Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

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D00Med
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Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by D00Med » Post

Hello everyone,
I want to talk about future of minetest. Mmm yes that's fresh and new isn't it? But it seems to me that the minetest community is still quietly waiting for outside help, like it was 4 or 5 years ago when I lost interest. So I want to talk about why anyone from outside should/shouldn't actually get involved. Hopefully I'm not too out of touch. This has taken a long time to write because I don't want to be unfair and I had to do a bit of research. I will start with impressions and end with things I learnt afterwards.

----------------------------------------------- Impressions------------------------------------------------------------------
From what I can gather, minetest game is no longer maintained but is still packaged with the engine, because without a packaged game there is nothing to attract anyone to it. I suppose the plan was for players and people outside of the main development team to pick up the slack. We all know enough about that particular mentality. Alienating people has been a long term problem for minetest. Any member of this community will at some point be told they need to learn C or use Linux (remember when the windows builds weren't even available?) or "just do it yourself and make a pull request". And then there are the fights for those who do (desert stone, anyone?).

But besides all that, I've been keeping an eye on the subgames/games for the past few years and it still seems like there aren't really any new subgames to compete with mtg, that weren't around 4 years ago (mostly proof of concept games or modpacks?). Not good for attracting people. Especially since most subgames use the same textures which, to be blunt about it, are not of a high standard (I wonder how many artists got told to go learn programming). The subgame problem also means there's not much of a motivation for people to use newer versions of minetest, which is apparently reflected in the server numbers.

So minetest needs people to make some strong content for the engine. Ok, maybe some people will come along eventually...

But will they? I could produce a new game. I'd probably enjoy it. But a cursory look at the engine changelogs isn't particularly motivating, I remember that it was a bit of a pain working with minetest. I think that anyone who is serious about making a minetest-like game is surely better off making it from the ground up or in an engine like unity or unreal. People have said that for years, and there have been attempts to make another minetest, but no success.
I understand that many years of work have gone into the minetest engine, and it would take many years of work to replicate it. But even if that's the case, Minetest does not appear to have competitive features, as an engine.
If you use minetest, you ultimately produce a game that's going to be labelled as "just minecraft with a texturepack".
If you wanted to make some really unique features or changes, you can't because minetest is good for making minetest, and you'll inevitably end up being told to make a fork to give yourself the features you need for creative freedom. If every aspect of a game seems to depend on some kind of workaround, something is not right.

Are there plans to fix these problems? Are there people making plans at all? These questions aren't rhetorical, I would like to know. It's been a long time since I stopped using minetest and it seems like nothing has changed for the better. It would be kind of terrible if all of the talented people working on minetest were putting their time and energy to waste.

-------------------------------------------------------- Corrections -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe the problem is not what I think it is. Maybe the problem is how incredibly time consuming and difficult it is to actually find out information.
I had a poke around looking for what the developers are actually up to. The development wiki seems a bit..lame, but there's a todo list and an explanation of the development team's structure and core goals for the game. Good, nice to know there is that much organisation. Might never have guessed there would be, PR is clearly not a strong point. However, the 'todo' list hasn't been updated since 2020 hmm.... And then it turns out there's actually 6 todo lists?? and then there's 9 locations to get info about minetest (https://www.minetest.net/get-involved/).
Confusing. Visiting the forums, it looks like minetest is dead/dying (long live minetest), but then I went to Twitter and it looks like we're finally getting shadows (competitive, but only to minecraft and not to most games from the last decade and a half). Then there's information on contributing, and people are welcomed to make contributions that aren't just programming, that's nice. Still neglecting the artists though.

So is the future bright or not? I'd appreciate if someone would try to "sell" minetest to me, or mercilessly correct any mistakes.
Thanks for reading my essay, I'll probably regret it later.
Look! I have a signature :]
My subgame: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14051#p207242

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by rubenwardy » Post

D00Med wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 23:49
Any member of this community will at some point be told they need to learn C or use Linux (remember when the windows builds weren't even available?)
I don't remember when the Windows builds weren't even available, we've had Windows CI and windows builds for each release for many years. You don't need to use Linux (but you should 😉) and C++ is only needed if you wish to do engine development.
D00Med wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 23:49
From what I can gather, minetest game is no longer maintained but is still packaged with the engine, because without a packaged game there is nothing to attract anyone to it
Minetest Game is still packaged as we are waiting for a mainmenu redesign. Once the mainmenu redesign is done, no games will be bundled by default - instead, the user will see a list of games from ContentDB
D00Med wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 23:49
But besides all that, I've been keeping an eye on the subgames/games for the past few years and it still seems like there aren't really any new subgames to compete with mtg, that weren't around 4 years ago (mostly proof of concept games or modpacks?).
NodeCore, Mineclone2, Box World, Exile, and Loria were all created in the last 4 years, and are impressive
D00Med wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 23:49
However, the 'todo' list hasn't been updated since 2020 hmm.... And then it turns out there's actually 6 todo lists?? and then there's 9 locations to get info about minetest (https://www.minetest.net/get-involved/).
The roadmap is here: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/bl ... rection.md

This superscedes the todo list - the todo list hadn't been updated as the dev wiki was down for a while. I've updated it now with a link to the roadmap
D00Med wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 23:49
Visiting the forums, it looks like minetest is dead/dying (long live minetest)
The forums aren't representative, as they're an outdated medium and also had terrible performance issues last year. It's better to look at the Discord, the Matrix, Reddit, and online servers
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by D00Med » Post

rubenwardy wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 00:05
I don't remember when the Windows builds weren't even available, we've had Windows CI and windows builds for each release for many years.
It was for one of the 0.4 versions. For a while there were no windows builds on the website, sfan5 had a thread for them.
rubenwardy wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 00:05
The forums aren't representative, as they're an outdated medium and also had terrible performance issues last year. It's better to look at the Discord, the Matrix, Reddit, and online servers
That explains a lot. Guess I'll have to take a look at discord and ContentDB then.
Also that roadmap is kind of a relief to see, compared to that one on the wiki.
Look! I have a signature :]
My subgame: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14051#p207242

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by ywwv » Post

im workimg o n a game. it will revitalist the minetest scene, . I call it "ywwvtest" and . it will bring in 100000 new players . and is being developedi n complete secrecy. I will post a screenshot soon .

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by Wuzzy » Post

The forums aren't representative, as they're an outdated medium and also had terrible performance issues last year. It's better to look at the Discord, the Matrix, Reddit, and online servers
I am extremely concerned the Minetest community is getting split (or it already happened, apparently), and what's worse, Discord and Reddit are proprietary. I hate this! This goes against everything that Minetest stands for. Calling the forums an "outdated medium" makes me very sad.

Besides, technically speaking, Reddit and Discord aren't really comparable either. Discord is more like a chat (so isn't comparable) and Reddit sucks because it's mostly just a single endless thread of posts, vastly inferior to our forums because it's impossible to make out any logical structure there. Oh, and Reddit is extra evil for using infinite scrolling.

I feel like those proprietary services are only used because people believed they had to, because "everyone" uses those things. But I find it concerning those MegaCorps continue to dominate the Internet and turn everything they touch into poo. I do not want to download proprietary software just to be "allowed" to chat with other people. :-(

Mastodon is like a short messaging service, so also not comparable at all.
And Matrix is another chat-like thing, so also not really comparable to the forums.
At least those two are FOSS as far I know, so it's probably OK. I probably should check out Matrix more often, I don't really have an excuse … *blush*

Anyway, no matter how I look at it, there isn't anything that really replaces these forums right now. Claiming the forums are "outdated" or unimportant somehow is absolute insanity to me.
NodeCore, Mineclone2, Box World, Exile, and Loria were all created in the last 4 years, and are impressive
To be fair, none of these aren't even close to being finished tho and each of these games has issues. NodeCore is extremely confusing, MineClone 2, although feature-rich, has major performance issues and billions of bugs (alpha stage). Box World 3D only has like 4 levels. Exile is still in very early development, but looks very interesting. Loria is also in alpha.
If there's one game I could instantly recommend, it would be Inside the Box but unfortunately, it's only a server, not really downloadable. (No, the FOSS release doesn't count, it has no levels.)
From what I can gather, minetest game is no longer maintained but is still packaged with the engine, because without a packaged game there is nothing to attract anyone to it. I suppose the plan was for players and people outside of the main development team to pick up the slack.
Actually, that's not the case at all. The devs have given up on Minetest Game because it sucks. ;) It's only on maintenance mode in order to keep servers happy, that's all. So Minetest Game is weirdly stuck because it's almost impossible to do any major improvements at this stage because of dependencies. Outsiders won't be able to help either, and it's completely false that we're waiting for outsiders to help with MTG.
Putting MTG into maintenance mode was the only correct decision. The Minetest community REALLY needs to stop caring too much about MTG, this mentality has held Minetest back for years.

Any member of this community will at some point be told they need to learn C or use Linux (remember when the windows builds weren't even available?) or "just do it yourself and make a pull request". And then there are the fights for those who do (desert stone, anyone?).
There's some truth to that, and it's actually even worse. You have no idea how hard it is to get a PR accepted these days. It's not exactly that we're lacking possible contributors to Minetest. We have hundreds of PRs! But we only have a tiny amount of reviewers. Reviewers can't keep up with the incoming flood of PRs so many PRs wither and rot unreviewed for years, which is extremely demoralizing for contributors. Minetest has a serious reviewer shortage, NOT a contributor shortage! It can take months or even over 1 year for a PR to get accepted. And obviously, during this time, the contributor must "renew" the PR again and again because it has become incompatible in the meantime. To contribute to Minetest, you must grow a VERY thick skin and need to have the patience of an elephant.
So minetest needs people to make some strong content for the engine. Ok, maybe some people will come along eventually...
I agree. Games are the bread and butter of Minetest, without it, Minetest is nothing. This is very important. Working on the engine itself is nice, but eventually you just have to do actual games, otherwise it's pointless. ;-)

I've been trying my best for the past years. ;) MineClone 2 was an interesting experiment but eventually I got sick of just slavishly copying ideas. I still wish the new developers best of success!
My current big project is Hades Revisited (which I picked up again after years if inactivity) and I have loong lists of ideas. Maybe it will actually turn out to be something I can be proud of.
If you use minetest, you ultimately produce a game that's going to be labelled as "just minecraft with a texturepack".
It really depends. Maybe we all just weren't creative enough. I think the biggest killer feature of Minetest right now is that you can hop into any server and it Just Works(TM), no matter the amount of mods. So that alone means it's not that simple.
One of the biggest problems of Minetest right now is terrible usability and looks.
Also that roadmap is kind of a relief to see, compared to that one on the wiki.
Oh my! I just realized that Minetest has a lot of documents that claim to be "the roadmap". It's a bit chaotic now and it is not clear which one is the official one. That's not very encouraging. This mess should be cleaned up maybe and all "fake roadmaps" should be removed or at least link to the real one instead.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by Linuxdirk » Post

Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
I am extremely concerned the Minetest community is getting split (or it already happened, apparently), and what's worse, Discord and Reddit are proprietary. I hate this! This goes against everything that Minetest stands for.
Yes, it is apparent that MT devs have no issues with proprietary services. Add hosting code at MS GitHub to the list of the examples. The community is already split into several smaller ones. The one here int he forums, the one that uses IRC, the one on Discord, and the one on Reddit. Some people use multiple of them, but a lot of people don't.

It was also rejected by the devs multiple times in various discussions to centralize at least all Git stuff under git.minetest.net for example. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity 3 years ago was intentionally not taken.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
So Minetest Game is weirdly stuck because it's almost impossible to do any major improvements at this stage because of dependencies.
Another missed opportunity, yes. It was possible to ditch it when changing from 0.4.x to 5.x versioning. This was the only "real" chance where API breaking would absolutely understandable and fine. The next real chance will be 6.x.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
We have hundreds of PRs! [...] which is extremely demoralizing for contributors.
So are the 1000+ issues. The only real solution would be closing all and every issues and PRs and start over with a fresh and clean issue tracker with radical rules for closing issues and PRs. The only real opportunity would be when MICROS~1 screws up their GitHub service enough for c55 making the switch. But I guess this won't happen seeing the last two once-in-a-lifetime opportunities not taken.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
My current big project is Hades Revisited (which I picked up again after years if inactivity) and I have loong lists of ideas. Maybe it will actually turn out to be something I can be proud of.
On a personal note: yes, this would be awesome. Great concept and already some cool ideas! Could/Would be one of the top-tier games when feature-complete.
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
Oh my! I just realized that Minetest has a lot of documents that claim to be "the roadmap". It's a bit chaotic now and it is not clear which one is the official one. That's not very encouraging. This mess should be cleaned up maybe and all "fake roadmaps" should be removed or at least link to the real one instead.
Quoted for emphasis.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by jp » Post

Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
NodeCore is extremely confusing
I agree, NodeCode is a turd. The Discord crew created the hype about it but I see no reason why.
Or maybe yes, I see why: the Discord crew has a strong tribal spirit and everyone feels inclined to do a blowjob to their staff and flood the reviews section on CDB. Do not underestimate the influence capacity of this Discord server these days, those pimply teens have a lot of energy to spend.

I do think more and more frequently that it isn't worth to contribute to Minetest, there are just too much things that suck, from the software to the community. I have been overly patient to last 8 years in this project and today I feel like I'm reaching a dead-end. And it might be a dead-end for the project as well if they can't find a motherfucker like hecks to bring the project to the next step.

Sorry sfan5, but a game project is not only an engineering project. Something you failed to realize in all these years.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by MisterE » Post

comon people cheer up.
we need games? ok then start making simple, small games that you can get a first release out in about a month. For example, I am working on a robot racing game. Do your best to make the game high quality. Ask for artistic help if you need it. (check out the zughy32 pallette, its great for making high quality textures)

as far as the engine's issues and PRs goes, yeah its bad, but the only solution is for more people to become core devs. I hope to do so eventually. Others, yes, either help or do something constuctive. complaining doesn't help, tho its useful to point out these issues.

basically, all games for minetest are in an unfinished state. even nodecore, where the ingame hints are not as extensive as they will be.

boxworld could be finished by someone fairly easily...

but where minetest shines is on the servers... example Yourland server, which has a very strong community around it, among others.

jp, if you don't find minetest fulfilling then don't waste your time with it. try godot? or, try to fix it in the ways you can. or use it for what its good for and wait for the slow updates. anyhow thats my two cents.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by duane » Post

Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
The forums aren't representative, as they're an outdated medium and also had terrible performance issues last year. It's better to look at the Discord, the Matrix, Reddit, and online servers
I am extremely concerned the Minetest community is getting split (or it already happened, apparently), and what's worse, Discord and Reddit are proprietary. I hate this! This goes against everything that Minetest stands for. Calling the forums an "outdated medium" makes me very sad.
Wuzzy is dead-on-target about the forums. Unfortunately, more and more projects are going to chat-based communication. I think it's a sign of the way people think. We expect someone else to keep records, and consider anything that's not happening at the moment to be irrelevant (until we realize that we need it).

In the past, the limitations of our media made it possible to search through old communications, but now it's easier to just dump the past, or simply make it impractical to search. (Then, if we want to dump it at some point, no one will notice.)

And although I try to be practical about proprietary software, I will not use discord. (Not that my opinion matters.)
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by philipbenr » Post

duane wrote:
Mon Oct 04, 2021 01:50
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
The forums aren't representative, as they're an outdated medium and also had terrible performance issues last year. It's better to look at the Discord, the Matrix, Reddit, and online servers
I am extremely concerned the Minetest community is getting split (or it already happened, apparently), and what's worse, Discord and Reddit are proprietary. I hate this! This goes against everything that Minetest stands for. Calling the forums an "outdated medium" makes me very sad.
Wuzzy is dead-on-target about the forums. Unfortunately, more and more projects are going to chat-based communication. I think it's a sign of the way people think. We expect someone else to keep records, and consider anything that's not happening at the moment to be irrelevant (until we realize that we need it).

In the past, the limitations of our media made it possible to search through old communications, but now it's easier to just dump the past, or simply make it impractical to search. (Then, if we want to dump it at some point, no one will notice.)

And although I try to be practical about proprietary software, I will not use discord. (Not that my opinion matters.)
The digital era is really beginning in the past couple of years. Everyone has a device and is connected to the internet. Even homeless people have phones, as digital communication is so important. As such, more perspectives have arrived on how communications should be conducted. And the datasets have spoken: UX (user experience) is everything. As such, the older forum style is being deprecated due to the in general worse UX than messaging platforms, which take less effort to use. Writing a forum post takes miles more effort than just rattling off a couple of messages.

Free software needs to get on board with a better UX or be swallowed by the miles better looking and feeling proprietary solutions.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by ywwv » Post

I disagree. I think the forums are easily more relevant than the discord server. If you need evidence just look at my latest thread . It is full of activity and people are discussing my ideas in it. second of all the discord server BANNED me for talking about importing the stanford michaleangelo dataset into minetest http://graphics.stanford.edu/data/mich/

its just proof that the discord server is stagnant. they're insular and afraid of new ideas .

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by Blockhead » Post

Hello phillipbenr

First let me make a case, perhaps not the strongest, for how things are already done before I proceed to rebuttal.

My case for forums:
  • Ours. Self-hosted. Only moderated by us. Runs on phpBB which is GPL software.
  • Searchable. From the outside by search engines or from the inside through the built in search.
  • Not filtered and ranked by approval. People who want to fit in with the group are going to see what gets popular and follow the zeitgeist instead of thinking for themselves. Sites that by default sort based on what is popular suffer from the eventuality that, given enough posts, good things are going to 'die in new' - miss the window of opportunity to attract enough attention for a snowball effect.
  • Good for the permanent record, so that information isn't lost after being transmitted.
My case for IRC, Matrix etc.
  • Ours/free software (like my argument for the forums)
  • Realtime, good for active chatting. Not good for the permanent record; messages get posted too frequently to go trawling through them all.
  • Freedom of choice of client, open protocols.
And now for the point-by-point
philipbenr wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 22:23
The digital era is really beginning in the past couple of years. Everyone has a device and is connected to the internet. Even homeless people have phones, as digital communication is so important. As such, more perspectives have arrived on how communications should be conducted.
More people present doesn't mean our communication will necessarily improve. In fact, we have more voices shouting on top of one another than ever before.
philipbenr wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 22:23
And the datasets have spoken: UX (user experience) is everything. As such, the older forum style is being deprecated due to the in general worse UX than messaging platforms, which take less effort to use.
What data are you referring to and what metric do the alternatives improve? I would hazard a guess they improve time spent on websites feeding you targetted ads. It's actually a blessing to not have a system that's been specifically designed with psychologically manipulative tactics to delay you from leaving it. I get bored or mentally fatigued from reading the forums and leave. On reddit you can just scroll for hours with your brain turned off.

Worse UX? User experience with what goal? You can't say UX without context - what and why is the user experiencing? Are there commercial motivations to what you want your users to experience? And no I don't think the forums are a bad UX for the purpose of sending and receiving messages. When I log into these forums, I immediately get notification of any responses in any threads I am watching or any direct responses. I can easily see what I have and haven't read. On most of these other platforms, the default action is the consumption stream which has been designed to make me browse as long as possible to show me as many targeted ads as possible. Of course it takes less effort. The actual action for posting on forums isn't any harder than any other site.
philipbenr wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 22:23
Writing a forum post takes miles more effort than just rattling off a couple of messages.
Good. A barrier to entry means we get fewer unthoughtful people wander into a conversation knowing nothing about it, say something stupid, get told they've said something stupid, get angry then leave. Oh it still happens heaps on these forums that people don't read the whole thread - I don't blame them necessarily when we have 50+ page threads. But this forum isn't actively inviting you to see posts from a myriad of subreddits, random Facebook pages, etc. that happen to be close to your interests, which you may or may not have any good ideas about contributing to or not; this is such a big problem there's a whole subreddit devoted entirely to "lost redditors". I actually love that you're here for Minetest or you're not here at all. I'm not alone - half-decent subreddits specifically de-list themselves from r/all so if something big happens to them, a flood of people aren't invited along to see it for no reason except popularity.
philipbenr wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 22:23
Free software needs to get on board with a better UX or be swallowed by the miles better looking and feeling proprietary solutions.
This is not only wrong because you fall into the fallacy of thinking that UX progress has been linearly upward since the beginning of time, but more importantly because for any given proprietary solution there is already a free software clone for it.
  • Facebook - Diaspora
  • GitHub - GitLab, Gitea
  • Twitter - Mastodon
  • Discord - Matrix, Mumble, XMPP
  • Reddit - DogeIt (Voat, while source-available, was proprietary)
  • YouTube - DTube, LBRY, Odysee
The actual reason for the success of these proprietary SaaSS solutions is because they are backed by companies, not grassroots movements (more typical of free software projects). The result of being backed by companies is awareness in the marketplace from marketing campaigns, near-guarantee of success due to money being on the line and the people involved being smart, and of course user inertia. The inertia is especially guaranteed by the smear campaigns that inevitably come up against leaving big tech behind, not that I want to excuse the crazies that the fringe sites attract either.

The joyful thing here is that it's clear that we do not actually need the proprietary services. And even if we want their form, we already have something close enough to their substance. Someone could make a 'modern' looking stylesheet for these forums in half a day. Fill it with whitespace, scrolling. In another short while they could attach a basic algorithm to it to sort 'hot' and 'trending' posts to the top of a newsfeed that reads from the phpBB database, and add user personalisation and other machine learning techniques after that over time.

By the way, are you aware we have a subreddit and it gets way less traffic than this site? How do you explain that?

If you read nothing else...
So back to you, what proprietary site do you think we need to mimic or take ideas from, and why in detail is it better than the forums? What has stopped the Minetest community from adopting it so far?
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by Mantar » Post

UX (user experience) is everything
And yet Discord is in the #1 slot despite its interface being a hot mess.
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by ywwv » Post

Mantar wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 19:10
UX (user experience) is everything
And yet Discord is in the #1 slot despite its interface being a hot mess.
Discord's product isn't its UX. its that it can hold all your social relationships hostage. people value their friends more than anything a UX designer can create.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by cuthbertdoublebarrel » Post

MisterE wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 02:17

we need games? ok then start making simple, small games that you can get a first release out in about a month.
you really think making more silly sub games with no depth is the way foward ?
but where minetest shines is on the servers... example Yourland server, which has a very strong community around it, among others.
question is what game is the yourland server using as a base to make it shine ?
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by ThorfinnS » Post

cuthbertdoublebarrel wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 18:08
MisterE wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 02:17

we need games? ok then start making simple, small games that you can get a first release out in about a month.
you really think making more silly sub games with no depth is the way foward ?
Truth.

I mean, I guess you can make any number of games in an engine based on cubes you can mine, craft and place, though there is really only a narrow range of games where that makes sense. There's are subgenres of creative-style games, pvp-style games, and survival-style games, with some overlap, and maybe a few others. But unless the game involves stacking blocks onto other blocks, you would be better off with a different engine.

And now, to be that uncle that everyone dreads showing up at Thanksgiving, I don't see what is so bad about Minetest Game as a base. Yeah, there's a lot I'd have coded differently, knowing the current capabilities of the engine, but I'm guessing the same could be said by anyone who contributed to MTG over the years. They each would have coded things differently in the new version. Maybe the answer is a MTG that is updated? Plus all the other base games that give the essential sets of nodes to make a game "work".

There still needs to be some base to get from point A to point B. The problem is and will continue to be inter-mod compatibility. This has to be done at somewhere within the game launcher itself, not at the ContentDB level, since one needs to, for example, have a way to select mobkit and ONLY compatible mob expansion sets, or Mobs Redo and its compatible expansions, but not both.

As an example, it makes little sense to add all the "stone" components for MTG if you are using Hume2's excellent underch mod, nor does it make sense to add any mods that reference "default:stone" instead of "group:stone". This is all non-functional fluff that just ties up nodecount. Not easy for an engine to do, no.

As I've said before, ShadMOdre's approach might work well, but I still maintain that you need to break up his CSVs into groups that could be individually selected, or simply enable groups of related nodes. Since this is Open Source, maybe consider supporting LibreOffice's spreadsheet? Adding "all" nodes, even those that no one will ever see, decreases performance, while if I go through and delete the lines representing nodes I don't intend to include makes it a whole lot faster, plus reduce the amount of clutter on the crafting UI.

IMO, Mintest needs to focus on it's primary niche -- some kind of a game that involves digging, crafting and placing nodes, of whatever textures. And until the community is established to the point that the engine is just an added download, that instead you are trying out the game, there really needs to be some form of "game" included in the DL. MTG isn't necessarily bad, it just needs SOMETHING to get the player engaged. Rubenwardy's Awards is SOMETHING, but unless you are only interested in "grinding", it doesn't cut it.

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firefox
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by firefox » Post

cuthbertdoublebarrel wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 18:08
you really think making more silly sub games with no depth is the way foward ?
actually, yes? i don't like some things in MTG, and mods alone can't fix those.
well they could, but it's so many little things, it'll create quite the mess. so having more games that cater to a certain taste is much better.

and by "games" i mean new games, not modified MTG with mods. it doesn't matter if they have the same gameplay, because that gameplay is exactly what i want from minetest.
i just want them to be different from MTG's basic world structure. more simple, more complex, more realistic or just more diverse. so that, just like chosing a mapgen, you can chose a game that suits your taste.
you can still add mods afterwards.
✨🏳️‍🌈♣️✨

bzt
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by bzt » Post

duane wrote:
Mon Oct 04, 2021 01:50
Wuzzy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:31
The forums aren't representative, as they're an outdated medium and also had terrible performance issues last year. It's better to look at the Discord, the Matrix, Reddit, and online servers
I am extremely concerned the Minetest community is getting split (or it already happened, apparently), and what's worse, Discord and Reddit are proprietary. I hate this! This goes against everything that Minetest stands for. Calling the forums an "outdated medium" makes me very sad.
Wuzzy is dead-on-target about the forums. Unfortunately, more and more projects are going to chat-based communication.
I agree with both of you 100%.
duane wrote:
Mon Oct 04, 2021 01:50
I think it's a sign of the way people think.
I doubt that's the case. It's more like they know nothing else. Big money corps are forcing their shitty solutions on people and try to silence every other alternatives (especially privacy-focused and FOSS alternatives). And you know what they say: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
duane wrote:
Mon Oct 04, 2021 01:50
And although I try to be practical about proprietary software, I will not use discord. (Not that my opinion matters.)
I agree, and your opinion matters. Discord is not just proprietary but you can't use it unless you give up security, which means you open up for attacks as well (browser fingerprinting, XSS, trojans through CDN deface etc.). With proper privacy settings, Discord simply doesn't work. PhpBB does.

Cheers,
bzt

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by Eris » Post

firefox wrote:
Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:42
...so that, just like chosing a mapgen, you can chose a game that suits your taste.
you can still add mods afterwards.
This is how game platforms like Roblox work: they cater to game creators; and I think Minetest is on the right track to becoming one currently.

To make MTG a viable game, among the others ofc, there'd have to be a dedicated team to guide development following a predetermined vision. IMO, that is the challenging part; and Minetest maintainers can't help you with that.
Jump in the caac

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by oldie » Post

I am speaking as a fan of Minetest. Why? The "Basic Game" as is stated acts as a root game, very "basic" and not very exciting. The idea is to download mods and build the game that you want using the base game as a root. You don't have to learn anything particularly complicated to build a very interesting and challenging game playable on Windows and Linux systems (i use both) only basic computing skills of organising yourself, keeping track of modifications which you may find useful to learn and hone anyway. If you want to get "heavier" this is a good way to start programming by looking at some of the mod Lua code and perhaps making some simple changes. The mods are generally excellent and some border on genius productions. And this is all FREE!! compared to another mining game which may be a bit (only a bit) better looking bearing in mind the vast funds that it has now received. I know which one i prefer; Minetest is for adults; the other for kids.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by philipbenr » Post

First off, I agree with all your points about the benefits of the current set up. But they are entirely unrelated to the point I'm making.

Let me contextualize my perspective. I appreciate Minetest. Minetest needs user growth and exposure to stop it from stagnating. The Minetest community needs to meet people where they are at to encourage them to join the community instead of expecting them to put in the effort to join. If they don't do this, less people will put in said effort, meaning lower user growth.
Blockhead wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:50
I actually love that you're here for Minetest or you're not here at all.
I'm glad you have a perspective that allows you to appreciate the current approach, but you also need to acknowledge the fact that this approach makes a higher barrier to entry for the casual user. Forums are a higher effort than an already existing medium that people have already consented to using-- e.g. Reddit, Discord, or Twitter. The Minetest community can't access all those people easily at all.

And for what it's worth, I think the forums can stay the same (touch-ups being warranted though). They do serve a good purpose. But they can't be the end-all-be-all.
User experience with what goal? You can't say UX without context...
I can though, its kind of my whole point-- The holistic UX. If you want me to get really specific to this conversion, I am referring to the new user experience, and what they see in Minetest that makes it worth getting involved. The title of this thread.
By the way, are you aware we have a subreddit and it gets way less traffic than this site? How do you explain that?[
Think about it: If Reddit, a huge content site, but is not really growing Minetest, that implies that Minetest is overlookable. It doesn't have enough intrinsic value in its current state (warranting more users to help improve it) or it doesn't have a low enough barrier to entry to let people explore it. And this follows the argument I make against desktop Linux-- It may have good components, but from a full, holistic experience, it is something that takes too much effort from mainstream users to get invested into. Thankfully, to illustrate this point, Linus Sebastian, one of the most reputable tech YouTubers, has been doing a challenge of switching to Linux, to report back and say how desktop Linux experience is. I'd encourage looking into his perspectives that he's been posting in clips from his WAN show. That is a whole other discussion, unrelated to this one, but the perspective he brings is the same.
So back to you, what proprietary site do you think we need to mimic or take ideas from, and why in detail is it better than the forums? What has stopped the Minetest community from adopting it so far?
To circle back to my original context, I think that Minetest needs better integration with other more popular solutions if it wants to grow. For example, Minetest integration with Discord would immensely increase its marketability to the masses. The majority of people, (maybe not on this forum, but in general) don't care about free software or libre principles.

And on top of all of this discussion, Minetest doesn't need to grow at all costs. It can stick to what it has only, and that's fine too. It just has to acknowledge the risks that come along with that i.e. stagnation, a shrinking userbase, etc.

You bring up valid points, and I'm not fighting for proprietary software. I am personally looking to set up Matrix bridges into Discord, Slack, and the likes to unify my IM under one client, so trust me-- I agree with you. But I can't say I agree with the current, very orthodox approach Minetest is taking if it wants to stay relevant.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by PolySaken » Post

On and off for the past year I've been developing a mod that generates a new set of unique content per-world. This includes biomes, node types such as types of stone or wood, ores & other materials, mobs, structure types, food, items, and hopefully eventually lively NPC's and lore, dwarf-fortress style.

This model could make a pretty unique game, and it would need barely any extra work as the mod is already completely standalone, except for my vision_lib library.

The biggest challenge will be variety, as randomly composed presets often get old fast. My solution to this in terms of textures has previously been lacking, as just recoloring base textures is too limiting.
I'm planning to come up with a way to have a set of base noise textures, and different 'masks' for them, such as blobs, roots, cracks, etc. These can then be composed using random rotations & translations to create more varied solid textures. For textures with transparency, such as grass or leaves, I have yet to find a satisfactory solution.
Guidebook Lib, for in-game docs | Poly Decor, some cool blocks | Vision Lib, an all-purpose library.

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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by ShadMOrdre » Post

I've spent a "little" time, creating a base, albeit, messy and buggy.

As with any "fad" time will tell. Why minetest?

If you want complete control over your sandbox, minetest.

If you want a simple, child friendly "game", minecraft.

I believe what we are experiencing is in part due to "ignore, embrace, extinguish". With more and more of the linux subsystem working on windows, there is less and less motivation, and certainly less, if any profit, to motivate anyone to explore the FOSS world. Nevermind that there are some truly impressive projects across the FOSS world, whatever isn't ported to a paid Android or MS store app will eventually fade. If not outright "stolen", the FOSS projects have provided immeasurable opportunity for the less ethical to profit off the work of so many freely available FOSS projects, with little recourse for the original developer, if they are even paying attention in the first place.

I still mod for MT, because I find it to be the most easily accessible programmable voxel sandbox. Like programming for begginers with turtle graphics, but with the power of lua, MT, and irrlicht/OpenGL. But, who really cares about that except the few niche nerds like me who find it worthy of time and effort.

Why should you become interested? Why do we jump out of planes for fun? It's really a subjective question, and the answer is up to the user.

If you want a Lego set, with only the blocks you need to make a predesigned scene, for a lot of money, go play Minecraft.

If you want a Lego set with unlimited blocks, and 3D printer for any you create, to create any and every scene you could possibly imagine, come, play Minetest.

You will NOT be disappointed!

Shad

P.S. Why Minetest? Because I can't do this anywhere else!
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by PolySaken » Post

Exactly. For me, minetest is a hobby that's fun because it's small and niche. My other favorite game community, Minecraft modding, is already becoming a corporatized as large companies capitalize on forge modding to make Ad revenue and such. I'd rather people be interested in minetest for what it is, rather than changing it to please more people.

Don't get me wrong, minetest needs changes, but not ones that serve only to rope in more kids who want "free minecraft download 2021 no virus craft block" and will just incentivise things like multicraft* instead of adding to the community.

*I recognize multicraft has provided a lot of engine code for the android version of MT, however in terms of minetest's overall quality and philosophy, it's primarily a drag.
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oldie
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Re: Why should anyone become involved in minetest?

by oldie » Post

if anyone is getting bored with minetest which i admit i was, try the Techage mod by joe7575. This has revived my interest and is challenging enough to avoid boredom especially playing in survival mode with a few aggressive mob mods e.g. cubemods. Whatever anybody says bear in mind that this game is FREE, which considering the technical effort and expertise that has gone into the mods is incredible.

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