Getting Started

To start working with Lantern, download the latest unbundled release and place it in your world's datapacks folder. This method is perfect for learning how Lantern works, but is not suitable for distributing Lantern to end users.

When you depend on Lantern, rather than using the #minecraft:load tag to initialize your data packs, you use #lantern.1:resolve. The function called by this tag is responsible for checking Lantern's major version (as multiple versions of Lantern may attempt to load at once).

Here is an example of a data pack that uses Lantern's tag:

// #lantern.1:resolve
{
    "values": [
        "#example:resolve"
    ]
}

# example:resolve
execute if score lantern lantern.versions matches 1 run function example:initialize

# example:initialize
scoreboard players set example lantern.versions 1
say example data pack initialized!

The point of this process is to allow data packs to validate that the Lantern features they were built to expect are indeed supported. As an example, example:initialize can safely assume that the forceloaded chunks exist and have blocks in the locations they should be.

In example:initialize, you may note that an example version was set on the scoreboard. This is good practice even if no other data packs depend on yours, as it allows functions called from #minecraft:tick or advancement triggers to confirm your data pack's successful initialization.

The version resolution process will be revisted on a later page.