Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

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Yvanhoe
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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by Yvanhoe » Post

That's a good example to think about what you want people to be able to do with your mods.

I know that I would be annoyed if someone took my mod, incorporated it into a closed mod/game and refused to release the modifications they made. This is what the WTFPL, MIT, CC-BY allow. And to some extent, LGPL and CC-BY-SA as well (you can incorporate them into closed games, you just have to release the modifications to your mod).

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by jp » Post

Yvanhoe wrote:That's a good example to think about what you want people to be able to do with your mods.
No, this isn't a good example. The kidsbot has been made from scratch and it is vastly superior to whatever bot you can find on Minetest.

We do use LGPL or MIT mods and they remain open-source.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by TumeniNodes » Post

I have always found it slightly amusing, that so many who claim to be staunch supporters of all that is the open source community, and the freedom it stands for, become so upset when someone uses the very licenses created from that community in a manner which they do not approve... even when it is a manner which is highly permitted within the license itself.
I've seen it many times over the years, and it is nothing short of hypocritical.
For those who are not aware, some improvements have been ported upstream to Minetest from this project.

This is useless and, I will say it, "childish" bickering over something which is fully permitted.
If you support the freedoms of the open source community, you support all those freedoms, whether you like them or not.
And this aspect has now already been exhausted, and is straying off the topic.

Full support is offered by professionals from the project, and tbh I do not see any problems related to the part of the code in question here... because there is no problem.
It's a good project, and has been making good strides... should be rather congratulating it, and even a bit proud.

Working with education systems related to software is a cut throat business... you have to have some sort of an edge or something unique to provide. Kidsbot... is that unique, edge.
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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by texmex » Post

For my part I was simply curious about it. I mostly agree with Tumeni.

And so, another day, another topic derailed.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by Yvanhoe » Post

I am not saying that kidsbot is being evil, and I am totally agreeing that what they are doing is 100% legal. I am simply warning mod writers that this is a good thing to keep in mind when choosing a license: you are agreeing with your code being part of things like kidsbot.

I am writing software for a living, both open and closed, under various licenses. I have no problem with either and I am very happy when in a proprietary project I stumble upon an MIT lib that I can integrate directly into my code. It is just that too often I have found open source contributors surprised to discover their MIT/BSD content integrated into a closed source software.

And I think that more people should be aware of the Affero GPL. Technically today you can host a modified GPL server without sharing your modifications.

I am starting to write mods during my free time because I think minetest is great as a free game. I do not want it to be part of a commercial suite, otherwise I'd just mod minecraft. I understand other people do not mind, I just do and I think a lot of the people choosing liberal licenses do not realize the rights they give away.

I say Kidsbot is good to give as an example because then you can say "if you are ok with what they are doing, then the license you are using is fine. If you are not, consider something more protective."

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by runs » Post

Minecraft was 'boring' till v1.7.3...

Minetest is not boring, is simply imperfect, still.

"kidsbot" is a propietary mod. They have all the rights to protect it.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by Yvanhoe » Post

If one finds minetest boring, try the digtron and its boring machines! You wont get bored!

More seriously, I see Minetest and its mods as an awesome toolbox to design cool games. Minetest_game is a bit more of a demo of stable mods than a complete game.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by burli » Post

Red_King_Cyclops wrote:Although Minetest was made to be an engine for mods...
That's one point where I've been running into trouble lately. Randomly downloaded mods and, even more trouble, modpacks.

I have downloaded some mods and modpacks via contentdb. I didn't pay attention and downloaded the Dreambuilder Modpack. Because some mods were doubled or even tripled, nothing worked anymore. I couldn't load and use any more mods.

I think that downloading and using mods and modpacks "on the fly" is a big problem and leads to confusion and trouble. It's handy if you want to test something, but creating serious maps with it is a bad idea. It would be better to use the main menu to create subgames, each with its own mods, rather than simply extending a map with mods from a common mod pool.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by burli » Post

burli wrote:I don't think I'll make any more contributions to Minetest, because all the work isn't worth it if it doesn't get any credit.
As mentioned I don't want to make any contributions to Minetest, but mostly because I reached the limits of Lua and the Minetest engine itself and I'm not able (and willing) to write code in C++.

I will focus on Rust because I think this language will grow in the near future. It is amazing how easy it is to create and manage projects, but because the language is so different to most other languages it is not easy to learn. But I think it's worth it. It's almost impossible to write insecure code because the compiler won't allow it, unless you want it, and you can write software with the same performance as C or C++.

these days learning C++ feels like milking a dead cow. Even Microsoft thinks about using Rust instead of C++

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by texmex » Post

Ooh, perhaps Veloren can be of interest then: https://github.com/veloren/veloren

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by burli » Post

Interesting. Will try it. But I'm far away to contribute to such a project

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by Crystalwarrior » Post

Hey everyone, my first post on this forum after a bunch of lurking and curiosity exploring this Minetest project.
elfang wrote:
Wed Jul 03, 2019 00:22
Shouldn't gameplay be the focus here? And not just the things you can do, but how it all feels. In Minecraft, everything is fine-tuned to have a specific mood to it: dropped entities float, the sounds blend well, options for basically everything. I think the biggest part of having a fine-tuned game is, well, fine-tuning it so everything just works with minimal bugs and minimal unexpected behavior. I think that before content (apart from the base) there needs to be some kind of a plan that brings the whole game together as one cohesive unit, rather than several choppy components. Otherwise players just won't know how to feel about it.

That's just my one cents though.
You are 100% correct, that's exactly how I was feeling when I was first looking into Minetest. Here's how it went, really:
Spoiler
I discover Minetest by googling "open source minecraft clones" interested in how far each project went. Minetest was the most popular result, and it seems to have the healthiest multiplayer community, at least numbers-wise. I download and install the thing, and notice that there is no tutorial - the custom content is heavily advertised though, so I figured the game is designed for more user customizability. I have past experience with a game called Blockland which was basically Gmod with lego bricks, and I've been a prominent modder there.
Anyway, once I looked through the content DB, I find the tutorial, and I find a bunch of games that seem to be designed for survival. Voxelgarden, MineClone 2, Repixture, Tutorial and Voxel Dungeon (pixel dungeon clone) are what I found.
Voxel Dungeon was the first modded game I tried running, but it didn't work out - seemed buggy and I couldn't get it to run. I also spawned into a world where I infinitely fell to the ground and died on bedrock to fall damage constantly. Fair enough, description provided information that it was strictly alpha and WIP, though it wasn't categorized as such as there was no "wip projects" category or labels (or maybe I missed that?) so I would understand if someone was confused.
Next I try out Minetest Game... and, similar bedrock issue, except this time there is no bedrock - I fall infinitely into the world.
Voxelgarden had the same issue, so it just left me confused why was I unable to play in Single-Player, period.
I decide to give multiplayer a shot - it just leaves me even more confused, most servers I tried out lack much cohesion and it's definitely not user-friendly what you're "supposed" to do (some servers even lack the rules they claim to have!!)

Honestly, I uninstalled the game at this point and looked at alternatives. But from what I've searched, none of the other alternatives even had a multiplayer scene - other open source projects were barren, dead in the water, etc. with rarely any activity going on.

Back to Minetest it was. Turns out the reason why I was falling in the void is because I had "single node" setting in the world generation. Nice. This was an extremely annoying discovery, as there is zero communication how generation modes work, which generation mode I *should* be using by default, and I'm baffled why the mode that removes the world is somehow the default one. The only reason I knew to pick v7 world gen is because people mostly recommended v6 one... so I figured v7 stands for "latest version of the world gen". I had to put my detective thinking cap to reach this conclusion lol.

Finally I get MTG running and I start exploring the worldgen. This is the very first major positive of the game for me, the worldgen is incredbile. I love how there's no restrictions when it comes to "vertical chunks" - the most annoying artificial limitation of Minecraft for me. I start digging deep and discovering more materials, applying basic Minecraft knowledge to learn how to smelt stuff. Crafting interface was also familiar due to MC knowledge. I dig deeper and deeper until I decide to kms and return to the surface, doing more exploring, seeing how survival fares... I realized there's no mobs or any dangers of any kind, which resulted in a quick "oh" kind of realization. Nevertheless I crank out Creative mode on the same world, get myself a bunch of TNT and start exploding it down and down, going as deep as possible.

I'll chalk this up as another major highlight of the engine - I experienced extremely good performance despite dozens of TNT exploding at a time! I thought this was a pretty amazing achievement, especially using Minecraft as an anchor of comparison with this game. After that, I got other modes to work, and besides these two major highlights, everything else is a giant mixed bag.

I guess with Repixture, the biggest highlight for me was the crafting system and how it's a new and unique take. I would enjoy someone using that sort of crafting for their games as well as it massively streamlines the process and removes the need to constantly look up recipes on the wiki or in-game.
Brief history of my visit to Minetest aside, I will outline my current criticisms of the project. I was lurking on the forums and doing some minor research about the general community sentiment as well out of curiosity. I won't claim my opinion is unbiased but I had zero knowledge of Minetest's existence before the past week. Anyway, here goes:
Spoiler
1. It's undeniable that this project is inaccessible to newer players who would randomly stumble on the project and discover it on their own terms. I will also disagree with blaming the new players, as it is unreasonable to expect every single interested party to do the amount of effort and research I did - even I got frustrated and deinstalled the project despite possessing background knowledge in programming etc. at one point.
2. The game lacks polish, which is understandable for an open-source hobby project, but as my point of reference will be Minecraft and that's the thing I will be most familiar with, I will at the very least compare Minetest at the sound design, user interface and graphical standpoints. Minetest has the performance advantage, but I sadly couldn't find something I would consider extremely cohesive in its artistic vision and something that would be very pleasant on the ears. Repixture is visually cohesive and I appreciate that, but it lacks the polish in the sound department. Minetest Game leaves a very poor impression with its coder sprites and some jarring sound effects (like the glass footstep sounds are pretty annoying, and the swimming sfx last a bit too long for each individual splash.)
3. Lack of engine-side mob support is a huge downside, as it requires mod makers to use slower Lua to implement such features on their own. Mineclone 2 is my point of reference with this one, as it does have an impressive amount of effort put into it and is one of the most fleshed out gamemodes I checked out so far (I didn't give Voxelgarden that long of a try, though).. But the mobs suffer greatly. They're attracted to pools of water, damage and knockback effects are extremely weird, and every time I fight those guys it feels like I'm playing on a multiplayer server with 300 ping. It's bizarre how I experience latency in single-player, one time I hit a wolf and its model zipped to the sky until it was interpolated back to the position it was supposed to be in. Though Mineclone 2 also mentions that the mobs are in extreme alpha, so perhaps Lua is not as underperforming as I assume it is.
4. Minetest Game being the "standard gamemode" in multiplayer is pretty annoying. I would love to try out the numerous games on the content DB online, but *none of the servers* even run those! None that have players, at least! All I see is Minetest Game with mods. PVP feels really silly and stupid, too, as there's nothing visible on your playermodel when you carry an item - which I also discovered there's a mod to resolve that. Minetest Game feels clunky as the "core basis" of the engine, and perhaps more effort should be put into polishing what's already there with MTG instead of the sentiment expressed to remove it entirely (not as feasible of an idea anymore if that's the only thing keeping multiplayer alive.)
First impressions, folks, that's my honest two cents in the whole debate. Opinions may change, and I may even support the project in some form in the future, but that's how it went for me :)

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by sfan5 » Post

Crystalwarrior wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 12:08
Voxel Dungeon was the first modded game I tried running, but it didn't work out - seemed buggy and I couldn't get it to run. I also spawned into a world where I infinitely fell to the ground and died on bedrock to fall damage constantly. Fair enough, description provided information that it was strictly alpha and WIP, though it wasn't categorized as such as there was no "wip projects" category or labels (or maybe I missed that?) so I would understand if someone was confused.
Next I try out Minetest Game... and, similar bedrock issue, except this time there is no bedrock - I fall infinitely into the world. [...]
I'm baffled why the mode that removes the world is somehow the default one. The only reason I knew to pick v7 world gen is because people mostly recommended v6 one... so I figured v7 stands for "latest version of the world gen". I had to put my detective thinking cap to reach this conclusion lol.
It's obvious that this should not have happened but let me elaborate on the reasons:

The default generator is indeed not the one that gives you an endless void, it's v7.
The reason that singlenode was the default for you is that a game or mod you were running previously (perhaps Voxel Dungeon?) set it like that.
There's two problems here:
1) Games are not supposed to do this. Since 2 years there is an API to gracefully steer the user to the right generator in the world creation dialog.
2) Once set, the generator persists and applies when you create a new world.
1 is a solved problem if mods/games do what they're supposed to do, 2 is yet unsolved today.
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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Mine

by Crystalwarrior » Post

sfan5 wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 12:53
Crystalwarrior wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 12:08
Voxel Dungeon was the first modded game I tried running, but it didn't work out - seemed buggy and I couldn't get it to run. I also spawned into a world where I infinitely fell to the ground and died on bedrock to fall damage constantly. Fair enough, description provided information that it was strictly alpha and WIP, though it wasn't categorized as such as there was no "wip projects" category or labels (or maybe I missed that?) so I would understand if someone was confused.
Next I try out Minetest Game... and, similar bedrock issue, except this time there is no bedrock - I fall infinitely into the world. [...]
I'm baffled why the mode that removes the world is somehow the default one. The only reason I knew to pick v7 world gen is because people mostly recommended v6 one... so I figured v7 stands for "latest version of the world gen". I had to put my detective thinking cap to reach this conclusion lol.
It's obvious that this should not have happened but let me elaborate on the reasons:

The default generator is indeed not the one that gives you an endless void, it's v7.
The reason that singlenode was the default for you is that a game or mod you were running previously (perhaps Voxel Dungeon?) set it like that.
There's two problems here:
1) Games are not supposed to do this. Since 2 years there is an API to gracefully steer the user to the right generator in the world creation dialog.
2) Once set, the generator persists and applies when you create a new world.
1 is a solved problem if mods/games do what they're supposed to do, 2 is yet unsolved today.
Hmm, makes sense, because when I reinstalled the game after deinstalling it, it *was* set to v7 now that I recall.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

by chojin » Post

Just installed MT a week ago, visited it a few times in the past and now read this topic, so I wanted to add my two cents.
Spoiler
The background of why I'm trying MT again is that my 9y old son is currently hooked up to Minecraft (outdated PS3 version) for a while now, but in the current pandemic lockdown, he longs to play it with friends whom he can't meet IRL at the moment.. But some of those friends don't own a copy of MC, or use MC on PC which is not compatible with the no longer supported PS3 version we own.. Soo.. I though, I can set up a MT server where he and his friends can easily join up to without the precondition that everyone needs a paid for compatible MC game..

So I installed MT. I knew it from past short explorations of the project. I also thought the vast worlds it spawned me in where breathtaking, loved the 'infinity' of the world, but also lacked real gameplay. So I knew I had to install mods to it so that it would be attractive to those kids (with short attention spans). But I also remembered going through hell to install the mods that I thought looked awesome. It always resulted in the game crashing with lua errors or missing dependencies that I have to look for. Finding mods that provide the said dependencies, most of the time again cause problems themselves or are seemingly not the expected version or implementation of that dependency.

But now it has a contentDB, so I was hoping this was all solved and naively let my son pick mods out of the contentDB which looked appealing to him.. But after installing all the mods he wanted, I learned the hard way that not so much has actually changed in this area. The game crashes immediately with lua errors again..

Ultimately I decided to start from a fairly extended subgame that didn't crash and add a only a few mods. But no ordinary new player will ever do such work and/or research to obtain a playable and fun game..
So, I think, to make MT more appealing to endusers/gamers would indeed be to add a stable game and perhaps indeed a tutorial, all with well maintained mods (including mobs), preferably worked on in cooperation between several devs so those mods are well balanced together and won't stop being maintained easily.
As for contentDB, it would lessen a lot of pain if it would provide automatic dependency checking/pulling, version checking and maybe even conflict checking, so that when you install a mod this way, you can rest assured that it was tested on the MT version you are running and won't crash it already on startup. (Bugs of course can always happen).. I know all this is said easier than done.. but I do think MT is already great and has a lot of potential for a broader public . But is missing some userfriendliness ..

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

by Duvalon » Post

I'm in a similar situation as chojin with respect to stumbling upon Minetest for my son to enjoy during the pandemic lockdown. While we are both enjoying some play time in Minetest, I agree with almost all of the criticism raised previously. I would like to emphasize:
  1. MTG is not a good default game, and it turns players away. My personal reasons are:
    1. It's not user friendly enough (no tutorial, no crafting guide... you basically have to have played Minecraft before, and in that case, you may as well go back to it)
    2. It lacks elements of what makes survival fun (mobs, hunger, good crafting progression, etc.)
    3. It doesn't have enough of what makes creation/building fun (limited building materials and recipes, complicated access to fly, fast, etc.)
  2. My personal impression is that most people downloading it are looking for a "free minecraft clone." I think the fact that MCL2 is the most downloaded mod on ContentDB somewhat attests to that hypothesis. Despite that, and that I did enjoy it, I don't think MCL2 should be the default game, even after it is out of alpha. Minetest should be more than just a minecraft clone.
  3. The user interface is not friendly. It's made by developers, for developers. This is probably a big turn off for a lot of people (most gamers).
I think Minetest should strive to address a wider audience, to be more friendly and welcoming towards all types of people, not just developers. Most specifically, gamers, casual or hardcore, young and old, experienced or not, with or without programming skills, should be able to download vanilla Minetest and get a painfree enjoyable experience--bugs not withstanding. Gamers can become developers getting inspired playing a fun game. They can also generate publicity and interest that may reach developers. Other (sub)games and mods are just icing on the cake, increase the replayability, etc.

P.S. My favorite "vanilla" MT game has been whynot. It builds upon MTG by adding a good collection of mods that play well together and really expand the experience. It's not without flaws, but in my book, it would make a much better default game than MTG.

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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

by c56 » Post

solution add a wiki tab with basic information that basically says 1) minetest game is not perfect its a modding base 2)mods are unofficial so if they do not work its not minetests fault
3) some basic information like where to find diamonts (y level -1000=>)
4) some suggestions like a list of mods that are gennerally accepted and well maintained by the community example mesecons , worldedit , a chart ith potiental proplems and theyr solutions like there is no ground = try using a different mapgen 5) things to remember like minetest is not a minecraft clone its a game engine + a default game that works as modding base
6) links to the wiki and modding guide etc
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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

by Festus1965 » Post

c56 wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 20:25
4) some suggestions like a list of mods that are generally accepted and well maintained by the community example mesecons
lol,
mesecons haven't changed since the day before 5.4.1 release and still have the same failure under 5.4.1 ... thanks for that joke = 'well maintained'
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Re: Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

by c56 » Post

Festus1965 wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 03:08
c56 wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 20:25
4) some suggestions like a list of mods that are generally accepted and well maintained by the community example mesecons
lol,
mesecons haven't changed since the day before 5.4.1 release and still have the same failure under 5.4.1 ... thanks for that joke = 'well maintained'
keep in mind developing mods for minetest around here is more of a hobby
so people may not have much time to fix bugs also mesecons was really the only example i could think of at the time feel free to replace it with worldedit
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