🍪 cookie-caster

A CC: Tweaked render engine to convert your images and display them in Minecraft

📝 How to

This project requires python and either a modpack running CC: Tweaked or a forge instance that has CC: Tweaked installed.

Building in-game

Place down your desired size monitor and advanced computer close by. Place wired modems, one on the computer and one on each multi-block monitor. Connect them up by cable. Right click on the modems to activate them and assign them name Id's (these cannot be changed).

Image => .nfpx conversion

1. Firstly, clone down the repo onto your machine
2. 2nfpx.py enables you to bulk process image files, meaning that you can also render video in-game
   • If you just want to render a single image, simply drop your image file into 2nfpx/input/
   • If you want to render video, please prepare your video before hand. Choose any method to convert your video to individual frames/images. I strongly recommend ezgif to convert your video/gif to jpeg format, but you can do this however you wish. Drop all the images into 2nfpx/input/
3. Make sure you cd into the 2nfpx/ directory before running the script
4. Run python3 ./2nfpx and follow the prompts

Input the number of monitor rows and columns you wish to use in-game. If you're not sure what the width and height in pixels your in-game monitors are, you can find this out by:

• Right click on the advanced computer and run lua
• type: m = peripheral.wrap("monitor_*x*") where x is the monitor Id when activating it's modem
• type: m.setTextScale(0.5) and then m.getSize(). This should output the width and height respectively, and should be the numbers you use in the python conversion script

Running cookie-caster in Minecraft

1. Clone down the install.lua script from pastebin by running pastebin get <code> install.lua in your advanced computer. The latest release and subsequently the latest <code> can be found on the 'releases' github page. If you don't want to use pastebin, then manually copy your local version of the code into the advanced computer's folder on Windows

• Optional: configure computer craft behaviour like max folder size in ...saves/<saveGameName>/serverconfig/computercraft-server.toml. I recommend doing this if you require more space to hold bigger video

2. Copy the *.nfpx file(s) that you generated located in 2nfpx/build/ to the minecraft save's cookie-caster/build/. The frames must be in order if you desire video rendering
3. Finally, edit your config found in the cookie-caster/ folder in-game:

• Make sure the width and height are the same as the monitor size and when you converted your image
• mono.nfpx files are a portable way to carry multiple images in one file for video rendering. Set this option to true if you copied a single mono file to the build/ directory
• MONITOR_LAYOUT is a table that must contain all multi-block monitor Id's and their respective position (starting from the top left, is ID 1, and then going left to right the Id increments)

🔧 How it works

Computer craft uses .nfp files, along side it's paintUtils API to display colour on terminals and monitors. A .nfp file contains alphanumerical characters that correspond to a CC colour (I.e. e => 🔴).

cookie-caster extends this file format .nfpx which holds higher resolution images, is video compatable, and has a devoted 16 colour palette per frame.

2nfpx.py is a script to convert your image file(s) to .nfpx to then be later imported into your minecraft world and rendered onto monitors of variable screen size.

cookie-caster also renders better colour representation - each frame has it's own colour palette. Meaning that we are not confined to computer craft's predetermined colour palette.