Sidestep (Simple Dodge)

Sidestep

A quick invincibility-frame dodge dash for NeoForge 1.21.1. Tap the dodge key to snap in the direction you're moving and phase through an incoming hit — then manage your charges, because dodging isn't free and heavy armor slows you down. Standalone: no library mods, no dependencies.

What it is

Press the dodge key (default Left Alt, rebindable) to dash 8 ways relative to where you're facing — nothing held dashes forward. A dash grants a short window of invincibility against combat damage only: melee, mob attacks, and projectiles. Fall damage, fire, drowning, and every other environmental source still land, so a dodge is an escape from a fight, not from the world.

This is an original, from-scratch implementation. It's inspired in spirit by the dodge-plus-resource feel of mods like Elenai Dodge, but shares no code, assets, or naming with them.

How it works

• Charges, not a bare cooldown. You have a small pool of dodge charges; each dash spends one, and they refill one at a time. A short cooldown between dashes stops chain-dodging.
• Armor has weight. Heavier armor lowers how many charges you can hold and slows how fast they come back. Weight is read from each piece's real armor/toughness attributes, so it works with any modded armor set out of the box — no per-mod patch needed. It's fully tunable: per item, per mod, and by global factors.
• The Lithe enchantment lightens the armor it's on, letting heavy builds buy back some mobility.
• I-frames are configurable — set the duration, or turn them off entirely for a pure-movement dash.

Fair on servers

The client predicts your dash instantly so it feels responsive, but it only ever asks the server to dodge. The server checks every condition — alive, not spectating, not riding, not flying or gliding, grounded (unless mid-air dashing is enabled), off cooldown, a charge available — against its own state before it spends a charge, arms your i-frames, and records the dash. A hacked client can't grant itself invincibility, skip the cooldown, or dodge for free; the worst it can do is ask and be told no, and the HUD snaps back to the truth.

A HUD that reads as native

• The stamina meter is a row of discrete charge cells in the same visual grammar as vanilla's hearts and armor (a legacy chevron-pip style is also available).
• Put it anywhere. Twelve anchor points — docked beside the hotbar, above the hunger bar, above the hotbar, or any screen edge or corner — plus a pixel offset, so it fits around whatever else is on your HUD. Above the hunger bar it stacks automatically over air, mounted-health, and other reserved rows; the hotbar docks step aside for the offhand slot and attack indicator.
• It fills toward its anchored edge, hatches out charges your armor locks away, turns amber when you can't dodge, and hides itself once you're topped up.
• Never shows in creative or spectator, with no flash on world join.
• Accessibility: reduce-motion, a high-contrast palette, and a size multiplier.

Configure everything

Extensive, hand-editable configs (plus an in-game config screen) cover dash cooldown, charge count, dash distance and vertical boost, i-frame duration, recharge rate, the entire armor-weight system, and every HUD and sound option. Your own dash swoosh is a client setting; what nearby players hear is controlled by the server.

MIT licensed.