hotbar, health, breath, crosshair shouldn't be built in

[PolySaken]

HUDS like the hotbar, health & breath meters, & the crosshair should be defined by games, not by the engine. removing them is really annoying and not all games will want them.

[PolySaken]

I disagree because it's essential to know when you're gonna drown or break a neck jumping off the next cliff ect. But I'm also for reverting 90% of minetest game features and it becoming a clean slate for adding games/mods. If that ever happened The main menu should be a easy to use , kid and grandma friendly minetest game "basic" that installs a few essential features and maybe some G rated non essentials. Like hudbar, tools or whatever.

But many games might not have cliffs off which to fall. Anyway mtg can just implement the HUDs itself.

[runs]

HUDS like the hotbar, health & breath meters, & the crosshair should be defined by games, not by the engine. removing them is really annoying and not all games will want them.

Here we go. Just because your game doesn't need it, doesn't mean that 90% of voxel games do.

What should be easy is the possibility to disable them, maybe an option such as hotbar = false and crosshair = false and that's it, full customization.I mean FLEXIBILITY, more than just eliminating features. Because making a hotbar can take time and "money", it's not that easy and after all, all commercial and non-commercial voxel games have it: Minecraft, Hypixel (not hotbar, but a different and innovative system), etc.

There is already a mod for the blocks to be hexagonal. If I create a game with hexagonal blocks, should I ask for the square blocks to be removed from the engine ?? ... ....

A minimalist Minetest engine would be an engine only with irlitch, or even without anything because irlicht is also limiting because obsolete. LOL.

What I mean is that you have to look for a compromise. But I really think that Minetets still lacks many features.

[Pyrollo]

HUDS like the hotbar, health & breath meters, & the crosshair should be defined by games, not by the engine. removing them is really annoying and not all games will want them.

Totally agree with you. Minimap is about to move to Lua HUD, the rest should come... one day.

[rubenwardy]

Here we go. Just because your game doesn't need it, doesn't mean that 90% of voxel games do.

90% of voxel games also have creative, doesn't mean that it needs to be builtin. Minetest should make things easier to do, rather than making specific things already done.

Because making a hotbar can take time and "money", it's not that easy and after all, all commercial and non-commercial voxel games have it: Minecraft, Hypixel (not hotbar, but a different and innovative system), etc.

It can also take no time at all, by taking existing mods, and will be more flexible

[PolySaken]

It can also take no time at all, by taking existing mods, and will be more flexible

Exactly. Anything game-specific should be supported, but not builtin. Otherwise, minetest would be a game rather than a game engine.

[Zughy]

So, wait a moment: are you saying it's possible the hotbar may eventually disappear? Because right now a mod of mine, arena_lib, allows to create arenas both via commands and via an editor I made through the hotbar. I was planning to remove the commands part because it's quite user-unfriendly and because I thought the hotbar wasn't going to go anywhere, but at this point I'd like to know more before doing anything. Also because it'd make older versions incompatible

EDIT: also, I know it's OT, but Poly, please consider my PRs on guidebooklib :(

[PolySaken]

So, wait a moment: are you saying it's possible the hotbar may eventually disappear? Because right now a mod of mine, arena_lib, allows to create arenas both via commands and via an editor I made through the hotbar. I was planning to remove the commands part because it's quite user-unfriendly and because I thought the hotbar wasn't going to go anywhere, but at this point I'd like to know more before doing anything. Also because it'd make older versions incompatible

EDIT: also, I know it's OT, but Poly, please consider my PRs on guidebooklib :(

The hotbar would become a part of minetest_game rather than the engine, but would still exist. perhaps a hotbar mod that is functionally the same as the normal hotbar would be a good idea so it can be drag-dropped into other games.

(I don't have wifi at home right now so I haven't been checking GitHub, I'll have a look)

[Wuzzy]

All these HUD elements are already disabable on a per-player basis, so this thread is pointless.

If you are suggesting to disable them by default, then you suggest to break all existing games and mods that assume the existence of these HUD elements. Your suggestion is thus not backwards-compatible.

Therefore, I reject your suggestion.

If you want to get rid of these HUD elements, just disable them.

I find discussions about changing default behavior to be extremely tiresome and frustrating, especially when said behavior is already overwritable. There is absolutely zero reason to change the default behavior. But there is a strong reason to keep default behavior, mainly historic precendent and backwards-compability. Change the default behavior, and you're pissing on all games and mods that came before you. And this creates far greater problems. Don't do this.

The default behavior doesn't actually matter. You might argue the default behavior is dumb, but this is irrelevant. Minetest has to have some default behavior tho. Simply, it is the responsibility of you as the game author to do the right thing, no matter what the default behavior is. Preserving backwards compability is important, it should only be broken if there's a good reason. This suggestion is no good reason to break backwards compability. Not at all.

I think this comes from a notion of “purity”, i.e. you think that Minetest needs to be as “pure” as possible in its default state. This sounds nice on surface, and yeah, it doesn't hurt, but I think you overblow the importance of this. The fact that hotbar, etc. are enabled by default might be a little annoying, yes, but it's really not a problem. It's an imagined problem, in that Minetest is not “pure” enough. It's a one-liner to disable them in game, after all. I think the default behavior should just be documented more, that's all. However, if you start removing e.g. the crosshair, you are making many game authors just very angry for breaking their games for no reason. Now every game author is forced to update their games just to have their crosshair back. So, don't do that.

Do not change the default behavior for no good reason, or you will end up with constant breakage in games and mods. And this case does NOT have a good reason.

I consider the value of backwards-compability, a really useful value that keeps games functional for years to come, to be INFINITELY more important than the value of purity, a fake value with near-zero tangible real-world benefits.

However, I note there are certain GUI elements that can not be moved, changed or disabled yet: chat, debug, infotext, status text (e.g. for “fly mode enabled”). Those should be disabable, movable and customizable, obviously.