Mapgens as mods ?

[Sires]

I got an idea of like adding an extra folder to .minetest called "mapgens", there you could have lua-based mapgens(for this an entire api must be created and must be really light weight I guess, so it may be the worst part of my idea) or cpp mapgens, like you download.. I dunno, you download "carpathian.zip", extract it in the mapgens folder and ta-da when you open minetest you'll have "carpathian" to select at your world creation button idk the name.

When a mapgen is removed, well the world should starting using some "default" mapgen or just singlenode with air, that is a nice way to tell you "hey install dat mapgen again"
It would be cool to see what people could do as mapgens, many good ideas would be there.

(I have low knowgledge of cpp, I just learned a bit and tried to understand what is happening at the 65416854 files related to mapgen, but I really don't understand nothing, many types of variables that I don't get what they are, if they are a vector or maybe a mapblock or something)

[sofar]

lua mapgens already exist. They are normal mods. There is no need to make them special. Example: https://github.com/minetest-mods/mg

[Krock]

Additionally, mapgens can be horribly slow and memory-consuming when they're programmed in Lua. If you plan to make a nice looking mapgen that you want to use much, I heavily recommend using at least LuaJIT or program them with C(++) to gain speed.

[Sires]

What do I mean is like letting us to enable and disable new mapgens without the need of recompiling the game and without having to hardcode it in the engine, I don't really want lua mapgens

[sofar]

What do I mean is like letting us to enable and disable new mapgens without the need of recompiling the game and without having to hardcode it in the engine, I don't really want lua mapgens

Those two things are not compatible. Either its a mod, or you will need to recompile.

[duane]

What do I mean is like letting us to enable and disable new mapgens without the need of recompiling the game and without having to hardcode it in the engine, I don't really want lua mapgens

Those two things are not compatible. Either its a mod, or you will need to recompile.

I suppose that if somebody really wanted to, they could make the mapgens dynamically linked libraries. Of course, you'd still have to have a library compiled for every system, but you could just drop the right one in and it'd work. I'd never use it, but in theory...

[sofar]

I suppose that if somebody really wanted to, they could make the mapgens dynamically linked libraries. Of course, you'd still have to have a library compiled for every system, but you could just drop the right one in and it'd work. I'd never use it, but in theory...

It could, but remember that minetest can link against various libraries, such as zlib, sqlite, SSL, curl, and if the mapgen plugins aren't linked against the same versions, bad things may happen, or it just won't work. If you have an Ubuntu build, but you download a mapgen DSO from duane who hates ubuntu and uses puppy linux(everyone loves puppies, right?), it's quite possible that your minetest takes you for a ride to the Segmentation of Fault (crashes, and corrupts your map).

[Sires]

I suppose that if somebody really wanted to, they could make the mapgens dynamically linked libraries. Of course, you'd still have to have a library compiled for every system, but you could just drop the right one in and it'd work. I'd never use it, but in theory...

It could, but remember that minetest can link against various libraries, such as zlib, sqlite, SSL, curl, and if the mapgen plugins aren't linked against the same versions, bad things may happen, or it just won't work. If you have an Ubuntu build, but you download a mapgen DSO from duane who hates ubuntu and uses puppy linux(everyone loves puppies, right?), it's quite possible that your minetest takes you for a ride to the Segmentation of Fault (crashes, and corrupts your map).

Ok but kittens linux is better