With the pupils completing the cinema design, it's time to move onto a new project. Except that there is one more thing needed at the cinema - something on the screens. They are sitting there blank.

What would be much better would be picture (or a movie playing - even better) to make it look finished.

When we first started the cinema build, I was chatting to the school technician about this and we both tried - unsuccessfully - to find a way to get an image on the giant monitor. 

Well, I wasn't prepared to give up and have been beavering away  since using the computercraft mod.

Today I cracked it. The reason we were failing (primarily) is that (1) the children had built the screen using the 'basic' monitor with a grey surround and (2) I connected a 'basic' computer to it. Basic, in this case just wasn't good enough. It needed 'advanced' monitors with the yellow surround and an advanced computer. 

Because the computer was placed to the right of the screen, it meant that "monitor left" would need to be used to send the output to the screen correctly.

Once the advanced items were in place I needed to open the "paint" program on the advanced computer, making sure it output to the location of the monitor, and the specify an image name.

 > monitor left paint image1 

Once this was running I could then draw - block by block - an image on the cinema screen; With an image completed, I used CTRL + S to save the image to the advanced computer.

To make the image appear whenever I wanted it to, I needed to edit the start program on the advanced computer

> edit start

and then write a program that would call up the image from the advanced computer, and draw it on screen.

Once the edited start file had been saved (CTRL  key then select SAVE), it could be run with the following command to make sure the display was sent to the big screen on the left of the computer;

So now showing on Screen1 is a blockbuster movie, while on Screen2 is a film about a plane;

Using the isometric view that MCMap creates from MineCraft data, (as mentioned in a previous post) I've created a view of the World created so far by pupils over the past few years. Seeing it like this, it suddenly becomes apparent just how much creativity there has been.

This week the pupils completed their Palace design. They placed a two block high wooden fence on the roof to add an effect that worked perfectly as the final touch.

As they had a little time left after completing this, they returned to the cinema design (they started this long before we had the annoying laptop issues) and set about finishing off screens 2, 3 and 4.

The palace project is progressing. Pupils have been working on this during their lunch and break times, and have made excellent progress.

We've sorted the access issues we had on the laptops, and now the pupils can really crack on with the building of the Palace design.

By the end of the latest club session they had completed the outline of the East face, and were well on the way to getting the other faces of the building completed;