Inspiration
We've created a Minecraft® world using real data of the Lake Champlain Basin in Vermont. The ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center wanted this as a tool for teaching kids about the basin in summer "Minecraft" day-camps.
How it works
We used pre-existing and modified open-source tools, with openly and freely available geospatial data to model the basin.
Challenges I ran into
The existing tools for working with geospatial data are rudimentary. I had to hack WorldPainter to add additional capability for importing and using raster imagery in ways WorldPainter did not already have. Since I am not a regular user of Java, and WorldPainter is not thoroughly commented, this took quite a bit of effort.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
The current world model is really pretty accurate - as much as it can be given the 'resolution' of the Minecraft world (smallest building block size is 1m^3).
What I learned
Hacks to WorldPainter are hosted on GitHub as WPGIS: https://github.com/nfloersch/wpgis It may not be production ready but it has allowed a bunch of progress with the model.
What's next for LakeCraft
We have a number of exciting ideas and plans - some technical challenges, and some are more about just getting work done in our free time. For example, we are trying to make the LakeCraft world easily usable for teachers that have MineCraftEdu. This means re-packaging the world file and breaking it into more manageable portions. It also means suggesting a curriculum that can be applied once the world is available to a class. In a very different direction, one of our technical challenges is improving the water physics of Minecraft so we can teach kids about water within the game. We have other ideas, too, including more and more integration with the Burlington Civic Cloud. Go to our website and watch the Prezi movie if you are interested in the various ideas.
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