Resource pack

The resource pack system is an API replacement for texture packs and a way for players to further customize their Minecraft experience.

Resource packs allow players to customize textures, music, sounds, language files, end credits, splashes and fonts without any code modification. When the resource packs support modfication of code, every mod/plugin will be its own resource pack, with vanilla incorporated as a resource pack by itself; users will be able to apply multiple resource packs at once. Texture Packs must be converted into a resource pack to work with the latest Minecraft update. It can be done with Dinnerbone's "Texture Ender".

Texture Packs
All texture pack functionality has been incorporated into resource packs as of 1.6. All prior texture packs must first be converted to be usable by the game. A tool called Minecraft Texture Ender is available from Mojang to automatically convert "unstitched" (1.5 compatible) texture packs to resource packs. "Stitched" packs, which are texture packs meant for versions prior to 1.5, must first be unstitched with Unstitcher. Converted packs function as texture packs when loaded in the game.

Additional functionality
Resource packs include a new metadata format that allows plugin developers in addition to Mojang themselves to easily include whole new types of resources such as sounds, language files, music, etc. with minimal difficulty. The new format will also allow Minecraft to more easily detect out of date packs, while still being able to load them. Resource packs use the entire assets folder in the minecraft directory and "1.6.jar" (a new version format in the new launcher) for usage of additional resources, and include pack.mcmeta (used to describe the resource pack like pack.txt before 1.6.1), and pack.png (a picture for the resource pack, same as texture packs).

Designing a Resource Pack
To make a Resource pack, first go to the minecraft folder. On a PC, it will be called .minecraft and it will be in the AppData folder under your user name. On a Mac, it is called minecraft and you can find it by going to the Library folder under your user name, and opening Application Support.

Once you've gotten to minecraft, open the  folder. Create a new folder for your new resource pack, naming it whatever you want your resource pack to be called.

pack.mcmeta
Now the first thing you'll need is a  file. This lets Minecraft know that the folder is a resource pack and it also allows you to customize the description that appears when you're selecting which resource pack to use in the game. To create your  file, open a text editor and paste in the following lines:

{   "pack":{ "pack_format":1, "description":" My Resource Pack " } }

You can leave the description as My Resource Pack or you can change it to something more exciting. If you decide you need something with fancy characters, you can look up the code for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters Say you want to use the letter thorn: Þ You'd put that in as. Just make sure you use a backslash and not a forward slash.

Whether you change the description or not, you'll need to save your text file as. Make sure your text editor is actually saving it in plain text rather than something special like rich text format.

pack.png
If you want to make a new image to show in the resource pack selection screen, you can make a 128x128 pixel png and call it. It goes in the same place as

assets
Next you need to create a folder called  and create a folder called   inside it. This inner  is where you'll put all of the custom files you'll create to make your texture pack unique. Why you need a folder with nothing inside but another folder is beyond me, but that's how it works.

Now you're ready to find the files that you want to customize. You don't need to put in anything that isn't changing from the default because Minecraft will automatically use the default for any missing files. So say you want everything to be the same, except that you want to make your brick texture purple instead of red. You'll need to create a new image file with purple bricks, but it needs to have the same name and file path as the original. So for the bricks, you'll need to go into the  folder inside assets, and create a folder called. Inside that, you'll need to make a  folder, and inside that you can put your purple brick image file, making sure to call it.

You might be wondering how to figure out what the names are and what the file structure is, and how to find the original files themselves if you only want to make a slight change rather than starting from scratch. For that you have to look in one of two places, depending on the type of file that you're changing.

If you want to make custom icons, music, records, or sounds, go back to the first  folder that contains. Now open up the  folder (this is a different one from the one you made). You should see folders labeled,  ,   and. Inside, you'll find the original files for each category. If you want to update an icon, just copy the one you want and then go back to the  folder that you recently created. Create a new  folder inside, and paste your icon file into it. Now you can open that file and modify it however you like, and it will still have the correct name and file path.

To find the files for fonts, languages, texts, and textures, it's a little bit more involved. Go back to the first  folder that contains   and this time, open up the   folder. Inside you should see a folder that corresponds to the current version (i.e. 1.6.2). Open that to find the 1.6.2.jar file and open that jar file using 7-Zip or Archive Utility or whatever unzipping program you have. Inside the new folder that it creates, you'll see a whole slew of class files, but somewhere in there you'll find yet another  folder with yet another   folder inside. Open them up and you'll see folders called,  ,  and. Again, you'll find the default files inside and you can copy the ones you want to change and put them into the  folder that's hidden in the depths of your new   folder.

If that's too confusing, it might be helpful to look at a video tutorial or two. You can also look into downloading a default resource pack that you can just copy and modify, deleting the branches of folders that you don't need. That might be simpler, depending on what you're doing.

Adding Languages
You can add new language to Minecraft by resource pack. Assume that your language code (might be ISO 639) is 'LANG' and country/region code is 'COUNTRY' (might be ISO 3166-1),  will be: {   "pack":{ "pack_format":1, "description":" Resource pack sample " },   "language":{ "LANG_COUNTRY":{ "name":" Language name ", "region":" Country/region name ", "bidirectional":false }   } }

Then, put  file to   folder. Choose your resource pack, open language selection screen, new language will be there.

NOTE: As of 1.6, you cannot choose multiple resource packs at once. If you want to use new language and texture pack, you need to combine them manually.

.mcmeta Animation example
{    "animation":{ "frametime":1, "frames":[{ "index":0, "time": 0 }                   1,2,3,4,5,6,4,2]    } }

NOTE: all you really need to make a texture animated is:

{  "animation": {} }

Saved as the file you want animated (like stone).png.mcmeta. It then need to be placed in the same folder as your texture (stone).png is located in.

Usage
This function would be great for adventure maps where you'd want to change the music of a certain disc, or if you'd want to change the end credits to something more user-friendly. You could even change the name of the item itself in Survival maps. And of course, changing the textures of things like texture packs have done. Keep in mind that you can also change the words of the Death Messages, Title-Screen options and more. However, the resource packs aren't there yet for servers, like Texture packs did. This will be fixed in a future update.