How to stop grass spreading
I'm trying to make Minecraft Dungeons in vanilla Minecraft but I just realised something: "Since grass spreads, how am I going to keep the dirt as dirt?". Is there something I can do to keep the dirt I place AS dirt? This is in java 1.16.5, and no, I can't use coarse dirt.
The randomTickSpeed gamerule denotes how often chunks receive random ticks. A chunk receiving a random tick triggers a variety of events, which include, but are not limited to:
- grass may spread to a nearby dirt block (upon receiving a random tick, the grass only "rolls a dice" whether to spread, the event is not guaranteed)
- crops may grow
- saplings may turn into trees
- leaves may decay
- ...
There's no way to my knowledge how to pick only which of these updates you'd like to perform during a random tick - you can only manipulate the speed at which they hapen.
To disable random updates altogether (and therefore prevent grass from spreading), simply use:
/gamerule randomTickSpeed 0
The default value for this gamerule is 3 for the Java Edition.
An alternative approach would be paying attention to the grass block's spreading rules and designing your map so that the dirt blocks wouldn't come in proximity (3x3x5 blocks area) of other grass blocks.
Doesn't dirt only turn to grass if it is touching a grass block? If so, then either don't have any grass blocks or if you have to have some anywhere, just separate them with a block that looks like dirt/grass in between. Alternatively, if you are familiar with map art, you could use a level 1/4 map area, pixel art paint it to look like dirt, make the map, lock the map, duplicate it a bunch then place items frame with the maps on them to make it look just like dirt. This way you can still have grass anywhere you want to have grass. but still have any devices utilizing random tick speed active