Performance Mods

Performance mods rewrite the parts of the client that Apoli’s render powers hook, so Apoli meets them half way: it hooks the replacement where one exists, stays out of the way where the mod is already doing the right thing, and keeps its own per-frame cost near zero so it never becomes the bottleneck the mod was installed to fix.

This integration is behaviour-gated and adds no types. Nothing to enable and no new JSON — install the mod and the powers you already have keep working.

At a glance#

Mod	What it changes	What Apoli does
Sodium / Rubidium / Embeddium	Replaces chunk meshing, including where block states are read from	Hooks Sodium’s own chunk reader as well as vanilla’s, so apoli:modify_block_render applies to the mesh either way
Sodium Extra / Rubidium Extra	Fog distance, particle toggles, per-entity render toggles	Apoli’s fog powers apply after its fog distance; its particle toggles gate Apoli’s particles like any other
EntityCulling	Skips entities hidden behind blocks	Nothing to do — Apoli decides visibility earlier, in shouldRender, so a hidden entity costs even less
ImmediatelyFast	Batches HUD and immediate-mode drawing	Apoli’s HUD bars, overlays and badges draw through GuiGraphics and never force a flush, so they batch with everything else
Lithium	Server-side game logic, entity collisions	Its collision sweeper asks the block for its shape the normal way, so apoli:phasing still applies
FerriteCore	Memory layout of block states and models	No interaction — it touches nothing Apoli hooks

Sodium and the block render powers#

Sodium does not build chunk meshes from vanilla’s RenderChunkRegion; it copies each chunk section into its own reader on a worker thread. A power that swaps one block’s appearance for another has to be applied there too, or the mesh is built from the real block and the power looks like it does nothing.

Apoli hooks both readers, so apoli:modify_block_render behaves the same with Sodium as without it, and the Sodium hook is only installed when Sodium is actually present. Rubidium and Embeddium are Sodium ports and are covered by the same hook.

Granting or revoking the power — or a block_condition on it changing — rebuilds the affected chunks on its own, so the swap appears immediately instead of waiting for something else to dirty the chunk.

A block-render power costs a condition test per block lookup during a chunk rebuild, which is the hottest loop in the game. Keep its block_condition cheap — a block or tag test, not a nested entity condition — and prefer one power with a broad condition over several narrow ones.

Sodium Extra and fog#

Sodium Extra sets its own fog distance after vanilla has set fog up. Apoli’s fog powers — apoli:fluid_vision and the blindness render type of apoli:phasing — apply last, so the power wins where the two disagree and Sodium Extra’s setting governs everything else.

Its Particles page gates Apoli’s particles the same way it gates vanilla’s: turning particles off, or switching apoli:custom off in the per-type list, stops them being created at all.

Its Prevent Shaders setting blocks every post-processing shader the game loads, including the one apoli:shader asks for. If a shader power does nothing, check that setting first — Apoli logs a warning naming it when a shader fails to load.

What a power costs when nobody has it#

Every render hook Apoli installs reads one flag before it does anything else, refreshed once per tick from the powers you actually hold. A player with no prevent_entity_render pays a field read per entity per frame; a world with no modify_block_render pays an array-length check per block lookup. That is the reason these hooks can sit in the middle of Sodium’s mesher at all.