There are a few resourcepacks out there trying to reimplement the alpha and beta Minecraft full block chest. Usually this is done using Custom Entity Models, either using Optifine or Fabric, but it's still an entity model.
Instead, we can use a mod called Enhanced Block Entities which turns chests (and other entities) into block models. This by itself makes the chests lag less since they are rendered as a block and not an entity, but we can now easily turn those 14x14 block models into 16x16, and disable the opening animation, to get that alpha/beta feel.
Note: Also works with FastChest since v0.4. FastChest only provides functionality for chests and no other blocks. EBE is still recommended over FastChest.
All this really does is that we can create separate textures for all the sides of chests.
- Chests will have a top (also used for bottom), front and side texture.
- Large chests reuse single chest textures, with unique front and back textures.
- Trapped chests reuse chest textures except the front texture which is unique (slightly red tinted).
- Ender chests have unique front, side, top and bottom textures.
Then we just need to create the block model files to specify which part of the block has which texture.
The chests now have three "states"; closed, trunk and lid. The closed model is used when a chest is not opened. When a chest is opened, it changes to trunk and lid. In our case, the trunk inherits from the closed chest, so an opened chest will look identical to a closed chest, and the lid is not used at all, so the lid will not open.
The attached file will include a number of files and textures. This is not a resource pack by itself, but you can use these files to create all the chest block models.
The archive contains textures/block and models/block. Both these folders can be extracted into the assets/minecraft folder of a resource pack. The normal chest textures are stripped from the Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 terrain.png while the trapped and ender chest textures are taken from the Nostalgia-Craft resource pack.
# v0.4
Added support for FastChest mod
# v0.3
Fixed christmas chests
# v0.2
Added a missing texture
# v0.1
Initial release