BlanketCon Participant Guide

What is BlanketCon?

BlanketCon is a collaborative event celebrating the art of Minecraft modding!

It features keynotes and panels hosted by members of the community, and takes place on a modded minecraft server full of booths that showcase mods and modding projects.

Once the event is announced, mod authors and other community members can sign up to build booths for their own projects, or pitch an event they'd like to host!

For Participants, BlanketCon can be broken down into the following "phases":

• Signups: Mods, booths, and events are submitted through the ModFest Discord.
• Testing: Participants collaboratively test the assembled modpack/server and fix bugs.
• Claiming: Participants reserve booth space, and plan builds with the team/eachother.
• Building: Participants build their booths, playtest them, and improve common areas.
• Showcase Weekend: Players tour the server, award voting and stage events are held.

Booth Submissions

Mod Submission Requirements

• Mods must be feature-complete when signups close - only updates to tweak, fix, and polish existing features can be submitted after this point.
• Mods must have visible, up-to-date source available - this helps the team and other participants screen mods for issues, and fix bugs and compatibility issues faster.
• Mods must be able to be modified to meet convention requirements - including fixes/removals for performance or compatibility, adventure mode restrictions, etc.

Returning Submission Considerations

If you're submitting a project that was shown at BlanketCon in a previous year, please:

• Bring what's new to the table - center added features/improvements in your booth!
• Make it fun, not an ad - we've seen it before, so give it more than a mini-booth!
• Keep it sensible - scale booth size to new content, don't just add more every year!

What is a booth?

Booths are themed builds that tourists can explore, that also showcase a modding project!
Your average booth showcases a mod, and contains:

• An entrance along a tourist path with a large sign displaying the name of the mod.
• One collectible Visitor Shard (Scattered Shards) placed at the start of the booth.
• A general description of the mod for tourists, written on Text Blocks (Glowcase).
• An interactive or walk-through showcase of the mod's features, which may utilize Item Providers (Glowcase) to allow tourists to obtain and utilize items added by the mod.
• Up to 3 collectible Bonus Shards that require interacting with the mod's mechanics to obtain. Walk-through booths may have just one of these shards at their exit instead.
• Credits for mod/booth creators, and a Hyperlink Block (Glowcase) to the mod page.

Booth Example Screenshots

Average Booth

not every booth has to be a singular building - any cohesive space can work well.
familiar magic (1.21) is comprised of small forest clearings, with a cave underneath.

on-path entrance signage helps tourists find your booth, and delineates it from the path so they wont wander into it unintentionally.

a mod summary explains what to expect from the booth, preventing confusion later on - this one also displays some formatting benefits of text blocks compared to signs.

a visitor shard helps tourists track booth completion - touching this one would collect it.

this area tutorializes a mechanic step-by step using text blocks. the item provider allows tourists to take a copy of the flint and steel item for use.

shards have a custom name, icon, and hint set by the booth author. reaching this one required using the teleport mechanic from the mod.

a mod page link lets tourists follow your mod if they enjoyed it, and placing it at the exit prevents the page from spoiling your booth!

Variations

some booths use very little text, and show mod features purely experientially.
Dust (Carnival) features a dusty mansion the player can brush to clean.

command blocks utilizing /shard award are used to award shards for challenges.
Confetti Stuff (Carnival) uses this for to award a shard in a cleaning race minigame.

mods with high-depth mechanics can use course-like booths, with 'levels' per shard.
Dream Burst Spirit Vector (Carnival) is laid out as a platformer - with a basic tutorial, advanced tutorial, and a challenging level ascending a mountain.

booths for non-mod projects like modpacks or websites are usually walk-through, but follow the same overall structure

for low-depth mods or on a time budget, a one-shard 'mini-booth' is often suitable
Obscure Masks (Carnival) uses acceptors to sell its cosmetic items, and that's it!

Common Areas

These features ill-suit most booths, but work great pitched as collaborative builds.

Hangout areas give tourists a break, and helps avoid group splits. (BC23)

Competitive arenas like this provide repeatable fun in multiplayer. (Carnival)
They're kept as separated attractions with their own warps, even if mod-themed.

Playgrounds and minigames add a fun non-booth activity to break things up. (1.21)
This allows skilled builders to get creative with other submitted mods!

Food stands help tourists get around, and add placeness to the world. (Carnival)

Decorative areas like this integrate with the world lore. (Carnival)
They contain nothing useful, but give tourists something interesting to look at.

Booth Claiming

Each booth starts as a Wool Claim - an in-world outline that shows its location and size.
Claims help participants collaborate on booth ideas and placement. They should:

• Be built 50-100 blocks above the ground, to avoid colliding with the build itself later.
• Be placed on one side of a tourist path - away from crossroads, spawn, and stage.
• Contain a vanilla sign displaying the project name, and optionally the booth concept.
• Indicate the booth entrance using white wool. Black wool can be used for back exits.
• Indicate if they'll be taller than two storeys, or contain a large underground element.

Once built, a screenshot and coordinates should be sent in for approval, whereupon the team will add a map marker, warp, and placeholders for an entrance sign and visitor shard!

Booth Building

When building your booth note that, by default, tourists cannot:

• Perform survival mode actions (break and place blocks, start fires, or place entities)
• Interact with containers such as chests, dispensers, shulker boxes, or hoppers.
• Interact with common decoratives such as trapdoors, flower pots, and fence gates.
• Interact with non-input redstone components such as repeaters and comparators.

However, tourists can:

• Interact with wooden doors, and open trapped chests (clear these on open)
• Interact with redstone input components such as buttons, plates, and levers.
• Collect items from Item Providers and place items into Item Acceptors (Glowcase)

Generally, when building your booth, try to:

• Make your booth a real place in your chosen part of the world! Whether that's a house, a shop, a workshop, a shelter, a spooky cave, a campsite, a caravan... Work with the existing setting to give it some character! - If you need suggestions, just ask.
• Keep your booth roughly the size it takes to show your mod - walking is boring!

Helpful Utilities

Glowcase offers various displays for text, items, sprites, sounds and more.
Everything is resource-driven, so send any custom assets you'd like to use to the team.

Arealib allows builders to define Areas that affect players and entities.
This can be utilized by mods - Meret uses areas to add location-specific music.
You can also use Area Tools allow item use only inside a specific area.

Barricade's barriers limit movement, filtering by entity type or movement direction.

WorldEdit and Axiom let you make large, detailed modifications to the world.
They're particularly useful terraforming, clearing space, and moving builds.

Fireblanket makes entities like armor stands, item frames, and spawn egg mobs invulnerable when placed by hand.
To avoid this, use a command block with /summon, or a dispenser hoppered up to an item provider.

Booth Layouts

To make showcase worlds easy to navigate despite their size, we adhere to some key tricks:

• The map can be broken into looping tour paths (or "streets") defined before claiming.
• Every booth has its entrance along one of these tour paths, effectively giving it a "street address"
• Booths can share a path entrance. To do so, the entrance should form a smaller looping path - as if each booth is a numbered unit at the same address.
  • Like booths, these smaller paths should also be a "place", with clear signage.

This creates a natural "checklist" of streets and booths that tourists can complete as if they're doing a paper round. Easy!

Common Areas

Your building skills don't need to be isolated to your booth!

Starting from claiming, participants are welcome to collaborate with the team and eachother to improve paths and existing common areas like spawn and the stage.

Once building starts, feel free to suggest and help build new (setting-friendly) common areas! Use mods where you can - food stands, lookout spots, arenas and races, minigames, or small decorative areas. Just run it by the team first to check for potential tourist issues!

Event Submissions

Stage events are a great way to share you or your team's experience with modding projects!

Stage events are scheduled in 1 hour slots. You can check out Recordings from BC23 for examples of previous panels and keynotes.

When submitting a stage event, you should already know:

• The title
• Who else is hosting it
• A rough outline of the content

You'll be able to display slideshow images during your stage event via Glowcase, but keep the text nice and large! Screen blocks appear smaller in-game. Try to have your stage event completely prepared (with your slides in-game) well before launch, in case anything gets hectic.

Make sure you let the team know what times during the weekend you're available to present. You'll have a time scheduled for you when your stage event is approved.