Villager Brain Config

A lightweight, highly optimized mod that makes villager pathfinding behavior fully configurable

Features

• Per-block malus control

  Customize how villagers treat different blocks in pathfinding. Blocks are configurable to any malus, block and item tags supported

• Profession-based malus

  Configure different path preferences per villager profession.

• Global block penalty caching

  Pathfinding results are cached for maximum efficiency across multiple villagers

• Native modded support

  The config file supports any modded blocks or professions

Example Use Cases

• Prevent villagers from walking into trap blocks like campfires or magma
• Make water paths viable for fishermen only
• Design custom village layouts with optimized navigation paths
• Prevent villagers from wandering off paths
• Add personality to each profession type

Pathfinding Visualizations

Smart villager takes the short path to get to his job site

Stupid villager walks off the screen to get to his job site

Planned features

• Per-villager-type rules (eg. plains villagers, taiga villagers)

Performance

Villager Brain Config is designed to be almost invisible in impact or even faster than vanilla

Test case

• 250 villagers
• Each pathing to a unique workstation in a grid
• Compared vanilla to modded using Spark profiler

Results

Vanilla Logic

Modded Logic

Mod total

Configuration

All settings are in a villager-brain-config.json file in the config folder.

{
  "walk_on_block_penalties": {
    "minecraft:grass_block": 4.0,
    "minecraft:dirt_path": 0.0,
    "default": 5.0
  },
  "walk_through_block_penalties": {
    "minecraft:lava": -1.0,
    "minecraft:tall_grass": 20,
    "default": 0.0
  },
  "actions_penalties": {
    "jump": 10.0
  },
  "professions": {
    "minecraft:farmer": {
      "walk_on_block_penalties": {
        "minecraft:farmland": 0.0,
        "minecraft:grass_block": 2.0
      }
    },
    "minecraft:fisherman": {
      "walk_on_block_penalties": {
        "minecraft:water": 0.0
      },
      "walk_through_block_penalties": {
        "minecraft:water": 0.0
      }
    }
  },
  "avoids": [
    {
      "block": "minecraft:lava",
      "radius": 3,
      "penalty": -1.0
    }
  ]
}