FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Although I've made several code changes to MineTest, I never created my own mod or worked with the Lua API before. I decided to change that today, and start with putting in practice a simple idea I had in mind.

The Moon Flower is an unique flower created for Minetest. It spawns on grass and can be pretty rare to find (5 spawn attempts of 0.1 probability per chunk). Compared to simple decorative flowers, it has a special property: It opens up and casts lighting when under the influence of the moon. This is done by checking that its location is affected by sky light and the time of day is right. This was mainly its purpose, since I thought a plant that spawns naturally and emits lighting at night could be a beautiful sight.

This is also intended to become part of MineTest by default, but I'd rather it's included as part of the complete flowers mod. The texture and code are free to use, and I guess they're licensed GPL or WTFPL if that works best. Since this is my first Lua mod, I'd like to know what you think of the coding too and if my approach is generally correct (some of the code was inspired from VanessaE's old Flowers mod).

Mod available on Github

could you have it change tyhe gravity. i know someone added that to dev

jojoa1997 wrote:could you have it change tyhe gravity. i know someone added that to dev

I added that to dev yesterday :P But that goes beyond its purpose. I'm considering lower gravity for floatlands instead, but that's a different story.

I really like the idea of this mod. I'm currently trying to map a world with landup, chasm and canyons (and it's literally taking all day) but as soon as I find a stopping-point, i plan to try this one out!

Very cool idea.

I think I will make a sun flower, that only opens during the day

I tried the mod. My daughters and I love the moon flowers. Thank you for making this mod.

Love it!
reminds me of Terraria.

Seems to work fine on stable 0.4.6.
Unfortunately it does not on the version of 0.4.6dev I've got (no other mods installed);

Mossmanikin wrote:Seems to work fine on stable 0.4.6.
Unfortunately it does not on the version of 0.4.6dev I've got (no other mods installed);

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

GUIConfigureWorld: Not allowing focus change.
GUIConfigureWorld: Not allowing focus change.
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: ========== ERROR FROM LUA ===========
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: Failed to load and run script from
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: C:\Games\minetest-0.4.6-e57dc4e-farming-win32\bin\..\mods\moonflower\init.lua:
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: ....6-e57dc4e-farming-win32\bin\..\mods\moonflower\init.lua:20: attempt to index global 'default' (a nil value)
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: stack traceback:
18:37:20: ERROR[main]:     ....6-e57dc4e-farming-win32\bin\..\mods\moonflower\init.lua:20: in main chunk
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: =======END OF ERROR FROM LUA ========
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: Server: Failed to load and run C:\Games\minetest-0.4.6-e57dc4e-farming-win32\bin\..\mods\moonflower\init.lua
18:37:20: ERROR[main]: ModError: Failed to load and run C:\Games\minetest-0.4.6-e57dc4e-farming-win32\bin\..\mods\moonflower\init.lua

Try adding "default" to depends.txt

PilzAdam wrote:Try adding "default" to depends.txt

Thanks! :)
Works just fine now.

Mossmanikin wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:Try adding "default" to depends.txt

Thanks! :)
Works just fine now.

I like this mod, kind of unique. Please make this windows fix part of this mod.

MirceaKitsune wrote:Since this is my first Lua mod, I'd like to know what you think of the coding too and if my approach is generally correct.

I don't know whether what you've done is "correct", but it is different in an interesting way from what I've done (in similar circumstances).

You use a register_abm to create a timer, as explained here. I use on_timer in register_node, as explained here and here.

I've heard tell in ancient times of the potential evils of ABMs. Which is to say, I've seen people on the forum saying you shouldn't have too many, or something like that.

Maybe someone who knows what they're talking about can jump in and explain some details.

Adding lots of ABMs can cause a lot of lag- So they are fine to use, but if you have, say, 10 or more, lag will definitely start to occur.