FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

We already have an amazing Community but it's not very big I would love to make it bigger and more popular but how, Any ideas?

construct an orbital satelite laser cannon and destroy minecraft :P

firefox wrote:construct an orbital satelite laser cannon and destroy minecraft :P

XD

Funny Minetest videos on youtube to draw in a crowd.

TenPlus1 wrote:Funny Minetest videos on youtube to draw in a crowd.

ok

Fix bugs.

Some spontanous ideas which came into my (maybe naive) mind:

- Reaching version 1.0.0 and proudly announce in as many channels as possible
- By posting Minetest to various online game or software databases like LGDB (VERY important IMO)
- Making sure Minetest runs fine on popular operating systems
- Make the Android build less shitty/buggy
- By telling friends
- Be a proud Minetest player (don't be ashamed of Minetest :D)
- LAN parties!
- By actually playing it with other people
- By making gameplay videos and posting them in large Internet communities
- By hosting one or more Minetest servers and telling people about it
- Just by mentioning Minetest in daily discussions (no matter if AFK or in Internet)
- By creating Minetest fanpages (lol) and linking to them
- Lower hurdles for complete newbies and improve usability
- By creating great subgames and repeating everything I just said about Minetest for these subgames
- By leaving a great first impression on the homepage

Pay that Swedish youtuber to act like he's having the best time marketing... i mean playing it.

The UI for Minetest puts a lot of people off, I've found

rubenwardy wrote:The UI for Minetest puts a lot of people off, I've found

You mean the main-menu, or the ingame-controls ?

Is there a way to 'mod' the main menu, and have a parameter
to get the alternative menu come up ?

Ingame, there should be more help - and F1 should be the help-key.
And some pre-defined help-topics, that come up depending on the state of the user, eg.
* tool selected --> tools-page, explain what left/right-click do
* block/building stuff selected --> build/place-page
* pointing --> show page about that block
* inventory / chest / crafting --> explain moving stuff, link to crafting-guide
* furnace --> link to crafting-guide
* chat --> "/help"
* dark --> explain day/night, and torches
* general --> status of map (mapgen, server/multiplayer ...)
...
Also F1 while help is showing --> help-index

The main menu, inventory, and other formspecs

hajo wrote:

rubenwardy wrote:The UI for Minetest puts a lot of people off, I've found

You mean the main-menu, or the ingame-controls ?

Both. :P
See also my rant on MT's controls: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9505&hilit=controls
I think the bigger problem are the controls. Personally, the main menu is acceptable to me, although it clearly can see improvements. It is not really pretty but it gets it job done.

Is there a way to 'mod' the main menu, and have a parameter
to get the alternative menu come up ?

No. The only thing which could be modified easily would be the inventory menu. Rubenwardy added the Simple Fast Inventory to allow mods to add new inventory pages, that would help with some stuff. But this only works for Minetest Game, of course.

Ingame, there should be more help (…)

I am working on this (as a modpack), see here:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15912&p=240152

The first thing that comes to mind is that minetest is extremely basic,without mods. Like no hunger, sprinting or any real survival challenges. Add mobs hunger and such and I think minetest as a comunity and game will grow a lot. I know there are mods for all of this but for a new user who is not a computer geek may have trouble installing mods. Also add music without lua errors.

Ohh. GOD, if you are and everywhere hear me !

1. Shadows !
2. Of cource Shadows !
3. Shadows - no exceptions )
4. Epic crossmaden caves with abandoned mines of cource.
5. One another realm like Hell in MC.
6. Base but not silly mobs.
7. LORE of resource behaviour (for example, mese pickaxe looks hmm hmm IMHO)

It's all is minimal standart of DEFAULT game now, so it's need to be when player first starting the game, no way abandone it because gamer's wish WANT.

Nyarg wrote:1. Shadows !
2. Of cource Shadows !
3. Shadows - no exceptions )

that would require a complete re-writing of the lighting system :P

Nyarg wrote:4. Epic crossmaden caves with abandoned mines of cource.

are dungeons not good enough?

Nyarg wrote:5. One another realm like Hell in MC.

i heard that layered map generation (stacked realms) is in development ...

Nyarg wrote:6. Base but not silly mobs.

TenPlus1's mobs redo

Nyarg wrote:7. LORE of resource behaviour (for example, mese pickaxe looks hmm hmm IMHO)

what's wrong with mese tools? they are just yellow diamonds :P

Joseph13 wrote:The first thing that comes to mind is that minetest is extremely basic,without mods. Like no hunger, sprinting or any real survival challenges. Add mobs hunger and such and I think minetest as a comunity and game will grow a lot. I know there are mods for all of this but for a new user who is not a computer geek may have trouble installing mods.

Nyarg wrote:It's all is minimal standart of DEFAULT game now, so it's need to be when player first starting the game, no way abandone it because gamer's wish WANT.

minetest is supposed to be a game platform, not a game by itself. so i guess it's fine to have a minimalistic game to use as base for additions or get started.
there is this "vote for games to be bundled with minetest" thread ever since i don't know when, but so far no games have been bundled with minetest :(

If the first time player downloads minetest, does not know to install any mods or subgames, the player will receive a message on the main menu...

"THERE ARE NO MODS OR SUBGAMES CURRENTLY LOADED.
To provide a fuller game experience, please go here
[link] and install these mods!"

Don't judge on there ways?
E.g. regarding myself I'm Transgender.
Then again not everyone has the same POV of others. People may very.

Maybe I'm wrong but looking at the server list I feel like there are more and more players. So I feel like community is actually growing.

TARD wrote:Pay that Swedish youtuber to act like he's having the best time marketing... i mean playing it.

that can work thers Only One Problem I don't have money for it XD

rubenwardy wrote:The UI for Minetest puts a lot of people off, I've found

i completely agree (Maybe you should make an issue on GitHub you have More chance to get The idea approved than me)

Joseph13 wrote:The first thing that comes to mind is that minetest is extremely basic,without mods. Like no hunger, sprinting or any real survival challenges. Add mobs hunger and such and I think minetest as a comunity and game will grow a lot. I know there are mods for all of this but for a new user who is not a computer geek may have trouble installing mods. Also add music without lua errors.

Completely agree with this but I can't program :\ I can help with Art and models btw

Yeah but seriously. Download with mods option is great idea I think. It's got to have goals for people who like strategy, Decor for those who rp, skins. Keep it lite so that kid riding a camel in somolia can play on a 10 year old blackberry or dialup, but fun enough that he makes all F- because he stayed up until 3 am.

Maybe the biggest road blocks which hinder Minetest gaining more popularity is, frankly, Minetest Game.
Or more precisely: For it being the default (and only) subgame being distributed with Minetest.

It leaves a “meh” first impression, it's just too incomplete. It's OK for a sandbox, but there simply isn't much to do.
And development progress on it is very slow. Every change needs approval. And any proposed big changes ALWAYS trigger very long and tiresome discussions. Big changes are usually met with huge resistance; you can basically kiss good-bye to stuff like Mesecons. Minetest Game releases only appear together with Minetest releases, which means it does not happen often. Other subgames have a faster release cycle.
But worst of all, Minetest Game completely lacks any direction.
Many other subgames often adopt Minetest features way earlier than Minetest Game does. For instance, Carbone has connected glass WAY earlier than Minetest Game.
Basically, Minetest Game only becomes more or less acceptable after it is heavily modded. Many mods for Minetest Game actually only exist because their authors felt something was lacking in Minetest Game.

For this use case (modding), I have to admit that Minetest Game is actually pretty good and provides a pretty strong API. But I think installing mods is something for power users. Yes, modding is totally a core feature of Minetest, but NEW users have a reasonable expectation to get a full game without mods. The pure unmodded Minetest Game is too incomplete and pale. New users certainly just want to play before even thinking of installing mods (even IF they are power users otherwise).

IMO Minetest Game doesn't deserve all that free attention for being the default game. I think other subgames like Pixture or Lord of the Test deserve more attention.
The problem is, Mintest Game still absolutely dominates, simply because it happens to be the default, not because it is that good. What's especially sad is that still many people are eqating Minetest Game with Minetest. Sure, Minetest Game is improving slowly over time, but it has still a LONG journey ahead.


I think a good “default” (or “starter”) subgame should:
- Show off Minetest well
- Leave a good first impression
- Be relatively easy to pick up (no “gotchas”)
- Be complete and self-contained. The player should not feel that something is lacking
- Maybe make players even want to check out other subgames

I think Pixture might be a VERY good candidate for a new “starter” subgame. Maybe not replacing Minetest Game entirely, but simply distributed along with Minetest.

Or we completely have to rethink how subgames are distributed and/or advertised. I already posted two great subgames in the LGDB.

But no matter what default game we choose, it should not be Minetest Game. What I think is especially important is that Minetest Game needs to be dethroned. It must stop being the king which de facto dominates everything else. Other subgames, the good subgames should be given a chance, too. They should not be hidden in the dark parts of the forums.

We had the subgame voting thread for years now, but no new subgame was ever included. Only Minetest NeXt made it into the default, but this was just a merge into Minetest Game and basically was just a collection of relatively mundane changes.

So maybe, just maybe, including 1 new subgame into Minetest or even completely replacing Minetest Game as the default might help.

Multi-language supported in chat,for other Chinese-tradition language users.

linushsao wrote:Multi-language supported in chat,for other Chinese-tradition language users.

I don't speak Chinese Myself but I can see this being really useful for people who do

Wuzzy wrote:Maybe the biggest road blocks which hinder Minetest gaining more popularity is, frankly, Minetest Game.
Or more precisely: For it being the default (and only) subgame being distributed with Minetest.

It leaves a “meh” first impression, it's just too incomplete. It's OK for a sandbox, but there simply isn't much to do.
And development progress on it is very slow. Every change needs approval. And any proposed big changes ALWAYS trigger very long and tiresome discussions. Big changes are usually met with huge resistance; you can basically kiss good-bye to stuff like Mesecons. Minetest Game releases only appear together with Minetest releases, which means it does not happen often. Other subgames have a faster release cycle.

...

I fully agree ... I do remember that I tested Minetest a longer time ago it was so boring.

Thinks that really do specially young kids think that Minetest ist better than Minecraft is in case of my son homedecor. He found so many crazy thinks I'd never found in Minecraft before.

But of cause others are more puristic and don't like the not blocky things. My husband is looking for a cart-system that make nice sounds ... he does not want the "advanced trains" mod but more technical possibilities ... a good sound.

The problem is, the interests are different. What about adding a set of pepared maps or subgames for different interests. May be it could be installed additionally to minetest and add the needed mods at once.

Another possibility to realize the possibilities of Minetest is to go to the open servers. May be the Tabs need some information about what can be done there.

celeron or another dev should contact Ubuntu and some the other main GNU OSs which others folk under and ask them to repackage Minetest so when new comers download it from the repos it is 0.4.14 (.15 soon) rather than the old 0.4.9 which is the current repo pckg

Have someone go through the countess mods and look for repeats (2 or more of the same mod) and even (2 or more of the same material/texture)
I learned early on that some mods use alias to override some default textures/functions, and this can be very confusing to a new user (even annoying) because even if you change texture packs some items still use a mods texture because it uses an override code.
There are two mods which jump to mind instantly with this very situation (not bad mouthing, simply stating a fact) but, homedecor uses override for it's 3d bookshelves and I could not figure out why my bookshelf never changed when I switched to another TP for quite a while and it frustrated me.
Techics does this as well with steel, by switching it to stainless steel, and technic chests pop up everywhere and if you're new, you can't figure why these things are all over the place :P
I honestly feel that no mod should override any "default" features/textures..., texture packs are for changing default textures and textures from mods..., not the other way around.
There are a few mods which add the same material, i.e. moretrees has birch.... so does farming?(or something like that), this sort of situation only creates issues
When I first started with Minetest I went mod-crazy installing every cool mod I could find... but then kept running into these very sorts of frustrating issues I've mentioned... it is to the point I am down to about 3 mods now, and I like them simply because they do not use overriding code. Mods should "add" new materials, features and functions, not take them away by overriding them.

You need to update your Ubuntu version. You're using an old Lts version, and by doing that you're telling Ubuntu that you don't want new updates only security patches. 16.04 has 0.4.14 in the repos

rubenwardy wrote:You need to update your Ubuntu version. You're using an old Lts version, and by doing that you're telling Ubuntu that you don't want new updates only security patches. 16.04 has 0.4.14 in the repos

Actually, I use Mint. 0.4.9 was the version available back when I first downloaded Minetest from the repo. I posted a mssg to Clem when I found out it was outdated and I was told I would need to contact Ubuntu, as you know Mint uses Ubuntu repos for most stuff. I have seen quite a few people come along who wound up with the same original issue I had by getting an outdated version at the beginning.
Since that time, I use the Ubuntu/Mint ppa

Anyway, I'm really glad to hear it is now an updated version with Ubuntu. What about the other big dogs? The main distros are the ones which should all have the latest version, so that all the OSs which feed from their main repos will be covered as well.

I think the question asking how to make Minetest community bigger, is the very same question which has perplexed GNU Linux users for a long while... We think to ourselves, "It's free of cost, free to alter/customize, and it's just better.... so why don;t more people use it?"

The reason is..., society lives by the dogma.... "If it's free, it must not be worth it." Minetest probably gets many new users frequently, but only a certain percentage of those will stick with it, while the rest instantly compare it to MC and via their own frame of mind as well as a lot of misinformation out there regarding to Minetest as a "copy" of MC, etc..

They become disenchanted comparing a multi billion dollar, generating software, to a completely free of cost software (which is pretty dang awesome considering many things, and created by, developed by, and maintained by a great bunch of people... who don't get paid to do it.)
It's just the same old question.... Minetest vs MC, Linux vs MS + Mac

Besides, I think many agree with me... I like "small communities"..., it's just better that way ; ) Better than being overrun by a trillion runny nosed, spoiled, foul mouthed kids with zero adult supervision and having these forums bog your computer down like mincraftforums.net does. Every time I've scoured there looking at TPs my pc goes into respiratory distress... because their servers are constantly over flooded... And that is just another way they make even more $$$$ from it... by not improve the online/forum experience to keep costs as minimal as possible.

And I also want to take this moment to make sure no one is offended by my comments regarding some mods... I think they are awesome mods and those who created them have done a great job..., I was just pointing out a couple of issues with them which I am sure other people have been confused by or frustrated by.

Make a bigger community? Make a better game engine and a better default game. There are so many issues and missing things in this game and it has to comped with one of the most popular games ever.

There are so many tiny, but annoying issues like the new water sounds. It is great to finally have some kind of sound, but the implementation is crap. There is no splash sound if you jump in the water, if you walk on the ground the walking sound is played instead of the water sound. If the water sound is played then sometimes it is played multiple times, some times no sound is played at all. It's silent. And if you dive I would expect a diving sound

An important part of a good and successful game are details. And I miss this kind of details in MT

This is just one example for many many tiny issues that kills the fun in the game. And the limitations of the engine makes it impossible to change that


Many good modders left the community because they can't finish their mods because of the engine limitations and the core developers are "not keen" to fix bugs or add features. I can understand that their time is limited, but you can't get an output without any input.

That's why I stopped developing mods too. I hit limitations of the engine and I saw no chance to change that.