Setting up a Minecraft server in Azure (for use at weekly CodeClub session)

For almost one year, I've been doing a weekly CodeClub session at one of my kids schools, and sometimes at a local restaurant (see here)

Since there is quite a lot of passion in the kids for Minecraft, I decided that for this term, we would try to use a Minecraft server in class, and see if we (me and kids) can figure out how to use Minecraft without a mouse (ie, with only programming).

Since my first experiments with a Minecraft server where quite positive (see Setting up a CraftBukkit based Minecraft server on OSX (Nov 2013)) I decided that it was time to take it up a notch, and try to create a Minecraft server in Azure (so that the kids can access it from home).

Here are the steps I took:

What if minecraft was open source? (it would be an amazing learning tool)

Last week I did my 2nd CodeClub session where we tried to use a Minecraft server in the class (see Setting up a CraftBukkit based Minecraft server on OSX (Nov 2013) )

And it was a painful experience.

There where a ton of technical probs and most (if not all of them) were caused by the fact that MineCraft is not open source and needs to have a 'call home' function to make sure the clients have a valid license (i.e. there is an authentication step when connecting to a Minecraft server which forces the clients to be online, and introduces a number of issues).

This got me thinking about the hidden costs of the 'Minecraft closed' world, and how much more of an impact it would have if it was open source (and freely available to more kids).

Setting up a CraftBukkit based Minecraft server on OSX (Nov 2013)

Since I have my regular Codeclub Wednesday session later today, I finally got around to figure out how to run a Minecraft server (I have a number of kids that are starting to get bored with Scratch and REALLY like the idea of programming Minecraft)

There are a couple Minecraft servers out there (including an official one), but the CraftBukkit seems really powerful and very plugin-friendly (see http://plugins.bukkit.org/)

Here are the steps required to get an Minecraft CraftBukkit  server up and running:

1. download the CraftBukkit 1.7.2 development version from http://dl.bukkit.org/downloads/craftbukkit/
2. follow the instructions from http://wiki.bukkit.org/Setting_up_a_server
3. move the downloaded craftbukkit-1.7.2-R0.1-20131204.020906-17.jar into the BukkitServer folder and rename it craftbukkit.jar (you can delete the one originally downloaded)
4. execute ./start.command from a terminal window in the BukkitServer folder
5. open your Minecraft client (downloaded from https://minecraft.net/download) and connect to localhost (you will need a valid/paid account in https://minecraft.net)