FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

So, to start off, no matter how many times I reinstall Minetest, I have to run it as administrator, or else it will crash to desktop with no error after a few seconds in game. I run in Windows 8. Could this be the issue? Any fixes to this would be great.

Second problem, a friend and I like to play it together, and, everything's better with mods, right? Well, we - or I suppose just I, since I host the server - downloaded a fair amount of mods, which I'll post a picture of below. I believe I installed them all correctly, and I think they're all compatible. But in game, we get a continuous streams of dozens of different errors. Sometimes we can't even see the chat because it just fills up with errors. I have a few less issues than the friend does, which I believe is because I'm hosting. Sometimes he joins in and will start placing blocks, but has an infinite ammount (we're in normal survival) and when he relogs in, every block he placed is gone.

So, here are the mods.

Thanks in advanced for any solutions to either problem.

I can see that mesecons directory name isn't right. it should just be mesecons. That is about all that I'm qualified to help with. :)

LionsDen wrote:I can see that mesecons directory name isn't right. it should just be mesecons. That is about all that I'm qualified to help with. :)

In a lot of cases the mod folder has to be named like the mod. But in this case the name is ok the way it is because mesecons works like a modpack.

Thanks for the screenshot. I see you're putting the mods in mods/minetest/ . The 0.4.6 version you're running looks like having the survival and build games. If you create a survival world, you'll need to have the mods in games/survival/mods. To use the mods from the place you placed them create a world with Minetest [minetest].

At least that is my first impression. But since you say you have errors instead of not working mods it could be something else.

Maybe some texture/image errors (I think darkage and building_blocks both have one) and some mesecons errors?
I experience that when I enable mesecons, only the first mod is 'checked'. Since it is a mod-pack (so no naming problems) I would expect all the mesecons mods-to be checked. Maybe checking all the individual mods of mesecons will help. The errors may be missing textures or dependencies within this mod, caused by not-checked 'sub'-mods.

megan-elizabeth1 wrote:So, to start off, no matter how many times I reinstall Minetest, I have to run it as administrator, or else it will crash to desktop with no error after a few seconds in game. I run in Windows 8. Could this be the issue? Any fixes to this would be great.

Could you file this as a bugreport on Github, please? This should be a bug in the engine.

The second problem is fuzzy. So there is not bugtracker where it clearly belongs to. Can you add and remove mods to find out, if a specific mod is the problem?

qznc wrote:

megan-elizabeth1 wrote:So, to start off, no matter how many times I reinstall Minetest, I have to run it as administrator, or else it will crash to desktop with no error after a few seconds in game. I run in Windows 8. Could this be the issue? Any fixes to this would be great.

Could you file this as a bugreport on Github, please? This should be a bug in the engine.

No, the problem is that he has installed them in "Program Files" wich is owned by the admin. Move the minetest folder to somwhere else, e.g. your documents folder or whatever.

Re second problem: You are using mobf and Simple mobs. Both together create an enourmous amount of mobs, wich the Minetest engine cant handle, so it starts throwing errors and deletes them.

Some random suggestions: ambience increases the connecting a lot, IMO its not worth it. The floatlands mod is obsolete; use mg_name = indev in minetest.conf instead and create a new world. Plantlife and snow will increase the mapgen time a lot, but it seems like a fair trade.

PilzAdam wrote:

qznc wrote:

megan-elizabeth1 wrote:So, to start off, no matter how many times I reinstall Minetest, I have to run it as administrator, or else it will crash to desktop with no error after a few seconds in game. I run in Windows 8. Could this be the issue? Any fixes to this would be great.

Could you file this as a bugreport on Github, please? This should be a bug in the engine.

No, the problem is that he has installed them in "Program Files" wich is owned by the admin. Move the minetest folder to somwhere else, e.g. your documents folder or whatever.

I would consider this a bug, since minetest crashes. There should be a clear error message instead.

qznc wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:

qznc wrote:
Could you file this as a bugreport on Github, please? This should be a bug in the engine.

No, the problem is that he has installed them in "Program Files" wich is owned by the admin. Move the minetest folder to somwhere else, e.g. your documents folder or whatever.

I would consider this a bug, since minetest crashes. There should be a clear error message instead.

This is not related to Minetest at all, its the OS's fault.

*lurk* Even if it IS the OS's fault, Minetest should still handle it elegantly instead of leaving the user scratching their head.

rarkenin wrote:*lurk* Even if it IS the OS's fault, Minetest should still handle it elegantly instead of leaving the user scratching their head.

What should Minetest do if the OS just kills the program? There is not proper way to handle this. Get a better OS.

PilzAdam wrote:

rarkenin wrote:*lurk* Even if it IS the OS's fault, Minetest should still handle it elegantly instead of leaving the user scratching their head.

What should Minetest do if the OS just kills the program? There is not proper way to handle this. Get a better OS.

We could at least include some notice on the download page to tell Windows users to not put their Minetest directory in Program Files.

Calinou wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:

rarkenin wrote:*lurk* Even if it IS the OS's fault, Minetest should still handle it elegantly instead of leaving the user scratching their head.

What should Minetest do if the OS just kills the program? There is not proper way to handle this. Get a better OS.

We could at least include some notice on the download page to tell Windows users to not put their Minetest directory in Program Files.

http://minetest.net/download Is it good like this?

PilzAdam wrote:http://minetest.net/download Is it good like this?

Yes.

PilzAdam wrote:

qznc wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:No, the problem is that he has installed them in "Program Files" wich is owned by the admin. Move the minetest folder to somwhere else, e.g. your documents folder or whatever.

I would consider this a bug, since minetest crashes. There should be a clear error message instead.

This is not related to Minetest at all, its the OS's fault.

Minetest should write the user-data to %APPDATA%/Minetest/ like it does in ~/.minetest on other OSes

The installer has a note about this.

Zeg9 wrote:

PilzAdam wrote:

qznc wrote:
I would consider this a bug, since minetest crashes. There should be a clear error message instead.

This is not related to Minetest at all, its the OS's fault.

Minetest should write the user-data to %APPDATA%/Minetest/ like it does in ~/.minetest on other OSes

It does, if you run a RUN_IN_PLACE=0 version on windows.