Games, features, patches, etc

[shaneroach]

I really am not a fan of scripting languages. I see them as a tool for automating input, not as a programming tool in and of themselves. Nevertheless, they have become to tool of choice for those who like to modify existing games, and I understand they are simpler than learning full on C++.

On the other hand, I want to hone my C++ skills...

Anyone have advice on how I could make "mods" as patches? (Obviously, my C++ needs a LOT of honing.) I guess my question is where do I start in trying to understand the lay of the land in Mintest's C++ and how to make personal modifications that do not get my development off on a tangent that would make it incompatible with the official Minetest engine?

Secondly, while there are a ton of good mods for this game, none of them really fit exactly what I want to do, and so I have to kind of mix and match them to get what I want. Some of them, in my experience, sort of overlap... I dunno. I guess what I am trying to say is, am I missing a nice central location I might be able to look at where I can compare mods, their dependencies on other mods, and sort of shorten the learning curve a little as far as what I want to add to make things work like I want them.

My current mix for 4.6 is animals_modpack, bucket, calinou_mods, creative, default, doors, dplus, dye, farming, farming_plus, fire, homedecor, moretrees, plantlife-master, screwdriver, unifieddyes, vessels, and wool. And that appears to NOT be all I want. At the very least, I need to remember to add the one for boats too.

I don't know if that gives you a general idea of where I am heading, but basically what I want is all the plant related stuff I can get so I can start working on something that reflects survivalistic skills... I'd like something to build on that allows me to then think about which biomes certain necessary plants would grow in, how to represent them, etc, and start making something for like an almost strictly stone age game play.

That's not where I'd stop, but I want a lot of visceral detail as the groundwork for the game as I'd like to play it.

This post is possibly something of a disaster as far as making myself clear, but to sum up -
1. Where's the best place to go to get speedily up to date on the current state of the C++ portion of Minetest?
2. What's the best way to mod it using C++ without tripping all over the base code?
3. Can anyone suggest a set of mods that focuses on sort of a realistic, survivalistic set of materials and tools to be developed? I'd need that until such time as I was able to start modding myself, basically.

As an aside, Minetest works way better on Debian out of the box than Minecraft does. I was unable to resist the temptation to buy Minecraft recently, and now I am feeling the need to donate to Minetest, as I really should never have bought Minecraft to begin with. It's not terribly linux friendly. I will eventually get it to run correctly, but at the same time feel guilty for wasting the time when I ought to be working on my Minetest skillz. Lol

Anyhow, thanks in advance for any available input.

[PilzAdam]

1. Where's the best place to go to get speedily up to date on the current state of the C++ portion of Minetest?

Read the actual code. Thats the best thing you can do. Then there is the Dev Wiki with some documentation of the Minetest internals.

2. What's the best way to mod it using C++ without tripping all over the base code?

0.3 had hardcoded nodes, you might want to either backport 0.4 features to 0.3.x or reimplement the old system in 0.4.

[Menche]

Maybe you would be interested in this project? It's a continuation of the old minetest 0.3.x.