What's Minetest still missing over Minecraft?

[rubenwardy]

There has been progress recently in the dev chatter about meta. A patch has been made which increases fps in Vanessa's spawn area from 3fps to 50fps. All due to meta causing mesh updates when it should not.

[Linuxdirk]

That's not necessarily the unique engine's fault, though.

It is, since I’m not talking about mods but about the vanilla “Minetest Game”.

[benrob0329]

@single player lag

I don't know what the problem is, but I'm running MT on a ~2ghtz laptop (quad core but MT doesn't take advantage of this yet), running GNOME. The only time I ever get any noticeable lag in single player is when I have heavy mods installed.

Not only that but Minetest 0.5.0 is promised to have less noticeable lag because of a better network protocol and client protection.

[nomohakon]

Dont know where to put it, but can minetest server just send ingame time and a map instead of sending map with precalculated light values? If its already done, tell me, so i stop asking stupid questions.

[Sokomine]

Regarding lag when interacting with chests: In my experience, the best way to get lag (even in singleplayer) is to just update the formspec of a node and wait for that to be displayed for the player. Normal, non-locked chests are usually fast enough because there's client prediction of what will happen. Locked chests got slow when that hide-the-content-"feature" got added. In recent times they felt less slow. The build chest in handle_schematics gained a lot of speed when interacting with it in singleplayer after I switched from just-update-metadata-formspec to showing the formspec directly to the player after receiving a command.

[Don]

Regarding lag when interacting with chests: In my experience, the best way to get lag (even in singleplayer) is to just update the formspec of a node and wait for that to be displayed for the player. Normal, non-locked chests are usually fast enough because there's client prediction of what will happen. Locked chests got slow when that hide-the-content-"feature" got added. In recent times they felt less slow. The build chest in handle_schematics gained a lot of speed when interacting with it in singleplayer after I switched from just-update-metadata-formspec to showing the formspec directly to the player after receiving a command.

I have used machines(formspec) in a number of my mos. I would love to hear how I can make them faster. If you have any ideas I would appreciate it.

[Sokomine]

I have used machines(formspec) in a number of my mos. I would love to hear how I can make them faster. If you have any ideas I would appreciate it.

It's faster if you use minetest.show_formspec(playername, formname, formspec) whenever receiving input instead of meta:set_string("formspec", new_formspec_string). At least that's so for me. And it applies mostly to formspecs with input (buttons, forms) in singleplayer. I'd love to hear which experience other players/modders have gathered in that regard.

[Don]

I have used machines(formspec) in a number of my mos. I would love to hear how I can make them faster. If you have any ideas I would appreciate it.

It's faster if you use minetest.show_formspec(playername, formname, formspec) whenever receiving input instead of meta:set_string("formspec", new_formspec_string). At least that's so for me. And it applies mostly to formspecs with input (buttons, forms) in singleplayer. I'd love to hear which experience other players/modders have gathered in that regard.

Thanks. I will give it a try and see if it is faster.

[4aiman]

It's faster if you use minetest.show_formspec(playername, formname, formspec) whenever receiving input instead of meta:set_string("formspec", new_formspec_string). At least that's so for me. And it applies mostly to formspecs with input (buttons, forms) in singleplayer.

Actually, ^this may be the reason I didn't see any fs delays during last year.
I play MGC 99% of time and it uses minetest.show_formspec for updating forms.
First I used the func to enable sorting buttons but eventually got used to it and now every other "update" is done via it.

[lisacvuk]

If minetest had hardware lighting and re-done textures, none would play Minecraft. I believe hardware lighting should be a priority. It would make the game look a lot better, and add options for colored lights, and light effects.

[Inocudom]

If minetest had hardware lighting and re-done textures, none would play Minecraft. I believe hardware lighting should be a priority. It would make the game look a lot better, and add options for colored lights, and light effects.

Yeah, but the developers hate those things. Besides, it would be far better in the long run to convert the graphics engine of Minetest into sparse voxel octrees first in some way, shape, or form. However, that will never happen either.

[4aiman]

They don't hate those things. They just don't want to mess with lighting. For several reasons, AFAIK.
There are ppl who not only can, but did some of the hard work (coloured lights).
There were reasons to not add those changes either, though...

I don't like the talks about anything never happening (you should know better than others, I guess).
But I have to agree with the fact that I can't see any of the features in question to be added any time soon..
And as the MM engine is getting more abstracted, the chances of having HW lighting become lower and lower.
I fear that soon any attempt to change smth in a way MM engine draws the scene will be deemed *too hacky*.

MT... no, the whole community... has a wrong vector of development.

[Ferk]

Yeah, but the developers hate those things.

From what I gathered from reading threads on this forum, the developers do want hardware lighting, but it's hard to implement and nobody did it. Last time someone tried to add colored lighting it was done in a hackish way by just increasing the bits of the nodes, which is not the right way to do it. Lighting shouldn't be stored in param1 to begin with, hardware lighting should be the way to go and the devs know this. It's just that nobody is doing it.

Besides, it would be far better in the long run to convert the graphics engine of Minetest into sparse voxel octrees first in some way, shape, or form. However, that will never happen either.

That would just make the game slower without much benefit. In this time and age the whole hardware and software stack is optimized around polygons. Maybe in the future this would change and graphic cards would offer more voxel-based features, but I don't think that's the case right now, much less for the low-end hardware Minetest seems to want to target. I don't think going voxels would bring any benefit, it would just increase the workload since we would have to code our own engine. It would be easier to move to Ogre3D, OpenSceneGraph or some other more efficient and featureful engine than irrlicht.

[Fixerol]

Don't worry, client side is coming soon(tm).

Sarcasm?

[rubenwardy]

Not really sarcasm, I'm just saying "coming soon" may not be that soon, it's just promised to be.

[thomasthespacefox]

one thing im sure us on older hardware have noticed is the lack of "raytracing" (is that the term?) aka not rendering things when they are not visible? aka a cave 50 nodes of rock below you for example?
that should at least increase the framerate.
and can someone explain this thing about there being no central texture atlas? (and what a texture atlas?)

[Ferk]

not rendering things when they are not visible

If that's the case then this might actually be the biggest performance hog. I thought this was supposed to be already done at a lower level and that it would have come for free in irrlicht.. is it not the case?

can someone explain this thing about there being no central texture atlas? (and what a texture atlas?)

It's a single big picture that is actually a "collage" composed of all the textures stitched together. Then you load that single picture in memory and select the one you actually want by transposing to the right coordinates.
It's supposed to make loading textures faster.

[Calinou]

one thing im sure us on older hardware have noticed is the lack of "raytracing" (is that the term?) aka not rendering things when they are not visible? aka a cave 50 nodes of rock below you for example?
that should at least increase the framerate.
and can someone explain this thing about there being no central texture atlas? (and what a texture atlas?)

We have occlusion culling since November 2011 (and fixed view frustum culling at the same time). It however tries to cause as few rendering glitches as possible, so it remains conservative.

The texture atlas was removed because it caused too many bugs and didn't have a large positive impact on performance of modern hardware.

Performance hogs we currently have are hidden deep inside Minetest rendering code (and not Irrlicht, which is very fast when used right).

[rubenwardy]

The texture atlas was broken only by the implementation. The idea of one is sound.

[thomasthespacefox]

one thing im sure us on older hardware have noticed is the lack of "raytracing" (is that the term?) aka not rendering things when they are not visible? aka a cave 50 nodes of rock below you for example?
that should at least increase the framerate.
and can someone explain this thing about there being no central texture atlas? (and what a texture atlas?)

We have occlusion culling since November 2011 (and fixed view frustum culling at the same time). It however tries to cause as few rendering glitches as possible, so it remains conservative.

The texture atlas was removed because it caused too many bugs and didn't have a large positive impact on performance of modern hardware.

Performance hogs we currently have are hidden deep inside Minetest rendering code (and not Irrlicht, which is very fast when used right).

i have a clue how hard those buried bugs and slugs can be to work out. not exactly, mind you, I'm currently not that skilled in C, C++, exc. most of my work is with logical, Bash/shell programs. i can picture how long this stuff can take though.

perhaps we should fix these performance hogs first. So minetest will actually have enough CPU RAM and GPU left for all those ,Mods, Sub-Games, Graphics and physics bells and whistles everybody is talking about.

that seems to be the general idea.

[afflatus]

I haven't read all of this yet and I still haven't played Minecraft. When I started designing my subgame, I deliberately avoided looking at it, so I wasn't influenced. Players made references to Notch and Herobrine, so I had to look them up and discovered that I was a lot closer to Notch's original vision than I realised. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's all very well saying that MT shouldn't be like MC, but MC really has set the benchmarks for a voxel based digging / building game. Resistance is fertile ;-)

I don't want it to be like Minecraft, because it already is like Minecraft.

Precisely.

I'm finding this thread amazingly useful for filling in the gaps in my subgame and building a development roadmap. I hope I can build a game that satifies most of these requirements. There may be a good argument for sidelining minetest_game in favour of a more polished sub-game.

MineCraft has a serious avantage to MineTest.
You don't have to be a IT'er to install it or to use it.

Installing a package is pretty simple ... unless of course you're running some user-unfriendly OS like Windows. So, I guess what you're really saying is that you (or at least, your child) needs a user-friendly Windows installer, plus in-game mod installer?

[Calinou]

We can make NSIS installers for Windows, we just need someone to provide a good script with nice integration (optional start menu/desktop shortcuts, header and finish images).

Another choice is Inno Setup.

[kaeza]

We can make NSIS installers for Windows, we just need someone to provide a good script with nice integration (optional start menu/desktop shortcuts, header and finish images).

Another choice is Inno Setup.

Like, maybe, this?

[afflatus]

"Czerwone jabłuszko przekrojone na krzyż
Czemu ty dziewczyno krzywo na mnie patrzysz ?

Gęsi za wodą, kaczki za wodą
Uciekaj dziewczyno bo Cię pobodą
Ty mi buzi dasz, ja Ci buzi dam
Ty mnie nie wydasz, ja Cię nie wydam."

Is that enough Polish for you now?

[rubenwardy]

Like, maybe, this?

If you scroll down in that topic, I made an updated version.

[benrob0329]

Something that makes the environment feel alive. I don't think that that's necessarily mobs. Perhaps it's the addition of both mobs and dynamic shadows?

[afflatus]

It seems that developers currently want a playground for other programmers, rather than an actual game.

See Voxus, Minetest sucks for content creators and game designers.

I understand what you're saying here, but I also want to challenge it.

I have been looking for a game engine suitable for the game I want to build for some time. I looked long and hard at things like cube and python_soya3d. Minetest fits my requirements very well, particularly because of the Lua modding environment. I'm not anything like a professional game-designer or programmer, I'm a digital artist, who is capable of hacking up a script.

Minetest sucks if you only look at it as an Open Source drop-in replacement for MC. Notch's genius was to break several cardinal rules of game design and make it work. I'm having fun and learning a lot creating my own custom voxel sandbox, but it ain't gonna change the world. That's not what it's about for me.

I joke about game programming being my equivalent of sudoku, but it's not really a joke. I'm playing "the game" as much as anyone else; I usually ended up DMing when I played D&D. I see MC as a graphic MUD, I think minetest could be the graphic equivalent of MUSH. At least, that's my interest in it declared.

Kenney is a professional game-designer who has decided that minetest isn't the right engine for the game he wants to build; partly because his commitment to Open Source isn't strong. I know everyone got excited about voxus and it was a nice-looking game, but ...
Maybe I'll come back to this in another post.

It is useful and interesting to understand players' expectations coming from minecraft and from reading this thread I am beginning to understand why some players rubbish minetest by comparison. There are several clear repeated calls - the inclusion of mobs, client-side Lua et al. and my opinion on what might be best for minetest_game is shifting as a result.

I just feel the need to say I think minetest is potentially bigger than that (in scope) and it could be used to build a world-changing game (i.e. not YAMC clone), we just need to start thinking out of the selectionbox a bit more in terms of what "the game" actually is.

[jp]

I just quickly looked inside the Minecraft modding API, the biggest advantage is you can freely interact with the other core's classes, for maximum of flexibility. You're basically extending the engine with the simplicity of Java.

Some things are also very accurate, like the light level or node hardness (going from 1.0F to 2000.0F).

[SamCinnamon]

Just my thoughts on what can be improved:
1. Mobs (skins, animations, personality)
- All mobs should have a consistent, clean look, and a good variety come pre-installed.
- Their animations can be better. (Swaying of the PC should be removed)
- Mobs should also interact with one another, rarely. (Wolf, sheep, etc.)

- Maybe add some people mobs that randomly appear and give the player quests or tasks to preform, (with rewards) making the world feel more alive? Their writing should be well done (similar to Zelda or jrpg games) to add personality to the game world. This would be much better than the boring villagers in vanilla Minecraft.

2. Sounds
- Sound effects can be improved, as well as atmospheric music added.

3. UI, Look, Usability
- Icons in the main menu are blurry.
- Add a button to reset keys to default.
- Way to easily resize window to fit screen within Minetest.
- More shaders and lighting options.
- Easy way to install the best mods and texture packs within Minetest, or a link to a top-rated list.
- Add controller support.

Other than that, Minetest is excellent. If the overall presentation can be improved, it'll be as good as or superior to other similar games.

[AnxiousInfusion]

Welcome to the forums, SamCinnamon. The Minetest developers are generally not also writers or musicians or modelers. If you want to see music, animals and game art the onus is on you to create, submit and promote it. Other than that, there is royalty free music and assets.

I like your idea of humanoid mobs that offer quests which is what I thought MC villagers would be when they were first announced. Perhaps their quest tasks could range from simply collecting default items or killing default monsters all the way to building structures and saving villages.