Stormilla Resource Pack 1.21 / 1.20

Among the vast sea of similar and uninspiring packs, the Stormilla resource pack has emerged to break the routine and set itself as the most ambitious project that the Minecraft community has seen in a while. The pack is one of the more recent additions, dating back just a few years with the first release in 2020. Its developer, StormDragon77 started it out by just fixing a few simple annoyances that the game had, but after a couple of updates, it evolved into a much larger endeavor. Laying out the basic concepts of Stormilla, even though everything is currently included in just one resource pack, it’s actually meant to be separated into multiple different packs that each overhaul a single concept. This is done in an attempt to make the whole project more compatible with the vanilla game while also giving people the opportunity to only change certain aspects that they deem unsatisfying. Although the whole pack can be loaded successfully without Optifine, most of the features rely on it in order to work properly. The main goal of Stormilla is to fix inconsistencies. There are many textures/models in Minecraft that deviate from their original design. For example, the representation of a glass bottle inside the brewing stand GUI is different from the model itself. Furthermore, the jungle door texture is completely different from the appearance of the item when it’s dropped on the ground. These are all quite minor discrepancies, but Stormilla texture pack wants to fix each and every one of them. While the developer himself acknowledges that some of these are intentional due to Minecraft’s tradition and the textures’ iconic looks, he still maintains that they should be changed. Another major modification is regarding the color palette. Some items that are supposed to be made out of the same material have different hues. This is mostly noticeable on ores by comparing, for instance, iron tools and an anvil. They’re all going to be modified in order to accurately resemble the component that they’re made out of. Textures that are flat when in shade will also be corrected and changed to their original variants.

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This is also connected to the mix of 2D and 3D textures that Minecraft tries to implement. With this pack, all non-full blocks except stairs and slabs will be made exclusively 2D. Stormilla resource pack pays special attention to consistency between different game versions. There is a special release dedicated to Minecraft Bedrock players. There are multiple differences between the Java and Bedrock releases which limits the possibilities as far as resource packs go. However, the developer claims that he will keep the two as similar as possible. Keep in mind that there could be certain dissimilarities between the pack versions as they aren’t updated at the same time. If you’re a veteran player who doesn’t like the idea of significant changes that remove Minecraft’s originality, don’t worry. Although Stormilla does bring a lot to the table, it’s mostly building on the existing foundation and simply smoothing out the rough edges. There is a slightly increased tone as far as realism goes, but it still retains the original experience. The pack itself is, unsurprisingly, going to retain a 16×16 resolution of the vanilla game. This means that even the players without high-end hardware will be able to enjoy all the features while not experiencing a performance decrease. If you decide to add in Optifine (which you should for the pack to work properly) you’ll probably even get an additional few FPS. Also, if certain features do present an issue, you’ll be able to easily disable them once the pack is separated into smaller parts. All of the aforementioned changes take a lot of time to implement properly, which is why the Stormilla resource pack is still largely a work in progress. Since it’s mainly a solo project, each update takes over a month to be finished and released. The developer heavily relies on feedback from the playerbase, and there is a Discord server dedicated to announcements and previews as well as a GitHub page for suggestions and bug reports. Even though it’s surely going to take some time before it’s 100% finished, Stormilla is worth waiting for due to its innovative and perspective nature.