Project Overview
Craft-My-Play is a custom Paper Minecraft (1.21.4) server environment built to power a gamified public-engagement research initiative. The project is based on the Craft-My-Street initiative I was part of at UCD, Ireland, and builds upon foundations established in my previous projects, Emcify – Brno in Minecraft and EbAcraft. The server is powered by a custom plugin called PlayConsultant, which was created specifically for this project but is designed in a way that it might be reused in the future.
Commissioned by the Irish Department of Children, the project serves as an interactive consultation tool to gather authentic feedback from children (aged 8–18) regarding their “right to play.” Deployed across a series of in-person library workshops throughout Ireland, the platform transforms a standard Minecraft server into a structured, multi-world data-collection environment. The insights gathered (highlighting what makes a space fun, what feels dangerous, and what is missing) directly inform future national play policies.
The Player Journey
The server supports a carefully orchestrated, three-phase journey designed to accommodate multiple workshop sessions at scale:
- Urban Exploration (Adventure Phase): Players spawn into a generated replica of a real Irish town. Guided by server-side waypoint navigation (including live compass targets and action-bar hints), players explore the environment and interact with custom narrative NPCs that illustrate real-world barriers to play, such as hostile architecture or unsafe traffic.
- The Megaphone Feedback Loop: Players are equipped with a custom “Megaphone” tool to share their thoughts. The plugin intercepts chat input asynchronously and validates it against configurable rules (e.g., minimum word counts, profanity filter, and spatial distance checks) to prevent spam and encourage exploration.
- The Play Warehouse (Transition Phase): Upon reaching a validated comment threshold, players unlock access to an intermediary showcase zone designed to inspire them with creative play structures.
- Creative Building (Plot Phase): Using a GUI-based travel menu, players are dynamically assigned an isolated, private plot. The system automatically switches them to Creative Mode, allowing them to freely design and build their ideal play spaces.
Technical Architecture & Integrations
The PlayConsultant plugin acts as a stateful, event-driven orchestration layer that unifies several advanced server-side systems into a cohesive workflow:
- PlotSquared & FastAsyncWorldEdit (FAWE): Handles dynamic creative plot assignment, secure land ownership, and asynchronous schematic deployment to prepare private build plots for every player.
- DecentHolograms & Entity Management: Validated comments spawn a persistent, invulnerable, and silent mob-based marker tagged with custom metadata. The plugin attaches a hologram to this entity, creating clean, in-world feedback artifacts without exposing players to brittle entity behaviors.
- PlaceholderAPI & UX Systems: Drives rich server messaging, boss-bar progress tracking, timed reminders, and checkpoint management to ensure players are guided smoothly through the experience.
Research & State Management Systems
Built specifically for a live research program, the codebase prioritizes data integrity and operational reliability:
- Silent Data Logging: All validated player input, alongside geospatial coordinates and timestamps, is seamlessly written to daily CSV files for offline academic analysis.
- Persistent State Handling: Player progression (including comment counts, unlocked reward status, assigned plot IDs, last known locations across worlds, and current journey zones) is stored in memory and serialized to YAML-backed data files, ensuring progress survives server restarts or crashes.
- Operational Tooling: Designed for staff and researchers, the plugin includes administrative commands for moderation, session recovery, manual reward grants, navigation support, and automated cleanup. All major variables (thresholds, world names, reminder timings, and comment rules) are data-driven and easily configurable.
Conclusion
By seamlessly blending game-based exploration with structured, rigorous data collection, Craft-My-Play successfully captures the authentic voices of youth to aid in civic planning. The robust and stateful architecture of the PlayConsultant plugin ensures that real-world research can be conducted reliably within a live Minecraft environment, serving as a powerful template for future interactive consultation platforms.