Minecraft 1.8 Canarymod Starter Kit

[Martin O'Hanlon]

Version 1.0 of the canarymod starter kits are now online.

Its now using Minecraft 1.8 and has an updated version of RaspberryJuice (1.3) which includes a new function to get the post which have been sent to the chat window.

e.g.

import mcpi.minecraft as minecraft

mc = minecraft.Minecraft.create()

while True:

    for chatpost in mc.events.pollChatPosts():

        mc.postToChat("Echo " + chatpost.message)

[David Whale]

This is awesome, it works really very well (I tried it on Mac just now).

The possibilities..... I'm very excited!

David

@whaleygeek

[David Whale]

This is awesome!

I just tried this on Mac, it works very well.

The possibilities... I'm excited!

David

@whaleygeek

[Martin O'Hanlon]

[Bob Irving]

Hi all. I'm a MS compsci teacher very interested in how to use Minecraft, especially for teaching coding. I just stumbled upon this and am very interested in testing it out.

Are you still using the Bukkit server that comes in the AIM for PC download on the AIM website? Or have you moved to CanaryMod? Would love to know more about why the move, advantages, etc.

Thanks for this great work. I just ordered your book.

Bob Irving

Porter-Gaud School

Charleston, SC

[Martin O'Hanlon]

Hi Bob,

The official AIM starter kit is still based on Bukkit and Minecraft 1.6.4.

The choice of Minecraft server (bukkit or canarymod) isnt that important and it tends to be a personal choice thing. There are versions of RaspberryJuice (the server plugin that allows your code to talk to Minecraft) for both Bukkit and Canarymod. 

I made new starter kits available as readers asked if they could use more recent versions of Minecraft. I choose Canarymod to do that because of issues relating to the availability of newer versions of Bukkit and the fact that you know have to build Bukkit yourself (which is a bit of a pain) and a direct download isn't available.

From a personal perspective I find Canarymod easier to setup, Bukkit tends to require more plugins and security is more difficult.

Interestingly there are now versions of RaspberryJuice (written by AIM readers) for Minecraft Forge (a client based modding environment, rather than server based).

I hope that helps.

Martin

[Bob Irving]

Is either CanaryMod or Bukkit preferable for multiplayer MC with the RaspberryJuice plugin?

Or is that not even a possibility?

Bob

[Martin O'Hanlon]

I really doesnt matter, if you have one you prefer use that. Canarymod tends to have a nicer community and directly downloadable jars, Bukkit/Spigot tend to have more regular releases but you have to build yourself.

And yes you can run a multiplayer server with Raspberry Juice. You will need to use the mc.entity functions to get players positions and the mc.player functions only return the 'host' player. 

Martin

[Gregory Miller]

Martin, first thanks a ton for all your work on this!! My kids live it!!

Do you plan to release a kit for Linux (specifically I'm interested in Ubunbu).  I started with the 1.4 version and was able to adapt it for Ubuntu, but then now my son is up to the "block click event" program and the mc.event.pollBlockHits() doesn't return any events ever.  I was hoping upgrading to the newest version might fix this and was hoping to bypass some of the headache this time.

[Martin O'Hanlon]

Hi,

I dont have any plans to create a Linux Starter Kit, but I suspect it would be fairly trivial to turn the starterkit for MacOS into Linux. The only problem is I dont have a Linux pc.

I would be really surprised if pollBlockHits isnt working just because you are using Linux. If the other api calls are working its probably something else which is causing the problem.

The first thing to check (and you wouldnt be the first to have the problem) is "are you right clicking blocks while holding a sword?" left click doesnt register as a hit, it destroys blocks.

If you are, could you create a new post in the forum and paste in your code?

Martin

[Gregory Miller]

I am indeed clicking with the sword, though i also tried with other toll both in creative and survival. I'll post the code later, but it is exactly as shown in the book.

Either way I'm going to upgrade to your latest version using canary mod. If you'd like i can post what i do to make it compatible.

I think it's as simple as adding a start.sh file with the same jars and directory structure.

[Martin O'Hanlon]

Right clicking? It might be worth checking before you try building a new server.

[Gregory Miller]

Thanks Martin.  I think we were right clicking.  I can't be sure because I am traveling.  What I am sure of is that right clicking works on version 1.81.

Also, the Mac kit works as-is on Ubuntu with two very simple modifications.  

chmod +x StartCanary.command

chmod +x start_server.command

Other than that, unzip the tarball and keep directory structure in tact.  I haven't fully tested everything, but the stuff I have works fine.  Thanks again for your help.

Best Regards,

Greg Miller

[Gregory Miller]

Update: it also works in my original version.  Right clicking was the issue.

[Martin O'Hanlon]

:)

[Alexander Pruss]

The possibility of this confusion might be a reason to have an option (default on? default off?) to have Raspberry Juice recognize left-click sword hits in addition to right-click ones.

[Martin O'Hanlon]

I can see some value in having it configurable, but the default would still be 'right click' and unless you know that you are doing it wrong you wouldn't know to change the configuration.

[Alexander Pruss]

One could make the default be *both*. There are so few blocks that can be damaged by a sword that it would make very little difference to a user if a left-click with a sword got registered, I think.

[Eric I]

I recently posted about difficulties I was having getting the AIM Canarymod to work. I resolved this issue and deleted the post, so as not to add noise to the discussion.

It seems to me that when I first tried connecting to the Canarymod server using just "localhost" it was failing. I found a reference to port 4711, so when I tried to connect to "localhost:4711" it seemed to get further, but I got the exception that I previously described. However now when I connect to "localhost" all seems to work.

Can't wait to start playing w/ the enhanced API!!!

[Martin O'Hanlon]

Hi Eric,

I was unclear about the problems you were having.

Are you having problems when trying to connect to the server in Minecraft i.e. when playing the gaming, clicking multiplayer, then direct connect, and typing localhost as the server address?

Or....

Are you having problems when you try and connect to the server from your python program, i.e. when using the code mc = minecraft.MInecraft.create()?

For info,

The address you need to connect to when playing is just "localhost", the server is using the default port of 25565, i.e. "localhost:25565" but you dont need to specify the port because it defaults to 25565.

The don't need to specific an address when you connect using python, as it defaults to localhost (127.0.0.1) and port 4711

The only thing I can think of which would be blocking Minecraft from connecting to the canarymod server is if you didn't give it permission to talk to the network (I vaguely remember when you launch a new program on a Mac it asks you to confirm that it can connect to the network).

Lots of people use the 1.8 Canarymod server with Mac (including David) so Im pretty confident it works (at least for the majority of people).

If you were happy using Bukkit and all you wanted to do was use the latest functions in the Raspberry Juice API, you could upgrade the RapsberryJuice plugin on your . Its really simple, download the latest RaspberryJuice jar file from here (http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/raspberryjuice/files/), copy it to the AdventuresInMinecraft/Bukkit/plugins directory and remove the old RaspberryJuice jar file.

If you could let me have more information, I'll do my best to help.

Martin

[Eric I]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Martin! I deleted the post after figuring things out (and as described in a different post).

Just played with getRotation, getPitch, and getDirection.... Cool!!! (Interesting that getRotation returns a value <= 0).

[Victoria H]

Martin, my apologies for bringing this up here. The CanaryMod group has closed down their site. We've started a small discussion group to discuss if/how to maintain Canary. Anyone interested may join us here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/canarymod

[Felix Ling]

Thank you and David for putting this all together and writing your awesome, awesome book. I and my 5-year-old son are just loving this stuff. He hasn't written any programs on his own quite yet, but he has been able to use mc.setBlocks () from the Python terminal and also locate and change the block ID of the house building and other programs to see the results. Me, I've had a blast with simple stuff like rail-building programs that put power rail where it needs to be, making skyscrapers, stairs, etc.

We had been using the Bukkit server with 1.6.4, but after acquiring some Minecraft books, he's been itching to see stained glass, so I just installed your CanaryMod starter kit, and it works like a charm. Thank you!

I have a couple of questions. I'm guessing the answer to this one is no, but do you know if there's any way to migrate a Bukkit world to CanaryMod? I haven't seen anything, and I'm guessing they use completely different file formats. I already warned my son we probably couldn't migrate it, but pointed out we can still always go back to the Bukkit world by just launching the Bukkit server.

Secondly, both servers always warn that we're launching it in offline mode, and say that this isn't secure. What is the reason the kits are configured for offline, and what are the ramifications for switching it?

Lastly, I wanted to mention that I did run into a hiccup way back when I was installing the Bukkit server, and thought maybe it'd be helpful for y'all to know in case you hadn't seen this. When I installed Python 2.7.6. It complained about the Tcl version being unstable. I found the answer at Stack Overflow which is to install an earlier version of ActiveTcl and then reinstall Python. Note, this might be because I'm still using Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

Anyway, sorry this was so long. Thanks again for all this awesome work! I can't wait to see what we can do with sensing player direction.

[Martin O'Hanlon]

Hi,

Im pleased you are enjoying Adventures in Minecraft. I have put a few answers to your questions below.

Martin

Thank you and David for putting this all together and writing your awesome, awesome book. I and my 5-year-old son are just loving this stuff. He hasn't written any programs on his own quite yet, but he has been able to use mc.setBlocks () from the Python terminal and also locate and change the block ID of the house building and other programs to see the results. Me, I've had a blast with simple stuff like rail-building programs that put power rail where it needs to be, making skyscrapers, stairs, etc.

We had been using the Bukkit server with 1.6.4, but after acquiring some Minecraft books, he's been itching to see stained glass, so I just installed your CanaryMod starter kit, and it works like a charm. Thank you!

I have a couple of questions. I'm guessing the answer to this one is no, but do you know if there's any way to migrate a Bukkit world to CanaryMod? I haven't seen anything, and I'm guessing they use completely different file formats. I already warned my son we probably couldn't migrate it, but pointed out we can still always go back to the Bukkit world by just launching the Bukkit server.

I have never tried to migrate a map from Bukkit to Canarymod - sorry - I would be surprised if there are different formats but Bukkit and Canarymod might organise the files differently.

What you might want to do, is build your own starterkit using a later version of Bukkit. There are instructions on how to do so in the readme file, although you will need to compile Bukkit yourself. You can get the raspberry juice plugin here (https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/raspberryjuice.22724/) - creating a 1.10 version of the StarterKit is on my list of things to do.

Secondly, both servers always warn that we're launching it in offline mode, and say that this isn't secure. What is the reason the kits are configured for offline, and what are the ramifications for switching it?

The reason the kits are configured for offline, is just so people can still use the starter kits if they arent connected to the internet. The only reason it is secure is that when other people join your server in off-line mode it wont check that they have an official account with Mojangs. The only ramification for turning it on is that you will have to be connected to the internet in order to connect to the bukkit server.

If you want to change it in the Canarymod:

Open config\server.cfg
Change:
- online-mode=false to online-mode=true

Lastly, I wanted to mention that I did run into a hiccup way back when I was installing the Bukkit server, and thought maybe it'd be helpful for y'all to know in case you hadn't seen this. When I installed Python 2.7.6. It complained about the Tcl version being unstable. I found the answer at Stack Overflow which is to install an earlier version of ActiveTcl and then reinstall Python. Note, this might be because I'm still using Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

I do remember in testing there were some oddities with MacOS and ActiveTcl, but its not a problem I have seen reported many times, so I think your conclusions are right about it being due to an older version.

[David Whale]

Hi Felix,

Glad you and your family are enjoying the book, and thanks for the great feedback!

Just to add to what Martin said. When we did the original testing on Mac, one of our testers was using an older version of Mac and did come into this problem with the TCL version - the solution you suggest was indeed the solution that we used in this case. So yes, your analysis is correct, it is due to the older version, and your fix is correct too. Unfortunately we were not able to put a list of oddities in the install instructions, as it would have complicated the book somewhat. Perhaps we should have added this to the readme, but I think at the time we didn't think many users would be on the older version of MacOS X. Or perhaps we just forgot - sorry!

Hope you continue to enjoy using the book - if you follow us on twitter, do tweet us pictures of your awesome creations!

David

@whaleygeek

[Felix Ling]

Ah, okay! Thanks for the info on offline mode. I was worried about security, so I'll probably just leave it off (that warning did seem counterintuitive, as network access is usually less secure). 

Oh, it wasn't that hard to figure out the Tcl thing.  Not sure it's worth putting into the readme, since there's so few of us Snow Leopard users and even I'm getting to the point where I'm getting ready to finally upgrade because the latest R version doesn't support it anymore (I just really wish Apple would do another "bug-fix-only" release). I just wanted to make sure y'all knew about it.

Regarding Bukkit vs. CanaryMod, I've been reading about the whole DMCA drama, so I'm a little leery. I didn't realize they were still doing non-binary releases. It's also been ages since I've compiled anything, but I suppose it isn't *that* much harder than anything else I'm doing these days. I'll see if I can take a crack it sometime. And I understand the CanaryMod team isn't making any new releases at all, but there's Neptune? It's hard to keep track of everything.

Anyway, y'all are awesome. It's so amazing to see how much you put into helping everybody here. Thank you!

-felix

[Alexander Pruss]

Just a bit of shameless self-promotion: If one wants to avoid DMCA anxieties, my RaspberryJamMod works perfectly fine with a stock Minecraft server plus Forge, and has all of the functionality of Juice (and more, such as authentication for remote users). There is currently at least one semi-commercial server using it. And it supports up to 1.10.2.

(You can also use it without a server, in standalone mode.)

[Felix Ling]

Ooh, thanks. I'll try that out, too! I take it the only drawback is lack of multiplayer (not really an issue for us at this point yet)?

And whoa, you have some crazy awesome screenshots from your scripts!

[Alexander Pruss]

Actually, multiplayer is fully supported. You can run RJM on a computer and host a LAN session, or you can install it as a Forge mod on stock server.