Activity Checklist

• Run the Minecraft2D.py file and you should see a screen that looks like this:

• Your character is the yellow circle in the top-left of the game screen! Use the arrow keys to move around the world, which as you can see is full of different resources; dirt (the brown squares), grass (the green ones) and water (the blue ones).

• You can press the spacebar to collect resources. For example, move onto some water and press spacebar, you’ll see that you now have one more water in your inventory. Pick up a few of each type of resource.

• Press the number keys (1 to 4) to place a resource on the map. For example, press 3 to place some water on the map. This will only work if you have some spare water in your inventory.

• You can craft an item by holding down the shift key and pressing a number. Crafting means combining items you already have in your inventory to create new ones. Try holding shift and pressing 4 to craft a new brick (as long as you have 2 dirt and 1 water in your inventory).

• As you play, you’ll notice that you can only hold a maximum of 20 of each resource in your inventory. If you want to increase this, you can change the variable called MAXTILES in the variables.py file.

#the maximum number of each resource that can be held
    #----------------------------------------------------

    MAXTILES  = 20

Change this number and then double-click the Minecraft.py file to store more of each resource.

Activity Checklist

• In the Minecraft2D folder you’ll see that there are lots of images, one for each of the resources. If you right-click one of these images and open it in an image editor, you can change the graphics for a resource.

Here are some improved graphics for the grass. I’ve added different shades of grass and even a few flowers:

• Save the image and then reload the game and you’ll see the new graphics:

Activity Checklist

• Let’s firstly create the graphics for a new resource called ‘wood’. You can make a copy of an existing image and rename it. You can then edit the image to look like wood:

• Once you have your image for wood, you can then add the resource to your game. Open the variables.py file and add wood as a resource:

#variables representing the different resources
    #----------------------------------------------

    DIRT  = 0
    GRASS = 1
    WATER = 2
    BRICK = 3
    WOOD  = 4

• In the same file, there is also a list of all the resources. You should add wood to that list too:

#a list of all game resources
    #----------------------------

    resources = [DIRT,GRASS,WATER,BRICK,WOOD]

• You also need to set the image for the wood resource in the textures dictionary, so that the correct graphics will be shown:

#a dictionary linking resources to textures
    #------------------------------------------

    textures =   {
                    DIRT    : pygame.image.load('dirt.png'),
                    GRASS   : pygame.image.load('grass.png'),
                    WATER   : pygame.image.load('water.png'),
                    BRICK   : pygame.image.load('brick.png'),
                    WOOD    : pygame.image.load('wood.png')
                 }

Notice that you need to add a comma (,) after the brick image in the line above.

• You can also add wood to your inventory dictionary. You can choose how many you start with:

#the number of each resource that we have to start with
    #------------------------------------------------------

    inventory =   {
                    DIRT    : 10,
                    GRASS   : 10,
                    WATER   : 10,
                    BRICK   : 0,
                    WOOD    : 5
                }

• If you now run the game, you’ll see that you now have a wood resource that you can place on the map, but there isn’t any wood on the map to begin with:

• To start the game with some wood resources dotted around, you need to edit the Minecraft2D.py file. Open the file and add the following lines:

#pick a random number between 0 and 9
            randomNumber = random.randint(0,10)
            #WATER if the random number is a 1 or a 2
            if randomNumber in [1,2]:
                tile = WATER
            #GRASS if the random number is a 3 or a 4
            elif randomNumber in [3,4]:
                tile = GRASS
            #ADD THESE 2 LINES - WOOD if the random number is a 5
            elif randomNumber in [5]:
                tile = WOOD
            #otherwise it's DIRT
            else:
                tile = DIRT

Do you know what this code does? For each space on the map, the program chooses a random number between 0 and 9. Whenever the random number is a 5, wood is placed on the map. After you add this code, you should see some wood in your game:

Activity Checklist

• Follow the instructions in step 3 above to make a new ‘plank’ resource. However, make sure that there are 0 planks in the player’s inventory, and that there aren’t any planks on the map to begin with.

• To allow the player to craft planks of wood, you’ll need to add a crafting rule to your game. Open the variables.py file and add the following code to the crafting rules dictionary:

#rules to make new objects
    #-------------------------

    craft = {
                BRICK    : { WATER : 1, DIRT : 2 },
                PLANK    : { WOOD : 3 }
            }

This code tells the game that it can create a new plank if there are 3 wood in the player’s inventory. Again, don’t forget the comma after the line above.

• You need to make sure that the player knows how to craft planks, by adding some more instructions to the list:

#instructions list
    #-----------------

    instructions =  [
                        "Minecraft 2D",
                        "Instructions:",
                        "   ARROW KEYS = move",
                        "   SPACE = Pick up tile",
                        "   NUMBER KEYS = Place tile",
                        "   SHIFT + NUMBER KEYS = Craft tile",
                        "",
                        "Crafting Rules:",
                        "   BRICK = 2xDIRT + 1xWATER",
                        "   PLANK = 3xWOOD"     
                    ]

• If you collect 3 wood and hold down shift and press 6, you should see a new plank in your inventory. You can then add planks of wood to your map!