Gupta Aditya - Minecraft Modding with Forge

One day a couple of years ago, I was stunned when my son told me, Dad, my JAR snapshot messed up the configuration. As a curious dad and an experienced Java programmer, my question to him was, How do you know what a JAR is?

What I didnt anticipate at that time was how that one question would completely change our discussions over the ensuing months and years. I learned that the game of Minecraft is written in Java, and that my son had been installing mods, which are other JARs, to modify the gameplay. After helping him fix the configuration problem, my son expressed a desire to write a mod and we started exploring how to do that. This marked the beginning of an extremely rewarding and enjoyable journey for the both of us: he taught me about Minecraft, and I taught him basic Java programming concepts. Notes were exchanged over breakfast and dinner, during drives to school or classes while grocery shopping, and pretty much everywhere.

After building our first mod during Christmas 2012, we decided to share the knowledge with his Minecraft buddies. That gave rise to the first Minecraft modding workshop in our living room with about 12 kids. Most of the kids had no programming experience, let alone experience with Java. However, there was high Minecraft experience in the group, with some kids playing for about two years and up to two hours every day. When given the topic of Minecraft, the small group would talk excitedly about different aspects of the game, constantly using hundreds of game-specific terms and phrases as if speaking a different language. My goal was to leverage their passion and introduce them to Java programming.

We built our first trivial mod, but there were a lot of hiccups. After that, everything slowly started to get better. Once we learned more about modding and gained more experience, we were able to improve the quality of the workshops. Since then, my son and I have delivered multiple modding workshops in different cities around the world. Starting a .

Parents whose kids play Minecraft are well aware of how addicting the game can become. Playing the game is a lot of fun, but what makes it more engaging, entertaining, and educational is when kids start building mods. This book is targeted at parents and kids who would like to learn how to mod the game of Minecraft. It can be read by parents or kids independently, but it is more fun to read it together. No prior programming experience is required, but some familiarity with software installation will be very helpful (youll also need some basic troubleshooting know-how in case there is a problem with the installation, but this information can easily be found via a quick Google search).