A program that uses the minecraft pi edition python api to build a game where the player has to navigate a randomly generated labyrinth to locate treasure held in a castle.
When I found out that there was a simple minecraft version for the raspberry pi, I wanted to evaluate both what was possible with the API and the relative difficulty. I found an example online that demonstrated how to build a castle and adding the labyrinth to turn it into a game added enough complexity to make it interesting.
The maze generation uses a variant of Prim's spanning tree algorithm, modified to use vertices rather than edges and uses random selection rather than edge weights.
In the end, I was a little disappointed with the quality of minecraft pi edition and the API due to a number of prominent defects. It was also not easy, complete nor idiomatic python. As a result, my conclusion was that the game and the API are too complicated and too limited. If the API was simpler, it could possibly be used to teach younger students. Additionally, the API doesn't provide enough functionality to keep more advanced children (or adults) interested. Given this, I think there are likely better tools out there to use to teach programming to younger children.
To run this program, you'll need:
- A working Python 2 environment
- A raspberry pi with minecraft-pi api installed
To run the program, you just need to run:
./minecraft_labyrinth.py [host-address] [port]