MODSTER 2.0: Dead simple, super smart Minetest mod installer

[Temperest]

Are you confused about how to install mods? This is the program for you!



What can it do? It can install mods in 12 different archive types, from Lua files, from copy-pasted code, and from folders. It can detect Minetest and mods from up to two levels above and one level below in folder hierarchies. It is super easy to use, fast, light, and simple. Give it a try!

MODSTER helps out with the most common mistakes when installing mods, and is aimed at new users who just want to get up and running as quickly and easily as possible.

DOWNLOAD
Get it now!

MODSTER is smart
Select parent directories, subdirectories, purple directories, it'll find it for you! Got the pipeworks-master blues? No problem for MODSTER! It will detect that the actual name of the mod should be "pipeworks", and name the mod folder so that it works perfectly the first time.

MODSTER is flexible
It supports mods archived with 12 different archive formats, including tar, zip, gz, xz, and tgz. It even supports nested archives like tar.gz! Got plain Lua files? No problem, MODSTER's got your back.

MODSTER is easy to use
Download, open, go! Follow the easy onscreen prompts to install mods.

Technical stuff
The source code is available too! You can check it out here. As it says on the page, it's available under the AGPLv3 license.

[kaeza]

Excellent!

[Dan Duncombe]

Great for new people!

[PilzAdam]

Id like to see the sourcecode.

[webdesigner97]

Id like to see the sourcecode.

There's a link in 1st post: https://gist.github.com/Uberi/5945662

[2232]

If you could make one for texture packs it would be most helpful.

[Dan Duncombe]

Why don't you use JBR's texture pack program then?

If you could make one for texture packs it would be most helpful.

[2232]

I have no clue what the that is.
[EDIT:] I don't recall ever seeing this application. I think I will use it.

[Temperest]

Big update!

• Support for plain Lua files! Don't know what to do with charcoal.lua? Feed it into MODSTER, and it'll figure it out for you! It will even know that the mod folder should be named "charcoal".
• Support for 12 different types of archives! The full list is: *.7z; *.xz; *.zip; *.gz; *.gzip; *.tgz; *.bz2; *.bzip2; *.tbz2; *.tbz; *.tar; *.rar; *.lua
• Support for plain text! Want to install the air sword mod, but there's only some code in a forum post? Let MODSTER figure it out: select the "I've got a bunch of text" option and paste it in!
• Fixed some bugs and improved error handling.

[kaeza]

Want to install the air sword mod, but there's only some code in a forum post?

Yes, and the post was deleted D:

Anyway, that is a very cool feature to easily "install" some of the code snippets found in the Mod Requests or Modding Questions topics.

[Jordach]

I might re-do the air sword. Just for the nostalgia. It'd probably take > 1 min to code. Otherwise, it's fun.

[Temperest]

Here's my updated take on it:

Code: Select all

minetest.log("[MOD] Air Sword loaded!")

I made loading times 10x faster, plus the air sword now comes with a wield item (that coincidentally looks exactly like your hand). It'll beat every other weapon every time, except when it doesn't.

And of course, it installs with MODSTER!

[jhlucario3]

How do you use modster 2.0

[Kilarin]

Oh, this looks like a sweet gem! Will it work on linux?
And why hasn't this been incorporated directly into minetest?

[Temperest]

Hey Kilarin,

MODSTER doesn't work on Linux, as it is written to solve the most common issues that Windows users have when trying to install mods. I suspect this is also the reason it hasn't been incorporated into the main Minetest distribution.

[rubenwardy]

An installer has been added to the main menu, so this is now obsolete.

[Kilarin]

MODSTER doesn't work on Linux, as it is written to solve the most common issues that Windows users have when trying to install mods.

Ah, too bad. I would think that the problems of installing mods on linux would be virtually identical to the problems on windows. Find the mod folder, figure out how to rename it, etc.

An installer has been added to the main menu, so this is now obsolete.

And that installer is great, It's just that the installer only works with mods in the database. The advantage of this code is that it will handle mods that are archives you downloaded from the forum, or mods that are folders you extracted, or even just text files. From looking through the mod release forum it would appear that confusion over how to rename a mod folder is a common problem. So why not fix it with an additonal "manual" installer using a bit of very nice code like this?

[Temperest]

Good point. A cross-platform rewrite in Python is on the list!

While the built in mod installer is nice, many of the mods in use today are not in the database. That means people are still downloading archives, code files, and copying Lua code from forum posts. This is intended to streamline that process as far as possible - everything from automatically detecting the mod name to finding the mods folder.

For example, a MODSTER user will never have to ask how to extract an archive, because it's done automatically.