This is the third lesson in a series introducing 10-year-olds to programming through Minecraft. Learn more here.

Perhaps the simplest kind of file on a computer is a text file; it is very similar to the text in a book. It contains no formatting (e.g. bold or italic) or any metadata (e.g. who created the file). However, it can easily be understood by any program.

Minecraft uses text files in a few different ways; one is to display the text you see on the main screen. Here are the first few lines of a text file called splashes.txt - do you recognize any of them?

As seen on TV!  
Awesome!  
100% pure!  
May contain nuts!  
Better than Prey!  
More polygons!

You can create and edit text files in a variety of applications. There is one called Notepad which comes included in every version of Windows but is very limited. I would suggest you try out two other free text editors called Notepad++ and notepad2 and choose your favourite!

One of the simplest mods we can make to Minecraft is writing our own text to display during the splash screen. Here's a sneak peek of one I just made :)

splash-mod

Further Reading

Extra Credit

To have your splash screen text appear on launch, follow these steps:

  • Create a new directory
  • Create a file called pack.mcmeta

    {
      "pack": {  
        "pack_format": 1,  
        "description": "Minecraft Summer Camp 2013 Splash"  
      }  
    }
    
  • Create a 128x128 thumbnail called pack.png (optional)
  • Create a subdirectory called assets\minecraft\texts
  • Create a file called splashes.txt in that subdirectory
  • Add whatever splash screen text you would like to see and save it
  • Zip the entire directory and copy the zip to %APPDATA%\Roaming\.minecraft\resourcepacks
  • Launch Minecraft and choose your resource pack.
  • Restart the app and your splash screen text will appear.