Developing Games with Minecraft API

We are going to show and create a simple mob game using the Minecraft Pi API. By the end of the session you should know how to setup and run the Minecraft programming environment, how to deal with errors, how to look for help online, and have a good sense of what the Minecraft API has to offer.

The mob will play tag with the user. If the mob touches the user, the user will be teleported to another area.

We are going to stress hacking existing code to experiment and learn how to do things in python.

Recommended Age and Experience

The session is aimed at beginners 11-years-old and older or younger kids with previous programming experience in Scratch or Python.

Agenda:

• Software installation and testing
• Running python on Craftbukkit
• Guided hacking towards building a mob
• Coding time
• Show-and-tell

Software:

Please install the following software before the meeting. If you run into trouble, let us know in advance so that we can help you out.

Python 2.7: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.5/

Java: (http://www.python.org/download/Java) http://www.java.com/en/download/

The presentation scripts and server:

Download the specially made craftbukkit distribution for this presentation. This is required. This is a hands-on presentation, and you won't learn enough unless you are following the examples and trying to solve the problems.

Go to this page. On the right there is a link to download the code as a zip file. Download the folder and put it on the desktop and unzip it there. Follow the instructions on the page to test that the installation is working.

Download Project (https://github.com/hugoestr/minecraftapipresentation) Files: https://github.com/hugoestr/minecraftapipresentation

The package was made in a windows machine, so it will work well with windows. If you are using a mac or linux, then you will have to change things accordingly.

Text editor:

We are going to use text editors. Notepad or whatever default text editor you have in your computer will work. But if you want to make things slightly easier on yourself, you can install gedit. It is free, and there are versions for Windows, Mac, and LInux.

https://projects.gnome.org/gedit/

If you are familiar with another text editor, then use that. I am going to be using vim and gedit in the presentation.