In-Depth Learning Centre

 

Hello everyone!

This is my final in-depth post! This has been fun, challenging, difficult, and at times frustrating and worrying. However, eventually I accomplished most of my goals, learned some new concepts and approaches to learning new things – and some skills that I will definitely want to grow during the summer and future.

For my learning centre I am going to show my journey and what I’ve learned with a slideshow, and will also show a video demo of the results.

To remind anyone who hasn’t read through my blog, or following all along, I decided for my in-depth project to learn to code and try to build a mod for one of my favourite games – Minecraft. I’m happy to report I learned to code a little (not 100% perfectly, and with a lot of help from my mentor to learn some of the concepts), and managed to create a basic mod which adds a few items to the game. Minecraft is pretty complex, even though it looks simple and some of the concepts took me a while to understand. Through quite a few sessions with my mentor we realized that there are some easier ways to approach the basics and, thanks to forge (the toolkit that exposes the ability to mod Minecraft), a lot of the necessary work is just a quick method away (by extending the parent class).

While I’m very happy with the results of what I set out to do, I wanted to mention some of the things which happened along the way and that I learned. I learned that I am good at imagining the final product, but have a hard time picturing the first step and the rest on the way there – my mentor(s) helped me with “iteration”. I learned many new skills (the basics of two different languages, object oriented programming concepts, a code editor, Minecraft code (!!). I faced quite a few obstacles and overcame them as well as bounced back or adapted. I wanted to build a weather mod in Minecraft, and spent a long time learning a language that didn’t initially help me. Weather mods are very complex and I decided to build something simpler but more successfully. I also met a really nice mentor who was super helpful and understanding as I was learning from scratch.

Will I continue this for my next in-depth? I don’t know. I have learned a few things about myself during this and one of them is that, while I love to MAKE things, I like to try NEW things. I will continue to improve on this project, but I am excited to see what the next challenge I take on is.

 

I hope you enjoy the links below and thank you for viewing.

-Kira

  • For a more detailed summary of what I did, check out this slideshow!

 

  • For a quick demo of my mod “in action”, including indestructible pigs and olympic sprinter cows, click here!
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20 thoughts on “In-Depth Learning Centre

    1. Moving forward, I would really like to try and learn some more about programming, and maybe learn some other languages. Maybe I will even be able to code another mod!

  1. Hey Kira, great job making these mods. What part of the mod was the hardest to make? Which part was the most fun to make?

    1. Thank you! I think the part that was not necessarily the hardest, but the most confusing, was the relationships between ore, ingots, and blocks. I found it the most fun to create the textures on the two swords and the blocks (even though that doesn’t really count as coding)!!

  2. I loved your presentation Kira! I hope we get to play that mod someday, you did a great job with the popsicle swords! It was cool learning about what goes into a Minecraft mod. What was your favourite part of the process?

    1. Thank you so much Bana! My favourite part of the process was “drawing” or creating the textures for the new swords :))

  3. Hi Kira, I love your minecraft game, it’s funny that you were able to code popsicles in there!! Great job!

  4. Modding is not easy. Major respect for making so much! Your block looks so real I almost had to double-check it wasn’t in the base game! And your swords are super well made too! Awesome project!

    1. thank youuu! this is a very nice comment, I’m so glad I was able to make something that you could enjoy!!

  5. Thanks Kira! It sounds like you learned alot about yourself in this process and how to be resilient and deal with adversity and babies! I am glad your dad was able to step in and support you along the way! I love the humor involved in building a popsicle sword and the cows! When thinking about mods…what kind of mods would appeal to players? Is a mod only for ourselves or is it a shared thing? Thanks!

    1. I’m so glad that you liked it:))) there are different kinds of mods that you can play with your friends, or by yourself. this was my first ever mod (as well as my first time ever coding), so it was a very simple mod that wouldn’t be playable with others.

  6. Cool Kira! I didn’t know you were interested in coding. My oldest daughter was very into Minecraft, but never learned anything about making mods – this is great. I looks like you learned a lot both about coding and about how you learn. And who doesn’t like a creamsicle swprd?

  7. Hello Kira!
    Awesome project!
    I love the video that you included showcasing your mod pack, kira ore > any other block in minecraft
    If not modding for minecraft, are there any other coding experiments that you want to try out in the future?

    1. for sure! I think it would be very fun to do some more generic projects like programming my own website, or something along those lines. just to get more used to different languages and other things

  8. Hi Kira, I love your in depth topic. I liked how you challenged yourself by learning many new coding languages, and the end product looks great! My favourite is the kira block 🙂

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