Minecraft Programming using Python and Raspberry Pi

• Lesson plan is based on a 10am - 4pm day (including snack breaks!)
• Students will be a parent-child pair

General Introductions (15 mins: 10am - 10:15am)

Wooden Block Game (30 mins: 10:15am - 11:00am)

• Battle Ships!

• Building Instructions:

  • B (Block) x, y, z
  • L (Loop) start - end

• 🏆 Human Programmer Computer Challenges:

  • 4x3 wall
  • 3x3 cube
  • 8x pyramid
  • fort

Setup Raspberry Pi (15 mins: 11:00am - 11:15am)

• Video: What is a Raspberry?
• Pi board
• SD Card (pre-setup)
• HDMI (display) cable
• Wifi
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Power

Introduction to Minecraft (15 mins: 11:30am - 11:45am)

• What is Minecraft?

  • What is Minecraft all about?

• What is Minecraft Pi? (features and limitations)

  • Pi Edition

• Play the game!

  • Menu -> Minecraft
  • Start Game -> Create New (you can create new worlds till you get one you like)

• Keys:

  Key	Action
  W	Forward
  A	Left
  S	Backward
  D	Right
  Left-click	Hit
  Right-click	Place block
  Mouse-scroll	Hotbar select
  E	Inventory
  Space	Jump / Fly up
  Left Shift	Crouch / Fly down
  Double Space	Fly / Fall
  Esc	Pause / Game menu
  Tab	Release mouse cursor

• Minecraft coordinate system:
  • x-axis: East (positive), West (negative)
  • z-axis: South (positive), North (negative)
  • y-axis: High (positive), Low (negative)
  • Right-handed coordinates: thumb = x, index = y, middle = z

• 🏆 Challenges for parents
  • Move to position 0,0,0
  • Learn to fly and swim
  • What is the (y) coordinate of sea-level?
  • How big (x, z) is your world?
  • Can you find the South East corner of your world?
  • Build a house with stone walls, door, windows and wooden roof (bonus: fence around the house)
  • What are the dimensions (x, y, z) of your house?

Introduction to Python (45 mins: 11:45am - 12:30pm)

• Why Python?
  • A great first programming language
  • Python RefCard
• Video: Pair Programming (from code.org)
• Getting started:
  • Menu -> Programming -> IDLE 2
  • Shell: run commands here for instruction and testing
  • File -> Open -> minecraft/scripts/intro.py -> IDLE editor
  • Run: F5
  • Break: CTRL+C
  • Auto-complete: CTRL+SPACE
  • Case-sensitive
  • Indentation (for blocks)
• Learning Objectives:
  • Comments
  • Printing
  • Basic maths operators (add, subtract, multiply)
  • Basic variable types (strings, integers)
  • Concatenating strings
  • Casting an integer to a string
  • Booleans (True / False)
  • Inequalities (Greater Than / Less Than)
  • If/Else statements
  • For Loops
  • While Loops
  • Lists

Minecraft Programming (90 mins: 1:00pm - 2:30pm)

• Instructions

Lunch Break (30 mins: 12:30pm - 1:00pm)

• Minecraft Bingo

Electronics (60 mins 2:45pm - 3:45pm)

• Instructions

Crafty Crossing

• TBD