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posted by n1 on Monday October 27 2014, @08:57PM   Printer-friendly

Professors, students and alumni from the University of Texas at Dallas have created a mod for Minecraft that allows players to craft objects out of more complex elements.

With “Polycraft World,” the millions of “Minecraft” players worldwide will now be able to incorporate the properties of many materials — chemical elements and compounds — into game action. For example, said Dr. Walter Voit, players could harvest natural rubber from trees, thwart enemies using flamethrowers and jetpacks, explore underwater biomes by scuba diving, or rapidly travel through virtual worlds on pogo sticks wearing custom-molded running shoes.

Voit, a faculty member in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, is co-creator of the modification, or mod as video gamers refer to the kit.

“The accessibility and popularity of ‘Minecraft’ makes it a great tool as an educational platform,” said Voit, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering and bioengineering. “Using our ‘Polycraft World’ mod, people of all ages will have an opportunity to navigate materials science, including metallurgy and polymer chemistry, in a fun, creative self-paced environment.”

It is available at http://polycraft.utdallas.edu/Main_Page.html

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by melikamp on Monday October 27 2014, @09:27PM

    by melikamp (1886) on Monday October 27 2014, @09:27PM (#110666) Journal
    This Minecraft clone [minetest.net] is free software, and it seriously shreds, especially when you throw in some mods [minetest.net].
  • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Monday October 27 2014, @10:15PM

    by meisterister (949) on Monday October 27 2014, @10:15PM (#110679) Journal

    I like it when these mods add whole new levels of complexity. I'm still waiting for someone who is far less awful at Java than me to make some sort of proper logic mod (ie, ASIC chips... in minecraft).

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
    • (Score: 1) by Valkor on Tuesday October 28 2014, @10:23AM

      by Valkor (4253) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @10:23AM (#110800)

      You mean like ProjectRed? http://projectredwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page [projectredwiki.com]

      • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Tuesday October 28 2014, @03:29PM

        by meisterister (949) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @03:29PM (#110877) Journal

        I was thinking more integrated, where you could have one flexible block-sized module that would connect to the colored Project:Red wires. That way I could, say, have a single 16kbyte RAM chip or somesuch, or a single block CPU if I can make the design flexible enough.

        --
        (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
        • (Score: 1) by Valkor on Thursday October 30 2014, @09:53AM

          by Valkor (4253) on Thursday October 30 2014, @09:53AM (#111468)

          OK then, here, try this mod:
          http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/1293018-opencomputers-v1-3-6 [minecraftforum.net]

          I haven't used this one though, whereas Project Red I've used a fair amount. Project Red has logic gates and whatnot.

          Redpower 2 had computers like you speak of, but really it was just a clunky FORTH interpreter and a fairly clean way of interfacing it with the world. I believe that OpenComputers is trying to be similar to that.

          OpenComputers is in the modpack I'm currently playing so I'll give it a test drive maybe next week.

          If you want something much simpler and insanely overpowered, look in to ComputerCraft. It's a single block (usually) that you slap down and is a LUA interpreter. No mucking about with RAM modules. It also interfaces cleanly with the world, and has very good support for handling other mods. It's my usual go-to mod if I need something more complex than a couple of logic gates, or if I want to display dynamic text in the world.
          http://www.computercraft.info/ [computercraft.info]

          Both of these mods will gladly interface with Project Red bundled cables.

          Many of the mod packs released on the ATLauncher platform will contain all three of these mods (Project Red, ComputerCraft, and OpenComputers).
          http://www.atlauncher.com/ [atlauncher.com]

          • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday October 31 2014, @12:17AM

            by meisterister (949) on Friday October 31 2014, @12:17AM (#111735) Journal

            I've played with computercraft, and to be completely honest, it's absolutely amazing except for the fact that I have to use lua (which isn't so bad). Additionally, someone has written a BASIC interpreter for the RedPower 2 computer. https://web.archive.org/web/20130308035837/http://ibm5100.net/redpower/basic [archive.org] if you'd like to look at that.

            I was thinking more along the lines of discrete logic. People have built fully functional computers in minecraft but the problem is that they take up on the order of square kilometers of area. I was thinking of something that would allow logic to be combined together to make some custom block that would behave as programmed (like an ASIC or an FPGA, etc). It would be cool if these blocks could be nested, so I could build up some complex logic and start cranking out chips.

            I suppose that computercraft and such would be easier to work with, much as microcontrollers and now full computers can replace discrete logic due to price and ease of use, but I think that it could be cool to make custom logic blocks for the game.

            Basically my vision was to have some sort of crafting table with gates (and, or, not) and wires. This would allow for basic schematics. These schematics could then be combined together to form more complex logic, where the final logic could go to some sort of extremely expensive machine that would fabricate blocks that worked to those specs.

            --
            (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
            • (Score: 1) by Valkor on Friday October 31 2014, @05:30AM

              by Valkor (4253) on Friday October 31 2014, @05:30AM (#111798)

              OK now I get it. So far as I know that doesn't exist, and I really don't think it would be all that useful from a gameplay perspective (it certainly would be cool, though) simply because each build requires different logic. An automatic Wither killing system has totally different logic from a 3x3 piston door, for example. Something that comes incredibly close to what you want might perhaps be the RedNet component of MineFactory Reloaded, or perhaps Steve's Factory Manager. Both of them let you pick and choose logic gates (and higher level things) and combine them as though they were a FPGA/ASIC type block. I remember hearing of a way to copy a RedNet Controller's settings to another block, but I don't remember how. I don't use it as I find it a bit too complex for what I want. They definitely sit in between RP2/ProjectRed logic gates and ComputerCraft in terms of functionality and the problem they try to solve.

  • (Score: 1) by m2o2r2g2 on Monday October 27 2014, @10:57PM

    by m2o2r2g2 (3673) on Monday October 27 2014, @10:57PM (#110687)

    Talk about spoon-feeding the reader...

    I'm sure that it is not just video gamers that refer to a modification as a "mod".

    • (Score: 2) by everdred on Monday October 27 2014, @11:32PM

      by everdred (110) on Monday October 27 2014, @11:32PM (#110696) Journal

      No, but it's far more common among technical people, while this is clearly written for a general audience.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:54AM

        by frojack (1554) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:54AM (#110708) Journal

        Then who is going to explain what "kit" means? ;-)

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 28 2014, @02:39PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @02:39PM (#110861)

        while this is clearly written for a general audience.

        Which brings up the question of why it's on Soylent ;)

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by everdred on Tuesday October 28 2014, @03:18PM

          by everdred (110) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @03:18PM (#110873) Journal

          Because a good Soylent-appropriate summary is hard to write if nobody RTFAs? :)

  • (Score: 2) by romlok on Tuesday October 28 2014, @10:54AM

    by romlok (1241) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @10:54AM (#110805)

    So does this mod just add a few specific plastics-themed items and recipes to the game? Or is it something more than that?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @03:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @03:12PM (#110871)

    Everything I learned about metallurgy, I learned from Dwarf Fortress!