FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

so i downloaded minetest, and i went in the zipped file, havent done anything except download it, and i clicked through the files, until i found a bin folder, and it has a minetest.exe, or the application. Now, do i have to unzip the file for minetest to work? and how would i install dwarves modpack?

Yes, you extract the whole Minetest .zip. If you want to create a shortcut on your desktop, do not move minetest.exe, right click it and click "Create Shortcut".

And as for mods? do i copy dwarves into the mods folder?

Dwarves is a game, so you place it in the games folder :3

Ohh, ok, modding is different than in minecraft, thanks for the help, sorry for my stupidity

np, I know how you feel, I came here after running a custom MC Forge server with 36 Mods and a custom modpack.
It's quite a change.

I extracted the file, and like before when you double clicked on a zipped folder, youu saw the actual folder itself, now its the minetest folder in a folder, do i need to copy the actual minetest folder out, or can i run it as is?

You need the minetest folder out and in a seperate location.

Eg:
NOT
C:\Users\[name]\Downloads\minetest.zip\minetest

Do
C:\Users\[name]\Downloads\Minetest\

Then you can run It from
C:\Users\[name]\Downloads\Minetest\bin\minetest.exe

Mods go in
C:\Users[name]\Downloads\Minetest\mods\minetest
Games go in
C:\Users\[name]\Downloads\Minetest\games


Everything up to \Minetest is relative to where you extracted it.

Thats what it is, its unzipped, but when it made the unzipped file, it put it in a unzipped empty folder, except for the minetest folder itself, and what i mean by that, the entire game folder, ill screencap it for you,

That's redundant, but fine (though you shouldn't put those URLs in image tags; copy the text at the right that says "BBCode" and paste that). You put mods in "C:\Users\DonovanPritchard\Downloads\minetest-0.4.5-880d9e5-diamonds-win32\minetest-0.4.5-880d9e5-diamonds-win32\mods\minetest" and games in "C:\Users\DonovanPritchard\Downloads\minetest-0.4.5-880d9e5-diamonds-win32\minetest-0.4.5-880d9e5-diamonds-win32\games".

So i would put Dwarves in the games folder? Huh, minetest modding is wierd.

games are specialized collections of mods, intended to be played by themselves.

Yes, you put dwarves in the games folder

Got it running, played default for a bit.

So i got dwarves in the games folder, do i just run default minetest now?

No, you create a new world.. In the dialog when you create the world, you should see something like this below the name enrty box:

Minetest [minetest_game]
Minimal Development Test [minimal]
Dwarves [dwarves]

Select dwarves and click Create. Then you can play that world with the dwarves game

Cool.
Def. gonna download it and try it out.