Modding Tutorial Book (new: Privileges)

[leeminer]

I don't mean this to be rude but maybe start a new topic to debate the best code. This is a thread about the book. Let's discuss the content of the book. I think Rubenwardy could use help.

I've been reviewing the doc and giving feedback. Always helps to have others look at it from another angle.

I think Rubenwardy is looking for translators eventually. Sadly my Spanish and French is dismal :(

[rubenwardy]

Added a ( (very) short) chapter on ABMs. I will probably write a chapter on node drawtypes next. That's probably the next important thing. I'm also going to draw up a long list of what should be in there, and logically organise it for the best teaching experience.

I don't need it to be translated yet, it is currently quite unstable (it changes a lot).

[Don]

An explanation of why you need to do things would be nice. For example in your formspec chapter you have

minetest.show_formspec(playername, formname, formspec)

If you could explain it like this;

you need minetest because it tells the engine where to get the info
show_formspec tells engine to show the formspec that you specify below
playername is need for...
etc

This is one of the things that confused me at first. I am not sure if the info above is correct or not. As someone who does not know programming and just wants to make mods this type of info is important. I don't think you would have to do it for everything but if you explain some of it then with a little logic the rest could be figured out.

[Don]

Another idea might be itemstack and how it works.

EDIT - forgot to say that you are doing a great job! Thanks

[Don]

Another idea is what different symbols do
Examples

== means is equal too
~= means is not equal too
-- means a comment and is not read by the engine. It is for 1 line only
--[[ ]] means a block comment for more than 1 line

[rubenwardy]

I don't want to do a programming tutorial, that is beyond the scope of the book. I will search for a nice tutorial on Lua. Short.

Hoodedice is creating a getting started chapter which will be a much easier entry point.

[philipbenr]

@Don: That is something I might get into. The tutorials want to do will include videos as well.

[Don]

@ rubenwardy - I am throwing ideas out there simply because I am trying to learn and these are things that I got stuck on. Thought it might help to get the perspecive of someone that wants to learn how to mod.

@ philipbenr - That it awesome. Videos will be a big help too.

[rubenwardy]

the Minetest namespace, ie minetest.*, will be explained in the first chapter, and itemstacks is a planned chapter. I didn't intend to sound like I was rejecting your ideas.

As for videos, they take a lot of effort to get to the same quality, although they are better at communicating harder things that would need a huge and confusing list in a tutorial if done right. Good luck.

[Don]

the Minetest namespace, ie minetest.*, will be explained in the first chapter, and itemstacks is a planned chapter. I didn't intend to sound like I was rejecting your ideas.

As for videos, they take a lot of effort to get to the same quality, although they are better at communicating harder things that would need a huge and confusing list in a tutorial if done right. Good luck.

I took no offence. I was just letting you know why I was giving ideas. As someone who knows almost nothing about programing I know some of my ideas will be rejected or considered dumb.
Keep up the good work

[leeminer]

the Minetest namespace, ie minetest.*, will be explained in the first chapter, and itemstacks is a planned chapter. I didn't intend to sound like I was rejecting your ideas.

As for videos, they take a lot of effort to get to the same quality, although they are better at communicating harder things that would need a huge and confusing list in a tutorial if done right. Good luck.

I took no offence. I was just letting you know why I was giving ideas. As someone who knows almost nothing about programing I know some of my ideas will be rejected or considered dumb.
Keep up the good work

Find a good tutorial for OOP programming. I think it would benefit you. One I liked was How to think like a computer scientist.

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

It would be very difficult to understand modding without this sort of knowledge. For LUA, not sure what the best resource is. I've only scratched the surface on Lua. Perhaps someone could point us both in a good direction for that.

Anyway on with the ON TOPIC discussion ;)

[Don]

Thanks. After 5 minutes reading I have already learned a few things. I love the open source community. In a world of greed, open source proves that humanity still exists.

[Gael de Sailly]

Is it possible to make a feature to change the language ?
I could translate it into French.

I really like the project. I've already thought about writing a tuto in French.
I think it's really what we lack : a good documentation in others languages than English.

[rubenwardy]

Do you mean computer langauges? You could use a language interpreter written in Lua. Or you can add a new langauge to the core code. But the forner is slow and the latter won't be merged into Minetest, the core devs won't like it. You could use a language like moon script, I think it is called, to translate into Lua.

Or do you mean tutorial language? That's fairly easy, but requires restructuring of files.

[Evergreen]

Do you mean computer langauges? You could use a language interpreter written in Lua. Or you can add a new langauge to the core code. But the forner is slow and the latter won't be merged into Minetest, the core devs won't like it. You could use a language like moon script, I think it is called, to translate into Lua.

Or do you mean tutorial language? That's fairly easy, but requires restructuring of files.

Rubenwardy, he means translate to another real world language (eg. French)

[rubenwardy]

Okay. So the latter. I won't accept any translations at the moment, as the chapters are too volatile - they will probably be edited for quite a while before they reach a fixed state.

[Gael de Sailly]

I could also contribute to the project, especially about mapgen.

There are the 4 basics chapters, I think we can add more specialized chapters on more complex features (entities, mapgen, treegen, metadata, schematics, …).
I will have a lot of free time the next 2 weeks.

[grey]

This would be so amazing.

[rubenwardy]

No more linking to line numbers with the risk of them changing.

lua_api.html

[leeminer]

Wow, there is a lot of content here now! Everybody look at this so far.

[rubenwardy]

That Lua_api.HTML was from lua api.txt translated into markdown by wuzzy and shadowninja and translated into HTML by python's markdown and table of contents modules.

[rubenwardy]

Added a Node Drawtype chapter. It isn't complete yet, some are missing.

Node Drawtypes

[TG-MyinaWD]

Should also we make an Minetest History Book like Since first day started Minetest being made all the way to now?

I just know might got do an Q&A with C55 for most the Answers.

[rubenwardy]

There wouldn't be much to write about, you might as well just write a wiki page about it. celeron55 has a blog from the early days of development, that could help

Anyway, this is the n topic to discuss this.

[MrNomNom111]

Thanks so much for the time you put into these resources. These help immensely!

[MrNomNom111]

How do I contact you to contribute? I would love to help

[rubenwardy]

Send emails to me at rubenwardy on gmail.com
<-- Or PM me.

I am on free node IRC (#minetest) from 5-8pm GMT.

[rubenwardy]

Add anchor links to headings and printable version (click link in navbar).

Added a chapter on the HUD: http://rubenwardy.github.io/minetest_do ... s/hud.html
It's fairly basic as HUD is subject to change. It's really just to explain positioning.

[Don]

Add anchor links to headings and printable version (click link in navbar).

Added a chapter on the HUD: http://rubenwardy.github.io/minetest_do ... s/hud.html
It's fairly basic as HUD is subject to change. It's really just to explain positioning.

Thanks again for your hard work!

[Linuxdirk]

Thanks again for your hard work!

I second that. Finally an understandable description.

… but to me HUD elements and placing of them is still a chaotic mess :)