Because of its accessible gameplay along with its nearly limitless creative ceiling, Minecraft remains one of the most influential and popular games in history. As updates are continually released, Minecraft players continue to innovate on previous creations as well as come up with entirely new ones.
In-game creations tend to fall into one of three categories: art pieces, structures, and Redstone creations. However, there are creations outside these three categories that fall into the use of command blocks or data packs. For example, though Redstone programming is near limitless, the creation of a highly mobile Minecraft tank requires the use of command blocks.
As for Minecraft data packs, they allow for the creation of interesting new items, recipes, and functions without the manipulation of the game’s code. Data packs allow for unique creations like the Five Night’s at Freddy’s animatronics in Minecraft due to the packs adding new animations and models. Recently, a Reddit post documented a data pack adding a new model for the game’s kelp that was based on another undersea title.
That popular title is Subnautica, a survival game that takes players beneath the waves of a fully submerged planet chock-full of beautiful biomes and strange creatures. Reddit user jjkay03 was particularly enamored with Subnautica’s glowing kelp species and decided to recreate the kelp using a data pack. The result was a Minecraft version of the kelp that used one of the game’s flower models to simulate the glowing masses on the Subnautica kelp, creating an orange-yellow hue similar to that of the Minecraft bee hive computer.
Though the creation is certainly pretty, Reddit users offered some advice for how it could be further improved. For example, one user suggested using the block variation feature to cause the flowers to spawn all over the kelp rather than just at the top; this change would cause the flowers to be randomly generated along the kelp so that some blocks would have flowers while others were normal. Another user suggested that the flowers needed a glow effect to truly capture the feeling of Subnautica kelp; jjkay03 noted that with the right shaders, the kelp gives off the effect of a glow. Other users jokingly suggested that jjkay03 should add the menacing leviathan as a new mob.
While players will always be impressed by complicated creations like the functioning Minecraft graphing calculator, sometimes small changes to a game are the most important ones. In the case of jjkay03’s Subnautica kelp, the change would cause oceans to light up at night, creating a simple but beautiful addition to any Minecraft world.
Minecraft is available on Mobile, PC, PS5, PS4, Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.
