Author Archives: 8 bit Bastards

Community before code

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The 8 bit bandits actively go out of their way to help other teams succeed. For us, ACDC is not just about what we build, but how we contribute along the way.

Andrew Bibby of BratwurstandBiscuits stopped by the 8 bit bandits camp where we had a chat about the challenges of integration to Minecraft.

There a lot of good online resources on how to connect and manipulate a Minecraft world, but most are geared towards local environments and simple installs. Taking it to the next level and integrating with AI clients, MCP servers, and Minecraft servers requires a lot of time consuming research, experimentation with a fair amount of frustration. Sharing our learnings was a two way street.

My discussions with Andy:

  • Key differences between Minecraft Java edition and Bedrock, and why we choose Bedrock for our project.
  • Setting up the open source Minecraft MCP server, how it was configured as a local MCP server connected to Claude, and what our strategy was to move this to a cloud based service.
  • Why prompting is important and is we learned the hard way and took 1 minute to lay down a single block to being able to build an entire structure in 5 minutes.
  • Our learnings using the Mineflayer API (a base component of the Minecraft MCP server)

This helped with some unblocking for their project, and Joe from their team kindly helped us back in kind later when they gave use a valuable tip that helped us move forward on an important feature of our project. Karma is alive and well at ACDC!

Helping another team move faster and avoid known pitfalls is exactly what the Community Champion badge represents to us. Showing up, sharing openly, and treating the community’s progress as a shared win. We hope these extra details give the judges the info they need to award us this badge!

Dash it out

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We needed to track all our customers, dream house projects, average budgets for the customers and average estimated cost to build the damn house.

Power BI wasn’t just a tool, it was our pickaxe. We mined out every chunk of critical info with not to much fluff.

Go With The Flow

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When the customer submits an interest form for their dream house, the process starts instantly and the volume goes up 🤘

A Power Automate flow is triggered, capturing the data and creating a new contact in Dynamics 365 without any manual effort. At the same time, a confirmation email is sent to thank the customer for their interest and invite them to keep building their idea. The experience feels like spawning into a new Minecraft world: one action unlocks endless possibilities.

Glossy Pixels

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Look at that amazing, user friendly, gorgeous and glossy UI! Our responsive code app is now also glossy as hell. For no reason besides some points 🙂

Boring technical stuff:
We added gloss by layering translucent gradients and animated sheen overlays on cards, panels, upload areas, previews, and the plan canvas, then kept all text above those layers using isolation and z-index. We also introduced glossy highlight variables (–gloss, –shine), subtle reflections on interactive elements, and an animated @keyframes sheen sweep so surfaces feel glassy while keeping text readable.

Happy Camper

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The 8-bit Bastards are setting out to build something genuinely useful with AI and the Power Platform.

To feel at home, we did what any sensible Minecraft-inspired team would do: set up our team photo, grabbed our swords, and got ready to build.

This isn’t about a single feature or a polished demo. It’s about experimenting, learning fast, and seeing what happens when pro-code, low-code, and Copilot collide—sometimes gracefully, sometimes explosively

Chameleon

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We made a code app that is responsive as hell.

We use a mix of CSS Grid and Flexbox. Grid handles the main multi‑column sections and lets them auto‑fit into fewer columns as the viewport narrows, while Flexbox handles horizontal groups that can wrap onto new lines. A few media‑query breakpoints explicitly reduce column counts and stack items on small screens. Typography and spacing use fluid sizing so text and padding scale smoothly instead of jumping.

My computer is overheating. Even testing responsiveness lags.

Early Delivery: From image to Minecraft build

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The user uploads an image into a Power App.
From that image, we extract structure—not artistic detail, but shape, proportions, and key elements.

That structure becomes data.

The model is then:

• Scaled to real-world dimensions
• Broken into building components
• Calculated into materials and estimated cost

At this point, the image is no longer just inspiration. It’s something you can reason about.

From data to Minecraft

Minecraft is not where decisions are made.

A deterministic MCP-server receives structured instructions from the Power Platform model and builds the house in Minecraft block by block.

Power Platform is the system of record.
Minecraft makes the result visible.

Where Copilot fits

Copilot Studio acts as the conversational layer.

It explains assumptions.
It answers “what if” questions.
It helps users adjust before anything changes.

Copilot doesn’t build.
The system executes.

Why this matters

This isn’t a game demo.

It’s an example of how Power Platform, pro-code, and Copilot can work together when:

• assumptions are explicit
• rules are data
• consequences are visible

Minecraft is just the proving ground.