Adventures in MC

Jonni Bidwell enters the world of Minecraft for some coding fun.

We can’t get enough of Martin O’Hanlon’s Minecraft website (head to http://stuffaboutcode.com). Building on this, he and David Whale have released Adventures in Minecraft, a book which aims to introduce the Minecraft Python API to children. The text is divided into nine projects of increasing difficulty – ranging from the obligatory Hello Minecraft World to using Pi or Arduino GPIO-connected electronics to make a hazard-fraught diamond-collecting game, in which you race against the (seven-segment LED) clock, which is created using the various techniques you learned in the preceding chapters.

The text is hardware-agnostic, explaining how to set up Minecraft on the Pi, PC or Mac through the Bukkit server and Raspberry Juice plugin, which you can download from the book’s companion website. It’s also remarkably easy to follow, making it an excellent classroom resource. There are all manner of interstitial boxouts bearing extra details, explanations and warnings, as well as cartoon avatars of the authors offering their own observations. Code is kept as clean and minimal as possible, with clear explanations where necessary. Even in the grand finale project, which introduces the relatively complex matter of threading, this is broken up into easy-to-digest chunks.

With a little prodding, even the shortest attention spans will get something out of this book. It does a great job of explaining some programming fundamentals and there are plenty of pointers to further adventures too, should young imaginations be kindled.