How can I gain access to a player instance in a Minecraft mod?

Question

I'm creating Minecraft mod with a pickaxe that takes away experience when you break a block. The method for taking away experience from a player is addExperience on EntityPlayer, so I need to get an instance of EntityPlayer for the player using my pickaxe when the pickaxe breaks a block, so that I can remove the appropriate amount of experience.

My pickaxe class currently looks like this:

public class ExperiencePickaxe extends ItemPickaxe {

public ExperiencePickaxe(int ItemID, EnumToolMaterial material){
    super(ItemID, material);
}

public boolean onBlockDestroyed(ItemStack par1ItemStack, World par2World, int par3, int par4, int par5, int par6, EntityLiving par7EntityLiving)
{
    if ((double)Block.blocksList[par3].getBlockHardness(par2World, par4, par5, par6) != 0.0D)
    {
        EntityPlayer e = new EntityPlayer(); // create an instance
        e.addExperience(-1);
    }

    return true;
}
}

Obviously, I cannot actually create a new EntityPlayer since it is an abstract class. How can I get access to the player using my pickaxe?

Answer 1

I'm going to assume you're using the Forge API, given the parameters you listed.

EntityLiving is an abstract type representing living entities like players and mobs. When it is passed into your block break event, it indicates the entity which broke the block. It's not guaranteed to be a player, so you need to try to cast it to the subtype that represents a player:

if( par7EntityLiving instanceof EntityPlayer ) {
  EntityPlayer player = (EntityPlayer) par7EntityLiving;
  player.addExperience(-1);
  // OR
  player.addExperienceLevel(-1);
}

If the instanceof check fails, then the parameter did not represent an EntityPlayer object and the block break was caused by something else.