CodeBlock

CodeBlock allows to use lua code in Luanti to build anything you want

A drone you program in Lua, an in-game editor, a sandbox and a documented API. It brings its own blocks: 3930 colours as solid blocks, and 35 named colours each as a brick, a glass and a lamp. It depends only on vector3. The Codecube game bundles it with a flat world and settings made for it, which is the easiest way to try it. The Lua and block reference is at doc/api.md.

License: AGPLv3
Credits: inspired by Gnancraft, ComputerCraft, Visual Bots, TurtleMiner, basic_robot

Quick start

Run your first program

1. Create an empty (flat) world, enable the codeblock mod and its one dependency vector3
2. Enable creative mode and start the game
3. Get the two drone tools: run the /codeblock tools command (or use creative inventory)
4. Right click with tool on a block to place the drone, choose stairs.lua then left click with to start the drone

Write your first program

1. Right click with tool to open the lua editor
2. Create a new file with the new file field and write some code on the main window
3. Click load and close to load your code in the drone
4. Right click with tool on a block and run the code with a left click on
5. Read the Lua API in doc/api.md to know which commands and blocks you can use

Watch and steer a running program

• While your program runs, a HUD in the top-right corner names the file, says whether it is running or paused, and shows the limits of the drone. Untick Show the drone HUD on the editor's Settings panel to turn it off or set codeblock_drone_hud = false for the server's default.
• Left click your drone with the drone setter to open its panel, whatever it is doing: every limit with what the run has spent beside it, a line saying what each one means, and buttons to pause/resume and stop the drone.

Explore and tweak

• More built-in examples are available, just open the editor and choose an example to run
• User codelevel can be adjusted to tweak drone performance and capacities, see permissions and chat commands

For game authors

Your game can add a block category of its own. Call this from a mod that names codeblock in its depends, at load time:

codeblock.register_blocks('wool', {
    red = 'wool:red',
    blue = 'wool:blue'
})

wool.red is then a block a player's program can place, listed in the editor beside the mod's own bricks, glass and lamps. The keys are the names a program spells; the values are itemstrings your game has registered.

Registrations are queued at the call and checked once every mod has loaded, so a node belonging to a mod that loads later is still accepted. A name that collides with the existing API, cannot be a table key, or names no node is logged and dropped — never raised, so a typo in your game cannot stop the server.