Setting up ComputerCraft in Minecraft – installing Minecraft “mods” for beginners.

I’ve been using the excellent Minecraft “mod” ComputerCraft a bit to teach some programming inside of Minecraft and wanted to make sure that anyone who wanted to set this up at home could do just that. There are a few steps and I hope I’ve gotten them all, but if I’ve missed something and/or you have other questions feel free to ask!

ComputerCraft relies on a Minecraft Modding framework called Forge, so thats needed also. A basic overview of the process – download and install some stuff, change a bit of configuration and then Bob’s your uncle. Things are a little different depending on whether you’re using Linux and MacOS or Windows, so keep track of your platform. I’m assuming you’ve already installed Minecraft and therefore already have Java installed, if not do that first.

1. Download and install Forge
   Forge for Linux or MacOS
   or Forge for Windows
   You should be able to double click the downloaded file. Do the “client” install and remember the directory where Forge finds your Minecraft folder.

2. Download and install ComputerCraft
   ComputerCraft for all “platforms”
   Place the downloaded .jar file into the “mods” folder of your Minecraft installation, which is the directory where you installed “Forge” above..

3. Set up the correct configuration to launch
   The Minecraft “mods” Forge and ComputerCraft require Minecraft 1.8.9 to run properly. So, launch Minecraft and at the beginning “splash screen” you’ll need to click “edit profile”, and then under the section “Version Selection” make sure that “Use Version” is “release 1.8.9-forge 1.8.9-11.15.1.1902” or similar. click “Save Profile” to close the window.

Here is what mine looks like – on Windows yours will look different:

Launch Minecraft!
Launch Minecraft the way you normally would. You’ll know that the “mod” framework Forge is working correctly if it adds a hammer and some new progress indicators to the start screen. You’re done! Now you can use ComputerCraft to place computers and turtles! For me, it looks like this:

There is an excellent ComputerCraft wiki where there is plenty of documentation. We’ve started with Turtle in afterschool.