FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Has anyone ever thought about name distance in Minetest? I'm sure I'm not the only one who dislikes being disturbed by unwanted guest on servers when they follow you and your friends due to the fact your name tag gives away your position.

A feature where servers can be setup to their own preference such as:

• Adjusting the distance which a players name's fade off. (e.g 10 blocks or 30 blocks away)
• Different Settings for certain players
• Owners and Admins can have full name views of every player. Whereas others will not.
• Player's name can be set Red and full view for other players if that player is suspected of griefing.
• Disable all name tags so players can only recognize other players by their character texture.
• Color tag the names for certain players from different teams or groups.

The list can go on, but it should be customizable for the servers liking. Any suggestions? What are your thoughts?

Setting "unlimited_player_transfer_distance" to false in minetest.conf enables this. I forget the exact distance but it is hard-coded in. I think the distance should be configurable, and it would be nice if structures blocking line-of-sight obstructed the view of the name tag.

Maybe make the name tag an entity attached above players? That wouldn't be visible from far away and wouldn't show through walls.

I don't really want to vote because I'm torn between them. Your ideas for customization of this feature are pretty good. I have an idea for another option. If a player wants to, they can make their tag visible from anywhere to a specific player(s).

Menche wrote:Maybe make the name tag an entity attached above players? That wouldn't be visible from far away and wouldn't show through walls.

I like that idea. I'm sure somebody could make a mod that does this, but it's would be in vain if there isn't an option to disable the current name tag.

good idea

So... any plans for this sort of thing to happen in the near future?

I think this should be a personal matter,
since I, for one, can imagine doing something like this:

*Epic PVP wars going on.*

*All factions sneaking on each other in the cover of night.*

"COME GET ME MORTALS"

*Sylvertech activates lights and perma-nametag*

*Sylvertech stands on top of mountain*

*Players come from left and right*

*He sprays them with his UberBullets™*

I think it would be nice to have a simple function in the Player API:



This could manipulate a simple NxN table of booleans. There would obviously be a default, but the presence of this API would allow mod code to set custom values and update them every few seconds based on permissions, distance, chat commands, or whatever. The only tricky one would be line-of-sight, because you probably wouldn't want N^2 ray traces across the world every couple seconds to see if anything is blocking vision. That would better be done in the client, obviously.

EDIT: It could be an enum instead of a boolean: "never", "always", "LOS"

prestidigitator wrote:I think it would be nice to have a simple function in the Player API:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

player:set_name_visible_to(player_name, isVisible)

This could manipulate a simple NxN table of booleans. There would obviously be a default, but the presence of this API would allow mod code to set custom values and update them every few seconds based on permissions, distance, chat commands, or whatever. The only tricky one would be line-of-sight, because you probably wouldn't want N^2 ray traces across the world every couple seconds to see if anything is blocking vision. That would better be done in the client, obviously.

EDIT: It could be an enum instead of a boolean: "never", "always", "LOS"

this is the perfect idea although id add one more variable:



tagColour could be a hex code or a word??

I think we are all thinking, only about names, not the entire players, right?

Dragonop wrote:I think we are all thinking, only about names, not the entire players, right?

we are talking about the name tag that sits above each player in the game

+1 I think its a great idea.

I don't get it. You can set the player-to-player view distance with a setting which exists since a month.

About the colored names: Yes, that's a good idea, now is someone required to write the codes for it.

But, it would be better if you can see the names from close, but the characters from very far away.

I really need this feature. unlimited_player_transfer_distance not the option.

Bump... Did anyone attempt this?