Failure to Thrive

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SegFault22
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Failure to Thrive

by SegFault22 » Post

Minetest has fallen short of the growth expectations curve. It seems that the version number has grown at a faster rate than the game itself. The community has changed a lot. Many of the original crowd are gone for various reasons. Some have remained loyal to the project. However there are those who seek power to control others, and they have made their mark on us all. The type that want to shut you down completely, if they don't like you or don't agree with you. Nothing upsets them more than the inability to control others. The people know that a ruler has no power without people to rule. Fragmentation is the result, as the people go find a place they can have their freedom and be comfortable. People want freedom, so there is a natural attraction towards freedom and repulsion away from tyrants.

Once the underlying problem is fixed, there will not be an immediate recovery of the growth rate. Significant damage has already been done to the public image. Those who are irresponsible, have abused their privileges to get what they want instead of what is right. They know who they are and what they have done, as they have done it for all to see; there is no need to call them out individually, they will continue to do that for us automatically.

There is great hope but it remains to be seen if there is enough combined will among the community to get past this hurdle at this point in time. Greater challenges await, what would make the insurmountable seem like a cake walk.

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ROllerozxa
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Re: Failure to Thrive

by ROllerozxa » Post

SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
Minetest has fallen short of the growth expectations curve. It seems that the version number has grown at a faster rate than the game itself. Minetest has fallen short of the growth expectations curve.
According to who?

In many ways Minetest is better than ever now. The engine is ever-improving and has become better graphically and performance-wise, there are a lot of different games to play, and thousands of mods at your disposal (with varying game compatibility). In many ways it is thriving, and for every misstep Mojangcrosoft takes and for every Minecraft YouTuber that makes a video about the Minetest platform we get an influx of new players, some of which who stick around.

Also, I'm sorry, but the rest of your post just feels like AI-generated drivel.

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cx384
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Re: Failure to Thrive

by cx384 » Post

SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
Minetest has fallen short of the growth expectations curve. It seems that the version number has grown at a faster rate than the game itself.
To me it feels like there were some grow bursts in the last six years and version number are just numbers.
Minetest could grow faster, but I don't think it is growing particularly slow
SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
The community has changed a lot. Many of the original crowd are gone for various reasons. Some have remained loyal to the project.
This is true, but the community will change all the time. It is even more true when a project grows.
SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
However there are those who seek power to control others, and they have made their mark on us all. The type that want to shut you down completely, if they don't like you or don't agree with you. Nothing upsets them more than the inability to control others. The people know that a ruler has no power without people to rule. Fragmentation is the result, as the people go find a place they can have their freedom and be comfortable. People want freedom, so there is a natural attraction towards freedom and repulsion away from tyrants.
The minetest community indeed feels more fragmented nowadays.
SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
Significant damage has already been done to the public image.
How did the public image of minetest get damaged?
Can you name something concrete, without calling someone out?
Maybe I missed this.
SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
There is great hope but it remains to be seen if there is enough combined will among the community to get past this hurdle at this point in time. Greater challenges await, what would make the insurmountable seem like a cake walk.
Do you have any suggestions how this could be solved? A change in the distribution of power? More involvement of non-rulers?
It feels like an identity politics problem, which may arose from the recent proposal to rename minetest.
Can your read this?

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LRV
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Re: Failure to Thrive

by LRV » Post

ROllerozxa wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 17:52
Also, I'm sorry, but the rest of your post just feels like AI-generated drivel.
I'm concerned about the recent tendencies to dismiss people's posts as auto-generated.
cx384 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 19:23
The minetest community indeed feels more fragmented nowadays.
This is due to the project failing it's purpose to be a general use engine.
CSM, removal of certain irrlicht code, insufficient serverlist moderation, incompatibility between 0.4.x and 5.x and other things have led to people refusing to participate in the mainstream MT community and created splinter groups.
Many long-term and trusted users have done this, and I wouldn't rule out the fault lies with unwise decisions by the core devs.
cx384 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 19:23
SegFault22 wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 16:07
Significant damage has already been done to the public image.
How did the public image of minetest get damaged?
Can you name something concrete, without calling someone out?
Maybe I missed this.
There was a lot of drama about pornographic MT-servers recently and to what extent they should be censored.
Many posts regarding this topic were taken down though because discussions soon became unconstructive.
This is a cool signature. :)

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Blockhead
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Re: Failure to Thrive

by Blockhead » Post

I know you're probably upset Minetest hasn't seen rapid growth since your return from hiatus (at least on the forums) in 2016/17, but between 0.4.16 and the present 5.8.0-dev, I think nobody can dispute just how far Minetest has come, even if it hasn't gotten some of the huge wishlist items like larger worlds, client-side modding, VoxelAreaEntities and so on.

Here are some of my personal highlights:
  • ContentDB. 'nuff said.
  • Carpathian mapgen, and a number of quite nice external generators.
  • Client-side translation.
  • Custom player collision boxes and rotating entities in all 3 axes.
  • More options for databases engines for authentication and mod storage.
  • A number of important security updates, especially in 5.3
  • Better default keybinds for minimap and camera, and more keybinds like autoforward and pitch move.
  • The /help formspec instead of just chat feedback.
  • A much better built-in vector library instead of mods.
  • Model shading for entities. This took a lot of entities from really ugly to quite beautiful.
  • A much better semitransparent block renderer with depth sorting.
  • zstd block compression for smaller worlds.
  • Addition of the Lua bitop library.
  • Sky API improvements like tilt, colour, stars and so on.
  • You can finally have more than one copy of a mod installed inside different modpacks, and it uses paths instead of true/false.
  • ~ syntax which makes commands like /teleport capable of relative offsets instead of absolutes.
  • Async job runners. Actual multi-core modding. It has its limitations, but the potential is quite high. Few if any people have actually realised the potential of this feature yet.
  • Massive performance gains on systems with good CPUs and GPUs so they can render much longer view distances smoothly - finally using the GPU properly.
  • Also performance gains on servers by occlusion culling sent mapblocks.
  • Dynamic shadows, bloom, exposure correction. Minetest has never looked better.
And there's still more to come in 5.8 like the settings menu improvements and more texture modifiers. Minetest is more moddable and more configurable than ever. Can you tell us: What are you actually missing, and why do you think that's being held up or blocked? That's better than grumbling.
/˳˳_˳˳]_[˳˳_˳˳]_[˳˳_˳˳\ Advtrains enthusiast | My map: Noah's Railyard | My Content on ContentDB ✝️♂

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recluse4615
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Re: Failure to Thrive

by recluse4615 » Post

imo, minetest will continue to be a "toy for nerds" (respectfully) until there's an actual success

ironically, the type of experiences being made at the moment over in MC are experiences that would work SO well on minetest. having control over everything from nodes to functionality to ui within a server itself makes it, on paper, a far more attractive platform than MC.

i know most people are "fine" with the community being smaller and fairly static but it definitely puts a damper on newer developers looking to create cool stuff - only a tiny handful will even look at your work!

minetest is great to play around with as a developer, but it really does lack a "hook" for regular players imo. most servers are broadly speaking mod soup and everything else is just trying to copy MC so hard that you may as well just crack the damn thing for a better experience.

also - the chat is at the top, that really bugs me, there's a reason most games put chat in the lower-middle left hand side of the screen

minetest is a few good tweaks and hook games/servers away from exploding in popularity, it's just finding people to do that and start spinning off for "marketing" purposes

(this prolly got a bit off topic oops)

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Re: Failure to Thrive

by SuperStarSonic » Post

recluse4615 wrote:
Thu Jun 15, 2023 00:19
also - the chat is at the top, that really bugs me, there's a reason most games put chat in the lower-middle left hand side of the screen
This functionality comes from the earlier days of console log, if you use 0AD you will know it uses a console log system that is similar.

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