Chained

Everyone on the server is chained together. Walk too far and the chain goes taut and hauls you back.

Two players or ten, it does not matter — every pair is on its own chain. Ten blocks of slack each, and then physics.

For Minecraft 26.2 (Fabric).

Installing

1. Install Fabric Loader for Minecraft 26.2.
2. Put chained-1.0.0.jar and Fabric API in your mods folder:
   • Windows: %appdata%\.minecraft\mods
   • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/mods
   • Linux: ~/.minecraft/mods

Only the server needs it. The pull reaches vanilla clients as ordinary velocity, the same way a creeper explosion or a knockback sword does, so nobody has to install anything to be dragged around by it.

Needs at least two players to do anything.

How the chain behaves

It is a chain, not a leash, and it is simulated as one.

While you are closer than the chain is long, there is no chain. No drag, no tugging, no resistance. You can move freely inside your ten blocks and never feel it. This is most of why it feels like being chained rather than being on an elastic band.

The moment it goes taut, two forces come on at once.

The first is a spring: it pulls you back towards each other, and it pulls harder the further past the limit you are. One block over is a gentle tug. Four blocks over, sprinting, is not.

The second is damping: it removes the speed at which the two of you are still separating. Without it the chain would be a rubber band and you would spend the rest of the session bouncing back and forth past each other. With it, the chain arrests you and holds, the way a real one does.

Both forces are split evenly between the two of you, because you weigh the same and a chain pulls on both ends. Run away from someone standing still and you both end up moving.

Past 64 blocks the chain stops negotiating and drags you bodily to the other player. That is the catch for elytras, boats and anything else that can outrun a spring.

You can see it. A line of light connects everyone who is chained, and it sags when there is slack. It rattles when it snaps tight.

Dimensions

Going through a portal alone is not an escape. If you end up in a dimension the rest of the group is not in, you get ten seconds — long enough for everyone to walk a portal together — and then you are pulled back to them.

Set dimensionGraceTicks to 0 if you want to allow splitting up across dimensions permanently.

Commands

Settings

A file appears at config/chained.json the first time you run the mod.

Things worth knowing

• With three or more players, everyone is chained to everyone. The group has to move as a group. This gets genuinely difficult above four people, which is the point.
• Falling drags the other person down. So does a boat, a minecart, and an elytra.
• Spectators and dead players are off the chain, so dying does not drag the survivors into the hole you fell in.
• Turn the stiffness down and the length up for a gentler run. length: 24, stiffness: 0.2 is a comfortable version of the same idea.
• Turn the damping down for chaos. At 0.1 the chain becomes a slingshot, which is very funny and completely impractical.