Amidst for Minetest: A new map tool

[DrFrankenstone]

Here's a version of Amidst made for Minetest.

It's basically an infinite map-viewer that lets you view a Minetest world without having to generate it in Minetest, provided you have the seed to the world.

It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, the download is here (Java)

[veriaqa]

Kudos! Nice program. I'm going to try it.

[zing269]

This is great! I've always found Amidst indispensable for Minecraft and now I can use it with Minetest too.

[Fixerol]

Very nice and handy!

[rubenwardy]

This is awesome!

[cHyper]

good tool. you can also display minecraft maps, and minetest maps too...

[KCoombes]

Very nice utility, but...

1. Can't load save file? (greyed out)
2. Needs a utility to create other mapgen biome lists (like Ethereal, CaveRealms, etc) - yes, can be done manually, but would be better if other mapgen files could be added into your application.

[AleksSyntek]

Good job DrFrankenstone!, nice to see this utility working with Minetest! +100

[DrFrankenstone]

good tool. you can also display minecraft maps, and minetest maps too...

You noticed! I spent time refactoring it to be capable of supporting both engines, instead of just changing everything for Minetest. I'd hoped Amidst having Minetest support in addition to Minecraft could be another avenue of exposure for Minetest, but the amount of changes that needed to be made were so great (and in some cases awkward, or // TODO), that I didn't think it was worth trying to push upstream.

Hopefully it won't be hard to pull in any updates from upstream. It already has Woodland Mansions merged in, which aren't yet in the current Amidst release.

[DrFrankenstone]

Very nice utility, but...

1. Can't load save file? (greyed out)

The answer to both of these points is really that I didn't have time to do everything, so aimed to get it to a point where it was stand-alone useful, and wouldn't matter too much if/when someone worked on additional features.

The "Open save game" menu is currently only enabled when using a Minecraft profile, ideally one day the ability to load Minetest games will be implemented - adding support for parsing the map_meta.txt, and showing player locations.

2. Needs a utility to create other mapgen biome lists (like Ethereal, CaveRealms, etc) - yes, can be done manually, but would be better if other mapgen files could be added into your application.

There's currently two ways to add other biome files:

• the user adds more biome.mt files to the biomes directory. (json format - use the existing ones as templates)
• have people create biome profiles/templates for mods they care about and add those to the list of biome profiles the application comes with built-in.

You wording is slightly ambiguous, what would the utility be? A built-in native editor that edits the biome.mt files?

[texmex]

My dog, that is great! I wished for an application like this only the other day. Thank you for your efforts, DrFrankenstone.

[KCoombes]

You wording is slightly ambiguous, what would the utility be? A built-in native editor that edits the biome.mt files?

Not exactly - the mods I referred to (Ethereal, CaveRealms) have a mapgen.lua file that registers their unique biome(s) - so a utility in your app to read in those register_biome definitions would allow users to add the mapgen mods they prefer to use in order to generate accurate maps they could use. And yes, I did state this could already be done manually (by hand), although not every user might want to delve into that.

[DrFrankenstone]

so a utility in your app to read in those register_biome definitions

Gotcha. The complication with this is Ethereal doesn't have register_biome definitions like normal Minetest - it has an add_biome definitions. In the add_biome() function it will invoke register_biome(), so the util would need a lua interpretter, or to be hard-coded to support such mods. Also the most time consuming part of creating a biome profile for me was picking good colours, which add_biome/register_biome doesn't get you.

However, a util would still make things easier.

[KCoombes]

Also the most time consuming part of creating a biome profile for me was picking good colours, which add_biome/register_biome doesn't get you.

However, a util would still make things easier.

And that's where you ask the creators of those mods to choose RGB values for their colors to be included - make it a community effort.

[BirgitLachner]

Well, the others do not work. I'll give the new tool a try ;-)