New Minecraft Mod Teaches You Code as You Play
wired.com
wired.com
Also of note is a mod called Computer Craft, that adds Lua programmable computers and devices into the game (touchscreens, turtles!) as well as a set of APIs for interacting with various aspects of the game.
Although I personally have never enjoyed it as much as the famous Redpower 2 mod, which had computers as well, with 6502 assembler and Forth. It was less forgiving than Lua, but somehow more fitting the genre (of construction set, that is); programming in Lua feels almost like you could program the thing in Java and put it in a new block.
I also liked the logic gates and other stuff that came with RP2, I think that's good for kids to play with as well. Too bad Eloraam stopped developing RP2, it was the best mod for Minecraft ever.
(Also, CC computers seem to reset on world reload, while RP2 computers were persistent. They are also dirt cheap compared to RP2, and their runtime behavior is not well specified. I just kinda feel that CC computers break the fourth wall of the virtual world, in several different ways..)
http://www.patreon.com/Eloraam https://twitter.com/therealeloraam
About that fourth wall. I know some who take this as a very strange kind of opportunity. For instance:
- SQL databases hooked up to sorting contraptions to manage inventory.
- Arduino/rpi to receive input/output from the game over the HTTP API. Think - controling doors with physical buttons, routing in game player detectors to LEDs. Lots of opportunities here.
One was used for mining, other for paving, and third had attached two 7x5x7 trailers, one was mobile house with basic facilities and the other was mobile Thaumcraft 2 lab.
But most things can be automated quite easily with frames, and I find it more intuitive - you just look at it and see what it does when it's done.
I also later designed a fully programmable factory using RP2, Buildcraft crafting table and a conveyor belt.
I am glad to hear that Eloraam started working on RP again. I hope I will be able to design von Neumann machine in RP, eventually (that's my ultimate goal, but there are several blocks still missing in RP, so it's not yet doable). At the very least, next time I play I want to have a full base on a moving platform (may be of several independent "trucks"), so I could easily move all stuff I have somewhere else in the world. :-)
(I've assembled a custom modpack for Minecraft, and had to learn a lot about mods in the process. One of these days I need to look more at how mods are written. They're written in Java, of course, like Minecraft itself; some use Scala as well. I have a bunch of starred repositories on GitHub to look at...)
The subscription fee after the beta period is for use of a private server for you and your friends to use learntomod. Alternatively you can opt for a lower fee to play on a public learntomod server.
After the beta: we haven't decided on a final pricing system. We're shooting around ideas of doing a tier system.
And about running your own learntomod server:
At this stage we aren't letting people run their own learntomod server, the only exception being 3rd party hosting companies that want to make it available to their users.
We taught Code Club in primary school and Minecraft is the one thing that is guaranteed to grab and sustain kid's attentions. We actually used it at first through a Raspberry Pi and unplugged the keyboard and mouse, so the only way kids could interact with Minecraft was through Python ;)
Many, many hours were spent typing those programs in. I'm still really good at typing with one hand while the other is used to point at what I'm typing in.
Usually I just loaded games from the tape cassette loader.
Those were the days. :')
I don't know that minecraft needs to be beneficial. I certainly doubt super mario or sonic the hedgehog were when I was young. It's a game. It allows lots of creativity, it has lots of variety. No mod will change the fact that it's still a computer game. Treat it as such and I don't see a problem?
It's fun and relaxing, and there's some evidence that children need relaxation.
It's also potentially sociable, if you can find a suitable server.
While I wouldn't want to overstate the benefits of Minecraft I do think it's a pretty awesome game that changes to fit the playstyle of whoever's using it.
I've seen amazing things made in creative. Not just stuff turned into a model and imported, but built block by block.
> I dared not to let them play as I was told it's too addictive for kids...
Set firm boundaries and stick to them. Set conditions on play - "You must have finished homework before play". This also means that you have a privilege that you can withdraw if needed.
The amount of potential creativeness and ingenuity that exists just in vanilla-minecraft makes the game more appealing developmentally to kids. Building structures develops spacial reasoning and 3d thinking. Collecting resources disciplines management skills. Collaborating with others and respecting their buildings both teach important social behaviors that are otherwise non-existent in most other popular games. These are just a few reasons why minecraft is both a really fun game, and a really exciting game to push further.
It's the modern sandbox game, and it's just a canvas. So we are trying to bring programming to the above skill set with learntomod.
The client costs $26.95; you can buy it online with a credit card, or buy prepaid game license cards in some stores. You authenticate with Mojang's central server when you play the game. Actual game servers are usually configured to reject client connections if the user isn't authenticated. (You can turn that option off, but you get a big warning message in the server logs when you do.)
The same login for "vanilla" Minecraft also works with modded versions, such as those accessed through the Technic Launcher (http://www.technicpack.net).
My server is actually at my home, so my godsons and their mother use a VPN to log into it. It's easier to have it hosted on a cloud service like DO. (If you're just accessing it at home, you don't have to bother with the VPN part.)
While I myself can appreciate maintaining a linux VPS and installing things from scratch (erm, that's precisely how I do minecraft hosting), managed hosting 'just works' without a maintenance overhead, and there are easy to use web control panels for plugin installation and configuration.
Most servers that kids like to play on aren't standard - they are 3rd party modifications (ex: bukkit). Such 3rd party servers have plugins that make the gameplay more usable. Example of some useful plugins are essentials, worldedit, worldguard. The headaches you will typically get is upgrading the server (after a minecraft update) and installing plugins. The hosting services mentioned above make it incredibly easy.
The server is cheap enough, and if I wasn't so nuts it could handle a small number of players easily.
(if u haven't seen the new Terry Gilliam : Zero Theorem : then u should)