Exploring Minecraft Pi Edition

If you are a Raspberry Pi enthusiast, you may have seen that Minecraft Pi Edition was officially released yesterday. I don’t have the time to game like I used to, so I haven’t really played Minecraft, but this version looked intriguing since it’s free and it has an open API. So I downloaded it yesterday during a break when both of the boys were napping and give it a quick run. The performance of the game is surprisingly responsive, which shows that the GPU in the Pi is fairly capable, even if stock Raspian X Windows is slow.

With a bit of digging into the very sparse API docs included with the program, and a little Internet help, I was able to get a bit of code up and running. All it does is create a sphere 10 blocks away from the player’s location in the Z direction. Here’s the quick and dirty code:

You can see the results in this photo:

[pe2-image src=”http://lh3.ggpht.com/-mpxhCovV3jw/URqfv6RtGBI/AAAAAAAACwY/jwlRM6KiZb0/s144-c/IMG_20130212_120032.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/100175922620194527589/InstantUpload#5844159111912822802″ caption=”IMG_20130212_120032.jpg” type=”image” alt=”IMG_20130212_120032.jpg” ]

Pretty fun stuff, even if it’s very basic. I know that the hardcore MC fans have already been scripting some pretty fantastic stuff in the PC version. It should be interesting to see what people do with the Pi version.

2 thoughts on “Exploring Minecraft Pi Edition

  1. Jason, I am preparing a 1 page hand out for a Raspberry Jam I am hosting this Sunday (http://eghamraspberryjamapril.eventbrite.com/) I was wondering if it would be OK to include this code as an example of coding Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi.

    To me it is the perfect example. Short, but with enough detail to be interesting and useful.

    I would of course link back to your blog and once the sheet is completed share it with you.

    Thanks,
    Albert.

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