FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

In the windows release .zip there are two minetest.conf files

One is in
\minetest-0.4.14-win64\minetest-0.4.14

The other is in
\minetest-0.4.14-win64\minetest-0.4.14\games\minetest_game

This is super confusing, what is going on?

Also, why are the .conf files super ugly?
There is no line separation or anything - just looks like a blob of text. Who wrote this?

Also, the minetest.conf.example files contain entirely different commands than the ones found in
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minet ... nf.example
What in the world is going on? How are people actually setting up servers with all this confusion?

Use \minetest-0.4.14-win64\minetest-0.4.14\minetest.conf

the other one is the default config for a subgame - so should not be changed.

The minetest.conf file is created by minetest, it is in the form

key = value

You need to open it in notepad++ or wordpad, not notepad or word

Also, why are the .conf files super ugly?
There is no line separation or anything - just looks like a blob of text. Who wrote this?

Two reasons:
1) Notepad or whatever application you were using is broken. It is unable to display any text file correctly coming directly from Mac OS, Linux or other unix-like operating systems. This is not your fault. You can either report this decade-old bug to Microsoft (good luck!) and/or just stop using Notepad. Use a proper text editor like Notepad++ or jEdit. (Also, Wordpad and Word are NOT text editors (they are word processors), so don't use them to read or save text files.)
2) Minetest developers failed to transform the text files to “Windows line endings” for the Windows release Zip. (Developers, please fix this!)

Wuzzy wrote:

snip
...
(Also, Wordpad and Word are NOT text editors (they are word processors), so don't use them to read or save text files.)
...snap

don't scare the poor guy :-D
You don't need to organize a "real" editor for editing the config files (allthough you will never understand how you could do without once you have used such)

Wordpad is perfectly OK for editing ascii files!
As long as you make sure to save them in ascii format which is default when opening a file that is an ascii file from the start. Indeed Wordpad can do a little more than Notepad including some basic formating and reading word files but it is not a simplified Word. If anything it is more of a pimped Notepad. I might agree that under the hood it may be more a word processor in contrast to a pure ascii editor but I would rather see it as having a built in ascii editor. ;-P
I have always wondered why they didn't just replace the old Notepad with Wordpad as it can do anything the former could, might just be nostalgia.