Customization

The long-term goal of Hack/Mine is to be thoroughly customizable, such that users can create their own content and share it with the community. As of version 0.6.4, this is starting to become a reality, as users can create their own spells via Spellscript and create their own classes and skill-sets through a configuration file (hsmConfig.JSON) located in the <.minecraft>/spells/ directory. This information propagates over the network automatically, meaning each Hack/Mine server can offer its own unique RPG experience.

You'll definitely want to use a syntax-highlighted text editor like Sublime Text when customizing Hack/Mine. A Sublime package for Spellscript is also available here.

The JSON Data Format

To customize hsmConfig.JSON, you first need to understand the JSON data format. A .JSON file is simply a text file, except its text must be organized according to a certain set of rules. If you're a programmer, you can probably understand the precise definition given here, but otherwise, read on.

JSON has three basic textual components: values, objects, and arrays. A value is either a string of characters enclosed in quotation marks, a real number, an array, an object, true, false, or null. An array is simply a comma-separated list of values enclosed by square brackets. And finally, an object is a comma-separated list of pairs enclosed by curly braces, where a pair is simply a string and a value separated by a colon. That's it! Here's some example JSON data:

{
    "someNumber" : 34,
    "anotherNumber" : 21.4,
    "aString" : "yo dawg",
    "anArray" : [2, 3, 5.2, null, "hi!"]
    "anotherObject" : { "herp" : 0, "aderp": 1, "alerp" : 2 }
    "jsonIsSuperAmazing" : true,
    "jsonIsComplicated" : false
}

Now you're ready to customize hsmConfig.JSON...

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