Introduction 1
What Is Minecraft? 1
The Virtual World 1
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
Changes Made to the Second Edition 7
How This Book Is Organised 7
The Companion Website 9
Other Sources of Help 9
Conventions 10
Reaching Out 12
Adventure 1 Hello Minecraft World 13
Setting Up Your Raspberry Pi to Program Minecraft 15
Downloading the Starter Kit 16
Starting Minecraft on Your Raspberry Pi 17
Setting Up Your PC or Apple Mac to Program Minecraft 18
Installing the Starter Kit and Python on Your Windows PC 19
Installing the Starter Kit and Python on Your Apple Mac 21
Starting Minecraft on Your Windows PC or Apple Mac 23
Stopping the Minecraft Server 27
Creating a Program 27
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 37
Showing Your Player's Position 39
Tidying Up Your Position Display 41
Using postToChat to Change Where Your Position Displays 43
Introducing a Game Loop 43
Building the Welcome Home Game 46
Using if Statements to Make a Magic Doormat 46
Checking if Your Player Is at a Particular Location 47
Building a Magic Doormat 49
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 59
Further Adventures in Tracking Your Player 62
Adventure 3 Building Anything Automatically 65
Creating Blocks 66
Building More Than One Block 68
Using for Loops 69
Building Multiple Blocks with a for Loop 70
Building a Huge Tower with a for Loop 71
Clearing Some Space 73
Using setBlocks to Build Even Faster 73
Reading Input from the Keyboard 74
Building a House 76
Building More Than One House 82
Using Python Functions 82
Building a Street of Houses with a for Loop 86
Adding Random Carpets 87
Generating Random Numbers 88
Laying the Carpets 89
Further Adventures in Building Anything 92
Adventure 4 Interacting with Blocks 95
Finding Out What You Are Standing On 96
Finding Out if Your Feet Are on the Ground 96
Building Magic Bridges 99
Using Python Lists as Magic Memory 102
Experimenting with Lists 102
Building Vanishing Bridges with a Python List 105
Sensing That a Block Has Been Hit 109
Writing a Treasure Hunt Game 112
Writing the Functions and the Main Game Loop 113
Placing Treasure in the Sky 114
Collecting Treasure When It Is Hit 115
Adding a Homing Beacon 116
Adding Your Bridge Builder 117
Further Adventures in Interacting with Blocks 119
Adventure 5 Using Data Files 121
Reading Data from a File 121
Interesting Things You Can Do with Data Files 122
Making a Hint-Giver 122
Building Mazes from a Data File 126
Understanding CSV Files 127
Building a Maze 128
Building a 3D Block Printer 134
Hand-Crafting a Small Test Object to 3D Print 134
Writing the 3D Printer 137
Building a 3D Block Scanner 140
Building a Duplicating Machine 144
Writing the Framework of the Duplicating Machine Program 144
Displaying the Menu 148
Building the Duplicator Room 149
Demolishing the Duplicator Room 149
Scanning from the Duplicator Room 151
Cleaning the Duplicator Room 152
Printing from the Duplicator Room 153
Listing Files 154
Further Adventures in Data Files 157
Adventure 6 Building 2D and 3D Structures 159
The minecraftstuff Module 160
Creating Lines, Circles and Spheres 161
Drawing Lines 162
Drawing Circles 164
Drawing Spheres 165
Creating a Minecraft Clock 166
Drawing Polygons 172
Pyramids 175
Further Adventures with 2D and 3D Shapes 179
Adventure 7 Giving Blocks a Mind of Their Own 181
Your Block Friend 181
Using Random Numbers to Make Your Block Friend More Interesting 188
Bigger Shapes 191
Alien Invasion 194
Further Adventures in Simulation 200
Adventure 8 Building a Game Controller with a BBC micro:bit 203
What You Need for This Adventure 204
What Is a BBC micro:bit? 204
Understanding Inputs and Outputs 205
Using Your BBC micro:bit as a Game Controller 206
Setting Up Your Computer to Connect to Your BBC micro:bit 207
Plugging In Your BBC micro:bit 207
Loading the Game Controller Code onto Your BBC micro:bit 208
Hello BBC micro:bit 209
Sensing Button Presses 210
Using Your BBC micro:bit Display 211
The Magic Doormat Revisited 212
Developing the Magic Doormat Program 212
Designing Your Own Icon for the Display 213
Making a Detonator 215
Attaching a Banana to Your BBC micro:bit 215
Sensing Touch Inputs 216
Writing the Detonator Program 217
Writing a Ball-Rolling Game 220
Building the Structure of the Program 221
Adding a Button and a Countdown 224
Building the Game 225
Sensing Tilt Movements with Your BBC micro:bit 227
Moving the Ball When You Tilt Your BBC micro:bit 230
Collecting Items from the Table 232
Finishing the Game Play 233
Adding a Time Penalty for Falling into a Hole 234
Further Adventures with Your BBC micro:bit Game Controller 236
Adventure 9 The Big Adventure: Crafty Crossing 239
A Game within a Game 239
Part 1: Building the Arena 241
Part 2: Creating the Obstacles 245
The Wall 245
Building the River 251
Creating the Holes 254
Part 3: Game Play 258
Starting the Game 259
Collecting Diamonds 261
Out of Time 263
Tracking the Player 265
Setting the Level as Complete and Calculating Points 266
Adding the Game Over Message 267
Part 4: Adding a Button and Display 268
Set Up the BBC micro:bit 268
Countdown Clock 269
Diamonds to Collect 270
Further Adventures in Your Continuing Journey with Minecraft 271
Appendix A Where to Go from Here 273
Websites 273
Minecraft 273
Python 275
Others 276
Other Ways to Make Things Happen Automatically 276
Projects and Tutorials 277
Videos 278
Books 279
Appendix B
Quick Reference 281
Glossary 291
Index 295
