FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Hi guys,

I'm using Minetest in a school and the IT guys have installed it to the C: drive on a room full of computers. Students log in and have their own personal space on the N: drive. The problem is that game progress is automatically saved in the "worlds" folder which is local to the computer and not to the user. The school does not want every student to have a copy of Minetest in their personal space so this is not a solution unfortunately (that's what I did last year). So is there a way that I can modify the C: drive version of Minetest to use a "worlds" folder on the N: drive? Or is their some other solution that I haven't thought of?

Thanks for all the help :)

Jonty

Not a direct answer, but have you kept in mind that Minetest is a client-server architecture? Depending on how you are using Minetest, you could set up the world(s) on a separate, central server (which need not be Windows).

Other than that: I'm not a Windows user; Minetest on Linux has both a local install and a global install mode, which would solve your problem, but I don't know if the Windows builds have that too.

You would need a specal build with a changed path_user variable.
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/bl ... g.cpp#L481

Adding a new setting in minetest.conf for this might be helpful for situations like this one.

Ha! another usecase for making more paths configurable

I once started this old subject about "request for Minetest for PortableApps on Windows"
Please do not stumble over the word "portable", I know the run-in-place version is portable. That thread is about a portable automatic install, update and backup system integrated into a portable menu system.

The importand point is that they split the user data from the program files within their portable file structure so that they can easily update the program without destroying user configurations or data while not leaving data on the host system.

Napiophelios made a solution and I have described it's usage here.

His approach was to clone the bin folder into the data section at each startup. This may not be the best sollution but it sort of worked and the idea might be modified for a network solution.

But - nevertheless I do believe this could be easier if all the appdata paths could be configurable.
This might be the most interesting for the paths of:

• chache/media
  - beeing able to share a media folder between installations might be very useful and even more on a local network if setup cleverely. This might need more options though like "look here first, then here, try here if not found elsewhere and use this to override what you found before". But a school environment might be too much of a special case here.
  
• client\serverlist
  - with more options to make the favoriteservers.txt more useful like having a fixed static section or merging lists from shared locations.
  
• games\(minetest_game)
  - a fall back path to a default game
  
• games
  - a central games folder that can be shared between different mt installations
  
• mods
  - additionaly to locally installed mods a central mods folder that can be shared between different minetest installations
  
• sounds and textures
  - go figure
  
• worlds
  - it should be possible to have several places for worlds such as a central games folder that can be shared between different mt installations and additionaly worlds folders that might be stored locally or even privately on another storing device appart from the location of server, client or the normal world folder.
  
  of course there would also be usecases for:
• doc
• fonts
• locale

as far as I know only the screenshots path can be configered freely as of v0.1.13

I don't think a setting is needed for the user path, just look here:
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/bl ... #L356-L360
So in theory, it will store data into the folder specified by the appdata env var, which in theory should be the roaming user data:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... ata-folder
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... 85%29.aspx

So the only thing you'd need to do is to set up sharing of these roaming directories. This is specific to how the computers are set up, but if they are set up properly, it should work.

Here some doc, quoting what the APPDATA env var does:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... 10%29.aspx

The file-system directory that serves as a common repository for application-specific data. A typical path is C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data or C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all the suggestions. Please bear in mind that as a teacher I have no control over the way the computers or servers are set-up. Also the IT guys are probably a little bored of me giving them lots of jobs which as far as they can see is to let the students play games. This is certainly not true as I have programmed maths educational resources within Minetest which the kids really enjoy and learn a lot from. But anyway, is there anything that I can personally change within the Minetest files themselves to solve this problem?

Krock wrote:You would need a specal build with a changed path_user variable.
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/bl ... g.cpp#L481
Adding a new setting in minetest.conf for this might be helpful for situations like this one.

Krock, your answer sounds the most feasible, but I have no idea how to do that I'm afraid...?

Sorry, Krock, would you be able to point me in the right direction for making a special build with a changed path_user variable?

My thoughts were about adding a new Minetest settings, that defaults to a dynamical value.
https://github.com/SmallJoker/minetest/commit/12227e

It may result in problems when an invalid path is set.
Sure, using %APPDATA% is also possible with a RUN_IN_PLACE=0 build but other applications also use this variable, so it's not useful to change that one to have it on a network drive.

Could you please test this build?
Special Win32 build, based on this branch

Add the following setting to your minetest.conf

Hi Krock,

Thanks so much for your help with this, I have a few hundred students that will be very happy if we get this working!
When I run your build I get:

ERROR[Main]: Subgame specified in default_game [minetest] is invalid.

This is regardless of whether I add the worlds_path line to mintest.conf or not.
Sorry if I'm doing something stupid.

LoseTheGame wrote:ERROR[Main]: Subgame specified in default_game [minetest] is invalid.

I tested it now with my two hard drives, without any error:
My setup: Minetest on device E: with setting "worlds_path = C:\build\"
Successfully created, joined and left a world; the map got saved.

Check if the directory [path_to_minetest]\games\minetest_game exists.
If you want to move the subgames path to the remove drive aswell, define the environment variable %MINETEST_SUBGAME_PATH% to the desired path.

Thanks Krock! I've never used a minimal build before so I didn't realise that I needed to add the game file. It's working on my computer, I'll test it on the school computers today. Is this good to go or do I need a non-minimal version of this for them to play properly? Also, how hard would it be for me to get the same thing working for the mods folder too? I.e. setting up a definable "mods_path"? Cheers, Jonty.

LoseTheGame wrote:Is this good to go or do I need a non-minimal version of this for them to play properly?
Also, how hard would it be for me to get the same thing working for the mods folder too?
I.e. setting up a definable "mods_path"?

That Minetest archive contains the same functions as a stable build. I mainly provide those for people who want to update the Minetest core quickly without downloading the subgames again -> can be done with fetching the git commits.
I doupt a "mods_path" setting will be added because mods don't take much disk space, also (IMO) it would be better to add an other environment variable, as I suggested here with the worlds path.

You could also create a Windows symlink: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/co ... -or-linux/

Make your default worlds directory be a symlink to the specific place you want. Or you can also symlink particular worlds in particular places, that way you don't even need to move the whole worlds directory if you don't want to.

Ferk wrote:You could also create a Windows symlink

That's a good idea and a solution in this case. But it's not possible to add multiple search locations for Minetest worlds.