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 :)
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.
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