Ninth grade student releases Star Wars-themed Minecraft mod

Posted on January 5, 2016 By Editor Junior Residents

Just in time for the premiere of “The Force Awakens,” a ninth grade Bolles School student is releasing an update to a Star Wars-themed add-on for the popular building game Minecraft.

Colby Newman, who was introduced to coding when he was 10 years old, began this coding project in June. “Coding isn’t entirely a day-to-day thing, but during any week, I generally code at least 18 hours because of the project I’m currently working on, Parzi’s Star Wars Mod, with my cousin, Weston Miller,” he said.

“The first languages I came across were just basic ones, like HTML, but eventually I started to become familiar with more advanced languages, like Java and C#,” said Newman.

For Parzi’s Star Wars Mod, Newman wrote over one million lines of code and Miller created the models and textures. “We just released our mod four months ago and already have 25,000 downloads worldwide, and we couldn’t be more excited!” he said.

“If I were to relate to any Star Wars character, it would most likely be C-3PO. He knows a lot of languages and thus, has a deeper understanding of technical things, more than any of the other main characters,” said Newman. “Since he has that knowledge, he is always there to help when things go wrong, which appeals to me, because I like helping other people code and troubleshooting any problems they run into.”

The San Jose resident is hoping to get into hardware and large-scale systems design someday. Miller, who attends Jacksonville University majoring in mechanical engineering, has aspirations of working as a 3D designer in the automotive or aerospace industry.

Newman’s mod can be downloaded from http://parzivail.com/mods/tswm/

By Kate A. Hallock
Resident Community News