By GREGORY ZELLER //
A creative team of computer-science students and mentors have taken Adelphi University where it’s never gone before – into the world of Minecraft.
For the uninitiated, Minecraft is an uber-popular videogame that allows players to build virtually anything they can imagine from virtual blocks. Created in 2009 by game developer Markus “Notch” Persson, licensed by Sweden’s Mojang Studios and now owned by Microsoft, the game boasts “story” modules and other goal-oriented modes – but none more popular than its basic build-whatever-you-want system, a free-world creative sandbox for children of all ages.
Boasting its own conventions, numerous knockoffs and several educational applications, Minecraft has grown into a true subculture, and a highly lucrative one at that: The title generated more than $415 million in 2020 revenue, with 130 million-plus people playing it at least once a month; it’s still adding new users more than a decade after its initial release – its free “Chinese edition” has been downloaded more than 400 million times – and it continues to pay off nicely for Microsoft, which acquired Mojang Studios in 2014 for a whopping $2.5 billion.
Just like being there: Adelphi’s utility buildings, dormitories and playing fields are all recreated in exacting detail.
Minecraft’s blocky graphics have long been surpassed by newer videogames, which have progressed by leaps and bounds insofar as visual realism. But that hasn’t stopped global Minecraft artists from recreating some of fact and fiction’s most iconic locations, including a skyline view of modern Chicago, a portrait of Minas Tirith (the capital of Gondor in “The Lord of the Rings”) and a fully restored Acropolis of Ancient Greece, among many others.
Now add Adelphi’s Garden City campus to the long list.
As COVID disrupted campus life in 2020, the Bridges to Adelphi program – which provides academic, social and vocational support to students with Autism Spectrum Disorders – united five computer-science students on a project to recreate the main campus. The idea was twofold: keep the students engaged, and create a visual guide for students who might not be able to access campus facilities during the pandemic.
Joseph Koehler: Photo-realistic.
“We started this project originally because we wanted to offer Bridges students an online way to explore the campus during COVID-19,” noted Joseph Koehler, an adjunct professor in Adelphi’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. “It sort of spiraled into a much larger project for the university as a whole.”
Besides requiring an exacting eye to keenly recreate actual structures, the team (three students at first, and then five) faced some difficult logistical challenges. A single Minecraft block – the smallest possible measurement within the game – equals one cubed meter in real life, creating multiple situations where the Adelphi designers had to decide whether something should be slightly bigger or slightly smaller than whatever real-world object it represented.
“They had to go back and double the size of nearly all of the prototype buildings,” Koehler told Innovate Long Island. “This is something they’re still in the process of doing, actually – it is quite tricky.”
Team members – who’ve worked from memory, photographs and actual campus-building floorplans provided by the university – are still tinkering with the recreation. Koehler noted “meetings and conversations daily” to adjust specific room sizes or move building foundations ever-so-slightly, “to get the campus to be as faithful to the original as possible.”
But the not-quite-finished product – created by students Bryan Coene (May 2021), John Kulions (May 2021), Anitra Marley (December 2021), Steven Caminero (May 2022) and Jonah Zgombick (May 2023) – is already a massive triumph of copious detail, featuring every Adelphi building, walkway and tree. Even the university’s beloved bunny population is represented, bounding about in block form.
Rabbit whole: Adelphi’s famous bunnies make the scene.
Before a walk-through version is made public, even as the students polish their Minecraft masterwork, the recreation has been recorded in a stunning two-minute video, a fly-through showcasing the amazing detail captured in the art form’s unique style.
While definitely keeping the students connected through COVID’s haze, the video and the coming-soon walk-through actually represent useful interactive maps for returning students who may have trouble finding their way around when Adelphi reopens later this month for the Fall 2021 semester.
And in those ways, the ambitious project was much more than a game, noted Bridges to Adelphi Program Director Diana Damilatis.
“The reason we did this project was trying to find ways for students in the Bridges to Adelphi Program to stay and feel connected to campus while being remote during the pandemic,” Damilatis said. “We also feel having this complex yet integrative process of Adelphi’s campus on Minecraft can assist students in further navigating through the campus when they are in person for classes.”
