minecraft-scripting-toolchain

Helps with some common tasks when building a minecraft mod for Bedrock edition:

• builds an mcaddon directory (incomplete)
• installs the mod into Minecraft for Windows 10's development folders
• watches for file changes and reinstalls as neccessary
• has extension points to do transpilation
• (not implemented) build a .mcaddon

Prerequisites

Software	Minimum	Recommended
Minecraft	Minecraft on your Windows 10 device	Minecraft on your Windows 10 device
Storage	1.0 GB of free space for text editor, game, and scripts	3.0 GB of free space for Visual Studio, game, and scripts
Node.js	8.x	10.x

Getting Started

Ensure you have a package.json file present in your development directory, if you do not, you can create a minimal valid package with the following contents:

{
  "private": "true",
}

install the package (It's not currently available on NPM, you'll have to use the Github repository)

npm install --save-dev github:minecraft-addon-tools/minecraft-scripting-toolchain

This will automatically install gulp vNext (4.0.0)

Create a gulpfile.js gulp configuration

use the following as a template for your gulpfile.js, replacing <yourmodname> with the name of your mod, which will be used on the filesystem to identify your mod

const MinecraftModBuilder = require("minecraft-scripting-toolchain")
 
const modBuilder = new MinecraftModBuilder(<yourmodname>);
module.exports = modBuilder.configureEverythingForMe();

The MinecraftModBuilder object can be used to create your own tasks, but the default tasks configured by configureEverythingForMe() should be sufficient for simple mods.

Next, update your packge.json with appropriate scripts, here are some useful scripts

  "scripts": {
    "build": "gulp build",
    "installmod": "gulp install",
    "rebuild": "gulp rebuild",
    "watch": "gulp watch"
  },

• use npm run build to create the directory structure for a .mcaddon
• use npm run installmod to install the mod into Minecraft for Windows 10
• use npm run rebuild to clean the build directory and rebuild it
• use npm run watch to:
  • build the project
  • deploy it to to Minecraft for Windows 10
  • monitor for changes on the filesystem
    • automatically rebuilds and deploys the project.

Conventions

These scripts will assume a certain directory structure by default. These can be overridden by altering properties on the MinecraftModBuilder object in your gulpfile.js.

directory	purpose	config property
.\src\scripts	Any JavaScript/TypeScript/etc files that make up the code	scriptsDir
.\src\behaviors	files that are part of the behaviors	behaviorDir
.\src\resources	files that are part of the resources	resourceDir
.\built	the constructed mcaddon directory	outDir

an example of changing the build directory would look something like this:

const MinecraftModBuilder = require("minecraft-scripting-toolchain")
const modBuilder = new MinecraftModBuilder(<yourmodname>);
modBuilder.outDir = "./out"

Using with TypeScript

It is recommended if you use TypeScript to use the minecraft-scripting-types packge to give better code hints, see minecraft-addon-tools/minecraft-script-types for more details. The following steps will assume this is also installed.

Install the prerequisites to get started

npm install --save-dev gulp-typescript

Now edit your gulpfile.js and add typescript to the scriptTasks setting on the MinecraftModBuilder (again remembering to replace <yourmodname> as appropriate):

const ts = require("gulp-typescript");
const MinecraftModBuilder = require("minecraft-scripting-toolchain")
 
const modBuilder = new MinecraftModBuilder(<yourmodname>);
 
compileTypeScript = () => ts({
    module: "ES6" //Must be ES6 because otherwise code gets generated that Minecraft doesn't support
    noImplicitAny: true,
    types: [ "minecraft-scripting-types" ] // You won't need this line if you're not using the types
});
 
modBuilder.scriptTasks = [compileTypeScript];
 
module.exports = modBuilder.configureEverythingForMe();

Note that compileTypeScript is a function, not just a call to ts failing to do this will result in gulp and gulp-typescript trying to re-use a completed set of files and failing.