Primitive Refined

Important

Development has moved to the bertie monorepo. This repository is retained read-only for historical tags, releases, and issues.

Primitive Refined is an early-game, Create-powered storage network for NeoForge 1.21.1. It uses Refined Storage’s network and grid implementations, but replaces FE power and RS cables with a dedicated family of Create kinetics: the shafts and cogs that carry rotation also define the storage-network topology.

Create and Refined Storage are required dependencies.

Machines

Part	Stress impact	Role
Primitive Controller	0	Admits Create power and activates one primitive network
Arcanetic Shaft, Cog and Gearbox	0	Carry rotation and network connectivity
External Reader	1	Exposes an adjacent inventory as external storage
Mechanical Grid	5	Refined Storage grid interface
Mechanical Crafting Grid	10	Grid interface with a 3×3 crafting matrix

A node is active while its kinetic block is turning, its Create network is not overstressed, and its primitive network has exactly one controller. Each machine charges stress at its own position; the controller’s displayed total is informational and is not charged a second time.

Kinetic topology

KineticConnectionStrategy delegates adjacency to Create’s RotationPropagator.isConnected. Primitive Refined therefore has one topology rather than separate kinetic and storage graphs: breaking a rotational connection also splits the storage network.

Arcanetic kinetics form a closed family and do not mesh with ordinary Create shafts or cogs. RotationPropagatorMixin enforces the separation at Create’s common rotation-speed modifier. PrFamilyGuard drops a newly placed block when it would form a cross-family connection, giving the player immediate feedback instead of leaving a dead-looking join.

The controller’s top face is the intentional exception. A horizontal Create large cogwheel drives that face; the controller’s other faces remain arcanetic and carry the primitive network.

Storage behavior

The Mechanical Grid and Mechanical Crafting Grid use Refined Storage’s network components, menus and screens. PrNetworkNodeContainer adapts RS node behavior to Create block entities: activity comes from rotation, stress and controller count, while network connections follow the faces that are kinetically meshed. Upstream code reused or adapted by this project is identified in NOTICE.

The External Reader delegates adjacent storage to RS’s registered external-storage providers. The first provider that moves a resource wins, idle readers reduce their scan rate, neighbour changes wake them promptly, and last-modified ordering survives reloads. The reader does not expose RS’s filter, priority, access-mode or void-excess configuration.

Primitive Refined intentionally has no disks or storage blocks. A network contains only what its External Readers can access.

Rendering

Kinetic parts are rendered by Flywheel visuals so shafts and cogs turn with their Create network. Static block models omit those parts to avoid rendering stationary geometry over the instances; item models include them because inventory rendering has no Flywheel visual.

The controller, grids and reader synchronize their server-computed operating state for goggle tooltips and lit models. Client tooltips render synchronized state instead of trying to inspect server-only network or inventory data.

Current limitations

• There are no recipes yet; blocks are available from the creative tab.
• There is no RS security-manager equivalent or autocrafting machinery.
• Cross-family blocks created without a placement event, such as by world generation or /setblock, are left as inert joins instead of being dropped.
• With the Flywheel backend disabled, rotating partials have no fallback renderer.
• Several original registry IDs (p_grid, p_crafting_grid, soulstained_shaft, and obsidiansteel_cogwheel_soulstained) predate the current display names. They remain stable to preserve existing worlds.

Building and testing

The project uses Java 21, Gradle 8.14.4 from the shared Nix environment, NeoForge 21.1.233, ModDevGradle 2.0.134, Minecraft 1.21.1, Create 6.0.10 and Refined Storage 2.0.9. There is intentionally no Gradle wrapper.

From a shell containing the shared toolchain:

bertie-ci build --project . --output-dir .bertie-ci/artifact
bertie-ci unit-test --project .

The unit suite covers the External Reader’s multi-provider storage semantics and its scan pacing, the grid menus’ slot layout, and verifies that every registered block ships its blockstate, block model, item model, loot table and English name. Test code lives under src/test.

CI keeps building and testing as separate jobs. Release workflows consume the artifact from the build job and do not maintain another build recipe.

Assets and authoring tools

Derived textures are distributed with permission from their respective authors. See NOTICE; those permissions are project-specific and are not granted to forks by the Unlicense.

The repository includes four optional Python tools:

Script	Purpose
tools/extract_assets.py	Extract dependency assets into the ignored tools/extracted/ tree
tools/preview.py	Render the subset of Minecraft block models used by this project
tools/make_reader_textures.py	Regenerate the External Reader textures
tools/make_gearbox.py	Regenerate the gearbox texture, models, blockstate and loot table

The generated reader and gearbox assets are checked in, but their generator scripts are the source of truth. Do not hand-edit generated output.

tools/preview.py requires Pillow and NumPy. It does not render block-entity or Flywheel visuals. Minecraft normalizes model UV coordinates by 16 regardless of Blockbench’s texture_size authoring hint; the previewer follows that behavior.

License

Original code is released under The Unlicense. Third-party and derived assets are excluded as described in NOTICE.