Raspberry Jam York - Minecraft Programming
I had a great time at the York Raspberry Jam, honestly excellent, I met some really great people and got a chance to introduce more people to the wonders of Minecraft on the Pi and more importantly how to program using its API. It was hosted at the National STEM centre at the University of York, a fantastic place with great facilities.
I hosted 2 sessions, the first a practical session where we did some hands on, sitting round a Pi getting to grips with how to code in Minecraft. I couldn’t believe the popularity of this session, it was a strange sensation when Pete Lomas (yes the designer of the Pi himself) offered to stand outside and give the bad news that the we were full. We had 6 Pi’s setup with about 5 or 6 people to a Pi.
I had prepared a short set of instructions, which you can download here, to help people get started and spent most of the session moving around the room helping people get started. I was really please that everybody there managed to complete the practical and create, a simplified version of the auto bridge program, and great fun was had walking Steve through the air.
I then presented a talk about Minecraft and how to program it, in the lecture theatre as the penultimate session of the day and the warm up act for Amy Mather. Great experience and one I really enjoyed.
We then had a bit of fun when I fired up the Pi and we had a used my directional Minecraft cannon, to blow up the windmill used in the presentation. It took a few attempts but we finally managed to take it out.
Resources
Minecraft: Pi Edition - Programming Practical
Minecraft: Pi Edition - Presentation