FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I'm wanting to set up minetest for users of a windows network. The minetest folders would reside on a read-only server share, from which users can invoke minetest.exe.

Problem is, I think minetest expects users to have write permission on the minetest folders and to be able to create a 'user data directory' somewhere within them. I've looked through minetest.conf.example & can't see any way to specify that the user data is to be saved at some other location, say h:\minetest, where the user does have write permission.

Is this possible?

Generally all Windows builds of Minetest are compiled with RUN_IN_PLACE=1 which means that they expect to save user data in the same folder as the binary. What would be possible is to compile a custom Minetest build with RUN_IN_PLACE=0 and hard-coded paths for user data.

Thanks sfan5.

I'm afraid compiling from the source is probably beyond my ability, I'm not a C programmer.

As with the previous thread, I'm wondering if the game is playable in a school environment. It's all Windows. Students are given a home H drive, where they do have write permission, but not permission to invoke executables.

sfan5 wrote:… which means that they expect to save user data in the same folder as the binary.

Holy fuck … who in the right mind wants that?

Linuxdirk wrote:

sfan5 wrote:… which means that they expect to save user data in the same folder as the binary.

Holy fuck … who in the right mind wants that?

anybody who runs minetest from a portable device

but being able to specify the location of more folders or files is something I have wished for for a long time.

Could you use a symbolic link?

Or you could simply use my installer. viewtopic.php?f=42&t=14109
The minetest folder is then C:\Users\<username>\minetest\ where you can store mods, games texturepacks and config.

I wish that minetest would make use of a correct installation in future versions. The current official installer is just a self extracting archive.

sfan5 wrote:Generally all Windows builds of Minetest are compiled with RUN_IN_PLACE=1 which means that they expect to save user data in the same folder as the binary.

Are you sure? I think Minetest save user data and world data in separate folder. Like normal compile.

I believe he is referring to the root folder.