FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Hi,

The wiki ( http://wiki.minetest.net/Bones ) says:

Servers can change the time by changing minetest.conf setting share_bones_time (time is in seconds).

I'm unsure of this, since I haven't found this config string in https://github.com/celeron55/minetest/b ... nf.example

Someone may clarify ?

Note: I'm aware of this mod: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10020&hilit=bones ; however I'm unsure I want to allow bones to be dug instantly.

The setting is "share_bones_time" and by default it is 1200. Add it to your minetest.conf file. You are right that this is documented nowhere.

It's not in minetest.conf.example because it is something from minetest_game, that not all players may have, and not a direct engine feature.

Thanks for clarification,

1200 seconds means 20 minutes.
However, I left this setting as default on my server, and bones are staying "fresh" for days and days...

I changed it to 600 in minetest.conf and I suppose the change has taken effect (can't confirm) but it's still way too long...

Yeah, I notice that bones stay fresh way to long... I would say 5 minutes is a good maximum time, as it normally gives the player time to get back to his/her bones, and if the player was a long way away, then there shouldn't be many players that far away. Just my two pennies! ;)

I agree, but what I was trying to say in my previous post is:

share_bones_time is set to 1200, but bones remains fresh like for a full week!... which is far more than the 20 minutes as it is meant to be.

(I confirm "bones" from minetest_game is loaded as a mod on the server.)

The reason the bones stay fresh that long is because time spent with the chunk un-loaded isn't counted. In other words, you have to be in the vicinity of the bones for 20 minutes, not have the server running for 20 minutes. And it can be any player, not just the owner.

(Or at least that's my understanding of it... Also, not sure, but perhaps when the base game was replaced with Minetest NeXt, the bones broke..........)

True. I think that I am going to use the drop_on_die mod in Lux_Solis. It makes everything work so much nicer. (The only thing I play nowadays. Makes sense, right?).

I actually rather like the bones mod. I might be quite alone with that but nevertheless I find it interesting to see where players die or fail and where the "hotspots" for dying are. For example a lot of first time players seem to drown easily, that might be a hint that drowning could need tweaking or actually as I presume swimming might not be such a straight forward or easy action on some platforms. Some mobiles and tablets come to my mind that may have a problem here.

The bones mod could need some attention though. It might pose some ethicall or age related problems for some people to have bones of players laying around. So maybe it would be usefull to have an option like a dropped backpack version.

Also I could imagine to have a possabilty to set some more time frames might be nice. Not only the setting when fresh bones turn to old bones. As the bones tend to clutter places up if no mod makes use of them, something that happens after they have become old bones might be interesting. They could turn to some other node depending on the underground and the location after a longer time like laying undisturbed for a week or so. If the bones lay on some type of earth or grass node theycould turne into some rare flowers, maybe else not aviable or not generated like white Lilies. On other nodes they could turn to some random node from their contents or if on protected land turn to an apple. Bones underground could turn to some glowing mushroom or whatever. This should be configurable easily to change settings for games such as Moontest or Wasteland or special servers such as "JustTest"

Seeing that the bones own time measurement might be faulty it might be usefull to have some commands concerning managing single nodes in the database by type. I guess such a tool could serve many issues with "node management".

HeroOfTheWinds wrote:The reason the bones stay fresh that long is because time spent with the chunk un-loaded isn't counted. In other words, you have to be in the vicinity of the bones for 20 minutes, not have the server running for 20 minutes. And it can be any player, not just the owner.

(Or at least that's my understanding of it... Also, not sure, but perhaps when the base game was replaced with Minetest NeXt, the bones broke..........)

Actually it is the opposite - on_timer() function provides "elapsed" time from last on_timer call, if timer is set to 10 and chunk is loaded, elapsed is always 10, but it can be more if chunk was unloaded. Original bones code have counter, to count complete time together meta:get_int("time"), but someone forgot to increase that counter.
Because of this, bones are marked "old" only when they are unloaded more than for 1200 seconds and that is why spawns usually are full of bones.
I forked and fixed that mod for my server needs Here, but i also added some other features, so i cannot ask PilzAdam to merge it.

Does it is possible to make my bones i could pick up from a protected area?

amadin wrote:Does it is possible to make my bones i could pick up from a protected area?

I added exception into protector mod itself, to achieve that. https://github.com/AndrejIT/minetest-pr ... t.lua#L259
But it is old style protector mod, which don't use newer minetest is_protected API...
http://dev.minetest.net/minetest.is_protected