🐕 Better Dogs

"Make Wolves Worthy Companions. Smarter, Safer, Livelier."

Every Minecraft player knows the pain: you spend hours finding and taming a wolf, and five minutes later it jumps into a 2-block lava pit or walks off a fatal cliff. Better Dogs overhauls vanilla wolf AI from the ground up to turn them into intelligent, durable, and highly capable companions. Powered by a high-performance Event-Driven AI Scheduler, every mechanic operates with near-zero tick overhead.

Part of the Vanilla Outsider Collection — modern mods designed to refine and elevate the vanilla Minecraft experience.

[!NOTE] 1 Jar 1 Version Policy: I build 1 dedicated JAR for each Minecraft version (e.g. MC 1.20.1, MC 1.21.1, MC 1.21.11, MC 26.1.2, MC 26.2, MC 26.3). Please download the exact build that matches your Minecraft installation.

Dependency Notice:

• Modern Era (MC 26.x+): Requires Fabric API AND Dasik Library.
• Legacy & Transitional Eras (MC 1.20.1, MC 1.21.x): Self-contained builds requiring only Fabric API.

✨ Features

🧠 Personality Intelligence

Upon taming, every wolf permanently develops one of three distinct personalities with custom stats, traits, and ambient patrol particles:

• 💢 Aggressive (The Vanguard): Proactively scouts up to 10 blocks ahead of the owner, targets hostiles up to 20 blocks away (+15% speed, -15% damage, -10 HP offset, 10% low-health flee chance). Emits red patrol dust (0xFF3333).
• ❤️ Pacifist (The Sentinel): Follows closely within 6 blocks (+20 HP bonus, -10% speed, +15% damage, +50% knockback, 100% low-health flee chance). Emits green/teal patrol dust (0x00FF88). Warns you of nearby monsters with vocal growls and alert stances.
• ✨ Normal (The Balanced Companion): Follows reliably within 10 blocks (balanced stats, 50% low-health flee chance). Emits golden patrol dust (0xFFD700).

🛡️ Tamed Wolf Guard Mode

Shift-Right-Click (Sneak + Right-Click) your tamed wolf with a Bone in your main hand to anchor them to their current spot in Guard Mode (consuming 1 bone).

• Posture Preservation: Seated wolves remain sitting in a stationary sentry posture at their guard post without breaking posture.
• Personality Patrol Styles:
  • Aggressive: Active polygon perimeter sweep patrolling up to 8 blocks around the post.
  • Normal: Radial sweeps up to 6 blocks, returning to the center.
  • Pacifist: Tight orbital circular sweeps within 4 blocks.
• Watchdog Alarms & Threat Pointing: When hostile mobs approach a Pacifist guard, the dog stands, freezes, looks directly at the closest monster, emits directional red dust particles, and growls according to its unique sound variant.

📄 Wolf Ownership Transfer (Adoption)

Transfer ownership of your tamed companion to another player safely and seamlessly:

1. Initiate Adoption: Shift-Right-Click your tamed wolf with Paper. The wolf sits down, clears aggression, and emits a sparkling Rose Pink particle trail.
2. Claiming: Any non-owner player can right-click the adoptable wolf with an empty main hand to claim them as their new companion.
3. Safety Protection: Taking any damage or a normal right-click by the original owner immediately cancels the adoption state.

🦯 Select-and-Ride Command System

Command your tamed wolves to ride vehicles, mounts, boats, minecarts, or modded chairs with accurate sitting poses:

🎬 Video Tutorial: Select-and-Ride Command System Click the thumbnail or button below to watch the feature showcase on YouTube

• Selection: Shift-Right-Click your tamed wolf with a standard Stick, Blaze Rod, or Breeze Rod to select them (plays a chime and emits a golden particle ring).
• Mount Target: Right-click any vehicle (Boat, Minecart, Horse, Camel, Donkey, Mule, Skeleton Horse, or modded Chair/Stair) to direct the wolf into the seat.
• Natural Sitting Pose: Wolves maintain a natural, upright sitting pose while riding vehicles instead of floating or standing awkwardly.

📏 Dynamic Size & Attribute Scaling

Every wolf features continuous, genetics-driven body scaling (70% to 145%) utilizing Minecraft's native Attributes.SCALE:

• Physical & Stat Correlation: Physical size scales health pools and attack damage proportionally.
• Unique Sound Variant Lottery: Scale, genetics, and personality deterministically seed a unique audio sound variant (Classic, Big, Cute, Puglin, Angry, Grumpy, Sad) with individual pitch offsets.

🤝 Advanced Social AI & Pack Genetics

• Multi-Puppy Litters: Breeding can produce litters of 1 to 4 puppies, each rolling independent personality traits, mutations, and scale factors.
• Adult Disciplinary Correction: Aggressive adult pack members gently discipline mischievous puppies to prevent chaotic death loops.
• Food Quirks: Dogs possess individual dietary traits — enthusiastic "Hoovers" eagerly scavenge dropped food from the ground, while selective lineages refuse ground scraps.
• Social Bonding & Affinity: Packmates build mutual affinity over time, preventing accidental infighting and suppressing blood feud retaliation.

🐕 Harmless Pack Play Sparring AI Suite

Tamed dogs within the same pack can now engage in natural, non-lethal play fighting and social hierarchy dynamics:

• 🤼 Playful Sparring Rounds: Co-owned dogs of the same pack initiate gentle sparring sessions featuring playful circles, dynamic pouncing, and tail wagging. Play fighting is completely non-lethal and never causes death.
• 🐺 Adult Hierarchy Correction Snap: Calm adult pack members deliver a gentle discipline snap (0 damage to puppies with a gentle growl, 0.5 hearts to adults) when overly energetic packmates pounce repeatedly (3–5 times). This immediately calms the room, silences alerts, and suppresses retaliation feuds.
• ⏱️ Play Timeout Penalties: Disciplined dogs receive a 10-minute timeout penalty (betterdogs:playPenaltyMinutes), adopting a subdued tail posture and emitting gentle submissive whines when petted.
• 🍖 Comforting Treat Soothing: Feeding a disciplined dog comforting treats (bones, cooked or raw meats) soothes their mood, reducing their timeout penalty by 10% per treat.
• 👥 Pack Audience Spectating: Nearby packmate dogs within 6 blocks pause to spectate sparring matches with excited tail wags.

🛡️ Smart Survival AI

• Cliff Safety: Wolves detect fatal falls (>3 blocks) and ledge edges, halting dangerous chases.
• Hazard Avoidance: Intelligently paths around lava, fire, drowning hazards, and Magma Blocks.
• Wolf-on-Wolf Collision Push Safety: When colliding with a packmate perched near a cliff or hazard, wolves immediately halt navigation to avoid pushing them into danger.
• Fire Survival AI: Burning wolves break their sitting posture in an emergency and sprint at 1.4x speed toward the nearest water body within 16 blocks to extinguish themselves.
• Creeper Blast Evasion: Tamed dogs detect swelling creepers and sprint radially away at 1.5x speed.
• Scaled Whimpering: Low-health whimpering dynamically scales to < 50% max HP (preventing healthy runts from constant crying).

🏰 Dynamic Territoriality & Wild Pack Wars

Wild wolf packs roam as organized units led by an Alpha leader:

• Territorial Encounters: When rival packs meet, leaders negotiate outcomes based on personality:
  • Aggressive vs. Aggressive: Triggers an intense 1v1 Leader Duel.
  • Aggressive vs. Pacifist / Normal: Forces submissive pack mergers or peaceful retreats.
  • Pacifist vs. Pacifist: Both packs peacefully retreat in opposite directions.

🌕 Restored Howling Soundscapes & Zoomies

• Pack-Wide Howling: Under a full moon, pack leaders initiate howling choruses using restored classic wolf howl sound files.
• Morning & Rain Zoomies: Happy, healthy dogs occasionally burst into playful high-speed sprints in the morning or during fresh rainfall.

🔍 Jade Mod HUD Integration

• Dynamic Numeric Health: Displays exact numeric health values (HP: X / Y) and hearts.
• Inbred Status Tag: Displays genetic lineage and inbred warnings in tooltips.
• Favorite Treat Discovery: Identifies your dog's secret favorite treat once fed.

💻 Server-Side Optional & Client Gating

• Server-Side Optional: Fully functional on dedicated servers even if connecting clients do not have the mod installed!
• In-Game GUI Config: Seamlessly integrates with ModMenu + Cloth Config / YACL v3.

📊 Quick Reference & Mechanics Matrix

🐺 Personality Comparison Table

🧬 Breeding Genetics Inheritance Matrix

⌨️ In-Game Commands

All commands are registered under /betterdogs (alias /bd) and support rich tab-completion:

⚙️ Native GameRules & Configuration

[!IMPORTANT] 💡 Config vs. In-Game GameRules: The global configuration file only defines default values for newly created worlds. In existing worlds, change settings in-game via the Edit Game Rules UI screen or the /gamerule command.

Key GameRules Overview

📖 In-Depth How-To & Gameplay Playbook

Master every interaction in Better Dogs with this comprehensive operational playbook:

1. Taming & Discovering Personality

• Feed bones to any wild wolf. Upon taming, inspect the floating particle color (Red = Aggressive, Green/Teal = Pacifist, Gold = Normal) or check their Jade HUD tooltip.

2. Shift+Right-Click Gesture Playbook

• Bone + Shift-Right-Click: Toggles Guard Mode (consumes 1 bone). The dog anchors to the spot. Seated dogs remain sitting as sentries.
• Paper + Shift-Right-Click: Puts your dog up for Adoption (sparkling Rose Pink trail). Any non-owner player can right-click with an empty hand to claim them.
• Stick / Blaze Rod / Breeze Rod + Shift-Right-Click: Selects the dog (golden particle ring). Then right-click any vehicle (Boat, Minecart, Horse, Camel, Chair) to command the dog to mount with a seated pose.

3. Selective Breeding & Litter Genetics

• Feed meat to two tamed wolves. Litters produce 1–4 puppies. Puppies inherit parental scale and personality with a small chance of mutation. Outcrossing prevents inbreeding debuffs.

4. Pack Play Sparring & Discipline Dynamics

• Allow tamed packmates to roam freely together to watch them engage in harmless sparring rounds and playful pouncing.
• Overly energetic dogs will receive a calming discipline snap from adult packmates. If disciplined, comfort them with bones or meats to accelerate their timeout recovery by 10% per treat!

5. Reading Audio Cues & Whining

• Whimpering only triggers when health falls below 50% of the dog's maximum HP. Feed meat to restore health.
• Under a full moon, enjoy the ambient chorus of nocturnal pack howling.

6. In-Game Configuration

• Open World Settings → Edit Game Rules to browse all Better Dogs settings in a dedicated folder, or use /betterdogs set <rule> <value> in-game.

🧩 Recommended Sister Mods

If you enjoy Better Dogs, these companion mods from the Vanilla Outsider & Delayed Gratification Collections plug in seamlessly:

• 🐾 Natural Reproduction: Introduces realistic gestation, seasonal breeding cycles, and genetic trait variation across wolves, livestock, and ambient fauna.
• 🦇 Better Bats: Enhances vanilla bats with dynamic 3D Boids murmuration flocking, twilight flight behaviors, and natural cave guano crop fertilization.
• 💤 True Sleep: Transforms the vanilla sleep skip into a real-time world acceleration experience where furnace smelting and mob growth proceed naturally.

🌟 Explore the full Vanilla Outsider Collection for more mindful vanilla enhancements.

💬 Join the Community & Get Support

Looking for help, want to test early beta builds, or vote on upcoming features? Join our official Discord community!

☕ Support

If you enjoy Better Dogs and the Vanilla Outsider Collection, consider fueling future updates!

[!NOTE]

📜 Credits & Modpack Permissions

[!IMPORTANT] 📦 Modpack Permissions & Distribution: You are fully welcome to include this mod in any modpack on any platform! However, the mod file must be downloaded directly through official distribution channels (Modrinth or CurseForge). Re-uploading, mirroring, or redistributing the original mod JAR to third-party mirror sites, scraper portals, or unauthorized launchers is strictly prohibited.
⚖️ License & Fork Guidelines (No Zero-Change Re-uploads): This project is open-source under the GNU GPLv3. You are fully encouraged to inspect the code, learn from it, and fork the repository to create genuine modifications, substantial feature expansions, or community ports—provided your project remains open-source under GPLv3 with proper attribution. However, straight 1:1 re-uploads, clone forks with no meaningful functional changes, or re-publishing identical builds under different project names (e.g. to farm downloads or rewards) are strictly forbidden.