I was going to hold all of these posts until I had finished the genetics project, which will (hopefully) be ready and available for the next EE update. However, after getting to 'Day 6' I decided that I should put these out as I do them, like in the old days.
I am writing these posts as close to the days they relate to as possible, and the first 4 posts were written as a batch on the 30th of May, but instead of mass releasing them and spamming you with them, I will release them every couple of days until I catch up, then it will go back to 'as written' publication timelines.however I will leave them in draft form until I have completed the lesson and resources. So, if you are reading this, then I am DONE! Which, given I am currently about 4 days (around 20 hours) into my creation, I am very pleased about. Now, to business, and first business is background.
In Minecraft 1.8 they added Pandas, but while Pandas are special in their own right, they are also a bit extra special in Minecraft, because they are the only mob to have 'proper' genetics and inheritance. This started the senior biology teacher in me thinking about how I could utilise this to help me teach genetics to students, and how much I tried to do this 'back in the day' with MinecraftEdu, but the sheep just weren't a 'proper' model to support teaching. I ended up going with Pocket Frogs, but that is probably not a super key point, but still a really cool game for teaching inheritance and getting kids to think about the patterns that exist.
Anyway the idea has been stewing since Pandas came to vanilla Bedrock, but the idea took off into full flight mode once I figured out how to add my own entities. Not hijack those already in the game, but add my complete own custom entity. It was possible in 1.8 with 'experimental gameplay' on, but unfortunately they lock us out of using that in Education Edition (despite my requests to at least give us the option to choose ourselves).
So, I learned it because we had plans to include something in the first release of Mini Melbourne, but since experimental gameplay was banned, we had to pull back on our plans a little. The great thing for me, the learning had happened, and I was able to go back to stewing on exactly how I could do what I wanted.
Fast forward a few months, and I get told that the 'Village and Pillage' update for will come to M:EE 'soon'. So I think to myself "I wonder when custom entities got taken out of experimental gameplay." To my absolute delight, research said that 1.10 was the version, and since M:EE was going to be updated to 1.11 at least, I was right to actually implement my nefarious ideas.
So, onto what I did in day 1. If you have never tried to create a resource and behavior pack, do try it, and you will find that there are limited resources out there to help you, or there were when I started, more programs, guides and support are being made available all the time, which is all for the better, but getting started is definitely hard work! It took me about 5 packs to get the whole process stuck in my head, no joke. Day one consisted of the 5th attempt to create a pack, from scratch that would allow me to do what I wanted.
With the basic file structure of the pack created, it was time to go into Blockbench, an absolutely wicked program, that I need to do some tutorials on... add that to the list that is growing steadily longer because time.... is a precious resource, that I have very little of at the moment. What Blockbench allows you to do, is model an entity and export it to use in Minecraft (and many other programs, but my focus was Minecraft). So I spent the first 4 or so hours of this project creating my models, textures and a rough and ready animation and then getting them into the appropriate places in the packs.
4 Drosophila melanogaster models. Wild type male and female, and vestigial male and female flies.
With that all achieved, I went to bed, it was 1am after all. Next post, next day! Feel free to leave a comment below.
I am writing these posts as close to the days they relate to as possible, and the first 4 posts were written as a batch on the 30th of May, but instead of mass releasing them and spamming you with them, I will release them every couple of days until I catch up, then it will go back to 'as written' publication timelines.
In Minecraft 1.8 they added Pandas, but while Pandas are special in their own right, they are also a bit extra special in Minecraft, because they are the only mob to have 'proper' genetics and inheritance. This started the senior biology teacher in me thinking about how I could utilise this to help me teach genetics to students, and how much I tried to do this 'back in the day' with MinecraftEdu, but the sheep just weren't a 'proper' model to support teaching. I ended up going with Pocket Frogs, but that is probably not a super key point, but still a really cool game for teaching inheritance and getting kids to think about the patterns that exist.
Anyway the idea has been stewing since Pandas came to vanilla Bedrock, but the idea took off into full flight mode once I figured out how to add my own entities. Not hijack those already in the game, but add my complete own custom entity. It was possible in 1.8 with 'experimental gameplay' on, but unfortunately they lock us out of using that in Education Edition (despite my requests to at least give us the option to choose ourselves).
So, I learned it because we had plans to include something in the first release of Mini Melbourne, but since experimental gameplay was banned, we had to pull back on our plans a little. The great thing for me, the learning had happened, and I was able to go back to stewing on exactly how I could do what I wanted.
Fast forward a few months, and I get told that the 'Village and Pillage' update for will come to M:EE 'soon'. So I think to myself "I wonder when custom entities got taken out of experimental gameplay." To my absolute delight, research said that 1.10 was the version, and since M:EE was going to be updated to 1.11 at least, I was right to actually implement my nefarious ideas.
So, onto what I did in day 1. If you have never tried to create a resource and behavior pack, do try it, and you will find that there are limited resources out there to help you, or there were when I started, more programs, guides and support are being made available all the time, which is all for the better, but getting started is definitely hard work! It took me about 5 packs to get the whole process stuck in my head, no joke. Day one consisted of the 5th attempt to create a pack, from scratch that would allow me to do what I wanted.
With the basic file structure of the pack created, it was time to go into Blockbench, an absolutely wicked program, that I need to do some tutorials on... add that to the list that is growing steadily longer because time.... is a precious resource, that I have very little of at the moment. What Blockbench allows you to do, is model an entity and export it to use in Minecraft (and many other programs, but my focus was Minecraft). So I spent the first 4 or so hours of this project creating my models, textures and a rough and ready animation and then getting them into the appropriate places in the packs.
4 Drosophila melanogaster models. Wild type male and female, and vestigial male and female flies.
With that all achieved, I went to bed, it was 1am after all. Next post, next day! Feel free to leave a comment below.
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