Modding section

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rubenwardy
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Re: Modding section

by rubenwardy » Post

I would like to develop MMDB further, but I can't do that until iqualfragile makes his fixes. I could just do it anyway, but there would be a lot of conflicts to resolve if we change it independently.
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onpon4
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Re: Modding section

by onpon4 » Post

Apparently it's down now, so I can't check. But last time I did, MMDB allowed proprietary licenses. I think this is a bad policy. It makes recommending Minetest problematic for those of us who advocate free/libre software, because while Minetest itself might be libre, it would be happy to recommend non-libre software if it were uploaded to there. That no one seems to care about this problem[1] kind of makes me glad that MMDB is failing to catch on.

I seem to recall that MMDB also fails to distinguish between the license of the software (Lua code) and the license of the textures.

[1] https://bitbucket.org/iqualfragile/mmdb ... explicitly

Sokomine
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Re: Modding section

by Sokomine » Post

New people who are inexperienced regarding Minetest and just want to use it don't care about the liscence as long as they can use the mod. That ought to be no problem with any mod in the forum or database. As soon as someone gains intrest in modding and wants to change a particular mod, it's not beyound reason to assume that people in such a case might read the forum thread.
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Excalibur Zero
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Re: Modding section

by Excalibur Zero » Post

Sokomine wrote:
rubenwardy wrote: MMDB would be better than the wiki if it actually worked and was improved to at least have the functionality of "Minetest Extensions". (Minetest Extensions is the project that MMDB was based on / inspired by. It is in PHP rather than Python.
I've wished for automatic entries in MMDB as well for quite some time now. Even then, there will be one problem remaining: The sheer quantitude of mods. MMDB isn't designed to handle hundreds of mods - at least not the way it's designed right now. As long as mods have to be entered manually, very few will show up there, and players still have a chance of scrolling through. With all mods listed, there'll be a need for categories.

The current review system is of limited use. Few people write reviews. Perhaps listing which *games* use a particular mod might be more helpful. That could be done automaticly to a degree.
Since we're bringing up MMDB, I should probably mention something I tried working on before:
My idea was to use a python script to create a database file of sorts to store some basic info on mods, and then categorize them by the type of mod they were. Then another script would generate an html file out of the database file. While the project it's self may not be of much use, the conecpts behind it may help.

First, the system involved a person, or persons adding in the mods, thus freeing the restiction of only having the creator of the mod being able to add their mod.

Second, exact guidelines for the categorization of mods became a bit difficult to get straightened out, but bellow are the guidelines that were created for the project. The guidelines sytem the project used allowed mods to be classified under multiple categories, thus all that were applicable to the mod. While the individual guidelines could likely use some tweaking, I'd reccomend loking over them to see if it can help with the creation of a better categorization system.
Third, with some mods there are a bit unusal circumstances which make entering them into a system a bit difficult. While many mods depend on "default", not all of the mods that do so list such in the "depeds.txt" file, which could make determining the exact dependiencies of a mod a little more time consuming, as one would need to make sure that the mod in question doesn't truely depend on "default". Also, some mods use GitHub to store the code of the mod, which makes having some type of GitHub connectivity a good thing to add, however one should note that many mods do not use GitHub, and a few use other git repo storage sites like Gitorious.

Fourth, for mods, when it comes to licensing it can get a bit complicated. While some mods use on license outright for the entire mod, others have on license for the code, one for the textures, one fo the models, etc.. So it may not be a good idea to try to get and display the license of a mod, as there is not always just one license for a mod.

I don't know how much this info will help this discussion, but hopefully it might contribute a bit to the discussion.
Last edited by Excalibur Zero on Mon Aug 18, 2014 03:38, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Modding section

by prestidigitator » Post

Added to multiple categories? What, like wiki category tags or something? :-P

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Re: Modding section

by Sokomine » Post

Excalibur Zero wrote: My idea was to use a python script to create a database file of sorts to store some basic info on mods, and then categorize them by the type of mod they were. Then another script would generate an html file out of the database file. While the project it's self may not be of much use, the conecpts behind it may help.
It boils down to that, yes: A script that scans all posts, extracts whatever information it gains, and stores it for internal use. Categories would have to be assigned manually anyway. Mods with broken download links and deprecated mods would also have to be removed manually. With that data, a second script can create the entries for the wiki. I'm still hoping that sfan5 gets around to modernize his script that scans the posts in mod releases anyway.
Excalibur Zero wrote: Second, exact guidelines for the categorization of mods became a bit difficult to get straightened out, but bellow are the guidelines that were created for the project. The guidelines sytem the project used allowed mods to be classified under multiple categories, thus all that were applicable to the mod. While the individual guidelines could likely use some tweaking, I'd reccomend loking over them to see if it can help with the creation of a better categorization system.
I'm afraid your approach is too technical for now. New players have certain things in mind they want to be done by a mod - very commonly mobs, but also other things. My categorization system is based rather on usage of a mod than on technical aspects. The list may need extensions when more mods are analyzed and entered into the wiki, and I've started subcategories where that seems appropriate.
Excalibur Zero wrote: hile many mods depend on "default", not all of the mods that do so list such in the "depeds.txt" file, which could make determining the exact dependiencies of a mod a little more time consuming, as one would need to make sure that the mod in question doesn't truely depend on "default".
There was no need to depend on default for some time, and it wasn't required as a listed dependency on the forum in the past. Thus, many mods may miss that dependency. But that doesn't matter - dependencies are outright irrelevant at this stage. The goal of the cateogrization system is to give people a hint which mods may do what they're looking for - not to duplicate the forum as such. Further information on any mod can be found in the thread on the forum.
Excalibur Zero wrote: Fourth, for mods, when it comes to licensing it can get a bit complicated.
As I mentioned earlier, that's not a problem either. All liscenses allowed in this forum are permissive enough so that people can at least use the mods. If they want to tweak a mod or do something else with it, taking a look at the forum post is the least one might expect.

What I want do do is really only add categories and subcategories to fascilitate finding of mods.

For example, currently I'm looking for all mods that add trees in one way or another. Sure, there's moretrees, there's mg, there's tinytrees, bfd, Realtest....but there may be far more. And people looking for mob mods will never get a list of all mobs mods to select from if they ask on the forum - simply because nobody can remember them all.

Apart from the categorization as such, I also added short quotes explaining what mods do. These descriptions have to be searched manually in the text. A better way of linking them so that it becomes immediately obvious that it's a quote would be great. Perhaps with a "Read more" and a link to the entire posting might be nice.
A list of my mods can be found here.

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