

Settings

With the mod on your client you get a settings screen, through Mod Menu on Fabric or the Config button in the NeoForge mod list. On a server that runs the mod, admins (permission level 3) can change the server's settings from there, and in singleplayer the world's owner always can. The sea tubes also have their own switch on the Create World screen.

Everything is in config/village_railways.properties, with a comment on each line. Changes apply on the next server start. The full list of settings and commands is in the README on GitHub.

Feedback

Found a bug or have an idea? Come to Discord or open an issue. If it's a bug, the seed and the coordinates help a lot, and screenshots of your lines are always welcome.

Logo icon: Railway by Nueng_wana from Flaticon.