Adventures In Minecraft

Description

Here's your ticket to a world of adventures with Minecraft and programming. Learn how to extend Minecraft and create a new gaming experience, by exploring the magical world of Minecraft programming. Adventures in Minecraft, like other books in the highly successful Adventures series, is written especially for 11- to 15-year-olds. With this book you will learn new programming skills while having fun with Minecraft! Minecraft programming experts David Whale and Martin O'Hanlon walk you step-by-step through everything you need to know to: * Get started writing Minecraft programs in Python on your PC, Mac, or Raspberry Pi * Build houses and other structures in the blink of an eye, and make a 3D duplicating machine * Write interactive games like a field that charges you rent, and a treasure hunt using magic vanishing bridges * Build custom game control panels using simple electronic circuits * Easily build huge 2D and 3D structures such as spheres and pyramids * Build intelligent objects like a massive Minecraft clock, and program an alien invasion * Plan and write a complete interactive arena game Using the programming skills you learn from this book, writing Minecraft programs offers endless possibilities to create anything you can imagine. To make your journey that much easier, the Adventures in Minecraft companion website supplies you with a video for each adventure in the book, downloadable code files, helpful programming reference tables, a bonus adventure, and badges to collect for your Minecraft accomplishments. By day, David Whale and Martin O'Hanlon are software engineers who design computer products. By night, they play Minecraft and develop exciting new programs that interact with the Minecraft world. They both work regularly with young people in schools, computing clubs and at community events, giving talks about Minecraft programming and running programming workshops.

Author description

Martin O'Hanlon (Birmingham, UK) describes himself as a professional geek and amateur snowboarder. Martin blogs about Minecraft and Raspberry Pi at http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/. David Whale (Essex, UK) runs the Saturday Club, where kids learn Minecraft and the Raspberry Pi, among other things. David was the Tech Editor on Adventures in Raspberry Pi.

Table of contents

Introduction 1 What Is Minecraft? 1 The Virtual World 2 How Did Minecraft Come About? 2 What Is Minecraft Programming? 2 Who Should Read This Book? 3 What You Will Learn 4 What We Assume You Already Know 5 What You Will Need for the Projects 5 A Note for Parents and Teachers 6 How This Book Is Organised 7 The Companion Website 8 Other Sources of Help 9 Conventions 9 Reaching Out 11 Adventure 1 Hello Minecraft World 13 Setting up Your Raspberry Pi to Program Minecraft 15 Installing Minecraft on Your Raspberry Pi 16 Starting Minecraft on Your Raspberry Pi 17 Setting up Your PC or Apple Mac to Program Minecraft 19 Installing the Starter Kit and Python on Your Windows PC 20 Installing the Starter Kit and Python on Your Apple Mac 22 Starting Minecraft on Your Windows PC or Apple Mac 24 Stopping Bukkit 27 Creating a Program 28 Running a Program 30 Stopping a Program 33 Adventure 2 Tracking Your Players as They Move 35 Sensing Your Player s Position 36 Getting Started 38 Showing Your Player s Position 38 Tidying Up Your Position Display 41 x ADV EN T URE S IN MINECRAF T Using postToChat to Change Where Your Position Displays 43 Introducing a Game Loop 43 Building the Welcome Home Game 45 Using if Statements to Make a Magic Doormat 46 Checking if Your Player Is at a Particular Location 47 Building a Magic Doormat 48 Writing the Welcome Home Game 49 Using Geo-Fencing to Charge Rent 53 Working out the Corner Coordinates of the Field 54 Writing the Geo-Fence Program 56 Moving Your Player 58 Further Adventures in Tracking Your Player 61 Adventure 3 Building Anything Automatically 63 Creating Blocks 64 Building More than One Block 66 Using for Loops 67 Building Multiple Blocks with a for Loop 67 Building a Huge Tower with a for Loop 69 Clearing Some Space 71 Using setBlocks to Build Even Faster 71 Reading Input from the Keyboard 72 Building a House 74 Building More than One House 79 Using Python Functions 80 Building a Street of Houses with a for Loop 83 Adding Random Carpets 85 Generating Random Numbers 85 Laying the Carpets 86 Further Adventures in Building Anything 89 Adventure 4 Interacting with Blocks 91 Finding Out What You Are Standing On 92 Finding out if Your Feet Are on the Ground 92 Building Magic Bridges 95 Using Python Lists as Magic Memory 98 Experimenting with Lists 98 Building Vanishing Bridges with a Python List 101 TABLE OF CONTENTS xi Sensing that a Block Has Been Hit 105 Writing a Treasure Hunt Game 108 Writing the Functions and the Main Game Loop 109 Placing Treasure in the Sky 110 Collecting Treasure when It Is Hit 111 Adding a Homing Beacon 112 Adding Your Bridge Builder 113 Further Adventures in Interacting with Blocks 115 Adventure 5 Interacting with Electronic Circuits 117 What You Will Need for this Adventure 118 Prototyping Electronics with a Breadboard 121 Building a Circuit that Lights an LED 123 Connecting Electronics to Your Computer 124 Setting Up the PC or Mac to Control Electronic Circuits 125 Configuring the Drivers 126 Finding the Serial Port Number 127 Controlling an LED 128 Lighting Up an LED from your Computer 129 Flashing the LED 132 Running a GPIO Program 134 Writing the Magic Doormat LED Program 137 Using a 7-Segment Display 138 What is a 7-Segment Display? 138 Wiring Up the 7-Segment Display 140 Writing Python to Drive the 7-Segment Display 142 Using a Python Module to Control the Display 144 Making a Detonator 145 Wiring Up a Button 146 Writing the Detonator Program 148 Further Adventures in Electronic Circuits 152 Adventure 6 Using Data Files 155 Reading Data from a File 155 Interesting Things You Can Do With Data Files 156 Making a Hint-Giver 156 xii ADV EN T URE S IN MINECRAF T Building Mazes from a Data File 160 Understanding CSV Files 160 Building a Maze 162 Building a 3D Block Printer 168 Hand-Crafting a Small Test Object to 3D Print 169 Writing the 3D Printer 171 Building a 3D Block Scanner 174 Building a Duplicating Machine 178 Writing the Framework of the Duplicating Machine Program 178 Displaying the Menu 182 Building the Duplicator Room 183 Demolishing the Duplicator Room 185 Scanning from the Duplicator Room 186 Cleaning the Duplicator Room 187 Printing from the Duplicator Room 187 Listing Files 189 Further Adventures in Data Files 191 Adventure 7 Building 2D and 3D Structures 193 The minecraftstuff Module 194 Creating Lines, Circles and Spheres 194 Drawing Lines 196 Drawing Circles 197 Drawing Spheres 199 Creating a Minecraft Clock 200 Drawing Polygons 206 Pyramids 209 Further Adventures with 2d and 3d Shapes 213 Adventure 8 Giving Blocks a Mind of Their Own 215 Your Block Friend 215 Using Random Numbers to Make Your Block Friend More Interesting 222 Bigger Shapes 225 Alien Invasion 228 Further Adventures in Simulation 235 Adventure 9 The Big Adventure: Crafty Crossing 237 A Game within a Game 237 Part 1 Building the Arena 239 Part 2 Creating the Obstacles 243 The Wall 243 Running More Than One Obstacle 246 Building the River 249 Creating the Holes 252 Part 3 Game Play 256 Starting the Game 257 Collecting Diamonds 259 Out of Time 261 Tracking the Player 263 Setting the Level as Complete and Calculating Points 264 Adding the Game Over Message 265 Part 4 Adding a Button and Display 266 What You Will Need 266 Set Up the Hardware 267 Diamond Countdown 269 Time-Left Indicator 270 Further Adventures in Your Continuing Journey with Minecraft 271 Appendix A Where to Go from Here 273 Websites 273 Minecraft 273 Python 275 Bukkit 275 Other Ways to Make Things Happen Automatically 276 Projects and Tutorials 276 Videos 277 Books 278 Index 279