Woah, this looks cool!

What is it?

MineMath is a multivariate function plotting toolkit to help students develop mathematics and 3D visualization skills through Minecraft.

You can think of this as a 3D graphing calculator in Minecraft. MineMath is Bukkit plugin and can be installed on Bukkit/Spigot-compatible Minecraft server. I recommend Paper.

What can I do with it?

MineMath is still under active development but many basic features are supported out of the box. So far it can do most of the plot-related things I can do on my TI-89 graphing calculator (though none of that fancy algebraic stuff).

Features

• Defining plotting areas using an in-game wand tool
  • /m2 defplot
• Plotting parametric curves
  • /m2 plot cos(pi*u) sin(pi*u) u/2
• Plotting bivariate and parametric surfaces
  • /m2 plot e^(-x^2-y^2)
  • /m2 plot cos(pi*u) v*sin(pi*u) u-v
• Plotting animated time-varying curves and surfaces!
  • /m2 option animate true
  • /m2 option duration 5.0
  • /m2 plot cos(pi*u*t) sin(pi*u*t) u*t
• Drawing color-coded, appropriately-scaled axes in your plots
• Setting the window size and evaluation ranges
  • /m2 range x -1 1
  • /m2 range u 0 2
  • /m2 range t 0 3.14
• Defining custom functions to use in your plots
  • /m2 defun d(a,b)=a*cos(pi*b)
  • /m2 plot d(x,y)

In-Progress Features

A few other features have been implemented in code but aren't (yet) available in game.

• A number of settings relating to plots that aren't yet changable in game
  • Un-swapping the Y and Z axis
  • Drawing the axes somewhere else
• Matrix inversion and multiplication allowing for change-of-basis via linear transformations
• The PlotMaterialProvider interface, allowing plots to be made of different types of blocks
  • This includes DefaultMaterialProvider which has some basic presets to make plots out of different colors of glass and wool.
• The PlayerInstruction interface, allowing easy hooking of PlayerEvent objects to handle actions that players perform other than commands.
  • PlaterInstruction<E> objects are stored in a PlayerSession
  • The instructionQueue holds an ordered set of steps to be followed
  • The instructionList holds free instructions that can be run at any time

Future Plans

Here are some ideas I have and things I might want to add or change.

• Session and plot persistence (probably in a file)
• Choosing between multiple plot areas without having to reselect them with the wand
• Drawing a cube-like frame around the plotting area
• Polishing time-varying animated plots
• Adding size constraints to plotting areas
• Making more things asynchronous and timing-safe
• Adding tools users can use to manipulate their plots
  • Zoom, rotate, pan, redraw, etc.
• Allowing users to share plotting areas between each other
• Binding plots to tools to allow users to quickly switch plots
• Adding funky plotting colors via PlotMaterialProvider
• Who knows what else...?