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Minecraft – it’s here!

OK – I said I wasn’t going to post again until I was back in the UK, but I just opened my laptop to check my mail at the airport and found something that really couldn’t wait. The folks from Mojang have finished the Minecraft: Pi Edition port, and it’s available for download now. For free.

You can see a post from Mojang about the news on their main blog; they’ve also opened up a Pi Edition blog, where you can find download instructions. I know some of you have already downloaded the beta version that was released in December; if you have, you’ll want to replace it with today’s release, which fixes some bugs and has more features.

To read more about Minecraft on the Pi, check out our previous posts, where you’ll find video demonstrating how coding inside the Minecraft: Pi Edition environment works, a report from MineCon, and more. Thanks to all at Mojang for all the work you’ve done on this, and greetings to those of you who are coming to the Raspberry Pi platform to play this new edition – we’re really happy to be able to welcome all you Minecrafters to the Pi family!

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Well, here we are in the Pi Mines! Pick up axe. Turn right. Swing pick axe. Huh? Whaddaya mean it’s not that kinda game? Oh, I’m such a dinosaur! :D

OK, off to download and I hope it has the programmability feature that I seem to recall being discussed. Programmability … GOOOOOD!!! ;)

For those new to Minecraft, here’s the tutorial pages link:

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials

If even that is too overwhelming, start with the Newcomer’s tutorial:

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Beginner%27s_guide

It appears that they probably should generate a separate set of help/tutorial pages for the Pi Edition to make it clear which features are actually available and whether there are limitations to them compared with the full versions.

Because the ending is .gz, my pi is not recognizing it when trying to extract.

I don`t know if that`s your problem, but there`s a typo in the instructions on the official minecraft-site.
It says:

“To decompress it: tar -zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1..1.tar.gz”

But there are two dots instead of one between the two “1”. So you should type this:

zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz

I can’t get the programming to work at all, I’ve followed the instructions on the video by daniel bates and it still doesn’t work.

Would have been nice to have more features, as at the moment I find the game rather boring.

It also lags quite a bit for me, but otherwise, good work Mojang. Shame it wasn’t before New year/ end of January.

i found this blog to be very useful to learn the Minecraft Pi Edition API made by mojang
http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/

it has 3 code examples wich are pretty cool, one is a brief demo, on his a hide and seek for a diamond game, and the other makes automatic bridges under your feet if going off a cliff. if you examine the code you can figure out the basics

My son loves this (8 years) – its like Lego.

I think there are more improvements and features yet to come…

First the post is from Dec 20 2012, so its at least 1 1/2 months old.

Second there’s no out of the box instructions on how to use the python API, however looking online for a while got me a ‘demo’ script that runs the API, but you still can’t directly program like the vid showed. :(

Third this is only the second alpha (0.1.1) it uses half the world dimentions of the first one (to make it run smoother I assume).

I also managed to get animals spawning on the first one alpha (0.1) with a bit of hex modding of course, tho it did glitch a bit more, so would explain why they aren’t on. The address on the second one is different so couldn’t test it. Plus the activated animals can’t be hit.

Oh and is the options.txt kinda like a future config file? To turn on and off particular features?

The game was released before Christmas, but quickly pulled after some bugs were found – that’s how the leaked version appeared. I assume they just used the same blog post, but I can assure you that improvements have been made since then.

You can do the programming in real time – you just need to write your code in a Python interpreter (type python in a terminal) instead of running an existing Python script.

I knew that but you still have to do more than the demo vid shows.(proper working instructions are in a post below)

Plus the one everyone is using (the one linked on this post) IS the one that was pulled.

>>> import minecraft as mc
>>> mc.connect()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
AttributeError: ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘connect’

So I’m guessing you cannot program it like the video showed, even more disappointed.

You can!

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=33347

Answers everything guys.

Still not the same as the vid tho :/

At least it is possible to get it working.

I wrote my code before Mojang created their API – they now have many more features, but my code no longer works. If I have some time this evening, I’ll look into porting what I had to the new system, which should allow you to replicate what I did in the video.

Here you go. Download this and put it in your mcpi folder:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~db434/files/minecraft_basic.py

This allows you to do:
import minecraft_basic as mc mc.connect() mc.setblock(1,2,3, mc.GOLD) mc.getblock(1,2,3) mc.moveplayer(5,6,7)

It’s a much more limited API than Mojang provide, but it should allow you to replicate everything I did in my videos.

Is there any way to set up the pi as a headless minecraft server and connect pc/mac clients?

The Pi Edition of the game is only compatible with the Pocket Edition, not the desktop version. However, some clever person wrote a Minecraft server in C++ which I believe runs fairly well on the Pi for small numbers of players:

http://www.mc-server.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmapkPSk-os << If anyone needs a video guide on how to install

When I start minecraft as per the instructions I’m presented with a blank “minecraft” window.

The original “terminal” window displays repeated “sendto failed with code -1 for char 2 and length 25.” messages.

Do I need to install anything else or ensure that my user id is added to additional groups or anything?

Please help as I’d really like to get into minecraft.

I have the same problem, please help. T_T

What set-up are you using? In particular, connecting to a Pi via ssh and using a Raspberry Pi emulator are known not to work properly.

The messages you describe are normal. (At least, I get them too.)

I believe that everything should work out of the box, though I haven’t actually tried it on a fresh install.

How many GPU RAM it needs? I have a 256MB Pi and I split 128/128 MB and nothing happens only a black window appears.

That memory split is fine. Are you accessing the Pi over the network, or do you have a screen attached directly? In order to get a hardware-accelerated game in X, they had to do some hacks which mean that the game display doesn’t get sent over the network.

Is your RPi overclocked?
I have seen problems with graphic intense programs failing if over clocked. With Quake3 I had to go back to the normal clock speed to get it to work reliably.

Yeah, I’ve tried it over X11VNC. I’ve tried it on my TV, it works fine after I fall back to stock clock speeds. Both of you are right! Thanks!

so much betterthan the leak! i can look in all directions without glitches!

OMG OMG OMG!!

I was getting an error:
failed to open vchiq instance

So I added my userid to group video, and it then worked fine:
usermod -a -G video [your_username]

tried your method, but I’m still getting this error

vchiq_lib: Incompatible VCHIQ library - driver version 2 (min 2), library version 6 (min 3) * failed to open vchiq instance

Update your system with something like “aptitude update” , “apt-get update” or your preferred method, reboot and try again.

Ok so i have get it all updated and even ran through upgrade aswell but still getting the vchiq problem.

any ideas?

Have you tried giving the GPU more memory (minimum 64MB, recommended 128MB)? Use raspi-config and see the memory_split option.

When I try cd mcpi, it says command not found. I am using linux terminal on Wheezy. Does anyone know what is wrong?

you probably need to type ./mcpi

My son loves it. He says “it’s made python cool”. So far he has made a giant flood, a cube of “everything ” and a tower of lava.

I spent yesterday and today porting Minesweeper to Minecraft. You can see a video and pics here, and you can download the code here.

It runs great but there are a few issues.
1. I cant open my chest
2. I Can’t sleep because it never goes dark
3. The mouse only goes halfway across the screen.
Apart from them, it seems to be pretty good.
if I could get some help that would be great.
Thanks again.

I got Minecraft working last night and with the help from the stuffaboutcode website and a bit here have got it working. But we can not do anything more than place a single block and find our position using the LXTerminal. None of the other commands work. Any ideas? We’re new to Python but seasoned Minecrafters!

I wonder if the stuffaboutcode page is relating to the earlier leaked version of the game, and not the offical released version that appear a few days ago? Aparently the API has changed between versions, so earlier python programs will not work with this later version.
Texy

Funny thing is, version 0.1 didn’t come with an API, yet version 0.1.1 did (which is the oneused in this post, so somethings fishy).

Version 0.1 did come with an api, its almost exactly same as the api with 0.1.1, but the new ones seems a bit more performant. The programs on stuffaboutcode work with both versions, i know, i wrote them!

I wish they could have documented the API properly.

Is this good enough? http://www.wiki.vg/Minecraft_Pi_Protocol

There’s a couple of obvious things missing from this documentation, and presumably from the protocol itself.

I’m attempting to get a Wii balance board integrated into pi minecraft, so you can stand on it and segway around the world, using a wiimote to place/destroy blocks etc. But the api has no way of querying or setting the direction in which the player is facing, so I will only be able to fact due north to start with. Presumably mojang will expand the api in due course.

Same issues a Ben above for me :

It runs great but there are a few issues.
1. I cant open my chest
2. I Can’t sleep because it never goes dark
3. The mouse only goes halfway across the screen.

same!

Had a go but the mouse sticks a bit when in menus. Also, any way of setting it up for classic survival mode?

I may a little video showing how to place blocks in minecraft pi.

It’s poor quality but it may help

http://Www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hzURJmV5Y

I’m well pleased with the massive analogue clock I have made using the API, its so big you can walk on the hands!

Check out the video and source code here

I have been trying really hard to download and run Minecraft- Pi Edition and everything works, decompressing the files and everything until it comes to running the program. Every time i try i get to the point where i am at the mcpi folder and i type ‘./minecraft-pi’ but every time i do it it doesn’t work. Does anyone know why and please could you leave a reply telling me how to do it. Thanks.

I’m having the same problem.

Try the following:
chmod ug+x minecraft-pi
The above typed at the terminal when you’re in the mcpi directory should modify the permission of the file to be executed by the “pi” user.

I tried that but now it just does nothing., before it was saying there was no such file or directory

Same problem here. We are running Debian not Wheesy, as far as I know. Is there something missing from Debian?

If you are using Debian, instead of typing just minecraft.pi, type ./minecraft.pi

I am running wheezy.

When I try the “tar -zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz” command, I get the following error:
”
gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
”
What am I doing wrong?

Today was the first time to bring my Pi with me to a german Primary School. The kids are absolutely nuts about minecraft – a perfect setting…

“If you manage to set up the Pi with the prepared beamer yourself, you get the chance to play minecraft with it!”

The Pi was attached properly within minutes, first contact with linux made and the first house built soon… now they are all keen on the raspberry :-) Minecraft is attracting, well done. Now I do need more of these little machines!

Hello. I put together this blog post on the topic of getting started with Minecraft on the pi, using some of the tips from people’s comments here: http://prmrytchr.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/edtechnostalgia-and-beginning-programming-raspberry-pi-minecraft/

I have looked at so many forums and blogs trying to get this to work but the same thing happens every time. I am running on ‘wheezy’ so you do the ‘./’ command so i type ‘./minecraft-pi’ but EVERY time it never works and says ‘bash: ./minecraft-pi: No such file or directory’. It is so annoying and please could someone help me work out why it doesn’t work. Thanks a lot.

I have my raspberry pi connected to a older television via the composite output (PAL). When I start minecraft, a black window appears in the background and then the game is like “popped out” of the window (like a borderless window above the normal one). I can play normally with a good framerate, i can even resize the window in the background (The overlay will resize the same) . I took some pictures with my phone cam (because i couldnt get the right picture with a screenshot app.) https://dl.dropbox.com/u/53239111/IMG_20130223_121230.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/53239111/IMG_20130223_121253.jpg
Notice the 2 mouse cursors in the 2nd pic.
Maybe this has something to do with my overclocking settings? (I overclocked the pi to 900mhz, overvolted to 2, SDram 450mhz, GPU has 64mb)

Turns out you can drive Minecraft from Squeak (and therefore with a bit of work, from Scratch) –
http://croquetweak.blogspot.com/2013/02/smalltalk-bindings-for-minecraft-pi.html

when i type sudo apt-get install tar -zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz it comes up with E: Command line option ‘z’ [from -zxvf] is not known.
HELP!!!!

not sure if the comment system ate a few carriage returns so it should be

sudo apt-get install tar<enter> (if tar is not installed but i believe it’s in all distros by default) then
tar xzvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz<enter> (where <enter> is the return/enter key)

Hi Henry,

First download it: wget [insert web address of minecraft file here]

then decompress it: tar -zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz

full instructions here: http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2013/02/raspberry-pi-minecraft-install.html

if you are using the GUI you can: go to file manager and right click on mcpi. click extract all, then after they are all extracted, open the mcpi folder and click on minecraft.whatever. it should have a picture of gears on it. it says “this file is executable” there should be three options: run/run in lxterminal/cancel. select run out of lxterminal. then a minecraft window resembling minecraft pe before the 0.7.0 update. hope this works for you guys!

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