Dear reader.
Welcome to the “History of BetterVanillaBuilding” page. 👋
You likely clicked this page by accident or to learn some more about this resourcepack and its history. The first part sounds like a skill issue to me, but the latter part is something I can help with!
More about me on my Socials
My name is Stefan, also known by StefanJ2_, and on the Internet I am known as variety streamer on twitch.tv as well as being the creator of the BetterVanillaBuilding resourcepack. Next to that I host all the social media accounts for the resourcepack, create this website, manage the Minecraft server and not to forget I am a fulltime student going to college to study to be a teacher in the future.
Basically, I do a lot of things around here….
(Now that I have your attention lets do a quick social media plug.)
Origins of BetterVanillaBuilding
Lets have a little look through my history with the resourcepack.
BetterVanillaBuilding was first uploaded to the Internet on April 10th 2018, which marks 5 years before the day this website was published. Back then I was 16 years old and was playing a lot of Minecraft every day using various resourcepacks. I just couldn’t find a fitting resourcepack that had the exact things I wanted changed in Minecraft, so what do you do? You make your own!
While it started as a personal “passion project”, I decided to post it to the Internet after I got some friends to start using it who told me they really liked it and that I should share it online.
The day was April 10th and BetterVanillaBuilding was now officially up for download. And only 15 days later on April 25th the Discord server was born.
While people enjoyed the resourcepack in the early days, don’t be fooled. The resourcepack was nothing like it is today and you can still feel that fact in its name.
“BetterVanillaBuilding” was the name I picked for this pack since in its early life the pack was mainly focused on adding small tweaks to commonly used building blocks to “uniform” them and make them blend better. Examples of this that still exist (Although with way improved textures) are the polished andesite, diorite and granite having a brick-like texture to blend better with stone bricks.
While none of these old textures still exist or got greatly improved through the years, their inspiration still carried over to what the resourcepack became.
Old pack image.
On November 11th 2018, BetterVanillaBuilding V2.0 was released which was the first version of the resourcepack to include a feature that would be one of the main appeals of the resourcepack, connected textures. And 10 months later on September 8th 2019 the second most prominent feature of the pack got released, the custom armors and items.
These features would continue to be the staple of what the BetterVanillaBuilding resourcepack would become, and would continue to receive updates, additions and improvements in the years after next to the vanilla retextures in the pack being improved and expanded throughout the years. Which brings us to the current state of the pack.
As of the release of this website on April 10th 2023, BetterVanillaBuilding is now 5 years old and is looking forward to another 5 years of bringing users the new textures and features they enjoy.