Minecraft, Python, and nerdery

A little over a month ago, I was finally pulled into the rapidly growingthing that is Minecraft. Like many of you, I ended up happily breaking blocks and constructing crude huts and castles into the wee hours of the night.

As is the case with many other things I enjoy, I found myself wondering “What Python nerdery can I get into with Minecraft?” Much like the Minecraft client, the server is written in Java, which is not something I play with for fun. After some Googling around, I stumbled across the Bravo project, an effort to write a custom Minecraft server in Python. “Bingo!”

Bravo is built on top of Twisted and is aimed at being a much more efficient, extendable alternative to the “Notchian” official server. Development is still pretty early, but it is already just about suitable for those who wanting to run creative servers.

Lending a hand

One thing I immediately found out about the Bravo community is that they are immensely patient and helpful with any questions or ideas. I lurk on their IRC channel (#Bravo on Freenode), and have been very impressed so far. For these and other reasons, I can strongly recommend this project for Pythonistas looking for a way to apply their talents to one of their hobbies (Minecraft!).

The Bravo issue tracker has all kinds of stuff in it waiting to be implemented, or fixed up. A lot of these are not extremely difficult, and the maintainer has been great handling pull requests and providing good feedback.

If you’re not sure where to start, or have questions, the IRC room (#Bravo on FreeNode) is great.

tl;dr version

Bravo is a custom Minecraft server written in Python. It is early in development, but is already suitable for creative stuff. The community is friendly, and you should consider perusing their issue tracker.

Source: https://github.com/MostAwesomeDude/bravo

Docs: http://www.docs.bravoserver.org/index.html

IRC: #Bravo on FreeNode