Minetest in 2022

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runs
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Minetest in 2022

by runs » Post

I am opening this thread to post in the objectives, expectations of Minetest in this year.
What new things will there be?
What will you be from minetest?
Will it be a great year or a disastrous one, what do you think?

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Hugues Ross
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Hugues Ross » Post

Fun idea!

Personally, if I can get myself in the position to do so I'd like to release or contribute to a game this year.


As for what I want and expect to see...
We're not exactly off to a great start with that code injection kerfuffle from the other day, but I'm pretty optimistic about this year. We got a big dump of small games from the jam, and I expect that some of them are going to rot but others are going to blossom. It's the latter group that I'm looking forward to seeing, personally! We'll hopefully get 5.5 soon too, I haven't looked at the changes but that's usually an interesting time.

Minetest is usually pretty slow to move though, so it's hard to say how much more we'll see popping up. But, you never know!

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Blockhead » Post

Hugues Ross wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 01:34
Fun idea!

Personally, if I can get myself in the position to do so I'd like to release or contribute to a game this year.
Ah but then we need someone else to do as thorough of a critical review of your game as you do to most packages you review on ContentDB.. is there a comparable critic? Ah what am I saying, of course there is.
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Linuxdirk » Post

There are currently massive efforts taken to extend the world size. So I'm totally looking forward to see that happening. Unfortunately this currently has no official approval so all work on this could be useless if the usual people reject it due to "needs work".

Another thing that would be awesome to have is custom user-based GLSL shaders. Those are currently used in a "hardcoded" way without the user being able to change the shaders without modifying upstream files. Unfortunately it seems like that no-one from the current dev team is fluent in shader coding and so we likely never see any improvements here, let alone user-based shaders.

But since the devs decided to form Irrlicht (instead of taking efforts to move away from this ancient behemoth, but that's another topic) I look forward to see some graphical changes and improvement.

What also should finally happen is dropping Minetest Games the default game once and for all! There are some great concepts to provide a games list on first start for players to select what they like. There are more and more mods that don't depend on default and are either game-agnostic or for other games than Minetest Game, which is a good thing. So the community moves. Slowly, but it does.

But to be realistic here: A new release with at least shadows available would be enough for this year. The last release is from April 2021.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by firefox » Post

once again i will work on creating my own game.
this time i have a real plan and not just some vague idea of what i'd like to play.
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by rubenwardy » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 08:29
There are currently massive efforts taken to extend the world size. So I'm totally looking forward to see that happening. Unfortunately this currently has no official approval so all work on this could be useless if the usual people reject it due to "needs work".
I highly doubt that yet enough network breaking release would be popular in the user base, even if it allowed larger words and slower performance
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Casimir » Post

Starting with this new year I will more free time. So hopefully I will be able to put some work in my game and some mods (maybe even more than two one day long bursts of productivity). And when everything works out find I might get a server running again.

Regarding Minetest itself, I like the direction it is going.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Tim790 » Post

Now when I think of it, what's the point of increasing world size?
Yeet.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Linuxdirk » Post

rubenwardy wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 15:27
I highly doubt that yet enough network breaking release would be popular in the user base,
To bad branches are not used in the official Git repository. This would allow developing great features without breaking the master branch too much. But yes, since this breaks backwards compatibility it's something for "Minetest 6". I just hope it will become an approved change during 2022.
rubenwardy wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 15:27
even if it allowed larger words
This could become the number 1 selling point. Since Microsoft recently raised the height limit again (and I guess they will gradually continue doing so in the future) the argument of "but Minetest worlds are much higher" slowly shrinks. Since Minetest does not have multiple dimensions support (like Minecraft overworld, Nether, End, and the virtually infinite joke dimensions on April Fool's Day 2020) we need to put everything in the "overworld" the more space we have for that the better it is for us.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by philipbenr » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 07:49
Too bad branches are not used in the official Git repository. This would allow developing great features without breaking the master branch too much.
Every time I'm reminded of this, I'm surprised the Minetest project hasn't been doing this as standard.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by rubenwardy » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 07:49
To bad branches are not used in the official Git repository. This would allow developing great features without breaking the master branch too much. But yes, since this breaks backwards compatibility it's something for "Minetest 6". I just hope it will become an approved change during 2022.
It's quite a big change, it would cause merge conflicts quite quickly. The alternative to a branch would be a compile flag, which is what the PR does
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Wuzzy » Post

For early 2022, I definitely want to release a much-improved version 2.0 of Lazarr!, my (failed) game jam game about lasers, mirrors and pirates. Hopefully, I get something decent done before the end of January, unless I procastinate again. XD
After that, I return to Hades Revisited, but I don't have a specific plan on which features to do next, but I do want to make some serious progress. And I have a LOT of ideas for this game, just not a specific ordering.
I might also just take some time off to work on non-Minetest projects again, who knows?

I don't have any specific plans for doing anything for Minetest directly, probably just random small things that I have always contributed over the years. Oh, and of course keeping an eye on my current ongoing PRs that still are stuck in the review pipeline. Making games for Minetest is more important IMO. I have ca. 170 accepted PRs under my belt now, I can't even believe it myself!

I think for this year I really need to start getting in touch with 3D stuff and Blender, it's almost embarrassing at this point, that I still can't do my own meshnodes and stuff, haha. :P

My biggest wish for Minetest core development is that the review process is somehow made more efficient because as a contributor, it is VERY frustrating contributing anything non-trivial to Minetest. You have to have the patience of an elephant because of waiting times of months or sometimes even YEARS, even if you did everything right. :-(
And I also think the roadmap needs changes because the current roadmap is very limiting that kills many good features right from the start. Many ideas for new gameplay features are dead on arrival right now because the roadmap is very narrow. :-( :-( :-(
I really hope a solution will be found eventually.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Martno » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 07:49
This could become the number 1 selling point. Since Microsoft recently raised the height limit again (and I guess they will gradually continue doing so in the future) the argument of "but Minetest worlds are much higher" slowly shrinks.
Why bigger worlds are better? Who needs bigger words, and for what use? It's already huge. If the world doesn't get more diversity/content with bigger size, then I don't think it's a real selling point over Minecraft.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by rob123 » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 07:49
rubenwardy wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 15:27
I highly doubt that yet enough network breaking release would be popular in the user base,
To bad branches are not used in the official Git repository. This would allow developing great features without breaking the master branch too much. But yes, since this breaks backwards compatibility it's something for "Minetest 6". I just hope it will become an approved change during 2022.
rubenwardy wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 15:27
even if it allowed larger words
Since Minetest does not have multiple dimensions support (like Minecraft overworld, Nether, End, and the virtually infinite joke dimensions on April Fool's Day 2020)
try https://content.minetest.net/packages/A ... imensions/
If my post says something, it is a opinion and not fact unless i say so

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by TenPlus1 » Post

Bigger worlds aren't needed, what we do need is a way to layer biomes properly in the current world so we can create our own universes like nether, aether, planets etc. with ease and without having to resort to the slower voxelmanip functions we have been relying on to date.

I would also like to see 5.5 being released soon to urge users to upgrade their windows, linux, android systems and try to coax more players away from the older 0.4.x servers and onto the newer client with all new features and shadows :)

The devs are doing a great job to date and while it may be slow I still anticipate everything new put into this amazing project :P

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Komodo » Post

TenPlus1 wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 07:46
Bigger worlds aren't needed, what we do need is a way to layer biomes properly in the current world so we can create our own universes like nether, aether, planets etc. with ease and without having to resort to the slower voxelmanip functions we have been relying on to date.

I would also like to see 5.5 being released soon to urge users to upgrade their windows, linux, android systems and try to coax more players away from the older 0.4.x servers and onto the newer client with all new features and shadows :)

The devs are doing a great job to date and while it may be slow I still anticipate everything new put into this amazing project :P
Well said. Worlds are already pretty large. I didn't know shadows were coming. I've been on hiatus, that is awesome! Dev's do a great job. Progress is slow, but that's par open-source. Cool!

For me, I hope to make a lot of progress with my own skills, learning lua, blender, artwork, and making progress on building up MeseCraft.
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by runs » Post

My goal this year is to create a new game from scratch and win the JAM. I don't plan to do anything else.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by MisterE » Post

I dislike artificial restrictions. World size being capped at 64x64x64 k is an artificial restriction imo. Server owners should be able to set it to whatever they like. It should have a reasonable default, but should be allowed to be as large as the filesize will permit.

As to whether there is enough space, sure there is plenty of space for building. But for exploring? the minetest world is very small. If mapped to real world scales, the entire world would only have room for 2 biomes. Another point is that you can reach the edge of the world by walking, with not too much effort. This makes the claim "Practically inifnite" invalid.

Most servers would not be able to handle "practically infinite" but I think that there would pop up a few servers on the serverlist that were, with admins that invested in enough storage to handle the practical infinity

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by runs » Post

For me the size of Minetest is more than enough. It's not even small.

The console versions of Minecraft have very very small maps of 1024 nodes I think.

I consider that no time should be wasted on it, but yes:

- Make the forms better. The markdown is garbage. Better to create classes in LUA. A proper graphic design library.
- Finish the shadows.
- Allow to change the main menu.
- Improve the general performance.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by MisterE » Post

I agree that those are much more important things to work on

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Linuxdirk » Post

MisterE wrote:
Sun Jan 16, 2022 23:37
As to whether there is enough space, sure there is plenty of space for building. But for exploring? the minetest world is very small. If mapped to real world scales, the entire world would only have room for 2 biomes. Another point is that you can reach the edge of the world by walking, with not too much effort. This makes the claim "Practically inifnite" invalid.
That's the main thing the people saying that the worlds are "large enough" can't/won't see.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by Blockhead » Post

New engine version(s)

At a minimum I hope we see at least 5.5.0 if not a 5.6.0 - it really feels like development is stalled when you don't get releases, regardless of what's happening. I know we've set certain goals for 5.5 and well, I hope they don't get stalled.

Games in the medium term
I would really like to see games that started in the Game Jam mature and hope that those games can retain steady ongoing interest and not dwindle. The Game Jam was a peak in terms of user engagement with alternative games for Minetest, but what follows will be interesting to see.

Some games from the jam may dwindle, and that's only natural according to continued interest by the developer and/or players. Some may have only been throwaways to learn with, and that's okay too. One game I'm seeing promise from is moontest, just because I'm always browsing the forums; maybe others have flown under my radar.

New/old Ideas
The end of last year also brought the retirement of VanessaE from actively running her servers and maintaining her mods. Thankfully we have seen a smooth transition to EdgyNet and minetest-/mt-mods. This is the most obvious Minetest veteran to me; again like moontest, it's just who/what I've been paying attention to.

I've been a bit harshly critical of some of VanessaE's work before, especially my negative review on Homedecor. I've also felt similarly about Dreambuilder and streets-roads mods (also largely a creation of cheapie). It's not meant in ill-will, but just a divergence of vision Minetest. I haven't been the only one being critical of content, new or old in Minetest; there has been some good critical feedback on ContentDB in 2021 from people like HuguesRoss and Zughy. I'm sure we don't all agree on a vision for Minetest, but we do all want it to improve.

There's no denying the value that a lot of players, who played on VanessaE's servers, saw in her work and work of her associates. But a retirement inevitably means a fade from relevance and a change in the zeitgeist. We still remain with ideals that other veterans in the community have been pushing for for years, like a true competitor to Minetest Game to ship with the engine. I too hope to see a better default game one day, so some ideas like that will remain. However, I really hope to see fresh faces in the Minetest community in 2022, who will continue to question why things are how they are, point out the flaws we've all gotten used to, and then help us to improve further.

Maturity
I also hope for 2022 that we will see some of the newer parts of Minetest come to maturity. More advanced shadowing was a big change but came a bit soon for some people. It improves the look of the game, which will certainly help attract those looking for a better visual experience. 5.5.0 should make this feature more mature and less controversial.

Another thing I hope to see in 2022 is more mods moving out of a WIP state into a more fleshed out state. I don't really mean in terms of features I think. More in terms of stability, good code and good documentation. Replacement of programmer art, that sort of thing.

Advtrains is making efforts in terms of adding automated testing, for instance. As much as I love Lua, like any dynamic language it gets hard to manage complexity. I would also like to see more best practices come forward. I think there are probably a few great ideas in Rubenwardy's modding book that many of us who already knew how to program and read API docs have missed by skipping straight to the action.

Ease
Minetest is still hard to approach for a lot of people. We've made good strides to develop content but a lot of mods still fall short of the mark on issues like ease of use and proper documentation (and please don't confuse the two). Part of this I think is because Minetest is primarily a multiplayer game, and I think a lot of us are used to learning things by asking other players on a server. Some of us are even used to reading the source code just to figure stuff out! Obviously this can't work for everyone.

Let's cite some specific examples of player experience fails, and hope you can extrapolate to your own mod's/mods' problems:
  • Travelnet: It's still esoteric knowledge how to set up a private station. The solution: This should be in the README and also linked to the doc mod. But more importantly, it should be obvious from the interface alone how to make a private station.
  • Mesecons: The luacontroller still points you to a website to learn how to program it. No good if I want to play offline! The luacontroller help can probably fit into the doc mod.
  • Mesecons and digiline compatible mods/extension mods: For instance drawer controllers. Each item/node should register: Input (e.g. digiline signal with itemstring and quantity), Transformations/internal logic (e.g. XOR operation), Output signals (e.g. the result of XOR; the item passing through a digiline-detecting tube segment), Effects on the world (e.g. item comes out of drawer controller). This one is particularly bad because you often have to read the source code even if others know how to use the mod, in case they don't remember the particulars and aren't next to to their own machinery.
Let's not restrict all of our solutions to just documentation however. Let's actively think about how to interactively introduce game objects and concepts to players instead of just through text. Text is great reference material, but people learn by doing. They can learn to read to figure out how to do, but that's orders of magnitude harder because of the lag where they need to retain that knowledge and figure out how apply it before they forget it.

I pose this challenge to modders for 2022: If you know of any obvious flaws like poor documentation, giant formspecs, arcane knowledge required to play: fix them. Sacrifice a new feature if you have to. At the same time, don't write docs for the sake of docs. After that, get a new guinea pig and usability test your mod. Don't tell them how to do stuff, just ask them to do it. Write down what was easy and they struggled to do. Then sit down and figure out how to improve the experience based on the feedback you've just received.

Some specifics for me
I like trains! Well, I like to tweak other mods too. Maybe I should keep my cards closer to my chest and avoid the pressures, but here goes anyway:
  • Finally get better subway wagons out with smooth transitions from old mods like disco trains/coloured subway.
  • Maybe an advtrains tutorial world. I could rip off take inspiration from Factorio's train tutorial
  • More advtrains videos! This should have been done ages ago. I'm convinced it's the best way to teach and learn in something this complex, and which involves so many formspecs
  • Keep Noah's Railyard up to date/collaborate with trainpack.
  • Starting lib_multigame and making advtrains multi game compatible.
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Re: Minetest in 2022

by runs » Post

Blockhead wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 17:26
New engine version(s)

Ease
Minetest is still hard to approach for a lot of people. We've made good strides to develop content but a lot of mods still fall short of the mark on issues like ease of use and proper documentation (and please don't confuse the two). Part of this I think is because Minetest is primarily a multiplayer game, and I think a lot of us are used to learning things by asking other players on a server. Some of us are even used to reading the source code just to figure stuff out! Obviously this can't work for everyone.
Yes, for example my game Juanchi, has a lot of new features. But people don't know about them. They play for an hour, get bored and leave.

It's my fault. Lack of documentation and aid.

In my next game "The Samz" I will correct it. I will add a Samzpedia or similar.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by runs » Post

By the way, to remove Minetets Game and to have others in the TOP, I mean the first of the recommended list, there should be a contest. Without money of course.

I would present The Samz. Not Juanchi, because it is too much.
Last edited by runs on Mon Jan 17, 2022 17:47, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Minetest in 2022

by runs » Post

Another thing I would like is on-the-fly textures. For example, I would like to add Seasons, that would be super easy if you could change textures dynamically.

I think it's not difficult to implement.

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