Is there anything analogous to the FTB team here?

[hilerupal58]

Minetest is a wonderful game, but I find that mods are basically a necessity to really enjoy it. The problem I find, however, is that the mods are a bit too unorganized. It's hard to know what mods are good or bad, and I also feel that often times, the mods are lacking in readily accessible documentation of exactly what they do. I feel that the easiest fix would be something like the FTB team for Minecraft. For context, what the FTB team do is curate mods. They develop modpacks to provide to players, instead of players just having to try and find the collection they want. I feel that a similar concept would help Minetest, where a group of people more knowledgeable with the various mods could help curate them for new players, and provide a few options of modpacks.

[Zughy]

I don't think there is, but as a modder, the problem right now is that the vast majority of mods are amateur-like. You can download the top 5 mods and soon enough you'll find something that bugs you. In general, a lot of mods are filled with useless functions that just make them heavier because of that "teeny tiny remote possibility that this function could be used in a very specific situation". Finding mods with a proper documentation is rare, and finding one with comments is even rarer. Also, most of the times the code is heavily condensed and that worsen the comprehension. Last but not least, some mods are so specific and do so little that you could argue why they've been publicly released on ContentDB, but that's normal and actually (I guess) very welcomed: anyone has the right to publish their work, no matter if they're 12 or 30, if they started yesterday or they've been programming for ages

In short: what mods really need imo is quality and clarity, starting from the very code and/or documentation; both things are up to the very modder, not a third party

[philipbenr]

I believe ContentDB has a rating system, and it would be good to sort by user rating/recommendation to find the higher quality mods. But that also requires users to actually use and rate the mods, aka adopt the system that was added later (which is generally a tall order)..

[rubenwardy]

I believe ContentDB has a rating system, and it would be good to sort by user rating/recommendation to find the higher quality mods. But that also requires users to actually use and rate the mods, aka adopt the system that was added later (which is generally a tall order)..

You can sort by review score here https://content.minetest.net/packages/? ... order=desc

[freshreplicant]

You can download the top 5 mods and soon enough you'll find something that bugs you.

In my humble opinion as a non-proficient programmer/player the thing that's most noticeable is probably textures/models. Often even the 'simple' mods that add blocks or items are usually let down in those areas. I also noticed that sometimes the 'main' parts of a mod will get attention texture wise, but then if there's an auxiliary item, like an ingot, they are often rushed or scribbled together. Other times it's just a case of assets not really gelling with each other between mods. That's why texture packs with mod support are great, since you can get a uniform style across the board.

Mobs is a big area that Minetest mods could stand to improve in greatly. There's a handful of exceptions out there, but mob mods either have bad models/textures, very primitive AI or aren't satisfying to interact with. Some PVE mods don't provide any feedback in combat, e.g. you can't tell you're damaging them. They also all tend to rely on the same 'attack' which just revolves a Gameboy era logic of 'if this touches you, it will hurt you'.

Though there are 'games' on ContentDB which are essentially Minetest + curated mods, it would be great to see a more managed implementation of something like this by a team, with people who have the know-how to meld mods together better either via code or creating a uniform art style. But then I what I'm wishing for is a proper revival/replacement for MTG that expands features, but also remains compatible with the hundreds of mods that already exist for the current MTG.

[MCL]

That is right. Even the most recent advanced mods like Technic (which was probably inspired by IC) looks and performs worse than the first version of Industrial Craft ever released in 2010. Of course, I am not trying to be mean to whoever wrote that mod and I know He put a lot of work into it, I am just saying that Minetest has a more crude stance to it.

[ShadMOrdre]

I have previously proposed a "game base" or game development framework. A concept that I've worked towards.

Whether or not this fits the bill, it's not unlike what is discussed here.

Here's a github link, Game Abstraction Layer (GAL) I'm working on getting an official post here on the forum. I'll edit this when I do.

Shad

[MCL]

I think that games (outdated term: subgames) are what you're looking for they are (kind of) like modpacks for Minecraft. The mods in them were specifically selected by a man or a group of mans that are usually high quality (at least by free software standards, compared to Minecraft the mods are usually quite bad.) The reason there are so many good and advanced mods for Minecraft is that the authors of those mods often use ad-displaying URL shorteners like Ad-Fly so they make money with those mods. These type of practices are not allowed on the Minetest forums, the main source of Minetest mods for the vast majority of users. I don't think these types of URL shorteners should be allowed but if people made money with their mods it would probably motivate them to write more and put more effort.

[rubenwardy]

The opening poster of this topic is a spam bot, but I'll keep the topic here because it's useful

This spam bot copies posts off of reddit to seem more believable, here's the actual user: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minetest/comme ... team_here/

[MCL]

Why does the bot copy threads off of Readdit? It doesn't insert any ads or anything so what's the purpose of the bot?

[rubenwardy]

It edits the signature after a few days to add links

[Mantar]

The reason there are so many good and advanced mods for Minecraft is that

I think it's more the case that Minecraft has like 10 or 20 times the userbase, which means (in a naive estimate, discounting the relative difficulty of modding, which favors Minetest) 10 or 20 times the number of people working on mods for the game.

People who get into modding hoping to make money off url shorteners and the like are likely to be disappointed when it turns out you're lucky to even get beer money from those sites, after months of hard work.

[PolySaken]

The main problem with organization and quality in minetest is that it doesn't support the level of polish minecraft forge does. This is because forge mods are in the same language as the base game (java) whereas minetest mods are in Lua while the engine is in C++. This means that as minetest modders we don't have access to custom shaders, tool animations, etc. and we can't add things like extra dimensions or realms.

Because the Lua API limits the possibilities to what the devs implement (a problem inherent to scripting APIs in general) all mods of course try to use all of these possibilities at once and end up all feeling the same. I try to circumvent this sameness by having proper texture themes and art styles, but it doesn't really accomplish anything other than making my mods look nicer than most.

The biggest issue is that Mt doesn't take proper advantage of its graphics engine (which is already dead) which limits the things the devs can actually do. The other two main ones are that the API is very limited and specialized, and it's a non-profit project so there's no monetary incentive to work on the game at all. It's essentially a passion project, which is fine, but it means that the project planning is very janky and slow.

[Sokomine]

It edits the signature after a few days to add links

Argh. I wasn't aware that they got that criminal.

As to the topic as such: The best way to learn about existing mods and how they can be made to work well together (and to see which mod fits to which other one) is IMHO just joining a server. Server owners/admins/moderators are the people who do this job.