@joe7575
Thank you for the quick answer and for the fix.
I do have one more specific question or call it request regarding your modpack but as this does fit the title it also is a general question coming from this.
Could you add compatibility for mods that alter world gen like "underground challenge" for example? I (as 'just a player') don't know how to do this properly. I have just changed the coalburner part from ironage of your modpack to accept any "group:cobble", but it obviously gets overridden every time I pull an updated version of your mod (maybe there is a way to avoid this, but there is the 'just a player' again...I would love to but can't learn all I need to ...git, lua, coding, in the best case 'everything'...for just playing a game).
I am able to do the really basic stuff like my own 'mod' where I just change some recipes or define new ones, where I override some crafting stuff in the way of "if mod 'a' is installed, change output of mod 'b' to this or that", but for anything more I am just to dumb/lazy/whatever. So changing your respective function outside of your mod is beyond my capabilities. The little I understand, local functions (variables, etc) are not meant to be accessed from outside, are they?
@all
However, to the general part. As a player who still prefers singleplayer games or multiplayer with just some real-life friends on a private server (yes, I guess I am quite an oldish person) I experience this kind of problems quite often... I tend to install 'just every mod' that sounds interesting and want to at least try it out.
There is lots of overlapping or conflicting recipes, lots of dependencies (optional often but not everytime) and generally the feeling of 'it does not really work'.
Custom made games (or servers) would of course remedy this but those are not the 'cure' for every type of player (and thus will not help the apparent wish of at least some involved in this game- see recurring and well visited threads- to make it appeal to a broader audience).
More examples I have from my own modded worlds (funny, isn't it? without modded there is no actual world, is it?) are mods that add
- foods ("bbq" e.g. optionally depends on "mobs_redo" and adjusts mob drops so that the cows drop 'bbq:beef', needed for burger patties.(not just the logical "standard:beef" or "group:meat". There are other mobs mods whose drops are not altered, though -- e.g. "petz" drops 'beef' anyways)
- farming systems ("crops" is a great mod (in my opinion) for those who like a slightly more challenging experience...but close to no farming or food mod supports it) - there is plenty of different mods and additions but they are not exactly "self-explanatory" compatible to each other.
- ores (not sure in this case but at least it is very likely that there is mods that need 'the own' iron/copper/tin, etc... for crafting [probably more the case when introducing ores that are not in the 'base game'] -- any silver is silver, is it?)
- trees (yes, I like mods like "hard_trees(_redo in my case)" ... I don't like that I have to (try to) make any new tree from mods being compatible with this system)
- tools, weapons (I like using "toolranks", I do have to add compatibility for every mod I want compatibility with this system...this is actually one of the cases I can do (again as 'just a player')...but it is not exactly making the system as a whole generally 'good')
- drinkables, edibles, heal-ables, 'dimensions', player condition changing stuff (again, there is lots of mods doing things like this...but they are not exactly 'compatible' in every case [in my case it's "thirsty" ...great mod for making survival harder (in the same regard "bewarethedark" and "tempsurvive" are what I can think of right now)] why does drinking orange juice from mod 'x' e.g. not refill my thirst? -- (group:is_drink...makes thirst go down) Why does drinking not help against overheating? -- (group:is_drink_cold...makes temperature go down))
I 'could' of course politely ask every single mod maintainer to add functionality 'I' need but wouldn't it be better if there was some general compatibility provided?
You know where I'm coming from, aren't you? Some sort of forge (that thing that makes Minecraft mods compatible with each other and makes it so much more convenient when installing LOTS of mods (which is kinda NOT optional here).
When I first understood that I'll need to mod the provided basics to a proper game I had a brief (like about 20 hours or so) look at the best resource available, the modding book by rubenwardy. If I remember correctly, there was a chapter (sub-chapter?) about groups. 'Ohh, great, if I do my first simple mod I can just add (for example my "mymod:spoon") to "group:weapons" and "group:tools" [and for being weird "group:cutlery"]...nope, no such groups. (The latest group not existing I DO understand, though). Hmmm, what is the talk about groups if there not even is groups (or I'm just to dumb to use them? as 'just a player' who needs to make this a game of course)
What about the 'obvious' groups like "is_stone", "is_cobble", "is_food", "is 'xyz special' food (beef from ANY mods' cow for example)", "is_tool", "is_weapon", "is_ore"...could repeat forever.
I don't know if it is actually feasible but I think it would greatly improve Minetest (and would make it more accessible to all the new players 'you' want (or don't want?) to address.
If the groups (advertised in the standard resource for modding) are not even present...why would anyone go further?
There are some (actually more than just some) libs-mods that (seem to) try to address this 'problem'...but as far as I know from lurking the forums and searching for mods there and on ContentDB (and on ingame mod browser) there is no common 'standard' till now. ("basic_materials" at least seems to be a common standard dpendency by now [why not make it a 'real' standard?])
Mod (a) comes with its own strict dependency (self developed mod, lib, stuff - that is 'obviously' better than the other mods, libs, stuff that do the same [ermm, maybe just from the 'just a player' 's point of view]: an api for changing players' physics, make e.g. magic potions alter some stuff for some amount of time, changing properties of armor, alter 'this or that'...each one is (may or may not be...how would 'just a player' be able to differentiate?) in its own use case better or worse than the others...)
I DO know that I'm pulling the lazy 'please do this stuff (for me)'. But I DO have an excuse: Minetest advertises itself as being 'so easily modded' to one's liking, doesn't it? Just make it possible. Not THAT hard (in my 'oh, cool, this is easily modable for everone, even those who don't know a s**t' opinion that the advertising made me believe).
But still, there is some threads and lots of posts making me think that there is enough people in some way or another involved in this project who would like it to be more attractive to, well, just more people/users/players.
