Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

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Sergey
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Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Sergey » Post

We need:

New name for game

Many words were already said about why current name is a crap. In short, "test" part implies we do not actually play game, but we test and debug. In other words, our game is not about digging dirt but about digging C/Lua code looking for bugs.
azekill_DIABLO wrote:Minetest name looks like a bad rip-off MC. Or maybe a buggy testing-only clone. If we really want to get a good popularity in gaming world, we should think to changing this names which no longer fits minetest. I'd like to know your point of view.
New names for mapgens

What names like v5, v6, v7 mean? What is it all about?
farooqkz wrote:It's more than 1 year that I'm playing Minetest and before this post I was thinking v5 (and now v6) is legacy!
First fail — consecutive numbers that imply it is version numbers of some program that is developing in time. BUT IT IS NOT. These numbers are just similar names of different independent programs.

Second fail — these names say absolutely nothing about what they are about. It is like program that read file would be named "x7", and other program that print current date would be called "a5". Nonsense.

New names for itemstrings

Example1:

Code: Select all

default:stonebrick
default:stone_block
Example2:

Code: Select all

default:jungletree
default:junglewood
default:jungleleaves
default:junglesapling

default:pine_tree
default:pine_wood
default:pine_needles
default:pine_sapling
Do we have to use underscores to separate words in compound expressions or not? Is it a requirement? Or let everybody name it as he pleases?

We need standard that developers must follow.

New API names

As paramat said, "node is just a junction point in 3D space".
sorcerykid wrote:
Sergey wrote:
paramat wrote:'Node' is a better word for a position in a world because what exists at a position is often not a 'block' or cubic.
Co-ordinates refer to the central point of the cube element, so 'node' as in a junction point in a lattice is a good word and better than something that suggests a volume.
So what is the sense of API function register_node?
Register what? Register point in 3D space? Register place of intersection of ribs of 3D grid?
I agree, if a node is a position in a 3d-lattice, then the function register_node( ) is a misnomer. Moreover, if a mapblock and a block are not the same, then why are mapblocks so often referred to simply as "blocks"?

It doesn't seem much forethought was put into certain terminology.
Redesigned API documentation

API is not well documented. Superficial and inconsistent description. For example, some specific function is described in the middle of the document (line 2348), but its parameters — at the bottom the document (line 4346). Besides, document itself is just a huge plain text file with no navigation through it.

API should represent a detailed wiki (like Python documentation as an example)
Linuxdirk wrote:At least the most common parts of the API are properly documented. But a lot of the "deeper" stuff has little to no documentation and for a lot of functions the documentation is outdated. Not to mention that the documentation file is not maintainable in a sane way.
sofar wrote:Plenty of examples that are legal to use code from
Because others fiddled around with the API and found a way to do certain things and not because it's properly documented.

The main issues of the modding API are the incompleteness (some things are simply not moddable in a proper way) and the partly outdated and/or incomplete documentation.
Redesigned main menu
Wuzzy wrote:Quick list of mistakes in current main menu design:

— Small default font (that's true for all of Minetest)
— Subgame banner is positioned incorrectly or disappears at 16:9 and other widescreen resolutions
— A lot of precious screen space is wasted for no reason
— As a result, some menus are extremely crammed especially at small resultions
— The controls menu is extremely outdated and also kinda broken
— Subgame selection is brain dead and unwieldy if you have tons of subgame like me so you have to use the scroll buttons
— Inherits all the problems from still officially experimental formspec API
— Settings menu needs reorganization, more of the important settings needs to be promoted the the main settings menu
— Mapgen settings must be set in advance in the deep advanced settings menu rather than at world creation. This is tedious
— Mapgens are called “v5”, “v6” and “v7” in main menu, suggesting that the first two mapgens are legacy
— No exit button
Besides developers, designer is needed, so everybody does what he should, and does not do extraneous things.

I suppose, right now MT developer is like a man-orchestra. This is not good. That's why the impressions of MT — not so much. And MT is not going to be as popular as MC.

• System to install/update/remove mods and texture packs

For example, in most GNU/Linux operating systems there is software manager that automatically works with corresponding repositories. Why not implement similar system in MT? It is very convenient!

For example, I could view all available mods right in the game's window — view them, read about them, preview screenshot and, of course, install them with one click (it automatically downloads archive from forum or github, unpack it, and create necessary folder where it should).

Analogously, I could uninstall any mod I have with one click.

This manager should also automatically update installed mods if there are new versions of them.

New forum engine

Talking about forum I would like to be able to:
— like (vote up) post
— dislike (vote down) post
— report post
— use hashtags (make words as keywords) to search for all posts containing them
— scroll down instead of pagination
— sort posts and topics by different criteria (by time (old/new first), by votes (more useful first), and so on)
— delete my post if nobody replied to it

There are already complaints about lack of +1 button that cause stream of unnecessary posts like "thanks", "good job", "+1",… in which helpful and informative posts are simply lost.

I also want voting system for posts and especially for topics. If I want to know what mods are most polular or just best, I could sort topics by rating in descending order. And all popular mods will be right here at the top of the page. No need to scroll, paginate, read what they are all about. Same for texture packs.
texmex wrote:phpBB was written in the year 2000 and with the online discussion design paradigms of that time. 17 years later, here we are. Admins could start by bringing the forum software up to modern standards. Other than just the greater user experience an upgrade would bring is the fact that most forum developers will or have already jumped ship on the old forum softwares. That makes development of those slow to a crawl while expectations of a forum experience continues to rise, security threats become more sophisticated and so on. Sooner or later they're going to have to switch anyway.

Discourse is great, fast, open source and has migration from phpBB. See the Illuna forum for reference. There's a great amount of addons as well, tags for instance. Just look at how everyone is using ad-hoc [tags] in post titles already. Or enabling users to easily log in with their Github account, improving onboarding. Or mod threads could reference to their Github repo issues. In short, there's a lot you can do with it.
__________________________________________________

WE NEED REVOLUTION
Last edited by Sergey on Tue Sep 19, 2017 02:23, edited 41 times in total.

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sorcerykid
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Re: Minetest roadmap from my point of view

by sorcerykid » Post

The good news is, a naming convention has been established, and it is documented in the API. Unfortunately, for backwards compatibility some legacy items are still non-standardized. This could probably be rectified with aliases.

Universal naming convention for nodes?

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rubenwardy
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Re: Minetest roadmap from my point of view

by rubenwardy » Post

It's hardly a roadmap if you're not going to work on it, and developers aren't bound by it :P

Mostly good points though
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Sergey
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Re: Minetest roadmap from my point of view

by Sergey » Post

rubenwardy wrote:It's hardly a roadmap if you're not going to work on it, and developers aren't bound by it :P
Mostly good points though
It's not so important how to name these thoughts. The content is important.

OK, I changed topic name and made some additions and corrections to the first post.

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sorcerykid
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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by sorcerykid » Post

One of my biggest pet peeves with the forum is the inability to edit threads that have been abandoned by the original poster. This is mostly a concern in the case of mods and servers that change hands or that have multiple authors.

It kind of undermines the utility of the forum if the people responsible for the continued development or maintenance of these community resources do not even have the ability to update the published listings of those same resources.

u19503

Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by u19503 » Post

Sergey you forgot a inportant One being able to remove your own comments on the forum wuld be so nice :)

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Peppy » Post

When I launch Minetest, the first thing I do is muting the game's sound.
I should not have to do that !

Short version:
Most sounds and their volume levels are really bad.

Long version:
  • Most digging sounds are too loud thus not allowing any other subtle sound.
  • Most sounds are too percussive. (play with headphones, walk on obsidian glass...)
  • Most sounds are harsh.
  • Most footsteps are bad.(did you put your stone/wooden shoes today ?)
  • Ever thought "oh no, not that bird again..." at dawn ?(I can't hear it anymore, was a mod maybe, or someone shoot the bird :)
  • ...
  • [add yours here]
Sergey wrote: Besides developers, designer is needed, so everybody does what he should, and does not do extraneous things.
Indeed !

[Edit] Just to clarify, this post is not meant to be offending !
I just feel that most of the sounds once where placeholders, then were kept (maybe because of lack of time, skills, licensing issues ... ).

Sorry for bad English.

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Sergey
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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Sergey » Post

Сontinuation…

Rational use of heights

If we have 64km of world height, then it would be better to have 2km high (max) above sea level and 62km deep underground.

Have you ever seen any mountain or building ~30km high? The hightest montain I was on is about 200m (valleys mapgen). Maybe with other mapgen(s) mountains can be higher ~ 500m. OK, there are also floatlands at about 1km high. That's it.

The underworld must be more interesting and change depending on how deep you dig. Some people already stated that deeper than 1km (1024 nodes) it becomes boring because nothing new and interesting happens.

So higher than some height it is deadly boring because THERE IS JUST NOTHING.
And deeper than 1km it is boring because nothing new happens.

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Wuzzy » Post

New name for game:

No, this is not needed and the whole renaming thread is a waste of time. Minetest is not a game, it's a game engine. Many game engines have silly names. Want some examples? GoldSrc, Source, ioquake3, FLARE, BRender, Cube 2, Build Engine, LÖVE, ClanLib. Does the list start to look weird when you add “Minetest” to it? I don't think so.
You should complain about the names of subgames, e.g. “Minetest Game”.

New names for mapgens:
Agreed, we discussed this at length. We are still looking for new names, but some good suggestions have been made.

New names for itemstrings:
I almost couldn't care less. The problem with itemstrings is, once they are assigned, they are hard to change. Whenever you change them, you will break things. Aliases are not always the solution. The itemstrings will probably never be changed in Minetest Game. Also, note that itemstrings were never supposed to be user-friendly, they are only supposed to be used as identifiers, primarily for developers.
I only see a need for action when an itemstring is completely misleading, like “example:water” for lava.
But I agree, a standard for naming itemstrings would be nice. Too bad there is none.

New API names:
I couldn't care less. I don't see a need to change the names. All terms are well-defined, so what's the problem? The player is usually not bothered with these terms. And the developers are usually smart enough to understand them. The people who complain are a very small minority.

Redesigned API documentation:
The biggest problem now that the API documentation is incomplete and sometimes plain wrong. I opened several issues about this. This must be top priority when you want to improve API documentation.
The organization is still an issue, but should have a lower priority. The problem is the lack of automated tools. It would be MUCH better if the documentation is generated by tools.
There should be a new development policy (if it isn't already in place): If you add a new features to the Lua API you also MUST add documentation for it. If this principle is not followed strictly, the documentation will just degrade over time.

Redesigned main menu:
I fully agree. I planned to eventually post a new design of the main menu. I'm not really an UI designer, but I've played hundreds of games myselves and making a game main menu isn't actually that hard. I already have a rough idea, but I need to flesh it out and I plan to post it someday.
Freeminer seems to be like a good source of inspiration, but it's not the only one.

System to install/update/remove mods and texture packs:
You forgot subgames in your list.

New forum engine:
I almost couldn't care less. But I am vehemently opposed to switching to Discourse. Discourse is garbage. Discourse is completely broken if JavaScript is disabled.

Rational use of heights:
I'm not really sure about moving the origin. I am quite used to the fact that the world origin is at ca. (0,0,0). The fact that that in the sky there is nothing is simply a failure of all subgames. Request birds and sky monsters to be added.

The fact that after ca. 1000 nodes below everything repeats forever is only a Minetest Game problem. So I couldn't care less. :P
Feel free to suggest a different subgame with a different concept of the underground. I think many subgames have a boring or very boring underground; the “mine” part of “Minetest” is still very much underappreciated yet. Even in Minecraft, the underground is really, really basic.
What I would really love to see is an underground with many different stones of varying hardness. Something like biomes, but in 3D and with stones. Something like Dwarf Fortress. This would completely revolutionize digging.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the forum is the inability to edit threads that have been abandoned by the original poster. This is mostly a concern in the case of mods and servers that change hands or that have multiple authors.
Make an announcement in the legacy thread, then request the old thread to be closed or moved to the Old Something forum, then open a new thread. Problem solved!
Sergey you forgot a inportant One being able to remove your own comments on the forum wuld be so nice :)
Think before you post. Problem solved!

I dislike the notion of self-censorship.

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paramat
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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by paramat » Post

Hehe 'Book of complaints' there is enough for a book.
Most of this is dealt with in the linked topics or at Github, a topic of links is not very useful, please comment in the existing threads.

> Do we have to use underscores to separate words in compound expressions or not? Is it a requirement? Or let everybody name it as he pleases?
We need standard that developers must follow.

I've explained the inconsistency already and you missed the comment at the top of the document:

Code: Select all

--[[ Node name convention:
Although many node names are in combined-word form, the required form for new
node names is words separated by underscores. If both forms are used in written
language (for example pinewood and pine wood) the underscore form should be used.
--]]
> If we have 64km of world height, then it would be better to have 2km high (max) above sea level and 62km deep underground.

You are free to move surface level to y = 29000 if you want, by using settings and a mod to re-register biomes, decorations and ores.

Also i feel you don't have enough requests in this thread, please add more as we are sitting around with nothing to do.

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Wolfshippie » Post

Sergey wrote:[...]
New forum engine

Talking about forum I would like to be able to:
— like (vote up) post
— dislike (vote down) post
— report post
— use hashtags (make words as keywords) to search for all posts containing them
— scroll down instead of pagination
— sort posts and topics by different criteria (by time (old/new first), by votes (more useful first), and so on)
— delete my post if nobody replied to it
[...]
I suggest search feature in the member list.
Yes, there is Ctrl + F, but this doesn't work, cause if there are more than one pages this option works only on the one you are at the moment.

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Punk » Post

Sergey wrote:WE NEED REVOLUTION
No more Holodomor, please!

__________________________________________________


If I suggest original game with survival mode, would the devs become angry?
When I play too much Minetest I get bored soon, lacking a purpose in original game, perhaps survival. Or should all this things based only on mods?

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Punk » Post

Can itemstrings use numeric codes?

I like v# names, is simple.
Talking about forum I would like to be able to:
— like (vote up) post
— dislike (vote down) post
— use hashtags (make words as keywords) to search for all posts containing them
Forum is so old school, this new features is much social network bullshit.

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by Wolfshippie » Post

Punk wrote:
Talking about forum I would like to be able to:
— like (vote up) post
— dislike (vote down) post
— use hashtags (make words as keywords) to search for all posts containing them
Forum is so old school, this new features is much social network bullshit.
I think the upvote/like feature would be cool. So everybody can express his excitement without "+1"-spamming.
And keywords for the first post of a thread would be useful too if not abused (for example by keyword spamming).

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by william341 » Post

Seriously. The UI is a big problem. I love minetest but I can't stand the UI and my friends refuse to use it because the UI looks like it was from 2002 and looks like a test UI that's just there because the development has just started. I can't stand how the health bar goes way to the left for no good reason and there's so much wasted space. The fonts are way to small for the buttons and the gradients. The gradients. WHY. It really makes the UI look like it was made and then left to rot.

The worst part is that 4 years ago the UI was fine, it didn't look *good* per say but it wasn't unbearable.

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by azekill_DIABLO » Post

Good !I a gree to all of this sergey. I hope the devs will fix that in the future.
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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by BBmine » Post

Perhaps rather than complaining we could try to fix it :) There's a reason Minetest is open source ;)

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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by azekill_DIABLO » Post

I hate when BBmine is true. I feel dumb. xD
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Re: Minetest book of complaints and suggestions

by sorcerykid » Post

Wuzzy wrote:
One of my biggest pet peeves with the forum is the inability to edit threads that have been abandoned by the original poster. This is mostly a concern in the case of mods and servers that change hands or that have multiple authors.
Make an announcement in the legacy thread, then request the old thread to be closed or moved to the Old Something forum, then open a new thread. Problem solved!
There isn't an "Old Something Forum". Moreover, the original topic stills contains a lot of valuable information. It is neither sensible nor reasonable to begin an entirely new discussion only because one post is outdated.

Come to think of it, doesn't phpBB 3.0 have an option for changing post authors in the moderator control panel?

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &p=4021455
Peppy wrote:When I launch Minetest, the first thing I do is muting the game's sound. I should not have to do that !
I completely agree, the audio clips are next to unbearable. When I first began playing Minetest, the poor sound quality (walking on glass and metal, for example) always struck me as completely out of place in comparison to the detailed textures, models, etc. Sadly, there really hasn't been much improvement in the use of audio for any aspect of gameplay other than swimming.

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