TreeCapitator Mod — Guide

How Tree Felling Works

To fell a tree, break one of its logs with a tool the mod recognizes for that tree type. The mod then traces the connected logs that make up the trunk and breaks them together, yielding the same drops you would normally get from harvesting each log.

To reduce the power this gives the player, the mod can make the first log of a tree take longer to break. This is controlled by the treeHeightDecidesBreakSpeed option: when enabled, taller trees take more time to start chopping, so cutting down a large tree is no longer instant. If you prefer the original fast behavior, you can turn this option off.

Felling is meant to feel like a faster version of normal harvesting rather than an instant-clear tool, so the trunk is what gets broken; leaf handling is treated separately (see Leaf Handling).

Leaf Handling

TreeCapitator can also clear the leaves attached to a felled tree, but by default it is conservative about which leaves it removes.

By default the mod only destroys leaf blocks that have already been marked for natural decay. In vanilla Minecraft, a log block contains code that marks nearby leaves within a certain distance for decay, so those leaves are recognized and cleared. Some custom log blocks from other mods do not include this leaf-decay code, so their surrounding leaves are never marked for decay. In that case TreeCapitator, in its default configuration, sees that the leaves are not marked and leaves them behind.

This behavior can be changed with the requireLeafDecayCheck option. Setting it to false bypasses the decay check so that leaves are destroyed even when a modded log fails to mark them for decay. Leaf destruction overall is governed by the destroyLeaves setting; with it enabled, leaves connected to the felled tree are removed alongside the trunk subject to the decay-check rule above.

Modded Tree Support

The Forge version of TreeCapitator has the ability to fell trees from other mods. Whether a particular modded tree works depends on configuration: the mod can only recognize a tree if its log and leaf blocks are registered, either through the bundled defaults, the Ore Dictionary scan, or entries you add yourself.

To improve automatic compatibility, the Forge build scans the Forge Ore Dictionary for tree-related blocks that have not been explicitly registered and adds them to TreeCapitator. For trees that are still not detected, you can add configuration entries describing their log and leaf blocks so the mod knows how to fell them.

The mod also ships with default configuration for a number of popular tree-adding mods. Documented default-supported mods include Applied Energistics, Biomes O'Plenty, DivineRPG, ExtraBiomesXL, Forestry, Gems Plus, Gravitation Suite, IndustrialCraft 2, Mekanism, MineFactory Reloaded, Natura, Railcraft, RedPower 2, Thaumcraft, Tinkers' Construct, and The Twilight Forest. Trees from mods not in this list can be enabled by adding your own config entries.