Today was a very headache-inducing day. Well, I did put myself into the situation after all. But it was all worth the headache.
What I did today was very simple: learning to mod Minecraft.
Firstly, I don't have any experience with Minecraft. I heard all of the good things about it since it was in Alpha, but I think it is not suited for me. I don't even have any friends playing it, so it was a tough sell. The closest I have ever been to Minecraft is the easter egg in Borderlands 2 (and I managed to get the legendary weapon from Badass Creeper!).
What prompted me to play it is my Master's project. Yup, I managed to connect my hobby with my studies somehow. All thanks to my supervisors because they are interested in video games and the learning aspects of it. Anyhow, today I bought and downloaded the game, and tried to run a server.
It took me almost a day to finally get it.
I just followed the instruction from this one book called Minecraft Mods Programming: Absolute Beginner's Guide by Rogers Cadenhead that I received from Madam Marini (my co-supervisor). The instructions in the book are clear, but when setting up the server, there is this one big problem that it didn't address in the book. I managed to create the server, but I couldn't connect it with the game. This is the biggest headache-inducer for me. Luckily, I can just Google the problem to read the solutions. Unluckily, it is hard to find the solution specifically, so I read many instructions and watch a few tutorial videos to find out what's wrong with my server connection.
When I finally get to fix the problem, I go straight into playing with the mod a little bit. It is a simple mod that is explained in the book: summon a pet wolf. This part was easy because I just need to copy the coding in the book into my NetBeans editor, copy this one file to the server location and bam! I summoned the wolf to my game. It was a very empowering experience. I can't wait to get into the deeper parts of the modding.
Note: I am currently teaching students at PERMATApintar in Mathematical Problem Solving class. It is a nice experience which I want to share in the future post.
What I did today was very simple: learning to mod Minecraft.
Firstly, I don't have any experience with Minecraft. I heard all of the good things about it since it was in Alpha, but I think it is not suited for me. I don't even have any friends playing it, so it was a tough sell. The closest I have ever been to Minecraft is the easter egg in Borderlands 2 (and I managed to get the legendary weapon from Badass Creeper!).
What prompted me to play it is my Master's project. Yup, I managed to connect my hobby with my studies somehow. All thanks to my supervisors because they are interested in video games and the learning aspects of it. Anyhow, today I bought and downloaded the game, and tried to run a server.
It took me almost a day to finally get it.
I just followed the instruction from this one book called Minecraft Mods Programming: Absolute Beginner's Guide by Rogers Cadenhead that I received from Madam Marini (my co-supervisor). The instructions in the book are clear, but when setting up the server, there is this one big problem that it didn't address in the book. I managed to create the server, but I couldn't connect it with the game. This is the biggest headache-inducer for me. Luckily, I can just Google the problem to read the solutions. Unluckily, it is hard to find the solution specifically, so I read many instructions and watch a few tutorial videos to find out what's wrong with my server connection.
When I finally get to fix the problem, I go straight into playing with the mod a little bit. It is a simple mod that is explained in the book: summon a pet wolf. This part was easy because I just need to copy the coding in the book into my NetBeans editor, copy this one file to the server location and bam! I summoned the wolf to my game. It was a very empowering experience. I can't wait to get into the deeper parts of the modding.
Note: I am currently teaching students at PERMATApintar in Mathematical Problem Solving class. It is a nice experience which I want to share in the future post.