Inspiration
I thought it would be cool to have a video game be affected by the physical environment in real time.
What it does
There is a photoresistor and humidity sensor controlled by an Arduino that send data to a Minecraft server, which changes the in-game time of day and weather in accordance with the data from the Arduino.
How we built it
Used an Arduino with sensors, and we used the Java library jSerialComm in a Minecraft mod to read from the Arduino. The Minecraft mod then changes the in-game time and weather.
Challenges we ran into
We were having trouble including an external JAR library in a Minecraft mod. Our code for parsing the data for the Arduino required a lot of debugging. We did not find a way to actually run a debugger on the Minecraft mod, which made debugging much more difficult. We also could not find a way to change the brightness setting programmatically from within the mod, so we resorted to changing the time of day between night and day.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have a basic proof of concept for how we can use real sensor data to communicate with a Minecraft mod over a serial port, and interpret the data in real time.
What we learned
I learned a lot about Minecraft modding, particularly the Gradle build system for Java.
What's next for Minecraft Weather IRL
Make more sensors for more features, make the ways in which the game reacts to different data more nuanced.
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