Software:ComputerCraft
ComputerCraft is a Minecraft mod first released on December 24, 2011.[1] It was originally conceived and created by Daniel Ratcliffe, also known under the pseudonym Dan200. The mod makes it possible to craft and place "computer" blocks within the sandbox environment of Minecraft, which can be programmed using the Lua programming language.[2] When a player interacts with a computer block, a view similar to a computer terminal opens. The player can now run programs and code that they have programmed or obtained from other players. It is possible to interact with the virtual world of Minecraft with various other peripheral blocks and items.[2] The original version of ComputerCraft was downloaded more than 19.4 million times from CurseForge between October 2013 and July 2022.[3]
History
On December 24, 2011, Daniel Ratcliffe uploaded a video to YouTube demonstrating how ComputerCraft works.[4] That same day, he created an account on the minecraftforums.net forum and posted about the mod he made for Minecraft 1.0, with a link to a website and wiki he created for the mod. On the same day, dozens of people responded enthusiastically to the forum post, and the mod quickly gained popularity. On January 27, 2012, Ratcliffe posted a screenshot of the download page for the mod, showing that it had been downloaded more than 100,000 times.[5]
In the years that followed, Ratcliffe continued to update the mod to new Minecraft versions and over time, several features were added, such as the ability to communicate with the Internet via http in ComputerCraft version 1.1. In version 1.2, the possibility to exchange software and data between computers with floppy drives, floppy disks and "redpower" network cables appeared. On February 23, 2012, Ratcliffe released version 1.3, which contained turtles, a type of programmable robots. The mod was also based on the Forge modding framework since this version. In version 1.3.1 for Minecraft 1.2.3, monitor blocks were implemented and position determination through triangulation became possible. Since version 1.4, turtles have been able to interact with the "physical" world by mining and placing blocks and attacking with weapons. The release of version 1.42 for Minecraft 1.3.2 allowed printing on paper, and since version 1.45 advanced variants of blocks have become available. Version 1.5.1 introduced wireless communication via modems, and the mod was ported to Minecraft 1.5.
ComputerCraftEdu
In 2014, Ratcliffe starting creating a version of the mod aimed at education; ComputerCraftEdu.[6] On July 1, 2015, he launched this variant of the mod, which, like Minecraft: Education edition, provided additional opportunities and tools for education. This variant was developed together with TeacherGaming, a project to use games to teach students concepts such as logic and programming. This educational mod differs from the standard mod, providing features that allow teachers to easily control and reset turtles. It also adds an additional method for programming the turtles using a graphical block-based programming language.[7]
Open-sourcing
The last update Ratcliffe released is ComputerCraft version 1.79 for Minecraft 1.8.9, published on April 1, 2016.[8] On May 1, 2017, Ratcliffe announced to make the mod's source code publicly available on GitHub under a proprietary software license.[9][10] This allowed others to copy, modify, extend and update the mod to new Minecraft versions. Users could submit their changes to the mod via a pull request, after which these changes could be included into the original mod under the supervision of Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe last accepted a pull request to ComputerCraft on May 26, 2019.[11] To continue development, various forks have emerged in the years since, such as CC: Restitched and CC: Tweaked. The most famous fork, CC: Tweaked, was developed as a collaborative project led by Jonathan Coates, under the pseudonym SquidDev. The CC: Tweaked mod has been downloaded over 21.5 million times as of July 2022, having surpassed the download count of the original project in spring 2022.[12]
Functionality
CraftOS
CraftOS is the "operating system" that comes preinstalled on all computer blocks by default. This basic operating system, which itself is written in Lua, is very similar to MS-DOS. It supports a handful of generic commands and programs such as clear, ls, copy, remove and wget that can be used, for example, to interact with the virtual file system and the internet. CraftOS also includes a generic text editor and an interactive Lua REPL (read-eval-print loop), which makes it possible to type in code that will be executed immediately.
Hardware
The main premise of the mod is the addition of a computer block. The player can interact with this block through a display that resembles a computer terminal. The computer includes a monochrome display, supports keyboard input and has limited disk space.[2] An "advanced" variety also supports mouse input and a 4-bit color display.
Various peripherals are available such as floppy disk drives, printers and modems. Monitor blocks can be combined to build large rectangular screens. These screens can display texts and images within the virtual world of Minecraft.[2]
A "turtle" is a mobile computer block; a kind of programmable robot that can interact with the game world. They can be programmed and used like normal computer blocks, but have a smaller screen and a small "physical" storage (inventory) to hold blocks and items from the game. Turtles can move themselves by burning fuel. When equipped with tools and weapons such as pickaxes and swords, a turtle can be programmed to mine blocks and kill monsters.[2]
External links
- ComputerCraft.info – The official website of Daniel Ratcliffe's original mod. Contains links to the original wiki and (defunct) forum pages of ComputerCraft as well.
- ComputerCraft.cc – The official website of fork CC: Tweaked.
References
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel (2011-12-24). "ComputerCraft - Minecraft Mods". https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/1279741-computercraft.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Monk, Matthew; Monk, Simon (2014). Minecraft Mastery: Build Your Own Redstone Contraptions and Mods. McGraw Hill Education. ch. 8. ISBN 9780071839662. https://archive.org/details/minecraftmastery0000monk/.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel. "ComputerCraft - Mods - Minecraft - CurseForge". https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/computercraft.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel (2011-12-24). "ComputerCraft - YouTube". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKWZVOPHgkM.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel (2012-01-27). "100,000 People Can't Be Wrong! | ComputerCraft". https://www.computercraft.info/2012/01/27/100000-people-cant-be-wrong/.
- ↑ Finley, Klint (2014-07-18). "New Minecraft Mod Teaches You Code as You Play" (in en-US). Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/2014/08/learntomod/. Retrieved 2022-03-26.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel (2015-07-01). "Introducing: ComputerCraftEdu | ComputerCraft" (in en-US). https://www.computercraft.info/2015/07/01/introducing-computercraftedu/.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel (2016-04-01). "ComputerCraft and ComputerCraftEdu 1.79 | ComputerCraft" (in en-US). https://www.computercraft.info/2016/04/01/computercraft-and-computercraftedu-1-79/.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel (2017-05-01). "ComputerCraft is now Open Source". http://www.dan200.net/computercraft-is-now-open-source/.
- ↑ Ratcliffe, Daniel. "ComputerCraft". https://github.com/dan200/ComputerCraft.
- ↑ "Commits · dan200/ComputerCraft" (in en). 2019-05-26. https://github.com/dan200/ComputerCraft/commits/master.
- ↑ Coates, Jonathan. "CC: Tweaked - Mods - Minecraft - CurseForge". https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked.
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