Minecraft: Pi Edition Installation

Minecraft: Pi Edition is a free and Python-hackable version of Mojang's hugely successful Minecraft game, specifically created for the Raspberry Pi.

It's based around the Pocket Edition of Minecraft, a low cost version for smartphones and tablets running Apple's iOS or Google's Android operating system.

However, rather than the usual 'apt-get install' command it you'll need to download and unpack a zipped file.

How it is done? Boot up your Raspberry Pi, start the Raspbian's LXDE graphical interface, connect it to the internet and follow these steps.

Open a new terminal window

From the LXDE Desktop menu on your Raspberry Pi and select the 'Other->Terminal' option.

Ensure you're in the home directory

At the terminal command prompt type in this line and press enter (in Linux the tilde '~' character equates to the home directory):

$ cd ~

Download the Minecraft file

Now download the game file from the web using this wget command:

$ wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.minecraft.net/pi/minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz

Unpack the downloaded Minecraft file

Next unpack file with this tar command (which creates a new directory called mcpi):

$ tar -zxvf minecraft-pi-0.1.1.tar.gz

Start the Minecraft game

Start the game using this command (which opens a new window):

$ ./mcpi/minecraft-pi

Unfortunately, as I discovered myself, you cannot run Minecraft from an ssh session or via a remote desktop viewer, such as TightVNC - which is a shame.

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