minecraft-beats.md

Minecraft Beats

Enter the Minecraft world

1. Open Minecraft Pi from the main menu. Start a game and create a new world.

2. Walk around using the WSAD keys on the keyboard. Use space to jump, and double tap space to fly.

3. Press Tab and the keyboard to release your mouse cursor, and open Sonic Pi from the main menu.

4. Move your windows around so Minecraft and Sonic Pi are side-by-side.

Giving Steve a beat

Here's nice simple example of how Sonic Pi can be used to combine music with game play. You're going to pick up the player by half a block and play a drum beat at the same time. This will make the world appear to be bouncing to Steve's drum beats.

1. First get a rhythm going using an infinite loop:

   loop do
       sample :drum_heavy_kick
       sleep 0.5
   end

   When you click Run or press Alt + R your composition should play and you should hear a regular drum beat.

2. Next let's find out the player's location (as an x, y, z coordinate) before setting a new location which is the same x and z positions but at y + 0.5. This will pick Steve up and allow him to fall in time to the beat.

   loop do
       sample :drum_heavy_kick
       x, y, z = mc_location
       mc_set_pos x, y+0.5, z
       sleep 0.5
   end

   Now when you play your code, Steve will be able to move around the world, accompanied by his own beat!

Creating a teleport effect

Next, you'll create a simple teleport action with an appropriate sound effect. First, open a new buffer in the bottom part of the Sonic Pi window.

1. Let's warn the player with a message and a suitable sound effect.

   mc_message "Preparing to teleport..."
   sample :ambi_lunar_land, rate: -1

   When you press Run you should hear a weird teleporting sound effect.

2. You can then add a series of messages and pauses to create a countdown to teleportation.

   mc_message "Preparing to teleport..."
   sample :ambi_lunar_land, rate: -1
   
   sleep 1
   mc_message "3"
   sleep 1
   mc_message "2"
   sleep 1
   mc_message "1"
   sleep 1
   mc_teleport 90, 20, 10
   mc_message "Whoooosh!"

   Run your code to hear the teleportation sound and then be transported across the world. You can experiment with other sound files and different teleport locations.

Minecraft Dance Floor

Finally, for your most advanced project you're going to create a dance floor for the Minecraft player, as well as a simple randomised tune.

1. Start a new buffer and enter the following 3 lines:

   x, y, z = mc_location
   mc_set_area :glass, x, y-1, z, x+4, y-1, z+4
   notes = (scale :e3, major_pentatonic, num_octaves: 3).shuffle

   The first two lines find the current location of the player and build a 5x5 glass "dance floor" beneath them. The third line sets up a randomised scale of notes and calls it notes which will be used to form the tune.

2. The next step is to add a loop to create a more interesting dance floor:

   loop do
   b = (ring :melon, :brick, :glass, :tnt, :lapis).tick
   mc_set_block b, x+rand_i(5), y-1, z+rand_i(5)
   end

   The code creates a ring of block types which it cycles through each pass through the loop. It places each new block in a random location inside the 5x5 grid.

3. Next we need a tune, so let's add two lines to cycle through our scale of notes and pause briefly after each one.

   loop do
   b = (ring :melon, :brick, :glass, :tnt, :lapis).tick
   mc_set_block b, x+rand_i(5), y-1, z+rand_i(5)
   
   play note: notes.tick
   sleep 0.125
   
   end

   Your should now have randomly flashing dance floor with random notes playing in the background. Once that works you could experiment with changing the notes and the blocks used, you could alter the timings, or even incorporate the dance floor into a more complicated project.