Getting tired of it

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PolySaken
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Re: Getting tired of it

by PolySaken » Post

Man, this thread is depressing. I agree though. I had (and still sort of have) a naive vision for minetest; I wanted it to be the perfect engine for block games.
But I've had many troubles in my life lately: academic issues, neurodivergence, identity problems, and all of this has sort of broken the metaphorical rose tinted glasses I was wearing.
Now I see that minetest, like much else, is mired in conservatism and sits at a standstill. We like to talk about all the things we should be doing, but we are too focused on backwards compatibility and being a game/engine rather than a
(game) engine to actually do them.
I'd like to see minetest become the gold standard for specific-purpose engines, but that can never happen under how decisions are currently made, and as such it's stuck being a game where users can create variations on two or three game modes, rather than an engine for running node-based games.
Guidebook Lib, for in-game docs | Poly Decor, some cool blocks | Vision Lib, an all-purpose library.

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Yvanhoe
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Yvanhoe » Post

My my... So many long faces :-) Let me try my best to bring some sunshine.
Zughy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:21
So, in these days I've been talking with old community members and they helped me realising how a fork is suicidal.
Being in the process myself I am interested about a discussion about it, maybe in another thread? I don't think people should see a fork as something hostile or done in frustration. Forks are a normal part of OSS projects lives.
Zughy wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:21
Or, well, having a decent amount of pissed off determined people willing to do their part to actually fork it
I actually have started a fork during the last lock-down and will probably properly advertise it soon. But in my case that's not out of anger or frustration, more out of love for the engine, really. I think the devs made a good open-source game engine with a lot of flexibility, gave the thumb up to turn it into other games through the license but also forum messages. I am interested in an aspect that I understand won't be the focus of the MT core team so I'll make my own version, and probably propose some PRs along the way but not really care if they are not merged.

I want to use MT for maths and programming workshops with kids 6 to 12. I realized I would need tight integration with mumble (done) better internationalization support for chat (done, through an ugly kludge) and in the long term I have an ambitious goal: to embed the OpenGL context into a Qt window to benefit from real i18n support, actual GUIs that can display richer content and provide a half-decent in-game IDE by rendering UI elements in textures.
Linuxdirk wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 14:33
Why should a freshly starting game developer use Minetest over any other engine that can handle voxels?
I actually started programming from scratch a virtual room shared programming environment before I realized I could just mod/fork minetest instead. I am still unsure if this the best way, but being unsure about design decision is the curse of any advancing project. For now I'll continue with MT and here are my reasons:

- Geometry optimizations have been done
- Database organization has gone through several iterations and is well tested and reasonably efficient by now
- All the network code and arbitration already coded
- Lua is actually a good choice for an embedded language. MT's isolation is done in a sane and secure way. (I tried do something similar with python, that's a horror show.)
- There a lot of working educational mods already done for MT. There is a ton more half-done that just require a day or two of work to be usable.
- A community of users already exist
- There are world editing tools already developped

As a developper, I have learned to recognize a trap. Of all these items, I know I can do them by themselves. And looking at the current flaws, I am tempted to believe I could do them better. And finish it never.

When you do carpentry, you don't stop to mill the perfect nail. You hammer in whatever you have and make it work. The OSS world is a trove of wonderful and free tools. If you can work around their quirks, you can develop things 100 times faster.
runs wrote:
Mon Oct 12, 2020 16:08
I estimate between 10% and 20% of contributions miserably wasted.
If that is true, according to my experience in the industry, 80% of contributions being useful is an awesome ratio!

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Linuxdirk
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Linuxdirk » Post

Yvanhoe wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 06:54
I realized I would need tight integration with mumble (done) better internationalization support for chat (done, through an ugly kludge)
Those aren’t things that should need a fork. But looking at Minetest’s development style I understand why you have done it. Adding those features as PR or filing a suggestion issue would have been resulted in month-long, tiring, annoying pages-long discussions about minor things, being simply ignored, or code style review ping-pong with one single bit of code complained about after each review cycle. (In reality code style should not matter at all, that’s a job for an automatic linter!)

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Yvanhoe
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Yvanhoe » Post

Actually, people have done mumble localization integration in the past and it was argued (reasonably IMO) that it was a bit too niche of a use to maintain and that it requires testing with an additional dependency (mumble). I totally understand the choice not to go there. And in my case I even added a narrow (but fitting my use case) implementation of RPC calls to control a mumble server from a minetest server.

Hopefully I'll demonstrate the case for such a use and it may one day be integrated into MT but I understand that it does not seem worth spending time on today.

Good unicode support in the input is actually a bigger problem to solve than it seems. It is irrlicht who is at fault there. My kludge involve showing the mumble chat window with a transparent background instead of minetest's! Not something I would even dare to propose in a PR.

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runs
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Re: Getting tired of it

by runs » Post

My impressions of how it could be improved:

1) No Minecraft complexes. Minetest with all its faults is up to date and superior to Minecraft v1.7.6 at least. It just needs to polish small things.

2) More enthusiasm from the developers. Some of them are anchored almost permanentely in the "No, no, no" of Amy Winehouse's Rehab. :-D

3) More childish/radikal/crazier/colorful vision. For example, people cursed me and laugh on me because I added the poop thing to my mod Petz. But what they didn't know is that I had copied that feature from Hytale, just like that. What's more, in the Hytale forums a forumer asked that the poo should be thrown in people's faces and a developer not only answered yes, much more, he implemented it quickly. Of course it's a joke that will last for a while in the game, which is totally anecdotal, but it's the fact that what's behind the development of Hytale: a brainstorming of getting things out, good, new, great and crazy ideas. That's how great games are made, innovated by creative people. Another sad example at Minetest: the implementation of videos on nodes in a PR was recently rejected, for absurd reasons such as viruses (nonsense responses). Meanwhile Hytale implemented movie theaters already from the beginning. I do not need that feature in my discharge, but why not?

4) People here are discouraged and even depressed; Rubenwardy recently confessed in a melancholy way that he was tired of Minetest. Celeron55 is not there nor is he expected, he is like a Demiurge, he created the world, but then he does not interact with it, he lets it go. This project needs revolutionary, energy-filled leaders to command the developers and impose on them in a reasoned manner.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by rubenwardy » Post

runs wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 20:20
Another sad example at Minetest: the implementation of videos on nodes in a PR was recently rejected, for absurd reasons such as viruses (nonsense responses).
False, it was halted due to not having the prerequisites in media loading, and due to the heavy additional dependency. Nothing to do with viruses at all
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cuthbertdoublebarrel
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Re: Getting tired of it

by cuthbertdoublebarrel » Post

runs wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 20:20
I added the poop thing to my mod Petz. But what they didn't know is that I had copied that feature from Hytale
And Hytale copied the feature from minecrafts curseforge
but do they have monkeys that fling poop at you till you train then not to?
reading your comments is good for the wellbieng
i am still giggling over the poop story .
Project BrutalTest...hide your Petz

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Linuxdirk
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Linuxdirk » Post

runs wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 20:20
Minetest with all its faults is up to date and superior to Minecraft v1.7.6 at least. It just needs to polish small things.
Minetest is comparable with early beta versions of Minecraft plus modding API but without mobs. It is totally not comparable with final versions of the game nor is it superior. Minetest is a great concept but don’t be deluded.
runs wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 20:20
good, new, great and crazy ideas. That's how great games are made, innovated by creative people.
This is the main problem for me here: The core devs are good developers knowing their stuff, but they have no idea how to create a really fun game even if they have the technical skills to do so.
runs wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 20:20
Another sad example at Minetest: the implementation of videos on nodes in a PR was recently rejected, for absurd reasons such as viruses (nonsense responses).
But at the same time something absurd like insecure connections for server-send scripts that are executed on the client are planned/accepted. Fortunately it looks like the feature is abandoned and the only leftover is the half-assed client-side scripting
runs wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 20:20
People here are discouraged and even depressed
From what is visible on GitHub there are no reasons not being discouraged and depressed. Nearly a thousand issues, and more than 100 PRs (both dating back 3 to 9 years) are very frustrating to work with. I don’t think there is much fun or enthusiasm involved in Minetest development.

Jastiv
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Re: Getting tired of it

by Jastiv » Post

I've been realizing something as I went to work on my own project, Wograld. More than anything else, people want to get their own mods into a game. My son, who is drawing, (I mean, it is pretty good for a six year old but still) wants more than anything to get his artwork into my game (Wograld) so, I was working with the code again, and yes, I'm going to actually replace one of the more polished artworks I did with his six year old kid drawing, technically making it worse. This got me thinking of something.

People say the whole project structure is messed up. There are things people want done, and things people want to do. What if, in order to get your mod into Minetest you had to review three mods/contributions (or however many mods people think they will put up.) pull requests, and then, only then if you do a good job reviewing stuff then you could get your work into the game. Right now it is a bottle neck because the stuff people want to do has a big backup and the stuff that people hate to do their just isn't enough of, so what needs to be done is make the reviewing so many pull requests a requirement to get your pull request looked at and added.

I know another discussion was the marketing and project promotion. Now, I have been on Youtube and looked at the Minetest videos, and I've been comparing them to the videos my son watches endlessly. The main difference is the humor. You don't want someone to read off some tutorial or demonstration like in a monotone. There is too much people sounding like they are just demonstrating thing, you know like that teacher you had in colledge or whatever, the one where you slept through the class. Basically, what is needed is a lot of the following in videos

1. Humor - things like Minetest mods at 3:00 am. I ruined my house with lava. The floor is Lava, playing minetest while eating gummy pizza (or other yucky junk food), Sarcastic mod review.

2. Playing music while making a song about Minetest
There is plenty of good music on sites like opengameart.org and other places. The point is someone should make a stupid song, it doesn't have to make sense or be very good, just hopefully funny and catchy. Even if it isn't the greatest, it could be a bad paroday of other songs, like the free software song.

3. Some kind of a Minetest mod story line. It doesn't have to be a good story, It could be like top ten sickening rides where I puked my guts out in Minetest, That time the enderman locked me in jail and I had to escape. The giant scary clown statute with pigs coming out of its nose that I found in a cave. Swimming under lava and fighting zombie horses. Look, the stories don't have to be good, they can be stupid. But the point is have some kind of plot, like you set up a house and some guy comes and blows it up with tnt and fills it with lava, but it has to have the vague idea of a plot.

In order to encourage better videos we could have people nominate videos and vote on them, so we could say list the top 10, or top 100 or whatever videos every 3 months. People would work hard to get to the top video because they could win something important, Say, if you get the top video from voting, you could win a free custom Minetest mod. To keep the mod from getting out of hand, developers could come up with a list of say 10-20 mods they would be willing to do, but that are going to take some time and effort to make, so the video contest winner could pick what mod they wanted to get done.

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Re: Getting tired of it

by Linuxdirk » Post

Jastiv wrote:
Sun Oct 18, 2020 18:04
What if, in order to get your mod into Minetest you had to review three mods/contributions (or however many mods people think they will put up.) pull requests, and then, only then if you do a good job reviewing stuff then you could get your work into the game.
What if? Well … People would release the mods without having them integrated into Minetest like they do already.
Jastiv wrote:
Sun Oct 18, 2020 18:04
The main difference is the humor.
Minetest appeals to an older audience in general because of it’s more visible technical background. Therefore the humor is different from any Minecraft of Fortnite video, because those games usually attract a much, much younger audience.
Jastiv wrote:
Sun Oct 18, 2020 18:04
There is plenty of good music on sites like opengameart.org and other places.
The copyright trolls will come anyways. I had background music from the server I was recording on in my videos two times. It took not even 20 minutes and the whole video was claimed and plastered with advertising. The music was under a CC license in both cases. And of course YouTube gave a shit because I don’t make them any money with my channel. It took multiple months and a dozen of appeals to get my videos back from the copyright trolls.

I simply don’t want to mess with that kind of bullshit so I don’t add music to my videos except very rare occasions.
Jastiv wrote:
Sun Oct 18, 2020 18:04
In order to encourage better videos we could have people nominate videos and vote on them
You mean like it’s done already on YouTube with the like and dislike buttons? Also: Who decides what videos to nominate?
Jastiv wrote:
Sun Oct 18, 2020 18:04
People would work hard to get to the top video because they could win something important, Say, if you get the top video from voting, you could win a free custom Minetest mod.
It’s neither hard nor a secret how to make mods for Minetest, so if people want a specific mod they can simply create it.

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