Minetest Forums

Lord_Vlad wrote:Just wanted to add something I find critical in your review : World generation :

World generation is quite good for the most part, but seriously lacks a sense of height. Some hills are nearly impossible to climb without making a stairway allong the sides of it and there is no well done flat land, even in the more grassy biomes. There are too many cliffs everywhere and in every biome.
But I guess that isn't specific to Minetest game. What is is that there is no good way to travel on large mountains and such. Not a climbing tool, not a vehicule, maybe ladders, but then you need a ton of them.

Other than that, I guess the subgames that would be included by default should be decided by some kind of vote in the community.

I just use the flat magpen and enable hills, rivers, and lakes.

MT Game can't be dropped completely. Nearly every mod is connected to MT Game. This would have needed to be dropped years ago.

I didn't say to drop Minetest Game entirely. I just suggested to stop using and promoting it as the default subgame. Development of Minetest Game can still continue as usual, I wouldn't mind.
The only difference would be that Minetest Game would simply become a subgame like all others and lose its “special” status.

Lord_Vlad wrote:Other than that, I guess the subgames that would be included by default should be decided by some kind of vote in the community.

Best to me would be not providing any sub game but a properly browsable repository within the client that allows loading of subgames (and mods!) with one click and maybe some kind of rating system. This kind of "store" well known and widely used on mobile phones. And even Windows has a store now where you can load software.

0.4.10 had that for mods but it was removed for reasons I don't remember :)

Wuzzy wrote:The only difference would be that Minetest Game would simply become a subgame like all others and lose its “special” status.

As long as THIS is a fact ...

https://github.com/minetest/minetest_ga ... ds/default

... "Minetest Game" can't be "degraded" to "one of multiple different subgames".
default has to be 100 percent separated from "Minetest Game" beforehand.

What was the purpose of minimal_development? Why not replace that with a better MT_game with mobs & other things?

Lone_Wolf wrote:What was the purpose of minimal_development? Why not replace that with a better MT_game with mobs & other things?

Pretty sure the purpose of minimal_development is to be a test bed for developers working on mods.

Wuzzy wrote: For people who are only interested in creative building, Minetest Game is already good. But there's still room for improvement. I still feel there could be more blocks, some ideas are simply unexplored. I think of snow/ice bricks. More walls, door, xpanes types. More cobblestone.

Co...cobb...cobblestone? Really? Please don't mention it in the context of creative building. There are too many horrible cobble boxes some players claim to be "houses" and which make you run away screaming. Seriously - using cobble *can* be justified, but it rarely is.

Builders need some other mods that make building easier (like i.e. my replacer mod). More diffrent blocks can bring inspiration but may also limit creativity in some ways. Protection mods or a server policy of not allowing griefing are necessary. Yet there is no universal mod that would fit all purposes. The protector mod seems to be easier to understand for new players, but is insufficient if your building grows beyound 10x10x10m, or if the area is tightly stuffed with protected areas. The areas mod is far more useful for builders. Thus, even for this relatively limited purpose (=protect buildings), there's no real optimal solution as to which mod ought to be shipped as default.

Wuzzy wrote: What is definitely missing are more uses for dye. Currently only wool can be colored. There are no colorful beds, brick blocks, wood, glass, stone …

I'm working on updating my colormachine. My morecolor mod already works quite nicely. It only changes paramtype2 to a color type and adds a palette. Painting grass proved to be a really bad idea. But many other blocks can be colored just fine. You get 8 colors (default one + 7 more) with the new colorfacedir feature at practically no cost. That's sufficient for many purposes. It ought to be added to MTG.

Wuzzy wrote: You can place ladders on the ceiling and on the ground and you can place ladders in front of other ladders so you will get floating ladders if you're not careful. This is super annoying

I think people use it deliberately sometimes.

Wuzzy wrote: You must point to signs to read their text. The sign is not visible otherwise

Annoying and a big problem, yes. Some mods fix that.

Wuzzy wrote: Bookshelves and vessels shelves are usable as storages for books and vessels with half the capacity. Seems pointless to me. There is zero reason to craft bookshelves or vessels shelves as storage. Making them usable as storage would make sense if they had at least some unique feature or difference compared to normal chests.

Well, it's not the most important feature of MT. It makes sense to be able to store those items in there, but in practice you usually won't do it because the shelves cannot be locked.

Lord_Vlad wrote: World generation is quite good for the most part, but seriously lacks a sense of height. Some hills are nearly impossible to climb without making a stairway allong the sides of it and there is no well done flat land, even in the more grassy biomes. There are too many cliffs everywhere and in every biome.

That depends on the mapgen you use. I prefer v6 as that seems to generate more naturally-looking terrain without strange overhangs. Flat land is still rare. A flat mapgen can also be enjoyable.

Lord_Vlad wrote: But I guess that isn't specific to Minetest game. What is is that there is no good way to travel on large mountains and such. Not a climbing tool, not a vehicule, maybe ladders, but then you need a ton of them.

There's at least one mod out there that allows to dig steps/ladders into stone. The rope box from the vines mod is also something that may help with getting down safely. Or the exciting parachute.

In general, regarding MTG and mods and subgames: The existence of subgames ought to be more prominently shown on the MT page and be advertised when starting the game. Searching through the forum in order to find a subgame that fits to the new player is far from beeing convenient. MTG ought to remain the base from which mods can work - and to some degree a game you can play at the beginning. New players may have to learn how to actually move around in that world, how to interact with it - it helps if there's not overly much in it.

Are there any plans to add weather?

Some of the ice-type biomes have ice that goes down rather deep into the ground. Maybe after 7 or so nodes deep it could be replaced with a new frozen stone of some kind (possibly with ores in it?) Also, could ores be added to desert stone and sandstone?

Please note that many Minetest Game developers are ignorant of the forums, let alone this thread. Don't ask me why.
So your feature requests will most likely be unheard.

Wuzzy wrote:Please note that many Minetest Game developers are ignorant of the forums, let alone this thread. Don't ask me why.
So your feature requests will most likely be unheard.

There is ... a small amount of truth in that sentence, but it contains a healthy dose of bullshit.

I am pretty sure that all MTG developers know of the existence of these forums. Perhaps the word "ignorant" was a mistranslation from the german word "entfernt" or something.

As for this thread, it makes sense that there's not a lot of dev activity going on since it's entirely impossible to track issues or have meaningful discussions on something as complex as mtg in a single forum thread. So logically, it's better that people go to github.com/minetest/minetest_game and ask there. There's also like, 20 posts in 3 years? It's not really ... alive.

If you post a feature request on a forum, you will accomplish the following:

1) people saying "that's awesome"
2) people saying "that's shit"

Until someone actually writes the code, however, it won't do much. If enough people like the idea, maybe someone will open a github request and developers will see it. Might as well go straight to github then, right?

Well no, not so fast.

It's not a bad idea to have *players* talk about minetest_game in this thread. If it would attract more players to post about their experiences, then at a certain point developers will take note and ... that's what you wanted - people to read and share experiences and maybe improving things.

So, in short, feel free to have light discussions about mtg in this thread. Post bugs to github directly if possible, but if you have general complaints I suppose here is as good as anything to post about it. I don't see anything wrong with this forum topic, especially if people use it to communicate.

Well, I'm glad not all developers are ignoring the forums then. :-)

all the active Minetest Game devs are active on the forums

Also active here, though I generally don't check everything that gets posted since I prefer to use the little spare time I have more constructively than forum browsing usually ends up being. But either way, not reading every single thing isn't the same as ignoring something.

The only suggestions I see here for this year are "a new frozen stone of some kind" and ores in other kinds of stone. Checking github will show there have been discussions about adding other stone types, and there's even been some talk (though I'm not sure if on github) about having ores in specific stone types. They are just at the idea stage, so there is no saying they will happen, but the ideas are there.

Current Minetest Game devs:

celeron55
sfan5
SmallJoker (Krock)
sofar
rubenwardy
Ekdohibs (nore)
ShadowNinja
paramat
Ezhh (Shara)

Yes minetest is an engine. But as an engine it needs something as promotion tool to let people know what minetest engine can do. That is the purpose of Minetest Game. It was there so people new to the engine have something as basis/example how to mod/create a game for the engine. So in my opinion the developer should not shy in developing the Minetest Game too. Although their main task is to develop the engine, there's nothing wrong to have a default game for the devs to test new features of the engine and show it to the world via the default game.

About Minetest Game status:it is obviously a default game that pre-package with the engine but definitely not the only game the engine can run.

Contributors needed

Minetest Game deathly needs contributors to improve it.

See the Road Map and Concept Approved issues for ideas.

The issue with minetest_game is it is really hard to get any change into the game. Work of other people is not good enough for the game(personally experienced). Looked trough the roadmap and all mods are existing already outside of the minetest_game. Why not just use it?

Beds in all wool colours
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18910

More underground variety
Hard to establish "universal" variety because the game does not follow any theme or genre.
Maybe viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9522

Split default into smaller mods
https://github.com/MarkuBu/minetest_modbase

Crafting Guide
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14088

Skins
Full-blown: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17899
Really simple: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3587

Teleportation
Same issue as "underground variety": hard to select because of no theme or genre.
I prefer my "ccompass" for travel at the time: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17881

Add wield3d
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6407

We have too many tool-sets! Thats right, i said it. We have so many tool-sets that are not balanced, and because there are so many of them there isnt much difference in value of 2 similar tiers, i suggest that we:

1. Remove diamond tools, make it like the old days where mese was king
2. Increase efficiency/durability of wood tools, i mean for petes sake punching a tree with my hand is barely any slower than using a wood axe (if it is at all) the only wood tool worth it atm is the wood-pick because its needed for players progression!
3. In reaity steel is way stronger than bronze, so why not make bronze more effective but less durable?

Stix wrote:We have too many tool-sets! Thats right, i said it. We have so many tool-sets that are not balanced, and because there are so many of them there isnt much difference in value of 2 similar tiers, i suggest that we:

1. Remove diamond tools, make it like the old days where mese was king
2. Increase efficiency/durability of wood tools, i mean for petes sake punching a tree with my hand is barely any slower than using a wood axe (if it is at all) the only wood tool worth it atm is the wood-pick because its needed for players progression!
3. In reaity steel is way stronger than bronze, so why not make bronze more effective but less durable?

I feel that wooden tools should be somehow removed. The only one I ever use is the wooden pickaxe until I can get stone. I agree with the fact that diamond tools should be removed. Personally, I like the single Mese pickaxe more than the whole set like the 0.3s and the 0.2s had, but that's personal preference.

I don't know what should be done about bronze. It is both less effective and less durable in real life than steel. So, either copper and tin should be more common, or bronze should be removed. Another solution is to make iron ore spawn lower and copper/tin more common, so that copper and tin are found before iron is found.

While on the subject of metal, iron should smelt to iron ingots unless the fuel is a coal lump or a coal block because steel requires iron and carbon.

And I could give you a completely different set of opinions.

I think MTG needs first and foremost one director. Someone who has a consistent vision of what MTG should be, talk about it , and a motivation to make it a reality. Someone who can listen to suggestions, but who has final word on what is included and what is excluded.

And please let that director be a creative one, it's supposed to be a game after all, not just software.

Astrobe wrote:And I could give you a completely different set of opinions.

I think MTG needs first and foremost one director. Someone who has a consistent vision of what MTG should be, talk about it , and a motivation to make it a reality. Someone who can listen to suggestions, but who has final word on what is included and what is excluded.

Well, paramat is basically the director of MTG. The problem with giving MTG a direction has two problems:

1. MTG has had next to no direction from the beginning, so a lot of work needs to be done pruning and adding features
2. Does anyone have any ideas for MTG's direction? I haven't heard many suggestions that would work or that people would agree on.

So, to give MTG a direction, we need to find a direction. That's what needs to be focused on before anything else can be accomplished. As it is, MTG will stay the same with no set direction.

I think what should be stated first is: what is MTG?

Some easy answers:

MTG is a single player game. This doesn't exclude the possibility of a group of friends or family playing it, but it's not a game to be put on a public server. The implication is that you don't have to worry about grief, administration or moderation.

MTG is about exploration and resource accumulation. Players explore caves, in search for ores, and they explore the land. The creative and construction aspect is secondary.

MTG is for all ages. It can be played by young children, teens or adults who want to "evaluate" MT. The implications are that you want an easy-to-use crafting guide (forget about "discoverability" or spoilers and other advanced game design considerations), and you want mobs (to demonstrate that MT can do that like MC), but they should be there only for decoration (forget about bows, there's no use for them here).

MTG is international. It'll be played by people all around the world and we can't assume they know English. This means MTG should be a simple game in order to make it easy for you to provide directions in many languages.

It's ok not to demo everything MT can do. At some point, players should start their quest for mods and for games that fit their tests. One day MT will have some sort of package manager to help with that.

One problem is that MT is a sandbox game with no predefined goal. That makes it difficult to define a feature set and for some players defining what is their goal can be an issue. So we have to set an in-game goal for MTG.

What would be a subgame that fits this bill? Something like:

"You crashed on a desert planet. Your only hope is to build a long-range teleporter (or a little spaceship) to go back home."

Of course in order to build that thing you need metals, diamonds, perhaps mese in large quantities. Perhaps it'll have to be a two-stages recipe: build this-and-that from basic resources so you can build the goal item.

The teleporter or spaceship should have to be built in a high location (cloud-level is a good landmark; its height is configurable, but at this point we can assume players don't fiddle with configuration yet), so that players have to explore the land a bit.

They'll need more or less food depending on how careful they are in their explorations. This subgame has no hunger or hostile mobs to challenge the player, so dying should have consequences. Players should loose all the objects in their inventory when they die. There are other justifications: prevent cheating (suicide in order to get back to spawn point quickly) (cheating is a non-issue in a single player game, but MTG could be played by a small group in a "first to reach the goal" mode) and introduce the need for (locked) chests.

That's a strategy. The rest is tactics: how do we deliver the necessary directions? Since it's a "crashed on an alien planet" scenario, do we introduce some alien-looking stuff (vegetation, mobs - or does MT look alien enough by default ;-), do we have to provide a compass or similar?

"You crashed on a desert planet. Your only hope is to build a long-range teleporter (or a little spaceship) to go back home."

I think almost everyone would agree that Minetest Game does not have a final goal which the player “must” achieve. And it may probably never have one. Thus Minetest Game is (ironically) not a game in the traditional sense (e.g. with meaningful (!) decisions), but mostly a sandbox.

MTG is international.

Not yet. It's 100% English-only. OK, other games are not better, but this will hopefully change when the Greatest Update (i.e. 0.5.0 ;-) ) comes out.