Programming Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi

This post was originally published on the Wolfram Blog and has been edited slightly for Tech-Based Teaching. Enjoy!

The standard Raspbian software on the Raspberry Pi comes with a basic implementation of Minecraft and a full implementation of the Wolfram Language. Combining the two provides a fun playground for learning coding.

If you are a gamer, you can use the richness of the Wolfram Language to programmatically generate all kinds of interesting structures in the game world, or to add new capabilities to the game. If you are a coder, then you can consider Minecraft just as a fun 3D rendering engine for the output of your code.

Installation

The first step is to make sure that you have all the right components. Make sure that you have the latest version of Raspbian and the Wolfram Language. You do this by connecting your Raspberry Pi to the network, opening the Terminal app and typing the following:

Now open Mathematica on the Pi, or another computer, and type:

… followed by Shift + Return to evaluate it. If all went well, we are ready to start.

Using the Link

The MinecraftLink library adds a small set of new commands to the Wolfram Language for connecting to a running Raspberry Pi Minecraft game.

Start by launching Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi, and then start a fresh game or open an existing one. You must have a Minecraft game open before you can connect to it from the Wolfram Language. In the Wolfram Language, load the library by evaluating the following:

This extends the Wolfram Language with the following new commands:

You can find documentation on these by evaluating MinecraftHelp[] after you have installed the link.

You can control a Minecraft game running on the Raspberry Pi from the Wolfram Language running on the same Raspberry Pi, or from any other computer that has a network connection to the Pi. If you’re connecting from a different computer, you must now tell the Wolfram…