Play with Minecraft's Inner Workings!

Fri Dec 2. 2022

Nathan hopes that Brigadier will be made "extremely user-friendly one day" by giving Minecraft players access to it. After all, commands are not used often by many Minecraft players. Nathan says that some people don't look at commands because they are intimidating. "This is supposed help a lot with that."

Brigadier transforms the random strings you enter into Minecraft into a function that the game will perform (so Brigadier is to be thanked for all those sticks). Nathan says that this function is easy for many people. "But the truth is that it's extremely complex.

"This was our first test of the system. It's an easy to use tool that anyone can pick up and put into any project. It doesn't have to be a game. I've seen people use it on Telegram chat bots. You can message it and it will do what you ask it to."

Brigadier is only available for a little over a week and already we have people trying to improve it and make Nathan's handy readme more user-friendly. You guys are writing stuff for Nathan? Is this a job offer?

DATA FIXER UPPER

Nathan says that the problem we have in Minecraft is that data changes over time. "We add something to Minecraft and then we have to change how we store level information, how we save files, and other stuff to accommodate it.

"When you load any Minecraft world right now, you can have data that hasn't been touched in six years because that chunk was last used six years ago. We need to know: "OK, this level actually seems really old. Now, we need to transform that data into what it should be now - in a format that the game can read.

"We have one unit that uses DataFixerUpper. It just says to Minecraft: "This is how to convert any data into the data format that Minecraft is going to use." The game now says "This is how the data looks, and this is how it will be read."

"Basically, before Minecraft loads the chunks, it goes through DataFixerUpper, which transforms it into what it should be currently."

Confused? It's okay - DataFixerUpper may be less user-friendly that Brigadier, but that's exactly why we make it available to everyone!