Creative Students Connect to Make a Minecraft SHS

Written by: Emily Opresnick 

With the abrupt closing of New Jersey schools back in March, many students were not able to say a proper goodbye to their teachers and friends at Sparta High School. Drawing inspiration from some universities, seniors Kae DeGiovanni and Emily Opresnick had the idea to replicate the high school on a one-to-one scale in Minecraft. 

They shared their idea with other Sparta High School students through Discord, an online communication service, and so the project began. With little information about the dimensions of the school, they knew that the building would be difficult to virtually create on a one-to-one scale. Using the standard conversion–one Minecraft block is exactly one meter– an easy start was the football field, because of its uniform dimensions. They completed the field by making the bleachers, concession stand, and ticket booths using images of the field and Google Street View.

Completed football field.

After the field was complete, the students began designing the parking lots. Google Street View helped get the dimensions of the parking spots in relation to the football field. In addition, satellite images were used to get the exact amount of parking spaces in each of the parking lots around the school. Other details such as the tennis courts and track were added, completing SHS's surrounding landscape.

Completed parking spots

The next step was the school itself. They started with the main office and music rooms, working their way back outlining each of the rooms. Once again the students used Google Maps and the parking spaces to measure out each of the hallways and rooms. The major features of the school were the auditorium, gym, and cafeteria. The auditorium was laid out by Kaden Kambak, who used his knowledge from working the lights for the school play to recreate its ambiance. Grace Ward and Alex Ramos worked on building the gym and cafeteria based on their first hand SHS student experience. After the layout was done, ceilings, floors, and lights were added. Senior Cameron Ekeman recreated the roof of the school using drone footage found on YouTube. 

Completed auditorium

Liam Rust, a junior at Sparta High School, created a texture pack for the server. This included new colored bricks to match the school's exterior, new colored blocks to match the interior colors, and retextured doors to match the lockers. Another student, Max Scalera, created map art. This consisted of 16,384 blocks being placed per map to create artwork that appears on a map and item frame in Minecraft. DeGiovanni and Opresnick also worked on map art such as subject-specific whiteboards for different classrooms. Akshat Iyer used a Minecraft plugin called Litematica to convert an image into Minecraft blocks to be used as map art. This allowed them to add small yet crucial details to some classrooms such as the Physics room, which contains posters of Mr. Bickerton made by Michael Caruso. Senior Ava Lopez used the in-game coding system to create moving parts, such as the shudders separating the study halls, the stage curtain, and more. Similarly, Kyle Neuwirth used Redstone to generate fireworks in the game. Ula Bitinaitis created busses to be placed around the parking lot simulating drop off and pickups. Ellie Sheeran and Lorenzo Rendina added details to the music rooms such as music stands and a piano by creatively using different resources available in the game.

Completed hallway lockers

After four days of strategic block-placing, the project was complete, minus a few minor details. The students are planning to use the server to possibly host a Minecraft Graduation or as a way for students to see the school at home. 

Credits to: Ula Bitinaitis, Kae DeGiovanni, Cameron Ekeman, Akshat Iyer, Kaden Kambak, Ava Lopez, Kyle Neuwirth, Emily Opresnick, Alex Ramos, Lorenzo Rendina, Liam Rust, Max Scalera, Ellie Sheeran, and Grace Ward.

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