HoC 2017 | rails functionality specification list

The following is a list of features describing the intended functionality of rails in Minecraft's Hour of Code 2017:

(1) A player will ‘use’ with a rail in front of them to hop into a Minecart at that location. The player will travel the direction he is facing. He cannot mount a rail in a direction that prohibits travel (ex: sideways).

(2) The player will travel the direction the were facing when they mounted the rail. They cannot control the speed or direction once they are in motion.

(3) Once a mine cart starts moving, it will continue to move along that track until it reaches the end (any index in the actionPlane that is -not- some sort of rail). If the cart hits a non-rail block on the action layer, it will result in a level fail. If the cart reaches the end of a track without colliding with an action block (read: the track ends with an empty block in the action layer), the player will dismount the rail.

(4) The only type of rails used in the curriculum levels are regular rails (not redstone-charged-rails). We don’t want the player to have to worry about the ins-n-outs of Minecraft railworks.

(5) When the player reaches the end of a track, they will stay in that index with the cart sprite. They can either move back the other direction, and initiate another ride, or move out of the index to leave the cart, with the exception of a fail state, in which case the player would dismount. Additionally, you should be able to dismount the rails at any time during your travel by pressing the ACTION BUTTON. Again, you could re-mount the rails as described above.

(6) The agent can place and destroy rails with placeBlockForward(), destroyForward(), and placeBlock() (for placeBlock(): only over ground layer blocks that are not water or lava)

(7) Upon destruction, rails will drop a rail mini-block (this one is from Joel. I confirmed yesterday that he would really like all new blocks to have mini-blocks. We should expect assets in the future)