FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Hello everyone,
Minetest NeXt got merged into the default game (minetest_game) and all further developed will take place at minetest_game (https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game)

To prevent problems with the development like before (see this post) its maintained for now by only three people (sfan5, nore, BlockMen).

The new direction of development is following:
- Ensure balanced gameplay while still adding new and useful items/nodes/etc.
- No changes to the basic concepts (e.g. workbench won't get added)
- No additions that are decided to be too much (e.g. adding homedecor in its entirety)
- Focus on stability and completeness (no half-finished stuff)
- Improve/add API to allow mods to extend the features (e.g. new crops for farming)


Below is a complete Changelog:

New Blocks:
- Dessert Cobblestone, -stairs, -slabs #250
- Desertstonebrickstairs, -slabs
- Sandstonebrickstairs, -slabs
- Glass door, Obsidianglass door, Trapdoor
- Glasspanes, Ironbars
- TNT (freeminer version)
- New soil: Desert Sand

New features:
- Upward digging for papyrus and cactus #223
- Additional mirrored recipes for axes #182
- Bookshelves have an inventory (for books) #180
- Furnace protection
- Commands: /sethome & /home (with privileg)
- Mese- and Diamondhoe
- Jungle is enabled by default
- Farming API (slightly changed behavior too)

Changed behavior:
- Craft output for stairs is 6 (instead of 4) #237
- Punch bones to pickup items, drop them if no space for bones
- Doors have sounds
- Other code tweaks (including #250)
- Tweaked player physics

Changed appearance:
- Cuboid wieldhand (Sam II) #249
- Fancy inventories
- Many new textures

What direction is planned for the gameplay?

Does this mean that minetest_game is unfrozen? Yay, finally!

PS: Minetest NeXt also includes a boat, so the changelog is incomplete. :P

I'm glad that feature freeze is over! Minetest_next seems to be well suited to continue on where minetest_game ended. The goals also seem very reasonable and fitting.

BlockMen wrote: No additions that are decided to be too much (e.g. adding homedecor in its entirety)

Perhaps part of it might be considered for addition. I'm thinking especially of the chairs and tables (perhaps the lamp as well) which homedecor took over from 3dforniture and improved. That furniture is extremly useful and decorative. On one server, the chairs and tables even came in normal wood and junglewood design. I think it was Calinous old server. Those chairs and tables looked very nice.

The only real issue I have with minetest_next is that it changed textures. I do like the new textures - they look fine - but they're diffrent from the "original" minetest_game ones and thus change already built buildings. Think of textures like of a paint used to draw a picture. Painters would get slightly annoyed if the paint later on turns to a diffrent shade or color alltogether.

It might be possible to get away with some of the texture changes as they are rather moderate and can be counted as improvements. Normal wood falls under this category. A big problem, howevre, is jungletree wood. While I do like the new texture a lot, it is just too *diffrent* from the previous one. Can't you just add another tree that provides the new wood? New trees and wood types are always welcome! But that darker jungletree wood and the trunks minetest_game came with are also important. They're good roof material and provide a good contrast to normal wood. So, please: New tree for new wood! The new texture as such can be kept, but the dark brown color ought to be still available (as well as the new color!).

In general: Adding new blocks in moderate amounts is a good idea. It gives modders new material to play with and rely upon. And yes, mods need some default stuff that they can count on. Even with that, receipes are difficult enough to make up without conflicts and with some relation to the item crafted.

I did not notice that TNT is now included by default. But my children discovered it rather quickly. So now our world looks like Swiss cheese!
Lol
Good to see that the game is no longer frozen

PilzAdam wrote:What direction is planned for the gameplay?

So.... no gameplay direction? Just random additions like in "the old" minetest_game?

That sounds good to me... ;)

Though, actually doing more stuff than in the old minetest_game would help.

Sokomine wrote:A big problem, howevre, is jungletree wood. While I do like the new texture a lot, it is just too *diffrent* from the previous one. Can't you just add another tree that provides the new wood?

I agree, the strangely pale jungle wood plank texture is really annoying. I reverted to the old MT texture in the texture pack I'm using. Also, the minetest_next cobblestone texture looks really weird and flat.

PilzAdam wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:What direction is planned for the gameplay?

So.... no gameplay direction? Just random additions like in "the old" minetest_game?

If you can't read theres nothing we can do, the direction is listed above.

But now you mentioning, it lacks one point:
- No PilzAdam that blocks new features randomly (like it was before)


For all ppl that want use the old textures, you can easily make a texture pack with the old ones (and use it).

TNTs are absurd. (but are efficient to take down small servers)
vou ter que edita-lo manualmente para minemacro.
Correct the errors and bugs ASAP (the boat leaves the player turned sideways, bar disappears)
taking these problems, the new version is very good (but do not forget that minetest should be simple and fast)

BlockMen wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:What direction is planned for the gameplay?

So.... no gameplay direction? Just random additions like in "the old" minetest_game?

If you can't read theres nothing we can do, the direction is listed above.

But now you mentioning, it lacks one point:
- No PilzAdam that blocks new features randomly (like it was before)

Yes!!! Start the flame war! Here, have some molotov cocktails. I wanna see blooooooood!

But seriously, let’s talk about goals.

BlockMen wrote:- Ensure balanced gameplay while still adding new and useful items/nodes/etc.

But what is considered to be useful?

BlockMen wrote:- No changes to the basic concepts (e.g. workbench won't get added)

But what are the basic concepts?

BlockMen wrote:- No additions that are decided to be too much (e.g. adding homedecor in its entirety)

But when do we know if something is too much?

BlockMen wrote:- Focus on stability and completeness (no half-finished stuff)

OK, this goal is actually useful, so I can reply usefully to it. Here’s some half-finished stuff:

• There are rails but no carts,
• swords but no enemies to use them on (OK, there are players, but swords are useless in singleplayer)
• Vessels but no stuff to store and
• there’s gold but nearly no use of it (just a gold block).

This would imply the addition of carts and mobs and maybe some golden (decoration?) items. And contents for vessels unless they are intended as pure decorational items.

BlockMen wrote:- Improve/add API to allow mods to extend the features (e.g. new crops for farming)

OK. I tend to write my mods dependency-free but I am still happy with this goal.


What is clearly not stated in are concrete goals in the direction of gameplay, which is, I think, what PilzAdam wanted to hear.
Questions like:
Do we focus on simplistic easy-to-learn/casual gameplay with little complexity or maybe a more complex game with more mechanics but not simplistic?
Do we want to have a rather deep (in terms of gameplay content) or a rather flat game?
On what style do we want to focus (creativity? sandbox? survival? fighting? everything together? something else?)?
How difficult do we want the game to be (if the focus lies on survival gameplay)?
Do we want to have any goals/tasks for the player (even if just optional)?
Do we focus more on singleplayer? Do we focus more on multiplayer?
Do we want to borrow any concepts from other game and if yes, which ones and why?
Do we want to add some sense of “progression”?
Will there be mobs?
Should we nerf/buff/do nothing with diamonds? (this was just an illustrative question)
Should be add more ores?
How much content should we add? When would it be considered “too much”?
When do we know we are “finished”?

And so on, I hope you get the idea.
And since one goal state minetest_game should stick to the “basic concepts”, this important question needs to be answered as well: “What are minetest_game’s basic gameplay concepts?”

You provide some idea of a direction, but it can be improved. What we need are concrete goals.
With good goals, you know exactly a) what you want to do and b) when you have achieved them. With bad goals, you never really know a) what you actually want to do, you may just have a vague idea and b) when you have achieved them.

Given that there are many open questions concerning minetest_game’s direction, it is understandable that PilzAdam gets the impression that minetest_game is without direction.

Wuzzy wrote:

BlockMen wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:So.... no gameplay direction? Just random additions like in "the old" minetest_game?

If you can't read theres nothing we can do, the direction is listed above.

But now you mentioning, it lacks one point:
- No PilzAdam that blocks new features randomly (like it was before)

Yes!!! Start the flame war! Here, have some molotov cocktails. I wanna see blooooooood!

But seriously, let’s talk about goals.

BlockMen wrote:- No changes to the basic concepts (e.g. workbench won't get added)

But what are the basic concepts?

This is what the example is supposed to do.

Wuzzy wrote:

BlockMen wrote:- No additions that are decided to be too much (e.g. adding homedecor in its entirety)

But when do we know if something is too much?

"decided to be too much"

BlockMen wrote:...For all ppl that want use the old textures, you can easily make a texture pack with the old ones (and use it)...

Calinou has already done so. Look on the TP section. I comment somewhere that those TPs (coming from 0.3._ and 0.4.3(?) - 0.4.9) should come with MT as well as maybe one or two more lightwieght ones.Just like the game bundling idea.

Wuzzy wrote:

BlockMen wrote:- Focus on stability and completeness (no half-finished stuff)

OK, this goal is actually useful, so I can reply usefully to it. Here’s some half-finished stuff:

• There are rails but no carts,
• swords but no enemies to use them on (OK, there are players, but swords are useless in singleplayer)
• Vessels but no stuff to store and
• there’s gold but nearly no use of it (just a gold block).

This would imply the addition of carts and mobs and maybe some golden (decoration?) items. And contents for vessels unless they are intended as pure decorational items.

The thing you listed above (rail, sword, etc.) was already there before 0.4.10. I think what BlockMen meant is no future addition that is not complete or not stable.

I fully support the new direction and also agree that it should only be maintained by a chosen panel.

Wuzzy wrote:This would imply the addition of carts and mobs and maybe some golden (decoration?) items. And contents for vessels unless they are intended as pure decorational items.

Maybe carts (havn't checked their complexity), but mobs might be too much. There are also quite a lot of diffrent mob mods out there.

Those "purely decorative items" may also be used by other mods. The default stuff is needed as a common base for modders to pick materials from for their crafting receipes - and that's about it. No extensive gameplay - just a common ground.

Wuzzy wrote:What is clearly not stated in are concrete goals in the direction of gameplay, which is, I think, what PilzAdam wanted to hear.

Quite probably, and Celeron seems to aim in that direction as well. I think minetest_game was frozen because there's no way to find gameplay everyone is happy with. Every change will make someone unhappy and result in complaints, which may be frustrating for the developers.

My wish is that the focus for the basic game (now: minetest_next) is *not* on gameplay. The demands for a survival server are diffrent than those for one focussed on building, and mesecons or other mods may place an entirely diffrent focus again. That's all ok. minetest_next (and, previously, minetest_game) is what they all ought to have *in common*.

Thus, adding new blocks and craft items now and then is a good idea, but don't add too much. Especially don't change textures of existing blocks! That's a real no-go. New functionality/apis are also welcome - i.e. those generalized doors which - as in minetest_next - could easily be extended to new types.

As far as gameplay is concerned, point the people early on to the mods/mod collections (by some called "games"). For this, the webpage needs to be updated. minetest.com lists outdated mods. minetest.net is at least a bit more up to date. None of these websites help any new players who want to learn more and find the right mods/game(s) for their playstyle. And new players are more likely to check the webpage first and only start reading the forum once they want to learn details. At least it has become easy to join servers, so players may learn about mods and diffrent game types on them.