Critters and Companions (Unofficial Fabric Port)

A small, cozy compatibility port of Critters and Companions for Minecraft 26.1.x on Fabric.

This project brings the original mod’s charming vanilla-style wildlife into a newer Fabric environment, keeping the focus on cute creatures, gentle companion interactions, and overworld life that feels like it belongs in Minecraft.

🧡 What Is This?
Critters and Companions is a vanilla-style creature mod originally created by Bonsai Studios and contributors. It adds new animals, pets, ambient wildlife, and playful interactions across the overworld.

This upload is an unofficial Fabric compatibility port targeting:

• 🟩 Minecraft 26.1.2
• 🧵 Fabric Loader 0.19.2+
• 📦 Fabric API 0.149.0+26.1.2+
• 🦎 GeckoLib 5.5.1+
• ⚙️ Forge Config API Port 26.1.4+
• ☕ Java 25

🐾 Included Critters
This port includes the original mod’s lovely little cast of creatures, including:

• 🦦 Otters - River friends with clam and pearl interactions.
• 🐾 Ferrets - Tameable companions that can dig up loot and now correctly show their collar overlay when tamed.
• 🐟 Koi Fish - Peaceful river fish that can be bucketed and provide a luck-based group effect.
• 🐙 Dumbo Octopuses - Deep ocean helpers that can assist drowning players.
• 🐌 Sea Bunnies - Ocean critters that produce slime for crafting sea bunny slime blocks.
• 🪲 Dragonflies - Tameable protectors with armor support.
• 🍃 Leaf Insects - Tiny forest friends that dance to music.
• 🐼 Red Pandas - Jungle companions that sleep during the day and react to nearby threats.
• 🐦 Shima Enaga - Sweet snowy biome birds, tameable with seeds.
• 🕷️ Jumping Spiders - Tameable helpers with silk-related drops and tools.

✨ Porting Notes
This port focuses on compatibility, not redesign.

The goal is to preserve the original mod’s behavior and style while updating the project to run on newer Minecraft, Fabric, Java, GeckoLib, and resource/data formats.

Notable work includes:

• 🛠️ Updated Minecraft/Fabric/Java build setup
• 🦎 Migrated GeckoLib model, animation, and renderer usage
• 🎨 Restored item and spawn egg rendering
• 📜 Updated recipes, loot tables, language files, and resource metadata
• 🧵 Fixed resource pack paths, including the arachnophobia-friendly pack
• 🧣 Restored the tamed ferret collar render layer
• 🧪 Tested selected core interactions in-game

🧪 Current Status
This is an experimental unofficial port.

It has been tested for:

• ✅ Game startup
• ✅ World creation
• ✅ Creative inventory rendering
• ✅ Selected recipes
• ✅ Selected mob spawning/rendering
• ✅ GeckoLib animation loading
• ✅ Built-in resource pack loading
• ✅ Sea bunny slime collection
• ✅ Ferret taming and collar rendering
• ✅ Dragonfly armor behavior
• ✅ Pearl necklace behavior

There may still be edge cases, multiplayer issues, or less-tested interactions. If something behaves differently from the original mod, please report it with logs and reproduction steps.

🔗 Official Original Project Links
Please support and follow the original project here:

🌿 Original CurseForge Page:
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/critters-and-companions

💻 Original Source Repository:
https://github.com/bonsaistudi0s/CrittersAndCompanions

🙏 Credits
All original design, assets, names, mobs, textures, animations, sounds, and gameplay concepts belong to the original Critters and Companions creators and contributors.

Public credits from the original project page:

• 🎨 Josh / Joosh - Art
• 💻 EterDelta - Coding
• 🔊 Scratchy - Sound effects
• 🧵 Lytho_ - Original Fabric port

The public CurseForge team also lists:

possible_triangle, Lytho, AlexNijjar, CodexAdrian, EterDelta, and BonsaiStudios Mascot.

This unofficial port exists only to keep the mod playable on a newer Fabric/Minecraft target.

🤖 AI Assistance Disclosure
This compatibility port was prepared with assistance from OpenAI Codex during local debugging, code migration, build fixes, and release preparation.

All changes were reviewed and tested by the port maintainer before release.

AI assistance was used only for porting support and technical workflow help. It did not create the original mod’s concept, artwork, textures, animations, sounds, mobs, or gameplay design.

💛 A Small Note
If you are one of the original authors or contributors and would like credit adjusted, wording changed, links updated, or this port handled differently, please reach out and I will respect that promptly.