Category: Programming

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am covering the finer details of my port of one of my favorite minigames in Minecraft. Let’s get started.

Many times over this project, I’ve tun into bugs. There is no way I’d remember them all, but I did pick up a few tips along the way, mostly from Grifter. If things are going wrong with relative coordinates, try aligning yourself with the source block and teleporting to the relative coordinates. Another approach is to set a particle in a repeat command block or a chain command block downstream of one. More often than not, one of these will literally get you where you want to go. I recommend the barrier particle for its lack of movement and occupation of a full block space.

Another bug I had to deal with a lot early on was invalid functions. If you try loading a datapack with an invalid function, Minecraft just throws a compilation-time-like error in the console then ignores it. Fortunately, the error report, once I read it under Grifter’s instruction, told me where the function, line, and column of each error was. It also didn’t help that Minecraft functions can’t have a comment start part way through a line.

The most recent bug I had to deal with was one that royally goofed it during some stress testing my parents, Annie_8472 and Leo_8472, kindly provided. Sometimes, a level wouldn’t load if you didn’t make it onto the pressure plates far enough. I tried fixing that by using align xyz command segments, but I only made it worse. I never did figure it out because I reverted the change and extended the search range to include a bit more of the alcove. For those keeping score, the bug was with the IBC game and not the MGC core.

At present, the project is almost done; I don’t think I’ll have enough for a whole new post next week, but I still need to debug the Lost & Found. Jamcdonald, the one who showed me the super hoppers last time, did a quick test for me and made note of the bug. He also pointed me in the direction of a place to get signs to do some fancy stuff the original credits signs do.

Final Question: I’m open to further development after things launch. What kind of levels do you want to see in this datapack?

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am going over the “boat race” I ported to Minecraft 1.13 vanilla. Let’s get started.

At the beginning of the week, GrifterMage, an admin on the Minecraft server I play on, showed interest in getting the boat race up and running again sometime soon. I had already changed its host server over to a “Paper” server, like the server the project is being built for. Everything worked for a little while, but one day, the datapacks I tried sending weren’t working. I restarted my server, and my “original” copy was broken.

I decided to rebuild the backbone of the project from the ground up. While Grifter recommended I reuse as much as possible, I knew there was a certain amount of spaghetti logic at the end. I figured it would take less time to take the lessons I learned last time and make a version 2.1.

Grifter said he was okay with work-in-progress “untested” datapacks, so I made provisions as I set up my workspace. With Derpy set up as a VNC machine, I experimented with different arrangements of windows on both Derpy and my home Windows machine until I ended up with something that works.

My creative server with the secret boat race development laboratory in an Ice Spikes biome served to manufacture the structure files. From there, I would switch over to Derpy, where I would copy them into the “original” datapack along with the “originals” of the functions to run the whole setup. The datapack was stored in a special file on the desktop beside another file called Nightly Backups. This file did not live up to its name. I saved between two to four zip files per day there; whenever I felt I needed to make a progress report to Grifter I would open a terminal and run a command to zip the datapack for both storage and transmission.

The greatest flaw I perceived in my design last time was my inability to be sure someone else could set the game up on another server, so I created a “Clean Paper Server” to test my datapacks myself where I wouldn’t need to worry about anything accidentally relying on some scoreboard objective I forgot to make sure was created. Once I was done, all I had to do was delete the old server, copy the Clean Paper Server beside itself on Derpy’s desktop, copy the datapack into Clean Paper Server (copy 1), launch the server, hop in with my client on Windows, load both halves of the arena, and install the Ice Boat Challenge game. If this were something I was planning on needing to do over the course of a month or more, I would have looked into writing a script to automate what I could on Derpy.

The design objectives of this version remain almost the same as my first attempt at porting the boat race. I want to minimize the load on the server, while making it as easy as possible to develop other games for the system. I ended up coming up with a number of standards, like a “home” block for most command blocks in the Level Slots (floors a level can be loaded into) to run their commands from, forming a sort of two-way vector between the homes of each Alcove and Level Slot.

One improvement I noted in my notes for future development was to set up something similar for navigating the alcove. When Grifter introduced the /data merge command to me so I could use the same structure block for basically anything I wanted, he hinted that Minecraft 1.14 might actually let commands pipe information stored in such structures as input to other commands. I made sure to note that in many places within the comments of my functions. /data merge also opens up the possibility of multiplayer games that hijack functionality from the alcoves, so I made provisions for that functionality in the future.

This time around, the game starts when a player steps in an alcove. The Game Center operating system checks the player’s score for what game they want to play, and loads that game’s loader into the Level Slot for that alcove using a structure block in the home coordinates. The loader checks what slot it’s in, then checks what level to load for the player in the Level Slot’s alcove. It tries to load in the first half of the level, but if it fails for any reason, it has a carefully staged self-destruct to reset the Level Slot while making sure the redstone bits don’t accidentally pop off while multiple blocks are being changed (I’m pretty sure Minecraft likes to work from low y values on up based on an experiment I did with End Gateways, and my observations here back up this hypothesis).

After the loader, a series of command blocks embedded into each level takes over. These blocks handle spawning in the boat, teleporting the player, animating the boat so it does its cool spin, and checking for if the player has won or left their boat. It is here that I fixed a bug where the last version would smash players’ faces every once in a while. I used some redstone to space out commands. One of the last major bugs I faced before I got the main show working was dealing with how I hooked up the win detector. I had two blocks on repeat calling the same function and feeding into the same conditional chain command block. I ended up moving the win condition and giving it its own, dedicated command block.

A very big thanks to Grifter for all the help he’s given me this week. He got me started and helped me build inertia until I understood things well enough to continue mostly on my own. He also provided a friendly Discord avatar for me to explain the problem to in the hopes he would have time to help fix my current bug, only for me to keep working on it and often find it on my own.

A final word: documentation. Documentation is the link between you programming now and whoever is working on your project in the future. I have a whole folder in the root directory of the datapack with what the logic behind the Game Center and the Boat Challenge game is supposed to be. It also has a list of known bugs, a list of naming conventions I found helpful, credits, and even some general notes for what to do for if someone ever rewrites the project again

Final Question: Have you ever gone back to redo a project, only to find you’ve sped up by a fairly large margin

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am presenting my work to update the Boat Race from Titaincraft Season one’s custom dimension, The Above. Let’s get Started.

If you are here from the server and spot the “Part 7” in the title, don’t worry. I’m writing this post as a fresh introduction to the project. If you’re interested in the development of the project, feel free to go back and have a read, and if I post about further development, Part 9 and above will also be available.

The Above’s boat race was originally built by Duke and  2Cubed with testing by dminer78. In the original game, players would wander into an ice cave and get teleported to the lobby where they could pick an arena to play their personal next level in. Each of the five levels has a different maze to navigate, ending with a row of gold blocks serving as the finish line. After completing the last course, the game would award the player with a Tango head, the special currency of The Above’s prize system.

The new edition used Duke’s levels but has many technological improvements over 2Cubed’s programming. The 1.13 execute command’s overhaul means that whole blocks of commands that were running all the time are replaced with one or two commands with a smaller footprint on the server’s CPU, and they only run as often as needed. A planned time trial mode would increase the replay value (besides the Tango heads). As part of this planned feature, there would also be a way to choose what level pack you want, and whether or not to shuffle the levels among other, new level tracks. And thanks to MineCraft’s introduction of functions, I decided to rebuild the game so it could be easily expandable; not only should it be fairly easy to add even more new levels but also new games as well as time goes on. For now, I’m calling it the Modular Game Center.

Working on this project, I learned a lot and overcame many challenges, many with the help of Jamcdonald120 and a few others. If you want to learn about a few of them, go back and read parts 1-6. As of this writing, the Modular Game Center still needs a little work once 1.13 gets a stable release and Spigot gets its update in turn.

Final Question: What game would you like to see added to the Modular Game Center?

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am excited to announce the near completion of my project. Let’s get started.

Who would have known, not more than 24 hours after writing my last post, 12 after it went live, I would finally have the last major chunk of code working for my demo? I even made my goal of finishing before MineCraft 1.13 launched!

This week was kind to me even after my breakthrough, as I not only finished that up, but I got the other two alcove/arena combos working. Jam was helpful with getting the /tellraw commands working when he told me to just change out the old selecters.

I also worked over the end of level win condition, patching a bug where you could import a boat and cheat your way to the end. It turns out the boat would sometimes get stuck on elevators and break apart, forcing the player out of the level and resetting their progress. I made the level require the use of the original boat by setting (and checking for) an invulnerable flag on the boat. Unfortunately, I have no way of testing the invulnerable flag on glitching boats.

As it is now, I think the experience is at about 99.9% of the original. The original boats spun in air as they were summoned, and I still need to nail the /teleport commands.

I showed my work off to a few people this week. Duke, the guy who built the levels and my first guest after the workable demo, came by and helped me with a potentially embarrassing bug for when Tango (the owner of the Patreon server I play on) eventually does a blind reaction. New players need a valid score before they can enter the level for the first time. I fixed that for him and when DropDaBass, the server’s head moderator, came by.

There are still a few minor bugs. Sometimes timings don’t work out the best and you take a little damage on the way to the arena. Once in a large while, the level unloads around you without returning you to the lobby. There’s trouble with FPS (Frames Per Second) when connected over the Internet and a level unloads. There will always be something to polish.

One of my major goals for this build is the flexibility to add more games. I brought another patron over called Pendl3, who is looking to help me with my random throw away idea of a golf course. Getting the code ready for running dual games will be interesting, but I will complete the challenge.

Final Question: Simple, what games should I add? I think it would be good for me to add a few a year and they can either players or moderators swap them out with a control panel.