I suppose there wouldn't be overlap if Mojang say, kept on adding new states to grass thereby shifting all the mappings along each time. Otherwise they'd just be adding more entries to the end.
For the internal storage format presumably full backwards compatibility can be maintained if the format is as before (blocktype, nibbletype) but with larger storage types.
However, any sort of internal representation that isn't strings ("minecraft:potato_chips" crispness:1 colour:1000) would be impossible as now we would have to write and maintain a (internal <-> vanilla state) map in order to use the generated protocol mapping. Right?
If so, it seems like we are forced to use a slow option.
For the internal storage format presumably full backwards compatibility can be maintained if the format is as before (blocktype, nibbletype) but with larger storage types.
However, any sort of internal representation that isn't strings ("minecraft:potato_chips" crispness:1 colour:1000) would be impossible as now we would have to write and maintain a (internal <-> vanilla state) map in order to use the generated protocol mapping. Right?
If so, it seems like we are forced to use a slow option.