Fluids

Custom liquids that flow and swim like water, with their own colour, look, light, effects and bucket.

A fluid is a liquid of its own on the server: it flows, makes sources, fills buckets and does things to whoever touches it. Players’ games see it as water, so swimming, flowing and falling into it feel exactly like water, and it is painted with its own colour and look.

items/fluids/shimmer/shimmer.yml

shimmer:
  type: fluid
  color: "#C9A8FF"
  style:
    colors: ["#F5B8FF", "#A8F0FF", "#C9A8FF"]
    pattern: shimmer
  light: 7
  effects: ["levitation 10s 1"]
  bucket-texture: shimmer_bucket.png
  name: "<light_purple>Shimmer Bucket"

Reload, run /lodeitems give shimmer and pour it. The bucket has the same id as the fluid; an empty vanilla bucket picks a source back up.

Lode Items comes with two examples in items/fluids/: Shimmer (glowing opal, makes you float) and Sulfur Acid (yellow and bubbling, hurts and poisons).

Looks

color · colour · default: "#3F76E4"

Its water colour. Every player sees at least this, including players with shader packs.

style · section

How it is painted over water’s ripples:

Key	Default	Does
colors	color	Up to 6 colours it moves through. One colour is steady.
pattern	swirl	flat, swirl, shimmer or pulse.
speed	1	How fast it moves, 0 to 20. 0 is still.
opacity	0.75	0 to 1. Water is about 0.7.
glow	false	Ignores darkness, like lava.

Without style, it is plain water in color.

texture · png

Your own texture instead of water’s. Animated textures have their frames stacked downwards, like vanilla. At most 16 frames, and all fluids’ textures together must stay small (they’re scaled to 32 px).

flowing-texture · png

Drawn on flowing tops and on the sides, and moves with the flow. Lines along the flow look best. Defaults to texture.

frame-time · ticks · default: "2"

How long each frame shows.

interpolate · boolean · default: "true"

Blends each frame into the next, like vanilla water.

light · 0 to 15 · default: "0"

Light its sources give off. Flowing parts don’t glow, only sources. This is also the one glow players with shader packs see.

Players with shader packs

Shader packs (Iris, OptiFine) draw water themselves, so those players don’t see style or texture: they see the fluid in its color, plus its light.

shader-colors · list

Up to 6 colours shader-pack players see instead of just color, laid out as a still patchwork of 4×4 areas that the game blends into soft gradients. Use colours close to each other; very different ones show as patches.

Behaviour

effects · list

Potion effects while touching it, as name [duration] [level]: ["levitation 10s 1", "poison 5s 2"]. The duration defaults to 10 seconds, the level to 1.

damage · number · default: "0"

Health taken while touching it (2 is one heart), as often as the target can be hurt again.

flow-speed · ticks · default: "5"

Ticks between flow steps. Water is 5, lava 30.

flow-distance · 1 to 8 · default: "7"

How far it flows from a source on flat ground. Water is 7.

infinite · boolean · default: "true"

Two sources make a third, like water.

The bucket

bucket-texture, name, lore and every other item option set up the bucket. Without bucket-texture it looks like a water bucket. It stacks to 1 unless you set stack-size. Pouring fires a normal block place, so protection plugins apply.

Limits

• The server reserves fluids.slots fluids at startup (default 8, at most 24) in config.yml. Raising it needs a restart.
• Adding a fluid or changing its color or shader-colors needs a restart, because the colours are sent through biomes that are set up when the server starts. Reload warns when that’s the case. Other options apply on reload.
• Real water in the same 4×4×4 area as a fluid takes the fluid’s colour.
• Lode Items’ fluid look replaces the game’s terrain shader, so another resource pack that replaces it can’t be used at the same time.
• Bedrock players see plain water.

Never lower fluids.slots below what you use: placed fluids in the removed slots turn to air.