#Custom Blocks
rancid bloom
grave jasper
datapacks cannot change the texture on a block based on arbitrary data values, so no that idea isn't possible (hence why the laggy methods are used)
there do exist a few unused blocks/blockstates which you could overwrite without affecting vanilla gameplay, but they come tied with their own specific behaviors you need to work around
ashen spear
So its just not possible to make custom blocks without lagging the game?
grave jasper
broadly no, that's one of the biggest limits of datapacks currently.
ashen spear
But can't I make the datapack mark the block (somehow...) and let the resource pack swap the textures?
Or marking blocks is impossible?
grave jasper
as i already said, no, you cannot do that. most blocks don't store any data beyond the block id and the ones that do can't have their textures changed based on it (plus those are block entities, which would still likely be rough for performance in large enough quantities)
silver flame
Well, the fun of datapack dev is seeing how we can get around these restrictions.