Colorize the recipe-mode connection lines of Create's Factory Gauges with the 16 vanilla dyes, so that heavily crossed networks stay readable at a glance.
The same network, once vanilla and once color-coded:
Vanilla — link colors only reflect recipe status, so you can't tell which line belongs to which recipe:
With Colored Connections — each recipe keeps its own dye color, and every link stays traceable at a glance:
- Right-click a link with any dye to color it. Lines are drawn on the wall between gauges — point at the line itself, not the gauge panel. By default the dye is never consumed — not even in survival mode — so recolor as often as you like (a config option can make dyeing cost one dye per action).
- Black dye = reset. Restores the vanilla status color.
- Path dyeing. Shift+right-click a gauge to start a path, then simply sweep your crosshair over further gauges: each one joins the chain, connected to the previous gauge along its own shortest route — the sweep decides the branch, so the dyed path is exactly the route you traced. While building, every pending link carries a floating green beam. Hover the last gauge again to undo it, right-click the last gauge to dye the whole chain in one action, right-click anywhere else to cancel.
- Tactile feedback. A successful dyeing plays the same sound Create uses when two gauges link, plus a small puff of dust in the applied dye's color.
- Smart inheritance. A newly created link inherits the source gauge's incoming color — but only when all incoming links share exactly one color. Mixed or uncolored inputs stay vanilla.
- Status colors stay intact. Idle lines are fully dyed; active lines (in progress / satisfied / failed / flashing) keep their vanilla status-colored core and gain a thin 1px dye border on each side. Animations like the scrolling texture and restock flashing are untouched.
- Hover lift. Looking at any link smoothly lifts the whole line above its neighbors (a few microns — only the occlusion order changes), so you can always tell which line is which where links cross or overlap.
- Sticky hover. Once a line is hovered it stays picked while the crosshair is on it; small mouse movements over crossing or overlapping lines no longer make the highlight jump between them. The dye click targets exactly the line that is lifted on screen.
- Goggles tracing. Wear Create's Engineer's Goggles and rest the crosshair on a dyed link: its whole color group lights up while every other line of the same factory dims to gray — the "read my network" tool for dense factories. The highlight follows the crosshair, cross-fades when you switch to another color, and fades out as soon as you look away. A readout is appended to Create's own goggle overlay: the link and gauge counts of the production line and the idle / running / met / failed breakdown, plus the group's remaining shortage when every gauge requests the same item.
- Link lines are never dyed. Redstone and display link lines carry status semantics in their color and are left fully vanilla.
All 16 dye colors, applied to gauge links:
Crossed links stay distinguishable where they overlap:
| Minecraft | 1.21.1 |
| Loader | NeoForge 21.1.x |
| Create | 6.0.0 or higher |
Client and server for multiplayer.
- Colors are stored per dimension in the world save and survive panel relocation and world reload.
- Colors sync to players on login, dimension change, and chunk load — nothing to configure.
- A small config file (
config/create_colored_connections-common.toml) covers the optional extras: dye consumption (off by default — one dye per action, not per link), the one-time first-gauge hint, the dye feedback effects, the hover lift, and goggles tracing (on by default, with its reach distance and overlay readout as separate options).
- 0.1 — single-link dyeing, color inheritance, status-preserving rendering, hover lift
- 0.2 — path dyeing with live green preview, dye/sound feedback, config file, first-placement hint
- 0.3 — goggles tracing: color-group highlight, factory-scoped graying, overlay readout with link/gauge counts and status breakdown
- Next — whatever players actually ask for: open an issue
Nothing on this list is a promise; priorities follow player feedback.
Find this mod on Modrinth, CurseForge, and GitHub releases.
You may include this mod in any modpack, no permission needed.