Grandma’s Chickens is a game in which the player kills as many chickens as possible racing against the lightning strikes that may kill  chickens  and ocelots that may  eat them before the player can score a kill. Also, lightning might strike the fence making a hole through which chickens can escape.

A cowardly (or impatient) player will choose to use the sword, which is provided in the player inventory. In this case, chickens are killed with a single strike and the fence and ground will not be destroyed accidently. A more difficult version is to use the hand rather than the sword. In this case, it takes a few strikes to kill each chicken and it is frustratingly easy to accidently make holes in the fence or ground. During all this action, the score is updated in the sky. The game can be varied using the on-chat arguments for the size of the fence, the number of chickens and the number of ocelots.

Strategy for the Design of the Grandma’s Chickens Game

The strategy for building Grandma’s Chickens was to spawn chickens and ocelots at random positions inside a wooden fence with the player at the center. The player can start killing chickens while they are being  spawned. The on-chicken-killed event keeps score and every few kills randomly spawns a lightning bolt at a random position inside and including the fence. If lightning strikes the fence, a hole is burned in the fence through which chickens can escape. When a chicken is killed, the score is updated by the on-chicken-killed event and printed in the sky.

The Code for Grandma’s Chickens

The key code is the on-chat command “run” and the on-chicken-killed event.

The steps for then on-chat command “run” and described in the following paragraphs.

Step 1: Set the global variable origin, which will be where the west-north corner of the fence is positioned.

Step 2: Store the arguments in global variables– nBLocksPerFenceSide, nChickens and nOcelots. Check the variables for allowed values, switching to defaults if needed. Say these values before and after the validity checks to be sure there is not a problem, like the one described in a MakeCode for Minecraft on Chat Command Arguments Problem (Bug?). Notice that if no arguments are given — “run” — the values are all zero and the defaults are used.

Grandma’s Chickens Part 1 of 4

Step 3: Calculate fence parameters including the west-north corner (same as origin), the opposing east-south corner  and the center. If the argument for the number of blocks per side is even, increase it d by 1 so that it is odd. This enables an exact center block for the fence; that is, the center block has the exact same number of blocks on the left, right, in front and behind. Yes, I realize that this is being a bit too meticulous. It’s a programmer thing.

Step 4: Move the player to just outside the fence so she will not be in the way. Yes, I know that this is probably not necessary.

Step 5: Build the fence according to the previously calculated parameters.

Step 6: Call the function makeEastPointerFromOrigin, which helps the programmer visualize the fence construction.

Step 7: Give the player a sword to provide the option of striking chickens with a more powerful weapon than just the hand. Using a sword makes the game easier to play, but personally, I prefer the more difficult version using the hand.

Step 8: Initialize the score to zero and print it in the sky.

Step 9: Set the boundaries for spawning chickens and ocelots one block inside the fence. Spawn the number of chickens and ocelots specified by the global variables nChickens and nOcelots, which were set to the values passed in the on-chat arguments or to the default values if on-chat had no arguments or were invalid values.

 On start initializes the values for the global variables. Here it was automatically generated by MakeCode as JavaScript statements. 

An essential part of the Grandma’s Chickens game is the on-animal-chicken-killed event, which  is run when a chicken is killed by the player. Each time the event is triggered, 1 is added to the score and the score is printed in the sky. A random number is picked from the sequence 0, 1, 2. If the random number is 1, a lightning -bolt projectile is spawned at or inside the fence. The number 1 is arbitrary and could have been any of the three number 0, 1 or 2. It simply enables a 1 in 3 chance of the lightning striking.  If the lightning hits the fence, it burns a hole in the fence through which chickens and ocelots can escape. The lightning also sets fire to the grass, which can be annoying when one is in a panic to kill chickens.

The function giveMeSwords first clears the player’s inventory and then gives the player a sword that can be used to kill chickens more efficiently than just the hand. A function was chosen to implement this code rather than coding it inline, so that other items could be easily added to the player inventory to experiment with the game without cluttering the main code. For example, I have considered providing fence blocks so that the player can repair the fence.

Don’t Worry About the Chickens

I know you might be concerned about all those chickens being killed. Don’t be. They were born to be eaten by the hungry folks in the Minecraft world. On the humble farm where I grew up, chickens were feast food. I can still remember the anticipation of a festive meal when my mother was in the yard plucking the chicken feathers from a fine bird that my father had just killed.

Of course, We Are Working on Grandma’s Chickens 3.0

We have lots of ideas for making Grandma’s Chickens even more interesting and fun. We hope you have some, too. We would very much like for you to build on our code.

Get the Code

Grandma’s Chickens 2.0  code is shared on Code Connection at this URL

 https://makecode.com/_RFUKHraM7Tbp

To get and use the code, follow these steps.

Click the Import button , which is upper right in the Code Connection window just below the banner. This will open the window shown below.

Click the Import URL button , which is on the right, to open the window shown below.

Paste the URL supplied for the program you want to use in the space under the text “Copy the URL …”

Click the Go ahead! button .

The next window you will see will be the MakeCode window with the code downloaded from the URL. At this point, you can treat it like any other code, e.g., run it, save it locally, modify it, publish your changes or whatever else your heat desires.

We have tested several other methods of downloading the code using the URL, for example, pasting the URL in a browser. No joy. For more detailed instruction see our post How to Use Shared MakeCode on Microsoft Code Connection for Minecraft.