Signed 4-bit Binary Adder and Subtractor in Minecraft

Inspiration

We wanted to implement an actual digital circuit into Minecraft. Our team thought that this would be an exciting challenge because Minecraft is normally meant to be played casually and the circuitry in the game is extremely basic.

What it does

The calculator takes in two decimal inputs and converts them both into two signed-binary inputs, storing the first of the values into a 5-bit register. After a function is chosen (addition or subtraction), the second 5-bit value will be stored into another register. The calculator will then compute the sum by passing both of the values in the registers in a Full-Adder module. The result of the Full-Adder goes through a 2-1 multiplexer. If the sum is negative, the 4-bit number will be converted from 2’s Complement into its regular binary form. Once the number is properly converted, it goes through a binary-to-decimal converter in order to be easily displayed on our seven-segment display.

How we built it

First, we built the circuit design on paper using conventional logic gates and modules. This allowed us to see in full what components and objectives we needed to accomplish. Next, we mimicked traditional gates inside of Minecraft using an in-game system called Redstone. In simple terms, Redstone is a means of using and developing circuitry in Minecraft. After we built all the modules we needed in-game, we then used our blueprint from step 1 to guide our building process. As we built, we divided the modules among the group members to build, debug, and innovate our circuit.

Challenges I ran into

The original design only contained a ripple-carry adder. After spending several hours constructing, we realized that there were a bunch of necessary modules that we needed to construct. These modules were much more complicated in Minecraft due to the basic nature of the components. It was also extremely tedious to troubleshoot. For every bug that we encountered, we had to start at the beginning of the circuit and follow the wires all the way through until we reached the problem. Some bugs were unable to be uncovered until we corrected the pre-existing issues, which lead to us only being able to fix one or two flaws at a time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of that as a team, we were able to divide up a large task and achieve something that we originally did not think was plausible in a simple game like Minecraft.

What I learned

Things that seem to be extremely simple can turn out to be much more complicated than originally anticipated. At the beginning of the event, we anticipated this taking us only a few hours. In reality, it turned out to take us the majority of the weekend.

What's next for AdderSubtractorMinecraft

If we were to continue this project, we would implement multiplication and division. We have an idea of how to implement these functions, but we decided not to pursue this due to time constraints and focus on the digital display. Our team would also like to increase the number of bits that can be entered into our calculator. This would allow for more complex calculations and it would be similar to the design that we currently have.

Built With

• minecraft