FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

There are some terms in Minetest which are a bit confusing because they are either ambigious or used inconsequently throughout the wikis, the forums and Minetest itself. This thread is part of a series of threads; I used multiple threads in order to cast multiple polls.

“game”
“game” has the sense of “collection of mods”. For example minetest_game is a game, technic_game is a game etc. But this word is problematic in my opinion, since in colloqial English, “game” means things like Minetest and Xonotic and Backgammon and Chess and SuperTuxKart. This is not exactly what the “collection of mods” meaning was intended to express.
Celeron55 used the alternative term “subgame” in blogpost. I thinkg that “subgame” is much better; we should adopt it. Consequently, the word “game” should lose the special Minetest-related meaning and get back its default meaning we know from the English language. I suggest to apply this change of terminilogy throughout Minetest itself, the wikis and the forum (well, at least the name of the subforum).

I start a poll which runs for 31 days. This should be long enough, I think.

From the standpoint of the engine, this actually is a no-brainer. The engine, in fact, calls them subgames internally. 8)

In how many places are these even called games? Do we have to change, like, the name of one forum section and one wiki page?

The cpp minetest code is not a game, it is a game engine - a voxel game engine.

It is the minetest_game that is the game: it adds the content, the player, tools and some mapgen.

It is how ever, simpler to think of them as sub games.

DevWiki / terminology

celeron55 wrote:In how many places are these even called games?

At least 25.
In the Minetest GUI when you create a new world, in the Minetest folder structure, in lua_api.txt, in menu_lua_api.txt, in both manpages (“gameid”), as a command-line argument (“gameid”), in the logfile (refered to as “gameid”), in the forums, on http://minetest.net/development and in the community wiki (http://wiki.minetest.net/Game, I added the mention of “subgame” recently but the page itself is still called “Game”. Here are the pages that link on the page: http://wiki.minetest.net/Special:WhatLinksHere/Game. Notably if you read “the game” it probably means Minetest itself, and not “game” as in “collection of mods and stuff”.)

For some weird reason, neither the term “game” nor the term “subgame” appears in the developer wiki. o_O

I always thought they were called forks

Calling it a "game" makes people's self gratification go up.

On the the hand a "subgame" is more politically correct.

The motivation behind all this is not political correctness. The motivation is clarity, since using the word “game” is ambigious and confusing to newcomers. I am a person who is “allergic” to ambigious words and sadly, the English language is full of them. I have a strong “allergic reaction” when people willingly create a term which already has a different meaning. And “game” in the sense of “collection of mods of stuff” is not the definition of “game” everybody else normally thinks of. In fact, such a (sub)“game” is not a game. You can’t just take all the mods and stuff and start playing. You need the engine, too. I’d say you have a game when you have Minetest (the engine) and a collection of mods an stuff (aka subgame aka “game”).

And frankly, I think political correctness is bullshit and I don’t care when someone’s self gratification goes up just because of a “clever” wording. This is just silly. (Imagine two rolling eyeballs here.)

A fork is something completely different. It would be a fork if you took the code and related data of some software project, copy it and edit it afterwards. Here is an example for a fork: Stunt Rally is a fork of VDrift, because it originated from its source code. Now Stunt Rally is a completely different game, there were many changes made.
Even you could create a fork. Here’s how to do it: Copy the source code of Minetest. (https://github.com/minetest/minetest, click on “Download ZIP” if you don’t use Git). Extract it. Then edit any file from it you like. Even if just the Readme, it does not matter. Congratulations, you just created a fork of Minetest! :D Forking is trivial, but creating something new and cool out with a fork of course not (see Stunt Rally).

I usually refer to them as "game modes", but "subgame" works too and is probably more accurate.

The problem is not the term "game", but simply that people think Minetest is a game. But Minetest is not a game, its a game engine. And a game engine runs games, so "game" is the correct term for the things that add content to the Minetest engine.

PilzAdam wrote:The problem is not the term "game", but simply that people think Minetest is a game. But Minetest is not a game, its a game engine. And a game engine runs games, so "game" is the correct term for the things that add content to the Minetest engine.

+1

PilzAdam wrote:The problem is not the term "game", but simply that people think Minetest is a game. But Minetest is not a game, its a game engine. And a game engine runs games, so "game" is the correct term for the things that add content to the Minetest engine.

Yes. I would say that it is like Minetest is the OS, and games are the 'programs' that run on/in it.

A quick reminder: There are 6 days left until the poll ends.

My two BitCoin:

I've seen some people on YouTube AND in-multiplayer (saying in-game is wrong) call Minetest a complete game, because installing a game is "difficult" - according to them, as they say: "there's *NO* instructions"; the posts are easy enough to find. (And they also happen complain that there are no YouTube tutorials; that's because we're not big enough yet. Some even say the engine itself is a game.)

Hint, hint: we should make these changes as well as making easier to find tutorials. It shouldn't take too long to change this - which would be nice for the "future" end users. Which is justified because the future is uncertain - which means we should more focus making the game more slimlined for end users, including installing mods (yes, mmdb is there, but enabling mods, yes, I don't mind it with some, mg being one of them. The second problem with mmdb is that mod developers do not seem to update their mods there...) games and texture packs. (Again, they should use the mmdb)

Server admins have been asking for a GUI frontend to enter commands without relying on external_command or irc_commands to just change something, which is pretty damn pointless.

Instead of adding perty little game features, focus on the users, as these will be the source of content. (Which means help the users and explain why things are like this)

The easier the subgame is to install, get started with, and create for, the better. (The actual subgames are exempt - they're meant to be difficult. But basic tasks should, such as subgame creation, texture pack creation (hint, can we have .zip support?) and less cryptic modding errors - should be more easy for the user.

(This post should probably go elsewhere, but it has the same problems of changing game to subgame. Users clearly cannot read to help themselves.)

The poll is over!

Results:
(15) Yes.
(9) No.
(6) I don’t care.
30 people voted.

Half and most of the votes go to “Yes.”.

So it is justified to rename the community wiki pages accordingly now and to change every “game” to “subgame” in there. I will do the changes somewhere in the next days, whenever I find the time for it. Also the forum section “games” should be renamed to “subgames” and inside the Minetest files (main menu, readme, docs, etc.) as well. For consistency, of course. See also: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?pid=114761#p114761

Wuzzy wrote:The poll is over!

Results:
(15) Yes.
(9) No.
(6) I don’t care.
30 people voted.

Half and most of the votes go to “Yes.”.

So it is justified to rename the community wiki pages accordingly now and to change every “game” to “subgame” in there. I will do the changes somewhere in the next days, whenever I find the time for it. Also the forum section “games” should be renamed to “subgames” and inside the Minetest files (main menu, readme, docs, etc.) as well. For consistency, of course. See also: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?pid=114761#p114761

Eh... thats not how we decide things there.

PilzAdam wrote:

Wuzzy wrote:The poll is over!

Results:
(15) Yes.
(9) No.
(6) I don’t care.
30 people voted.

Half and most of the votes go to “Yes.”.

So it is justified to rename the community wiki pages accordingly now and to change every “game” to “subgame” in there. I will do the changes somewhere in the next days, whenever I find the time for it. Also the forum section “games” should be renamed to “subgames” and inside the Minetest files (main menu, readme, docs, etc.) as well. For consistency, of course. See also: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?pid=114761#p114761

Eh... thats not how we decide things there.

Not at all. Besides, the developers named it, so why not just leave it the way they wanted it to be?

*rolling eyes*

Couldn’t you have told me that earlier?

^ What PilzAdam said.
The current terminology is only ever-so-slightly confusing for absolute newbies, and who gives a toss about them? :)
The ever-so-slight confusion of an absolute newbie is no justification for changing the entire terminology, newbies will just have to put some effort into learning that Minetest engine is not a game.

This goes for the block/node terminology too.

Jordach wrote:The easier the subgame is to install, get started with, and create for, the better. (The actual subgames are exempt - they're meant to be difficult. But basic tasks should, such as subgame creation, texture pack creation (hint, can we have .zip support?) and less cryptic modding errors - should be more easy for the user.

I'm afraid it's even worse - how does a new player get to know about those games/subgames? New players are new - they don't know much. They'll read that the minimal development game is not complete - so they'll download minetest_game eventually. Seeking for mods comes much later. And that there are subgames...and which one might fit that player's particular intrests - that's...pretty advanced. Perhaps players will notice after reading the forum thorughly that there are further games/subgames.

I've only noticed through DanDuncombes Realtest fork run on a server that that's a pretty intresting game version with nice features that offer a refreshing change (although not well suited for building). And then there's the Eden game - pretty close to what I like to have in my singleplayer world - but wouldn't have guessed ran under that name. And skyblock - not bad. Runs on one of OldCoders servers - so it's easy to play (just connect).

Perhaps offering a public server for a game/subgame is the best way to get it known. That way, new users just have to connect and can start exploring. Describing the subgames/games on the webpage of Minetest might also help a bit.

As far as subgame or texture pack creation goes, I think that's easy enough. Once players get that much intrested, they'll hopefully show up here. And if they know how to operate IRC, they can receive help soon.

Would it still be considered a subgame, if the creator only edited textures, and hadn't done any modding him/her self?

what you're describing sounds like a texture pack. However, if the creator happened to assemble the mods together (and not make any), then that would be able to be called a subgame, IMO.