Create: Colored Connections

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.

Client + server addon — in multiplayer, install it on both sides; the server stores the colors and syncs them to everyone.

Features

• 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. Wearing Create's Engineer's Goggles and hovering a dyed link highlights the whole same-colored group and dims that factory's other links, and adds a summary and per-state counts to Create's goggle overlay. The highlight itself is a client-side overlay (the addon still needs to be installed on both sides so colors save and sync); switchable in the config, with an adjustable trigger distance.
• Link lines are never dyed. Redstone and display link lines carry status semantics in their color and are left fully vanilla.
• Create: Factory Controller integration (optional). With Factory Controller 1.2.1 or newer installed, its virtual logistics wires become dyeable right inside the GUI — same pick-up-a-dye gesture as in the world — and link colors survive blueprint export and import. Only logistics (ingredient) wires are dyeable; number and redstone wires stay vanilla.

Colors are stored per dimension in the world save, survive panel relocation, and sync to every player automatically — on login, dimension change, and chunk load. An optional config file covers the extras: dye consumption (off by default), the one-time first-gauge hint, the feedback effects, and the hover lift. Nothing to set up, no commands — just vanilla dye mechanics.

Requirements

This page ships two branches. Pick the file that matches your game version.

Minecraft 1.21.1 · NeoForge

• File: the 0.5.0 build (create-colored-connections-0.5.0.jar)
• Requires: NeoForge 21.1.x, Java 21, and Create 6.0.10 or newer (the 1.21.1 line)
• Optional: Create: Factory Controller 1.2.1 or newer

Minecraft 1.20.1 · Forge

• File: the 1.20.1-0.5.0 build (create-colored-connections-1.20.1-0.5.0.jar)
• Requires: Forge 47.x, Java 17, and Create 6.0.0 – 6.0.8 for 1.20.1 — 6.0.8 is the newest 1.20.1 build; 6.0.9 / 6.0.10 are 1.21.1-only
• Optional: Create: Factory Controller 1.2.1 or newer
• Playing with Factory Controller too? Its wires become dyeable in the controller GUI — but Factory Controller itself needs Create 6.0.3 or newer. On Create 6.0.0 - 6.0.2 its own mixins fail to load, so use 6.0.3 or newer to get both.

Install on both client and server for multiplayer.

About the two branches

The 1.20.1 Forge build is a port of the 1.21.1 NeoForge original, at feature parity: dyeing, path dyeing, hover lift, sticky hover, status-color preservation, color inheritance, and per-dimension color storage with multiplayer sync. Colors live in the world save per dimension, so each branch reads the worlds it created. The only differences are the loader, the required Create build (6.0.10+ on 1.21.1; 6.0.0 – 6.0.8 on 1.20.1, see the Factory Controller note above), and the Java version (21 vs 17).