Minetest is golden age of Minecraft

[stormchaser3000]

Microsoft have essentially ruined Minecraft. they took the pocket edition (the version of minecraft designed to run on Phones and tablets) and made it the main version of minecraft. they made this change proclaiming the idea of a cross-platform game that could be played anywhere. however they did not port the pocket edition to desktop linux (or GNU+Linux or howver you prefer to say it) or MacOS. the pocket edition of the game has many, many bugs. some of the said bugs have even existed for several years without being fixed. another bad thing about Minecraft (the pocket edition) is that the list of servers that you are able to connect to on Nintendo Switch and Xbox One are limited to "partnered servers" or servers that have been partnered with microsoft and mojang. also the launch versions of the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One ports of pocket edition were very buggy. the Xbox One port of pocket edition for quite a while did not notice i was signed into xbox live when i clearly had an xbox live gold subscription (i now think buying such a service was a bad idea). the nintendo switch edition as of right now is just buggy. it is often very difficult to connect to other people's worlds and the game crashes during autosaves.

my point is that whatever was/is interesting in minecraft is accompanied by many bugs and issues and as the codebase is proprietary, the community can not fix these issues. also minecraft is just a money grab now. the "minecraft marketplace" or the minecraft store requires that you pay for "minecoins" in order to buy community created content which has been curated by microsoft and mojang. this means that you often pay more than what is required in order to buy the said community content.

Microsoft has replaced versions of minecraft that were at least playable with a version of minecraft that is so buggy that for many it is unaplayable or at least incompatible with their workflow.

EDIT: sorry... this probably was not the place for me to rant about minecraft and microsoft now that i think about it

[voxelproof]

EDIT: sorry... this probably was not the place for me to rant about minecraft and microsoft now that i think about it

No need to be sorry, it's OK cause for example I am interested in open world gaming in general, now have no time to pay closer attention to the current state of Minecraft and your opinion gives some insightful look into it.

[Dokimi]

...my point is that whatever was/is interesting in minecraft is accompanied by many bugs and issues and as the codebase is proprietary, the community can not fix these issues. also minecraft is just a money grab now. ...

This is actually an interesting point: the potential for a collaborative community project to make a better quality product than the commercial guys.

I suspect the main thing holding us back is the funding issue (as with so many community projects!). People can't make a living off Minetest, so it get's stuck at the level of a hobby project.

[Festus1965]

... People can't make a living off Minetest, so it get's stuck at the level of a hobby project.

It is just a question of supporting advertising of us all to make it more well known.

A sticker with this logo on the car, telling to friends AND helping them through the first steps ...

It is a matter of everyone ... to make it famous,
than also the coders might have more power to keep going, as it is used.

[Linuxdirk]

This is actually an interesting point: the potential for a collaborative community project to make a better quality product than the commercial guys.

time to bring up my favorite quote about this again: "It's pity that a closed-source commercial product owned by Microsoft is better moddable than an open-source project intended as a base for modding." (source unknown)

[v-rob]

This is actually an interesting point: the potential for a collaborative community project to make a better quality product than the commercial guys.

time to bring up my favorite quote about this again: "It's pity that a closed-source commercial product owned by Microsoft is better moddable than an open-source project intended as a base for modding." (source unknown)

... But Minecraft mods can break without warning, while Minetest has an extensive API.

[Linuxdirk]

It's still true :(

[Hume2]

In my opinion Minetest's way of handling mods is better than Minecraft's because:

• Minetest doesn't require anything extra to handle mods.
• Minetest mods can be turned on and off per-world.
• Joining a modded server with an unmodded client is possible in Minetest unlike Minecraft.
• In Minetest, almost all gameplay elements are contained in a mod so it's possible to modify/turn off them easily.
• I don't know about the others but whenever I tried to build my own modpack in Minecraft, I most likely ended with an error. I needed to download whole Minecraft with the modpack already integrated. (Well, I played only cracked Minecraft. This might be different for the people who actually wasted their money for a legal version.)

[Punk]

Minetest is good among closed source java Minecraft evil.

Yes. And when you pronounce "Minecraft", german person hears "Mein Kraft" (my force). And its is very similar to name of the nazi book "Mein Kampf". So Minecraft is nazist game and Minetest is the real sandbox!

Hahahahahahaha...



My favorite joke still is...

[MineYoshi]

Minetest is good among closed source java Minecraft evil.

Yes. And when you pronounce "Minecraft", german person hears "Mein Kraft" (my force). And its is very similar to name of the nazi book "Mein Kampf". So Minecraft is nazist game and Minetest is the real sandbox!

Hahahahahahaha...



My favorite joke still is...

Maybe Microsoft is the revival of the nazi party but limited to the technology, Bill Gates is the spiritual successor of Adolf Hitler, and MeinKraft is the youth indoctrination tool: everything makes sense now.

[Linuxdirk]

In my opinion Minetest's way of handling mods is better worse than Minecraft's because:

One single wrong character in ANY of the mods unrecoverably crashes the whole game/server.

[Hume2]

In my opinion Minetest's way of handling mods is better worse than Minecraft's because:

One single wrong character in ANY of the mods unrecoverably crashes the whole game/server.

That's strange that I haven't experienced it myself so far. I don't run a server but it never crashed my game unrecoverably. When there was a mistake, the world usually didn't even start or the bug was gone when I fixed it. What kind of wrong character must it be to experience this?

[Dokimi]

This is actually an interesting point: the potential for a collaborative community project to make a better quality product than the commercial guys.

time to bring up my favorite quote about this again: "It's pity that a closed-source commercial product owned by Microsoft is better moddable than an open-source project intended as a base for modding." (source unknown)

So... if we are failing to live up to our potential... why?

And what can we do about it?

[Linuxdirk]

What kind of wrong character must it be to experience this?

Have a function and have a typo in a variable name or something like that and have the function called later.

And what can we do about it?

Have Minetest run the mods in an own namespace (this would also allow using global variables without caring about the name because the names are always global in the mod’s namespace only) and when they crash just destroy the namespace instead of crashing the server.

(I know, I know, you asked a different question but if fits so well *g* So, here …) We should massively extend the API and add API calls for EVERYTHING so that in the end there are zero hardcoded values and zero aspects of the game that can’t be changed via mod.

[Hume2]

Have a function and have a typo in a variable name or something like that and have the function called later.

I've just tried it and the world has survived. There was a jerky behaviour when I made a typo but everything went to normal when I fixed that typo. Has this bug been already fixed? Or do I need to make the typo in a specific function? Could you provide an example of a buggy mod?

Even if the bug still existed, this is not a mistake of Minetest, it's poor mod design. Mods can be still activated and deactivated by user's free will and nothing forces him to activate a buggy mod.

[Linuxdirk]

Have a function and have a typo in a variable name or something like that and have the function called later.

I've just tried it and the world has survived.

No, it doesn’t. Create a mod with init.lua being this:

Code: Select all

minetest.after(10, function ()
    local variable = 'foo'
    print('the value is '..variablr)
end)

This is supposed to run a function after 10 seconds that sets the local variable variable to the value “foo” and then prints an information about the value of said variable. But since there is a one character typo the server crashes with …

Code: Select all

2018-07-01 13:18:24: WARNING[Server]: Undeclared global variable "variablr" accessed at /home/dirk/.minetest/mods/test/init.lua:3
2018-07-01 13:18:24: ERROR[Main]: ServerError: AsyncErr: environment_Step: Runtime error from mod 'test' in callback environment_Step(): /home/dirk/.minetest/mods/test/init.lua:3: attempt to concatenate global 'variablr' (a nil value)
2018-07-01 13:18:24: ERROR[Main]: stack traceback:
2018-07-01 13:18:24: ERROR[Main]: 	/home/dirk/.minetest/mods/test/init.lua:3: in function 'func'
2018-07-01 13:18:24: ERROR[Main]: 	/usr/share/minetest/builtin/common/after.lua:18: in function </usr/share/minetest/builtin/common/after.lua:4>
2018-07-01 13:18:24: ERROR[Main]: 	/usr/share/minetest/builtin/game/register.lua:420: in function </usr/share/minetest/builtin/game/register.lua:400>
2018-07-01 13:18:24: ERROR[Main]: stack traceback:

[Hume2]

No, it doesn’t. Create a mod with init.lua being this:

Yes, the game crashes. However:

• The world is not permanently corrupted. Both fixing the typo and deactivating the mod fixes the issue as well.
• The only thing that happens is that the world crashes. Minetest is still perfectly running.
• Misspelled variable names not always lead to this crash. Sometimes it leads only to jerky behaviour.

I self-tested all three points.

Minetest handles these buggy mods well. It's a feature of lua because there's no need to pre-declare variables in lua. If lua would require variable pre-declaration, it would raise an exception when loading that mod. However, lua allows to declare variables just by using them and all variables are nil by default. It's not possible to check these typos on loading because the interpreter doesn't know that a variable will be never valid. At least I think that shutting down the world is OK when the syntax is invalid because this is an error and should be fixed.

Plus Minetest is not here to fix typos in other people's code. There are other tools for that.

[Linuxdirk]

The world is not permanently corrupted. Both fixing the typo and deactivating the mod fixes the issue as well.

I never said anything different.

The only thing that happens is that the world crashes. Minetest is still perfectly running.

The server crashes and can’t recover. Manual intervention or some sort of automatic restart has to be done.

Minetest handles these buggy mods well.

No, it doesn’t. It crashes. Crashing is not handling bugs well.

Plus Minetest is not here to fix typos in other people's code.

Instead of crashing it could sanely unload the mod and all mods that depend on that mod, like moddable software usually does it.

[Hume2]

Instead of crashing it could sanely unload the mod and all mods that depend on that mod, like moddable software usually does it.

I admit that crashing is not the best way of handling errors but it's discussable. I can imagine situations where suddenly unloaded mods could change the gameplay dramatically. But that's not the point.

So you say that Minetest should be able to load/unload mods dynamically (in runtime). By the way, does M¢ support this? The main difference is in how easily it is possible to make an error that is not revealed at start. It is easier in lua. However, how does M¢ handle fatal errors in mods?

[rubenwardy]

Luacheck is very useful: https://rubenwardy.com/minetest_modding ... check.html

[Nutty8]

In my opinion Minetest's way of handling mods is better worse than Minecraft's because:

One single wrong character in ANY of the mods unrecoverably crashes the whole game/server.

But programming is all about this in general...
God... I remember my college homeworks last year about C language and messed up my free partition space creating thousands of text files accidentally. It's the price you pay for not paying attention all the time (laughing while nervous)

[realtechnerd]

Even if Minetest Game is not Minecraft, our servers and community look just like golden days of Minecraft (2011-2012), a lot of minecrafters want those days back, we have those already, we should embrace and enjoy it, non profit nerd-driving servers with players building a server with each other, starting from spawn-city and beyond, not /wild apart. Many don't realise how valuable it is.

Now, I think Minetest is supposed to be it's own game...
Although I am a Minetest fan, I think Minecraft is way better (I am not biased, although it may sound like it. Read my post fully, so you don't misunderstand).
I've only played Minecraft once, at my friends house.
The game has a lot to offer, more than Minetest. Mobs, Realisticness, Interface, etc.
Minetest has a LONG way to go. Although Minetest feels like the first days of Minecraft, I think it should be its own game.
I know Minetest is with C++, and cannot really do the same features with Java, but if we try, we can accomplish it!
With people like us here, we can improve Minetest.
On a endnote, Minetest is a great game, with a lot of potential, but it needs a ton of work.
--
Thanks, RealTechNerd

https://realtechnerd.github.io

[Mantar]

I know Minetest is with C++, and cannot really do the same features with Java, but if we try, we can accomplish it!

You're not a coder, huh? Both C++ and Java are Turing-complete languages, you can do literally anything you know how to code in either language. The main reason Minetest is behind Minecraft feature-wise is lack of developers. This is a hobby project, Minecraft is a billion dollar commercial powerhouse, and grading on that curve, I think Minetest gives an excellent showing.

[Glory!]

Have Minetest run the mods in an own namespace (this would also allow using global variables without caring about the name because the names are always global in the mod’s namespace only) and when they crash just destroy the namespace instead of crashing the server.

(I know, I know, you asked a different question but if fits so well *g* So, here …) We should massively extend the API and add API calls for EVERYTHING so that in the end there are zero hardcoded values and zero aspects of the game that can’t be changed via mod.

1. Grab a snapshot of 5.0-dev MT-E with per-mod namespace.
2. Grab an unlucky snapshot of 5.0-dev MT-G.
3. Play the game normally.
4. default crashes. The entire world turns into unknown nodes, items and entities. Since nearly every mod relies on default, almost nearly every mod is also terminated (dependency unavailable). Chests lose their items, entities lose their properties, your custom items lose their properties (e.g. a green bike just becomes an unknown entity) players in carts or trains cannot escape. etc etc... Since there's now no defined toString (= save properties) function for anything, all properties will be lost when you close the server. If you try reloading the mod immediately after it crashed, it's going to crash again because the game is in the same state that caused the mod to crash.

Your idea would be nice if our computers were non-deterministic turing machines (Non-determinism in computing exists only as a theoretical concept). In reality it's a really bad idea because it opens up a huge possibility to corrupt an entire world, and the chances are even higher if the person playing doesn't know how MT works (not every one of us is a modder!).

You could implement an emergencyToString where it dumps all variables of a table, but overall this solution is computationally and developmentally expensive: you'll have to implement a dependency graph, traverse it, read the mods again, map the memory back to the new instance of the mod, hope the references are still valid, call serialize on the mods... It's quite literally reloading the world.

We can't afford to do that, we are only a couple dozen hobbyists and one full-time developer, and some of our computers are toasters too. The current solution is not elegany by a very long margin but it's good enough. In fact, that is how operating systems handle crashes: should thread of a process attempt to address an unauthorized address, the OS will SIGSEGV the thread and thus the process, crashing it.

[realtechnerd]

I know Minetest is with C++, and cannot really do the same features with Java, but if we try, we can accomplish it!

You're not a coder, huh? Both C++ and Java are Turing-complete languages, you can do literally anything you know how to code in either language. The main reason Minetest is behind Minecraft feature-wise is lack of developers. This is a hobby project, Minecraft is a billion dollar commercial powerhouse, and grading on that curve, I think Minetest gives an excellent showing.

I'm a coder, but mostly in Web Developing. Please excuse me for any flaws.
I code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, XML, and other languages.

But yeah, I agree Minetest is behind due to the lack of developers.