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.