FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Just a general question for the community. Sort of like saying "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" this is a question based on Minetest and what you believe it'll be like once it reaches 1.0.

If you can't really estimate what it'll be like by then, what would you dream it'll be like?

NOTE: This thread is not for asking for features, likewise this thread is not for suggesting mods to people either.

What do you mean exactly, the engine or minetest_game?

PilzAdam wrote:What do you mean exactly, the engine or minetest_game?

Both I'm guessing.

I would think how the game is used with the engine. Me I see ourselves with a smoother gameplay(the little things that matter), a more customizable menu, and a good amount more nodes in the game.

Server-side security.

PilzAdam wrote:What do you mean exactly, the engine or minetest_game?

It doesn't matter.

ak399g wrote:Server-side security.

What does "Server-side security" mean for you?

I may add to this list.

Polish
This means both in the game, and in the engine.
Polish is all about making the game look professional, and work well together.

• The main menu uses tabs, which is not very professional for a game.
• The Iron block looks like stone

Lua Api features

• Client Lua - This could be used for translation, filtering swear words, ignoring. Commands in this could be onMessageSend, onMessageRecieve, onStep, addHud, removeHud, editHud, addLocalParticles, sendMessage (like in 'T'). Could also be stuff like sendPacket, onPacketRecieved.
• Modular Main Menu - the main menu lua is currently quite ugly. It should be possible to menu.register_tab(). I was going to do this, but that area is currently too active.

Bug fixes
We need higher FPS!

May i also add cient side skins.(i know people say we wont have it anytime soon but i think it is a good estamite because 0.4 is a long way from 1.0)

sfan5 wrote:

ak399g wrote:Server-side security.

What does "Server-side security" mean for you?

We're (myself, father, friends) looking into setting up a server, and one thing we've noticed, which isn't mentioned anywhere in any FAQ or tutorial, is that logging into minetest as a client and creating a username/password on the fly opens up a security hole in that anyone can SSH in to the server IP outside of the minetest box and already have a username/password account, with which they can effectively hack the server. Or something like that -- my father understands this a whole lot better, I don't completely know the technical aspects behind it. As we figure this out, and lock down the server (implementing essentially a "you-have-to-email-us-first, then-we-personally-add-you-if-we-trust-you" kind of signup) to prevent unauthorized access, I'll be able to understand more of the issue. After we finish setting the server up, I'll post a "how-we-did-it" report here documenting what we did and how we made the server more secure.
If that didn't help clarify, I'll be talking to him again sometime this week about it, so hopefully I'll be more prepared to understand and defend my position as things develop.

rubenwardy wrote:I may add to this list.

Polish

• The main menu uses tabs, which is not very professional for a game.

I disagree; I don't know how you're defining "professional," but I haven't found tabs to be a problem -- in fact, I appreciate that there are tabs.

What DOES need to be implemented is the ability to run minetest without a GUI. Running a server, one may not have a computer with a graphics card or decent monitor, but one should still be able to generate a world, even if one couldn't see it, amongst other things.

It is the style of tabs it uses, and how un-ordered it is.

To make tabs professional it could use icons, a better skin, and better tabs:

Singleplayer, Multiplayer (advanced is in dialog in this), Settings, Credits

Basically hiding advanced stuff

I'd like to see Minetest 1.0 look and feel intuative with a graphically pleasing interface which is customizable depending on gameplay and textures... The ability to optimize server load by making use of other users' machines to erradicate lag and also additional pages or tabs that allow you to download player worlds, skins, textures, sound and mods within Minetest...

ak399g wrote:

sfan5 wrote:

ak399g wrote:Server-side security.

What does "Server-side security" mean for you?

We're (myself, father, friends) looking into setting up a server, and one thing we've noticed, which isn't mentioned anywhere in any FAQ or tutorial, is that logging into minetest as a client and creating a username/password on the fly opens up a security hole in that anyone can SSH in to the server IP outside of the minetest box and already have a username/password account, with which they can effectively hack the server. Or something like that -- my father understands this a whole lot better, I don't completely know the technical aspects behind it. As we figure this out, and lock down the server (implementing essentially a "you-have-to-email-us-first, then-we-personally-add-you-if-we-trust-you" kind of signup) to prevent unauthorized access, I'll be able to understand more of the issue. After we finish setting the server up, I'll post a "how-we-did-it" report here documenting what we did and how we made the server more secure.
If that didn't help clarify, I'll be talking to him again sometime this week about it, so hopefully I'll be more prepared to understand and defend my position as things develop.

rubenwardy wrote:I may add to this list.

Polish

• The main menu uses tabs, which is not very professional for a game.

I disagree; I don't know how you're defining "professional," but I haven't found tabs to be a problem -- in fact, I appreciate that there are tabs.

What DOES need to be implemented is the ability to run minetest without a GUI. Running a server, one may not have a computer with a graphics card or decent monitor, but one should still be able to generate a world, even if one couldn't see it, amongst other things.

To clarify things:
1)
If you log in on a Minetest server with username and password there is no actual user account created on the system, the "account" is only a combination of user/pass stored in auth.txt which is checked on login.
2)
There is a way to run a minetest server without a GUI.
(Since you've mentioned SSH I assume you use Linux)
You just need to download and compile the minetest source code and you will get an executable named minetestserver.
minetestserver can be used like you would start a world from the command line with GUI, e.g.:
minetestserver --world worlds/our_awesome_world --logfile debug.txt --config minetest.conf
(this command assumes your world is in worlds/our_awesome_world, you want to use debug.txt as log file and minetest.conf is your configuration file.

sfan5 wrote:To clarify things:
1)
If you log in on a Minetest server with username and password there is no actual user account created on the system, the "account" is only a combination of user/pass stored in auth.txt which is checked on login.
2)
There is a way to run a minetest server without a GUI.
(Since you've mentioned SSH I assume you use Linux)
You just need to download and compile the minetest source code and you will get an executable named minetestserver.
minetestserver can be used like you would start a world from the command line with GUI, e.g.:
minetestserver --world worlds/our_awesome_world --logfile debug.txt --config minetest.conf
(this command assumes your world is in worlds/our_awesome_world, you want to use debug.txt as log file and minetest.conf is your configuration file.

You could do the same with just minetest instead of minetest server

I see a varied world. More varied than the failure of Minecraft 1.0; *Aether*

I also see larger maps, server <-> server teleporting, *travelnet*, and my capes pull. ;)

Hardware lighting, Mob AI in Core, Sam II, custom player textures (addi's database attached to the game engine), snow biomes, wool slabs and stairs, obsidian slabs and stairs, moreblocks in minetest_game, swappable texture packs while playing, easier methods to install mods, releases come with more than just minetest_game, improved framerate, LuaJIT bundled for release builds, VoxelAreaEntities (build a boat and it BECOMES A BOAT.), more things the player can do; climbing, monkey bars, climb 2 block high walls, hunger, die from heat exhaustion / hypothermia, game difficulty increases the further the player digs down (-15k stone needs a mese pick or better to keep mining, mobs are also stonger, but some ores are more common; eg, risk = reward), and an actual FAQ post.

Jordach wrote: releases come with more than just minetest_game,

i think minetest 1.0 will be shipped with some sort of Game downloader for such things and is not shipping it with games the user would never play, but blows up the download size. In my opinion a way more elegant solution. Furthermore i see Minetest 1.0 with a very stable server package in order to allow more players on multiplayer servers without having the best hardware available on the market. More engine merged stuff to simplify modding Mobs / NPCs with some kind of default behaviour related to players, since most users/modders in the community seem to want this.

In fact, i think Minetest 1.0 will have way more graphical features and some more additions to the LUA API. Since these are the base advantages of this game ( the speed from C++ and the modding part ).

sfan5 wrote:To clarify things:
2)
There is a way to run a minetest server without a GUI.
(Since you've mentioned SSH I assume you use Linux)
You just need to download and compile the minetest source code and you will get an executable named minetestserver.
minetestserver can be used like you would start a world from the command line with GUI, e.g.:
minetestserver --world worlds/our_awesome_world --logfile debug.txt --config minetest.conf
(this command assumes your world is in worlds/our_awesome_world, you want to use debug.txt as log file and minetest.conf is your configuration file.

What I mean is there is no way to create a world via command line.

ak399g wrote:

sfan5 wrote:To clarify things:
2)
There is a way to run a minetest server without a GUI.
(Since you've mentioned SSH I assume you use Linux)
You just need to download and compile the minetest source code and you will get an executable named minetestserver.
minetestserver can be used like you would start a world from the command line with GUI, e.g.:
minetestserver --world worlds/our_awesome_world --logfile debug.txt --config minetest.conf
(this command assumes your world is in worlds/our_awesome_world, you want to use debug.txt as log file and minetest.conf is your configuration file.

What I mean is there is no way to create a world via command line.

Running 'minetestserver --world ~/.minetest/worlds/test' when the folder 'test' doesn't will create a world at the specified path. Using the option '--worldname test' will exit with an error instead if it doesn't exist, because minetest doesn't know exactly where you want the world.

Menche wrote:

ak399g wrote:

sfan5 wrote:To clarify things:
2)
There is a way to run a minetest server without a GUI.
(Since you've mentioned SSH I assume you use Linux)
You just need to download and compile the minetest source code and you will get an executable named minetestserver.
minetestserver can be used like you would start a world from the command line with GUI, e.g.:
minetestserver --world worlds/our_awesome_world --logfile debug.txt --config minetest.conf
(this command assumes your world is in worlds/our_awesome_world, you want to use debug.txt as log file and minetest.conf is your configuration file.

What I mean is there is no way to create a world via command line.

Running 'minetestserver --world ~/.minetest/worlds/test' when the folder 'test' doesn't will create a world at the specified path. Using the option '--worldname test' will exit with an error instead if it doesn't exist, because minetest doesn't know exactly where you want the world.

Thanks. I swear, when we're done with this whole ordeal, we're writing a complete and detailed (i.e. non-vague) how-to. Because so far, there isn't one, or at least there is no obvious one.

Jordach wrote:an actual FAQ post.

Do you mean something that is not a forum post?

I forgot to add that I see a beginners tutorial or crafting guide in game. Or at least a tutorial.text somewhere.

jojoa1997 wrote:I forgot to add that I see a beginners tutorial or crafting guide in game. Or at least a tutorial.text somewhere.

Thankfully a Crafting Guide mod exists to help show us recipes for everything in the game, including most mods :)

https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=2334

Jordach wrote:releases come with more than just minetest_game,

That. And hunger.

jojoa1997 wrote:I forgot to add that I see a beginners tutorial or crafting guide in game. Or at least a tutorial.text somewhere.

Or a Tutorial World like they do with Minecraft on Xbox 360 which the map updates when new features come up.

It should be a little faster and code should be all organized because a lot of people complain about it. there will be a lot more feature in modding (like mirror) and maybe bigger maps or parallel map (go to different map in game. load game while in different map, carry objects to different map.) also bigger community with minetest compiled in to smaller devices and game machine, with more logical smooth movement of player.

popular online server list on the multiplayer section.