Comparison with Minecraft Education Edition#
Introduction#
Minecraft Education Edition (MC EE) is a separate version of Minecraft that is designed for use in schools. It provides an in game editor for making python, javascript or scratch code to create in and interact with Minecraft worlds.
When I started working on MCIWB, I took a brief look at MC EE. But dismissed it as out of date and not well supported. That was a mistake. The Hacker News discussion here encouraged me to take another look.
This page details my findings on investigating MC EE in more depth and discusses the differences between MC EE and MCIWB.
Minecraft Education Edition#
The main reason for dismissing MC EE was that it was a paid subscription only
available to schools. However I found that I was able to quite easily get a
“commercial” license for around £10 per year. This is good value for money
given the amount of content that is available. See the DIRECT PURCHASE option
at https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/licensing.
Once you have the license there is a whole raft of education content available, not just coding. The lessons run inside of the Minecraft worlds in which you can explore and interact with the content. Here is a link to the lessons available https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/resources/explore-lessons.
I spent some time inside HOUR OF CODE 2021 (TIMECRAFT) and it does
introduce Python concepts in a pretty engaging mini game. I was disappointed
that the world did not use the latest vscode based editor and did encounter
a significant bug in the 2nd lesson that made it not work. I’m under the
impression that there is some work to do to update the lessons to work with
Microsoft’s latest changes to the game engine.
My impression is that Microsoft are interested in the product and putting effort into supporting it, so I thinks the issues above will get resolved. I base this on:
There are frequent recent releases of the product
The in game editor has been updated to use Microsoft’s popular developer tool vscode
Minecraft Interactive World Builder#
MCIWB is a Free Open Source project that uses Minecraft’s RCON interface too send admin commands to a Minecraft Server. It therefore works with the most recent version of Minecraft and is automatically compatible with new releases of Minecraft. The Admin commands are pretty powerful and allow a similar level of control to MC EE.
It is a single developer project at present but I’m open to contributions and would like to get a bit of a community going around it.
Is there a place for MCIWB when the MC EE is available? I’d argue yes, See my summary of advantages of each below.
MC EE Advantages#
It is a complete product with a lot of content and lessons available with support from a major software vendor.
It is very low barrier to entry, install and run one app. Hit C and you are writing Python code.
There are lots of pre created examples and tutorials here https://minecraft.makecode.com/
For some children it will be what they are learning at school already.
MCIWB Advantages#
It is >500 times faster to execute code inside the game than MC EE.
It is Free and Open Source.
It is cross platform, runs on Linux and Mac and Windows. MC EE is Windows only.
You get to use and learn standard developer tools such as vscode
It uses the latest version of Python and can access all the standard libraries and PyPi packages. MC EE uses an in game Python engine that does not appear to have the standard libraries available.
It works against any Minecraft Server, not just the MC EE server. This means you can combine it with server mods for unlimited options (currently Java only but Bedrock support could be added easily).
You can create complex projects with multiple modules when you get advanced. MC EE is limited to a single file per project.
You get an Interactive Python prompt to do immediate commands in as well as the ability to write modules and import them. This has ipython command line completion to help learn the commands.
Performance Results#
A headline difference is code execution speed. Microsoft could perhaps fix this in the future.
For the performance test I made a tower in both MCIWB and MC EE. The code places individual blocks and is not the most efficient way to do it in either system, but demonstrates how fast loops and world updates run.
MC EE Tower Build code#
def tower(start, size, height, item):
for y in range(height):
for x in range(size):
for z in range(size):
blocks.place(item, start.add(pos(0,y,z)))
blocks.place(item, start.add(pos(size,y,z)))
blocks.place(item, start.add(pos(x,y,0)))
blocks.place(item, start.add(pos(x,y,size)))
blocks.place(item, start.add(pos(x,y,z)))
tower(world(0, 4, 0), 9, 10, COBBLESTONE)
To build a 9 by 9 block tower 10 blocks high in MC EE took over 80 seconds. I could not do an accurate timing because the standard libraries for time are not available.
MCIWB Tower Build code#
import logging
from datetime import datetime
from mciwb.imports import Direction, Item, Vec3, get_world
def tower(start: Vec3, size: int, height: int, item=Item.COBBLESTONE):
world = get_world()
start_time = datetime.now()
for y in range(height):
for x in range(size):
for z in range(size):
world.set_block(start + Vec3(0, y, z), item)
world.set_block(start + Vec3(size, y, z), item)
world.set_block(start + Vec3(x, y, 0), item)
world.set_block(start + Vec3(x, y, size), item)
world.set_block(start + Vec3(x, y, z), item)
diff_time = datetime.now() - start_time
logging.warning(f"tower took {diff_time.total_seconds()} seconds")
tower(Vec3(632, 73, -1724), 9, 10, Item.COBBLESTONE)
To build a 9 by 9 block tower 10 blocks high in MCIWB took 0.14 seconds. That is more than 550 times faster than MC EE.
Another Alternative#
If you prefer the MC EE python API and don’t want to pay for a license then there is zhuowei/RaspberryJuice. This uses the Java server mod Bukkit to create a similar API to EE.
This would also have the advantage that you get to use a real version of Python and your choice of developer tools.
I’ve not tried this so if anyone knows more details then please let me know about it in an Issue or Pull Request.