Activity: Chicken Storm

In this activity, students use a variable to determine the number of chickens to spawn in Minecraft, and they’ll make these chickens fall from the sky like a storm of chickens!

Do the activity

Make a new project

1. Create a new MakeCode project and name it “Chicken Storm.”

2. From ||player:PLAYER||, drag ||player:on chat command|| into the coding Workspace and change the command to "chickens".

3. From |loops:LOOPS||, add a ||loops:repeat|| loop inside ||player:on chat command "chickens"||.

4. Open ||mobs:MOBS||, and add a ||mobs:spawn animal|| block inside the ||loops:repeat|| loop.

5. Change the Y coordinate to 10 inside ||mobs:spawn animal||. Chickens will spawn 10 blocks above your head.

player.onChat("chickens", function () {
    for (let i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
        mobs.spawn(CHICKEN, pos(0, 10, 0))
    }
})

6. Go into Minecraft, press T to open the chat window, and enter chickens in the chat window. It’s raining hens!

We want more chickens!

You want more chickens, of course, and you want to use a variable that will allow you to easily change the number of chickens.

You can provide the number of chickens when you call the ||player:on chat command||.

7. Click the plus sign (+) just to the right of the ||player:on chat command|| for "chickens". Another drop-down menu should appear, with the name num1 at the top of it. num1 is a number variable that you can use in your code.

8. From ||variables:VARIABLES||, replace the number 4 in ||loops:repeat|| with ||variables:num1||.

player.onChat("chickens", function (num1) {
    for (let i = 0; i < num1; i++) {
        mobs.spawn(CHICKEN, pos(0, 10, 0))
    }
})

Now if you enter chickens 15 in the chat window, the variable num1 will take the value 15. You have stored the value 15 inside num1. If you enter chickens 25, num1 takes the value 25.

Challenges

Now you can change some things to make your own different and unique situations!

Challenge 1 - Rename num1 to Something More Meaningful

Let’s change the code so that you are not using num1. The name num1 does not represent anything meaningful and could be hard to understand in a big block of code. Instead, your new variable will be called ChickenNum because the number you store is the number of chickens.

To do this, you will need to…

1. Make a new ||variables:VARIABLE||.

2. Rename it ChickenNum.

3. Replace num1 in your code with ChickenNum.

When you are done, everything should work the same as before, but now you can read your code a little more easily.

Challenge 2 - Give Feedback

Let’s have your chicken rain machine speak back to you. This will be kind of like ordering at a drive-through window. Right before chickens start falling, have your code say “ChickenNum chickens! Coming right up!”

So if you entered chickens 5 in the chat window, the response would be, “5 chickens! Coming right up!”. Then five chickens would fall from the sky on your head.

To do this, you will need to…

1. Figure out how to “say” things in the chat window.

2. Use the join block to put together ChickenNum + “ chickens! Coming right up!”

3. Put this new block in the right location in your code. If you put it in the wrong spot, the chat window will respond many times.

Experiments

Here there are no rules… Copy the code for the experiments and change things around to see what kind of results you can create. Suggestions are given, but do as you like!

Experiment 1 - Default Chicken Value

Now that you have created a chicken command that takes a number variable and produces that many chickens, it is good programming practice to make sure to handle cases where the chickens command in the chat window isn’t given a number. By default, ChickenNum has a value of 0. If you type the chickens command but forget to type a number after it, you will at least get a couple of chickens, which isn’t as good as 10 chickens, but it’s better than no chickens at all!

Use this code to start with.

How can you change this code? Maybe you do something interesting if the user types a certain number. For example, if the user types 20 in the chat window (chickens 20), what if raw chickens fell from the sky instead? Could you make a normal chicken fall, then a cooked chicken, then a normal chicken, and so on?

Experiment 2 - Chicken Storm

You can further improve the realism of the chickens command by using the ||positions:pick random position|| block from the ||positions:POSITIONS|| Toolbox drawer. This block will scatter the chickens randomly around the area described by the two coordinates. You can also vary the height of the drop, so that the chickens will land at different times. Now it is truly a storm of chickens!

Use this code to start with.

Try this out with other animals or objects.