Purchasing Minecraft
First you need to purchase Minecraft from Minecraft.net. This will get you a Minecraft username and password. (This is also called a Mojang password, as Mojang was the company that originally made Minecraft.)
Instead of using the normal Minecraft launcher, use the third-party ATLauncher software from ATLauncher.com. This video (which is also on the ATLauncher web site) on the download page explains how to install and configure it.
Installing ComputerCraft
Download ComputerCraft1.79.jar This is version 1.79 of ComputerCraft, for version 1.8.9 of Minecraft. Your browser may say something like "This type of file can harm your computer" but you can ignore this message. Browsers show this for all .jar file downloads since .jar files can be used as malware, but this particular .jar file is fine.
Once ATLauncher is installed and run, follow the instructions in this video to setup a new instance of Minecraft with ComputerCraft:
Crafting a turtle requires seven iron ingots, a chest, and a computer. A computer is crafted from seven stone blocks, a glass pane, and one redstone. The crafting recipes are below:
Using the Turtle GUI
After crafting a turtle in Minecraft, place it in the world and right-click on it. The ComputerCraft GUI (graphical user interface) window will appear. It has a command line interface, the player's inventory, and the turtle's inventory:
Learning How to Program
There are some great resources on programming turtles in the Lua programming language:
The turtle needs to install a program to download programs from TurtleAppstore.com. Type this into the command line interface and press Enter:
pastebin get iXRkjNsG appstore
This will download the appstore program that you can use to download the programs you find on TurtleAppstore.com.
If, for some reason, the pastebin command doesn't work, you can run the lua interpreter and enter the following code. Note that you don't type the lua> part; that's just there to show you that you type it into the lua shell, not the regular command line interface.
lua> res=http.get('https://turtleappstore.com/static/files/appstore.lua')
lua> f=fs.open('appstore', 'w')
lua> f.write(res.readAll())
lua> f.close()
lua> exit()
Browsing and Downloading Apps
You can browse a list of turtle programs by clicking the Browse link at the top of the TurtleAppstore.com website. Or, you can search for programs by entering a search term in the search bar, also at the top of the website.
To download a program to your turtle from the turtle's GUI, you need to specify the username and appname for the program you want to download. For example, enter the following into the turtle:
appstore get AlSweigart mydance
This downloads the mydance program from AlSweigart's appstore. When run, it causes the turtle to do a little dance.
WARNING: Do not use your TurtleAppstore.com password or Minecraft/Mojang password to upload apps. Passwords typed into a turtle's GUI can be viewed by the Minecraft server's admins. To prevent this, TurtleAppstore.com uses one-time passwords (OTP) to upload apps.
Programs downloaded through the appstore program have a small comment as their first line. This comment identifies the URL where the program was downloaded from. If you open the mydance program in the turtle's editor by running edit mydance, you can see that its comment looks like this:
-- https://turtleappstore.com/u/AlSweigart/a/mydance
This marks the program as a TurtleAppstore.com program. If this program is from your TurtleAppstore.com account, you can modify it and then upload the changes. Then everyone else can download the new version of your program. You can also upload programs you made in the turtle's GUI, and the mark will automatically be added to it.
To upload a program to your TurtleAppstore.com account, you need to find your one-time password (OTP). Your OTP is on your user page. Hover your mouse over the "Hover to reveal OTP" link, and it will appear as below:
Use this password to upload any changes you've made to your program that you downloaded through the appstore program. It's okay if the admins of the Minecraft server you are on see this one-time password, since it expires after it is used once.
appstore put mydance 4P7yWC
After running this program, you'll see the following:
If you got an error message while trying to upload your program, you need to log into the TurtleAppstore.com site and check what the OTP is. Remember, the OTP is a one-time password: it changes each time you use it (this way the Minecraft server admins will not be able to modify your TurtleAppstore.com account.)
You can create a turtle app from the turtle's GUI with the edit program, and then upload it to this site. Or you can type/copy & paste your code into the site directly. On your profile page, click the Add New App button. All apps have the following attributes:
- Filename - The name of the program.
- Short description - A short, max 140 character description of what the program does.
- Long description - A detailed description about any setup, modules, or other information needed to successfully run the program.
- Tags - Single word descriptions of the kind of program this is. Popular tags include: builder, crafter, miner, farmer.
- Source code - The Lua source code for the app.
Technically, you can store any text data in a "program" on this site, not just Lua code. You can have up to 100 programs (each up to 128 kilobytes in size) in your account after verifying your email address.