About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

tinoesroho
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by tinoesroho » Post

Inocudom wrote:
tinoesroho wrote:>.<

How 'bout no? Minetest is already rather laggy, although we've managed to disguise it somewhat thanks to LuaJIT and other engine improvements. Also, feature creep. Adding features for the sake of adding features without good rationale ("let's do it just because!") that could fundamentally alter the game? If people want mobs, they can install a mod. But don't force bloody unfinished hacky stuff on the public because some Minecraft(ard) wishes that a free and open source game was exactly like Minecraft. Mobs'll be added when we've got a flexible, moddable API nice and stable. Not a moment early.
What exactly causes Minetest to be laggy like that?
The Lua API wasn't designed for handling rapid movement or a lot of stuff, actually- it was really just designed to allow for custom tools/blocks- so things are going to lag like hell. Next, newer versions require a redonkulous amount of bandwidth. On top of that, landgen. And then dynamic lighting, maybe shaders-

Celeron didn't intend for Lua to ever support mobs. That it does- even laggily and so intensive on the CPU- is a miracle. He himself has said numerous times that mobs will only come after an extensible API in the core engine itself is written. Until then, use the "hacky" mobs- but don't force it on everybody else.
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by PilzAdam » Post

tinoesroho wrote:Celeron didn't intend for Lua to ever support mobs. That it does- even laggily and so intensive on the CPU- is a miracle. He himself has said numerous times that mobs will only come after an extensible API in the core engine itself is written. Until then, use the "hacky" mobs- but don't force it on everybody else.
{{cn}}

tinoesroho
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by tinoesroho » Post

I see what you did there. Okay, I'm officially changing my position on the Lua and mobs- it doesn't impact performance that badly- at least in singleplayer. The problem _now_ is building something unique that adds to the Minetest experience and fits thematically- using mobf or a hybrid of mobf and simplemobs. I've been playing with mobf, and it kicks arse when it comes to sheer capabilities. Simplemobs is, well, easy to mod, but I don't think it was really designed to be part of an adventure game.

Of course, wonderful people like Pavel_S have recreated the old mobs in 3D models- we could, of course, re-add them into the game via a modified simplemobs. I mean, the old mobs were stupid anyways. We could do it on the wiki, for Buddha's sake. If people want Minetest with mobs- they can play something that resembles Classic a wee much.

Minetest is not Minecraft. People who want Minetest to have Minecraft mobs should just go out and BUY the bloody piece of Java coding. Minetest is Minetest. We are not mindlessly copying- we're taking fun stuff from here and there to spice up the game, not become another dead clone.
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by Motherboard » Post

I would love to see official mobs in Minetest! That is something I have been waiting for ever since I started playing!(0.4.6) BUT, if there were mobs implemented into the game I would want some scary mobs! Im talking freaky *ss mother****ers! Like I walk aroud the corner and Im like "OH SH*T!" and I pee my pants!
(Just a personal opinion, didn't mean to start a fight)

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by shaneroach » Post

I don't think feature creep is a really good argument against mobs. I think even the most basic survival mode will eventually require food, which will be more fun if there are at least some easy mobs to kill for food.

On the other hand, I am perfectly content to wait until the API for them appears in the core engine. Currently, simplemobs in particular do not do much for me. I am about ready to turn off the hostile mobs and just keep the others for what resources they provide. For me, mobs will be far more fun if/when there is enough AI for them to form towns and communities (monsters and people, obviously. Not animals... Well, maybe baboons...)

I envision a 3d dwarf fortress in my minds eye, though I would think that is a very long term goal and one I am setting more for myself than for the Minetest community at large.
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by Thermal_Shock » Post

shaneroach wrote:For me, mobs will be far more fun if/when there is enough AI for them to form towns and communities (monsters and people, obviously. Not animals... Well, maybe baboons...)

I envision a 3d dwarf fortress in my minds eye, though I would think that is a very long term goal and one I am setting more for myself than for the Minetest community at large.
That's an awfully high bar to set. Especially with the hope for a 3D Dwarf Fortress. As much as I would love to see the same.

Personally my hope is for an AI with multiple states.

Neutral- A wandering mob that doesn't react to the player.
Avoidant - Runs from the player at a certain distance.
Aggressive - Pursues the player

I'd assume that could fulfill most players needs without being to pie in the sky for the devs.

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by Nore » Post

A 3D Dwarf Fortress? That would take years to code! And it would have to be done with the engine itself, and no control for lua, so bad.

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by shaneroach » Post

Nore wrote:A 3D Dwarf Fortress? That would take years to code! And it would have to be done with the engine itself, and no control for lua, so bad.
Hehe, as I said... more for my own personal motivation than anything the community needs to bother with here. The beginnings of it though would be pretty simple. People go home at night, go to a shop or other appropriate work place during the day, and react with the basic AI Thermal Shock was discussing.
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by MirceaKitsune » Post

This is something I consider one of the top concerns right now too. From what I heard, the reason mobs aren't in by default is that there's no mob system that's good enough. There are currently two implementations developed by two people, both of which have their own issues:

- MOB Framework by sapier: More detailed and complex, but slow and CPU intensive at times.

- Simple Mobs by PilzAdam: Lightweight and less resource intensive, but simpler and a bit buggy.

My suggestion is to go with PilzAdam's (which also has properly themed 3D models for animals) and slowly add features to it over time. I got a glimpse of it on VanessaE's server, and IMO it looks pretty good... although some minor movement issues are visible.

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by SilverWolfLily22 » Post

There isn't a mob system that is good enough? What? We can make one up.
It wouldn't be too hard. Tell me if I should put my thinking cap on.
I love hunting ;)

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by MirceaKitsune » Post

SilverWolfLily22 wrote:There isn't a mob system that is good enough? What? We can make one up.
It wouldn't be too hard. Tell me if I should put my thinking cap on.
There already are two, and their developers are experienced. So if it was possible to make a perfect one, such would have surely existed already.

I think some issues and limitations are problems with Lua entities overall, and will require code improvements also.

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by Casimir » Post

That means we still have time to think about a proper concept for mobs.
The two current mods try to copy the minecraft model, which I don't like at all. It make the night unusable - minecraft is unplayable without bed, you can do noting but waiting for sunrise. Or you spend the night slaying an infinite number of zombies.
There are some alternative concepts:
* Mobs are friendly until you attack them.
* Mobs only spawn in certain areas. E.g.: dungeons for the dungeonmaster, desert ruins for the sandmonster.
* Mobs are created at generate, and when they are dead they stay dead. (problem with clear_objects)
* Generate mobspawners instead of mobs. E.g.: graveyards for skeletons, cursed trees for treejumpers.

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by Jordach » Post

SilverWolfLily22 wrote:There isn't a mob system that is good enough? What? We can make one up.
It wouldn't be too hard. Tell me if I should put my thinking cap on.
Re-inventing the wheel takes way too long. It's probably best to contribute to Simple Mobs and go from there.

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by MirceaKitsune » Post

Casimir wrote:That means we still have time to think about a proper concept for mobs.
The two current mods try to copy the minecraft model, which I don't like at all. It make the night unusable - minecraft is unplayable without bed, you can do noting but waiting for sunrise. Or you spend the night slaying an infinite number of zombies.
There are some alternative concepts:
* Mobs are friendly until you attack them.
* Mobs only spawn in certain areas. E.g.: dungeons for the dungeonmaster, desert ruins for the sandmonster.
* Mobs are created at generate, and when they are dead they stay dead. (problem with clear_objects)
* Generate mobspawners instead of mobs. E.g.: graveyards for skeletons, cursed trees for treejumpers.
I believe those would be the easy part. Main problem I noticed is that mobs either don't have an intelligent and complete behavior yet (eg: they walk into walls because they don't detect the path is blocked), either have various glitches and lag a lot (eg: animations can't be matched properly), either are CPU intensive. Some of those things could be solved in the mod, but I believe issues with Lua entities in C++ need to be fixed primarily.

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by Sokomine » Post

The peaceful "normal" animals from mobf are already quite good and useful. The cpu usage doesn't raise that much if you just keep a few meadows with several dozen sheep, cows and chicken. It only gets bad when hostile mobs start spawning.

What I'd like to see are more types of animals. Those could easily be added if someone does a model for them.

The Minecraft way of letting hostile mobs spawn in the dark may be ok for players seeking adventures, but it's not so great for those who try to build. Perhaps that "spawning in mines" that was suggested might be a good idea. We ought to have peaceful inhabitants that spawn in villages and live there. Plus animals that roam the wild (and are sometimes dangerous if they consider the player to be food :-))
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by SilverWolfLily22 » Post

Well we definitely need something to turn mobs on and off.
Like in mobf u can turn certain mobs off.
I love hunting ;)

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by Diamond knight » Post

i think that mobs should be something that is configurable

the game kind of feels dead when you are the only non plant life form in the entire game

a few lightweight animals would be good but should have some settings if the minetest conf (like making them even more stupid, making them 2d, etc) for slower computers

with the developers support they could even be added in the c++ for even less lag

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by TenPlus1 » Post

I already use a slow computer when playing Minetest and Mobs Redo runs fine for me and adds a healthy number of entities to the world...

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9917

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by MirceaKitsune » Post

I seriously believe my Creatures mod is something I can offer to this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9240

It is based on PilzAdam's SimpleMobs, although at this stage it's been so heavily rewritten it's mostly the code layout that remains recognizable. Make no mistake however, it is still as lightweight and optimized and cleanly written.

What makes Creatures different firstly is that it takes a new approach to mobs: Players aren't considered people while mobs are animals or monsters or villagers. Everyone is simply a creature, with the same features and capabilities (to the best extent technically possible), the difference between players and AI minimized as much as possible. To better illustrate this, players spawn as ghosts and become ghosts when they die, and possess a mob in order to gain its body and features (species, appearance, etc). They can possess a person, a monster, or even animals like sheep or rats!

You can write your own creature settings as well as mods (modules) on top of Creatures, which offers a lot of code hooks and modding flexibility. The API is however still at the stage where it can undergo changes, so it's best to suggest features for the default creature set instead. In either case, I really think it's something Minetest users should try out and will enjoy at this stage.

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by pandaro » Post

I also believe that an efficient API for MOB is necessary, I also agree with a sensible planning their introduction:
first in many other parts minetest should be further improved, to give extreme stability and speed minetest.
When the rest of the complex system minetest will be completed, then it will be investigated what is the most efficient compromise for creatures within minetest.
I think there are at least two types of creatures needed to create different games and they should be able to be chosen by modders and server administrators:
stupid creatures (not using or use limited computational resources)
intelligent creatures (much more expensive)
not only survival games require intelligent creatures, games that require, for example, complex farming or trading may require very complex entity refined.
So there is the need for efficient API that can vacate the modders to introduce AI complex as they please.

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by Dragonop » Post

Oh man, you had to remember me the good old mobs from the 3.0...

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by 4aiman » Post

You know, I've longed for an C++ mobs API.

But now I'm sure that even if that *will* happen - I'll never get the AI *I* wanted all along.

Hoping to be able to provide some binaries (*.dll or *.so) is even more stupid as someone will definitely think that a dynamic library == security issue. Even if it will be Minetest that will call several functions from a library.


Thus I don't want API as such. Pathfinder, ground/air flags exposed to lua, animations selection, fast code for jumps or for being pushed back - having some of those as a part of AI (which is to be used in Lua) may be a good idea on the other hand.

Even if Lua isn't the best way to add any mobs, there's NO alternative to create AI/API that some certain person wants to create.

Having all that in mind I can say that I've became indifferent to mobs in default.
Not only I've created my own mobs.
I don't play minetest_game either.
I have my game which is not compatible with minetest_game (and is overlooked by many for that reason including it's mobs API) while simplemobs mod has become a standard of sorts and I'd rather not change that.
I can brag all I want about how cool my game and mobs are, but...
meh...
Everyone's free to guess why.


Those who can add a mod or use a custom game won't complain too much.

Those who can't...
My experience with android port showed me that it doesn't really matter whether mobs lag or not and how poor their AI is.
I don't think that adding a stupid mobs just for the sake of those who are too small/inexperienced to add a mod is worth doing it.


Those who want mobs in default should create a list of features that they want to have, like:
- breeding
- feeding
- projectile weapons
- flying/swimming mobs
- different attack procs
- XP drops
- items drop (which?) upon kill
- jumping over obstacles
- finding a clear view of a player for a distant attack
- exploding attacks
- environmental damage
- spawn rates control
- available animations
- collision box rotation
- disable collision box
- equip armour
etc.

Then that list should be broken in to 2 categories: C++ and Lua.
C++ goes into engine,
Lua becomes a part of builtin.

Some of those functions will require adoption of some mods like "3d_armor".
Chose wisely ;)

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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by Sokomine » Post

pandaro wrote: not only survival games require intelligent creatures, games that require, for example, complex farming or trading may require very complex entity refined.
Not really. Trading is pretty inexpensive regarding computation time as it only happens when a player clicks on a mob and wants to trade. If that takes a bit of time then, it's usually not an issue. It's more important to have efficient spawning of mobs (do we need to spawn another one right now? and if so, where? -> expensive) and optimized code at those places that get executed by all mobs every fraction of a second is usually more important.
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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by golthem » Post

My suggestion is that someone do run over of simple mobs making it fit in better with the default game (if that's possible ;) ). Perhaps tweaking the mobs themselves. Then bring that to the table and we can have this discussion.

My belief is that simple mobs has a "fake AI" that with the proper programming, could be put to pretty good use and at least that would give us a foundation to start perfecting.
Last edited by golthem on Wed Jul 01, 2015 15:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: About when will we get proper mobs in minetest?

by 4aiman » Post

@golthem
To better fit minetest_game mobs should be accompanied by 3d_armour and many other mods. w/o those I'd have to agree that mobs are needed only to slay smth.

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