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Figure 1: The UT Dallas Trellis and spawn point for our Polycraft World Servers

Quick Links

• Polycraft World Mod Website
• BEST Robotics Polycraft COVID Challenge
• Polycraft World Tutorials
• Find us on Social Media: Discord | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitch | Twitter

Introduction to Polycraft World

Polycraft World is a comprehensive mod for Minecraft designed by Students & Faculty at UT Dallas that introduces features ranging from petrochemical refining and harvesting of new ore types to the construction of polymers, plastics and many specialty items based on the new additions. Enterprising players can build tree taps and extract natural rubber from trees to build rubber blocks, pogo sticks and more. Adventurers can find above ground oilfields and mine custom minerals and elements including copper, tin, nickel, platinum, palladium, silver and more... Engineers can construct machining mills to make molds from metal ingots such as titanium, magnesium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, antimony, tungsten, platinum, bismuth and aluminum and from alloys such as brass and bronze. Materials scientists can create injection molders and extruders to melt process a whole range of polymers into running shoes, scuba gear, plastic bricks, a host of gripped tools and more... Aspiring chemical engineers, can advance into the age of oil through distillation columns, steam crackers, merox treatment units and chemical processors. This allows the production of increasingly sophisticated polymers and other materials that opens the door for overpowered items such as jet packs, scuba tanks, flame throwers and phase shifters. Though expansive, Polycraft World is actively played by players of all ages. We use our game to teach elementary kids all the way through college-aged students about science, chemistry, materials science, and engineering.

Introduction to BEST Robotics Polycraft COVID Challenge

We are working with BEST Robotics leadership to design a tailored, competitive challenge in an open world environment for BEST Robotics teams. For this challenge, teams will face a never-before-seen challenge in Polycraft: a highly transmissive strain of COVID-19 infecting tens of thousands of the non-player characters (NPCs) in Polycraft World. Using new items and inventories designed especially for this challenge, teams will be required to craft personal protective equipment (PPE) like facemasks and body shields, create COVID testing kits, build health clinics, develop treatments, and mass-produce vaccines to cure all NPCs on the servers.

Each team will have a private property where they will craft their way through a series of milestones (building a clinic, testing 50 patients, etc.) and will accumulate points rewarding their efforts. The competition will be divided into two stages – initially, teams will be asked to build PPE, create a Clinic, craft testing kits, and develop and deploy treatment kits to test, quarantine, and treat symptoms of sick villagers. In the second stage (i.e., “championship round”), teams will return to their private property and will have to create a Research Lab to aid them in their development of a COVID vaccine that will forever eradicate this illness. The highest scores will be awarded to teams that can mass-produce vaccines in enough quantities such that everyone in Polycraft World will be safe.

Each stage will be time-limited – while the milestones can be accomplished in-time by a single player who is also an advanced Minecrafter, the expectation is that teams can work together to finish the tasks in a much shorter time. Part of the game play will require teams to enter puzzle rooms in-game that will test their knowledge of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics through questions and clues. Completing these challenges will provide rewards to teams that will give them more points and provide rewards that help them on their way to complete the major milestones. Teamwork is rewarded in these challenges, with some puzzles being difficult to do without friends. Details on milestones and crafting instructions for the COVID items will be made available through the Polycraft World wiki at the beginning of each stage.

While Minecraft knowledge will be helpful to teams, pre-existing Polycrafting knowledge will not be needed for teams to compete successfully.

Item Page Links

• List of Polycraft Items, Polycraft Inventories and Polycraft Custom Objects
• List of Polymer Pellets, Polymer Walls, Polymer Stairs, Polymer Blocks, Polymer Fibers and Polymer Bricks
• List of List of Molds, Molded Items and Gripped Tools
  
• List of Polycraft Ores, Compressed Blocks, Polycraft Ingots, and Polycraft Catalysts
• List of Element Vessels and Compound Vessels
  
• Unformatted Recipes

Found Bugs? Want to help?

We will continue to update the game to fix bugs and add compelling content into the future. Thank you for your support. Interested in programming? building new in-game items? working to make the wiki? general helping? Trust us, there's plenty of fun stuff to do. Shoot an email to the Polycraft World team at [support@polycraftworld.com].