FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

We need to fix these before it's too late...

--Bad textures. I know that not everyone is great at making textures (I'm not), but it isn't hard to use pieces from existing textures, with some editing. Here are my simple rules for making textures:
-Try to make them 16x16, unless you NEED detail in some areas. Don't go above 32x32.
-Don't add too much noise
-Try to use parts of default textures, or make your textures FIT IN with default textures. Consistency is the most important thing.
-Try to use "Blocky" shapes. Sloped surfaces are OK, but don't use curves.

-No connection between mods. Many mods will have items that are nearly identical. The problem with this is that you will need to craft both of the very similar items, which takes up more space. Additionally, most mods only use default items in their recipes, which results in long, linear crafting chains, and many items with very few uses.

-Inconsistency.
The main problem is right click vs left click for activating blocks. USE RIGHT CLICK PLEASE!!!!!!
Additionally, textures are a problem, but I already talked about that.

There's much more, but if I listed everything, I would be here until all the bugs in the game are fixed (never)

Honestly, I think the game is almost beyond hope...

12Me21 wrote:Bad textures...

I agree with some points, I find some textures unecesarily too big, however not everyone is skilled to pull off nice 16 x 16 pixel art. But as other things, this is subjective. Imagine a skyrim mod using slightly altered textures from default...it wouldn't feel as the source material. The best way to solve this is to make more texture resources for modders to use. I can count with one hand all the topics that give away textures to work with...

12Me21 wrote:-Try to use "Blocky" shapes. Sloped surfaces are OK, but don't use curves.

Even tough I like more cubic stuff, this is subjective. Don't limit people to what and what can't they do. If something that we as a communty learned by now, that only hinders development. There are mods that use complex models, like homedecor, and they wouldn't be as great without that complexity.

12Me21 wrote:Inconsistency...

This is a great tip, but I doubt this will be listened because of the moddable nature of minetest. You as a user don't like to use the left-click? Open a word editor ,and edit it to be mapped to the right-click.

12Me21 wrote:We need to fix these before it's too late...

The things you mention here may be annoying some times, but it isnt an urgent thing. I have seen these things all the way back to 4.4...

While many of my arguments are based on my opinion, there is another reason.
I used to say that consistency is more important than quality, but now I think it's more than that: Quality IS consistency; it's when everything looks "right", and fits in.

The food mod is very good at supporting other mods, although its list of items may be out of date. It is near impossible to write a mod to support every other mod possible.
Modding is dead, in terms of gameplay quality. It's subgame creators that have the power.

subgame creators can and should make sure that those things are all right, by edititing the crafting recipes.

mod creators usually design their mods to be used in their own game world, so the initial recipes and textures are made to fit into those worlds. if you bring the mods into a different world, you have to make slight adjustments to the craft recipes.

a good example is how TenPlus1 integrated the homedecor mod into the Xanadu Server:
- he only added a selected choice of items to be used
- he changed the recipes to work with all kinds of wood.
- he changed the recipes to use simple materials that can all be found on the server

One thing also : don't believe that a popular mod is necessarily a quality mod. Lot of users stick with those without bothering to investigate and diagnose their specs. But hey, gregariousness is reassuring...

Why don't we put together some sort of experienced modding team which analyses and edits mods for consistency, because I agree that this is important. (I am not putting myself forward - I have no experience whatsoever with modding)

jp wrote:One thing also : don't believe that a popular mod is necessarily a quality mod. Lot of users stick with those without bothering to investigate and diagnose their specs. But hey, gregariousness is reassuring...

true...
when i first cam to minetest i searched for the most "popular" mods and ended up with moretrees, plantlife, moreores and moreblocks and lots of other stuff. not only did i have problems with overlapping crafting recipes, half of the mods were not maintained anymore and when i switched minetest versions from 4.10 to 4.11, my world was flooded with error messages, unknown nodes and missing items in craft recipes.

after experiencing a lot of chaos, i selected mods wich i found interesting, regardless of their popularity and the results were much better. this way i came to ethereal and eventually centered everything around that.

Alienant1 wrote:Why don't we put together some sort of experienced modding team which analyses and edits mods for consistency, because I agree that this is important. (I am not putting myself forward - I have no experience whatsoever with modding)

not a good idea ...
first of all, unifying all mods would require lots of changes in craft recipes and the original design idea of the author will be lost. some mods are designed to be simple and easy while others prioritize realism and are much more complicated. look at xdecor and homedecor for example.

but it is possible to create modpacks, so if mods work well together, people could make a modpack for them.
this is similar to a subgame but less big and can be used like any other mod.

Alienant1 wrote:Why don't we put together some sort of experienced modding team which analyses and edits mods for consistency, because I agree that this is important. (I am not putting myself forward - I have no experience whatsoever with modding)

This sounds like a good idea. Maybe this could be done when mods move from WIP Mods to Mod Releases?

I was thinking more of when they are integrated into the vanilla game because otherwise there will be far too much to process. (or maybe just have a really big team, or maybe rules for mods being published so the developer has to change it)

Aren't mods already edited when they are added to the vanilla game? I have no idea whether they are or not.