Course Description

***As part of this course, you are required to purchase your own minecraft account (we will provide instructions once you enroll), which will be ~$30 one time fee. This will be your own life-time Minecraft account.***
 
 In this course, students will learn how to use the Lua programming language, alongside Minecraft components from the ComputerCraft package, to instruct robots (known as “turtles”) and virtual computers to perform tasks in the game. The projects that students complete in this course include a password protected door and a robot that builds an entire house! Since each program will drive concrete changes in the Minecraft world, students will clearly see the purpose of each new concept.

In this course, students explore fundamental programming concepts, then apply them to Minecraft. For students who may not be ready to write complex code, or who are more interested in designing Minecraft Redstone contraptions, please check out our Intro to Game Design with Minecraft course (CS103). Please note that there is no need to take CS103 before your child can take CS104.

The first class session will cover software installation, configuration, and introductions.

Below is just tentative class content. Class paces are individual based.

Movement and digging with the Mining Turtle API
Using variables and for-loops to repeat instructions
Input and output text (“strings”)

Selecting and placing items from an inventory
Conditional statements (if-then)
Modulus operator (%)
Logical operators (and/or/not)

Redstone output of the Advanced Computer
Infinite loops

Block detection
String construction and concatenation
Defining functions

Using helper functions to break down complex tasks
Planning for variable runtime conditions (terrain) 

Highly configurable code
Shorthand functions
Defining useful constants

Throwing and handling errors
Repeat-until loop