Minecraft: Pi Edition is available for download | Hacker News Reader

Minecraft: Pi Edition is available for download

mojang.com

69 pointsbencevans10 comments

One thing worth noting, in my opinion, is that this has an API. The official Minecraft build is supposed to be getting an API as well, and I'd suspect that it will be similar to this API (but I could be wrong).

Also, here's a guide someone wrote up on using the prerelease pi.minecraft API, which might help you get started: http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2013/01/raspberry-pi-minecraft...

Whaaaaaa?! A "desktop" Minecraft, written in C++, and with an API?!

Why won't they just do that with the real game??!

They might be, but I bet it takes a long time to port and RPi is a good place to experiment.

I'm sure the pi version would be jvm if it could perform fast enough.

Last I heard, they were working with the bukkit team to produce an official api for the jvm version.

The unofficial download has been available for a while. It's pretty neat, you can build programmatically.

Here's the best part. On my (slightly tweaked) 512MB Raspberry pi, this runs flawless at fullscreen, way smoother than on my MacBook Pro.

The downside is that (in at least the early version I downloaded) there are no baddies, and nothing significant to mine.

Has anyone succeeded in getting this running via ssh and X forwarding and XQuartz? I just get a black window when I start it. I guess I should just hook the Pi up to a TV and try it that way.

Same here. Perhaps it uses a direct drawing API.

Do I need to have bought Minecraft to use this? It says it's free to download, but I'm not sure that means "to play".

It is free to download and play, but this version runs only on ARM processors. So if you have a Raspberry Pi or some other machine that runs a version of Linux on a device with an ARM processor, you're good to go. These machines are generally slow and have limited RAM and disk space, and Minecraft Pi doesn't have the functionality of the full version, but it's free.

I have a Raspberry Pi and I may look into Minecraft Pi to see how it looks as way to get young kids started with "programming". For kids who are already into Minecraft it looks like the Python API is a good way to get their feet wet.

Thanks, I do have a Raspberry Pi, I might load it up later and give it a go.

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