Project MELIOR Resource Pack 1.18 / 1.17

When it comes to originality, most resource packs take existing textures and add a bit of polish to them. This happens by increasing the resolution of the textures, playing around with colors, or adding a bit of smoothness to them. Truly original resource packs replace existing textures with new ones. Project MELIOR is one such resource pack that manages to be original in terms of visuals while adding a much-needed polish to Minecraft. The Project MELIOR resource pack was released in early 2022. Developed for Minecraft 1.18, the resource pack benefits from having an active team of developers that continues to release updates. The biggest advantage that the resource pack had at the time of release was the fact that it came with over 2000 original textures from day one. This makes it feel like an almost complete resource pack with very few original textures being left in the game. The development team for Project MELIOR also established a roadmap for their future updates. As already mentioned, the Project MELIOR introduces over 2000 original textures. Despite having so many new textures replacing old ones, the resource pack still preserves the same vibe and feel of Minecraft. The blockiness of models, blocks, mobs, and all the items in the game remains the same. What changes are the details on textures and how some of them look. Things such as dirt, gravel, ore, weapons, tools, trees, leaves, grass, mobs, and more, have received a much-needed visual improvement with new textures. Water textures and sky textures have also been improved.

There is also an improvement to things such as snow and rain. Other types of particles in the game also received some tweaks to make them look better. All these improvements make the vanilla Minecraft look much more polished. Amongst the many improvements that Project MELIOR brings to Minecraft, there are also new icons for items. The GUI received some improvement making it easier to manage while also improving the visibility of certain aspects of the game such as player hit points. To improve the visuals in the game, Project MELIOR had to use higher resolution textures. Replacing x16 textures with new x16 textures would not account for a considerable visual improvement. The development team decided to increase texture resolution to x64. While the bump in resolution improves visuals, it may also come with a cost in terms of game performance. Most other resource packs use x32 resolution for their textures. There are even more demanding resource packs that use x128 or x256 textures. Project MELIOR sits somewhere in the middle as it does not aim to be a pure photorealistic resource pack, but instead tries to cater to everyone’s needs by offering the perfect blend of realism, artistic creativity and gameplay features. It aims to bring much-needed visual improvements to Minecraft without crippling your computer. Project MELIOR is a premium resource pack. This means that it is available to players that support the development team on Patreon. Installation of the resource pack needs to be done with tools such as Optifine as it needs access to special features for the sky textures. Also, the resource pack should be complemented by a shader pack. The development team recommends using BSL Shaders along with Project MELIOR.