FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Posted: **Tue Jul 31, 2012 16:34**

Hello everyone!
I want to tell you what i think about Minetest especially about modding.
Normal players have normally some requirements on the game (one want to play a survival game, the other want to make awesome pixel art). And these normal players have to search in the mod section for some mods that might be useful for their requirements (if they dont want only the basic game). They have to test them and decide wether they want to keep it in their game or not. This is a lot of work and it could happen that some players dont want to do this. They just play with the normal minetest_game and after a while they think "Minetest is boring". But Minetest isnt boring, it has a lot of mods that make the game 1000000% better. But these players dont want to search and test every single mod!
So my suggestion:
Minetest is an engine. It gives us the possibility to make games (that are basically packages of mods). In the most cases the mods in there are compatible to each other (design,.. etc). So it is a lot easier for normal players to download the games and to get so a package of mods that are exactly what they want to play. So one modder has the work to make a (good) game and all the other players wich want the same game just have to download the game.
But in this forum I found only 1 or 2 games (heres not even a section "Games") and only 3-5 mod packages.
So let us make more games and not confuse the normal player with thousands of single mods!

Posted: **Tue Jul 31, 2012 17:45**

I only made a [game] because it was easier then asking people to add and remove mods, and edit default, just to play my map :p But now that it's done i see the potential for different worlds with different modsets.

As for having too many single mods, there arent that many of us producing more than one or two mods, and as you spend more time on the forums and develop more mods you'll find you wont know where to put all your stuff anymore :p heck i've even been asked to split staircase from riventest into it's own thread to give you an idea.. lol

Its obvious though that the current sorting system isn't gonna be enough at the present rate of development.

Posted: **Tue Jul 31, 2012 18:58**

Minetest is bad for "normal" gamers because content is spread around in separate mods, and I have only recently, slowly and barely started to include more actual content in it.

I am not sure how the general gamers would receive a huge number of games; I rather try to make minetest_game a game which will generally suit the needs of the survival and the creative people by the toggling of a switch. However, if somebody sees I am going way off of their vision, I encourage making a game or a modpack (and send me engine patches), so that other people can evaluate and play it.

This is somewhat related:

I am going to add a page on the main website that will contain listings of mods (mostly chosen by me from popular ones on the forum), texture packs and other things, and links to sections on this forum for further browsing.

That will help established modders get their deserved attention, as the mod threads tend to currently get flooded by each other on the forum (which has served the community quite well, and continues to do that somewhat reasonably).

A draft of the page, in fact, already exists, but I am not going to make it official until I have made an official 0.4.2 package (because that will let me update the list somewhat); here it is: http://minetest.net/play.php. It needs at least a bit of categorization.

Posted: **Wed Aug 01, 2012 15:08**

celeron55 wrote:I am going to add a page on the main website that will contain listings of mods (mostly chosen by me from popular ones on the forum), texture packs and other things, and links to sections on this forum for further browsing.

A draft of the page, in fact, already exists, but I am not going to make it official until I have made an official 0.4.2 package (because that will let me update the list somewhat); here it is: http://minetest.net/play.php. It needs at least a bit of categorization.

I don't see Creative Inventory Mod in this list. This mod is so useful, it should be made part of the main game. :)

@Jordach: Sweet, I see it, and it is far better than Creative Inventory mod. So easy to use. Looks like dyes & wool were added too.

Posted: **Wed Aug 01, 2012 15:21**

Neuromancer wrote:
celeron55 wrote:I am going to add a page on the main website that will contain listings of mods (mostly chosen by me from popular ones on the forum), texture packs and other things, and links to sections on this forum for further browsing.

A draft of the page, in fact, already exists, but I am not going to make it official until I have made an official 0.4.2 package (because that will let me update the list somewhat); here it is: http://minetest.net/play.php. It needs at least a bit of categorization.

I don't see Creative Inventory Mod in this list. This mod is so useful, it should be made part of the main game. :)

It IS already part of Minetest Game.

Posted: **Mon Aug 06, 2012 14:07**

I was thinking of a simple listings interface like a classifieds site, where modders could publish their own mods directly and let the users rate their stability/quality, and a search/sort by index (minetest version, category, date added, license, etc.).

Using forms w/ required fields would be alot faster than vetting posts for proper text formatting. And it would free up the moderators time to help keep the /servers forum clean and happy-ish lol

Posted: **Mon Aug 06, 2012 14:27**

What about the wiki? http://wiki.minetest.com/wiki/Mod_list

Posted: **Mon Aug 06, 2012 18:31**

There are mod lists all over the place each suggesting essential mods, some of which are older than others. But there's no website/platform for independent listing and rating of mods, nor anything offering an advance search that can sort by category, version or even license. With all the mock homepages popping up, i thought someone would have thought of this by now :p

Posted: **Mon Aug 06, 2012 18:47**

mauvebic wrote:I was thinking of a simple listings interface like a classifieds site, where modders could publish their own mods directly and let the users rate their stability/quality, and a search/sort by index (minetest version, category, date added, license, etc.).

Using forms w/ required fields would be alot faster than vetting posts for proper text formatting. And it would free up the moderators time to help keep the /servers forum clean and happy-ish lol

+1

Posted: **Tue Aug 07, 2012 00:26**

mauvebic wrote:I was thinking of a simple listings interface like a classifieds site, where modders could publish their own mods directly and let the users rate their stability/quality, and a search/sort by index (minetest version, category, date added, license, etc.).

Using forms w/ required fields would be alot faster than vetting posts for proper text formatting. And it would free up the moderators time to help keep the /servers forum clean and happy-ish lol

I agree with you that we need standards. Most of the following are your ideas. Add Submit/Edit Mod pages to minetest.net website so that modders can simply cut and paste the locations of their mod .zip files and info into predefined fields (with ZERO vetting approval needed from moderators):
Predefined Fields:
App:-url containing direct link to .zip file location of the mod (this may require Omploader or Github because they let you do direct downloads from url)
Screenshots:-urls to screenshots
Crafting Recipies: -urls to screenshots
Description: Fill in the text.
Instructions for usage: Fill in the text.
License: Fill in the text.
Depends: List of all the mods this mod depends on.
All of this gets stored in a MySql database somewhere.
I like your idea of having the users themselves rate the mods for stability and usefulness on related pages which are more structured than our forums.
Then you have Minetest app itself poll this database and display it as a list of available mods to the user in the GUI. The end user could look at the stability and usefulness ratings 0-5 stars and see if they want to click the install button. There could also be a view link button that would fire up a browser to the page with screenshots, crafting recipies, instructions etc. for more detail. As soon as the modder uploads their stuff, it is immediately available in every users' Minetest GUI. Heck, if you wanted to get fancy this would allow us to actually see how many installed (and uninstalled) instances of each mod there are out there.

Posted: **Wed Aug 08, 2012 10:06**

Posted: **Wed Aug 08, 2012 11:01**

Thanks for the heads' up. Moved most of them. (a couple can't be moved yet) :-)

Posted: **Fri Aug 24, 2012 15:50**

I am making a new mod forum/database classified mod listing/rating system, which will fit this.

New Minetest Mod Forum

I came up with the idea before i even saw this post ;D

FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Modding

Modding