FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

by **RAPHAEL** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 18:15

With the growing number of mods and likely potential for future mods, it is time to do some work on the mods wiki page to bring it up to epicness.

URL: http://c55.me/minetest/wiki/doku.php?id=mods

The reason I say work on this wiki page is so that there's a single place to go to see all mods and their status (working/notworking/dead/etc).

Some things that need to be included are the mods name, dependencies, forum post, description, all known versions if they are available, description, license and possibly screenshots.

Right this moment I will not have the time to work on that page (since I have to do a wiki refresher to remember how the heck to edit wiki pages) but I will be contributing. If you will be a big contributor, raise your hand and let's all get together to discuss how to make this wiki page the most epic of the wiki pages

by **Death Dealer** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 18:20

[url]Minetest.com[/url] is in the process of adding all mods and recipes. and its very user friendly.
and it links all the download to there respective threads so updating isn't a problem.

by **Death Dealer** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 18:25

no offense your wiki looks like its gonna be alot of work keeping it updated.

by **RAPHAEL** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 18:43

Death Dealer wrote:[url]Minetest.com[/url] is in the process of adding all mods and recipes. and its very user friendly.
and it links all the download to there respective threads so updating isn't a problem.

The reason I think a wiki page will be better than minetest.com is unless minetest.com has a wiki page, users/public/mod devs can't keep their mods updated. You will have to rely on one human and that usually leads to FAILure.

With a wiki page the community at large can keep it up. Work is distributed and it can be kept updated if people aren't lazy. If EACH mod developer kept just their mods updated on the wiki page then it would always stay updated.

by **Death Dealer** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 19:02

like i said the download links lead to this forum. meaning all they have to do it update there page on this site and its updated there. however here are things like the crafing section that if someone ads something to there mod i have to add it. but at least theres somehing.

by **bgsmithjr** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 19:20

Sorry for correcting you again , Raphel. but if it's dead you need not post it.

by **bgsmithjr** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 19:23

And earlier I posted that the forum should be split into two, Dev and Stable, so stable could be user friendly and dev can be technically stuff. My point was reinforced when a new mine craft player posted in the forum saying he uses stable 0.3, most people don't want to waste time with this stuff and you sound like you love 'dev stuff' so make yours dev only. And developers don't need screenshots. What do you think?

by **Death Dealer** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 19:26

good idea, but im adding mods to the site. witch means dev release, i think the wiki should be alot more simple tho.

by **bgsmithjr** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 19:29

by **celeron55** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 10:41

Do not update the wiki page; the place for mods is the Mod Releases section of this forum. There needs to be no other place.

Can't you people understand?

by **bgsmithjr** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 12:35

This is not that bad, but if there wasn't a search function on the top it would be non-functional for mods.
I am not going to go through 40 pages to find a mod that is not in the release section.

by **RabbiBob** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 12:59

I think this topic came up yesterday and I had the same thoughts then as now:

What Celeron did for the forum here is self-curating as long as the mods adhere to the Subject format and keep their mods up-to-date. I'd like to see a [LastUpdated: YYYYMMDD] or [Version <last version minetest with>] appended to that subject format and then you'd know how up to date the mod was right from the forum. I've taken to updating with the Version in my subject line for that reason and my update log shows the versions it is compatible with. Beyond that, it keeps care of itself to the best degree it can.

From a community interest standpoint, the work that Death is doing to promote Minetest is helpful in the way it is being done. As someone who has been here for a short time, I know where to look for things but the answer isn't always apparent as to what I'm looking for (two months ago I wondered wtf 'Mesecons\Jieja' was until I dug into it) and as bgsmithjr points out without knowing what you're looking for to search for, it is daunting. With the Mods page on Minetest.com, that gives a viewer a quick visual look at what is there and of what Minetest can be capable of. He then links right back to here, driving viewers (new and old) to the right place for more information. It's a thankless task (he stated what I learned in December: it's a crap-ton of work to keep it updated), but worth it in getting Minetest interest raised if even a little.

Not to slight Raphael's initative, but I wouldn't put energy into more than two places for mods (forums and minetest.com) and what\how the places represent the information needs to be different (which they are), else it is wasted effort.

by **celeron55** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 14:58

Other people can put up their own websites to make their listings of their preferred mods as they please; I have nothing against it. Or even post topics on the forums about listing the best mods.

But I have seen that multiple comprehensive mod listings will just get outdated, so I want just a single one in here. It is the Mod Releases section, because it has to exist in any case. Make sure to write good descriptions so that people can find what they are searching for.

Also if you think there should be something more in the Mod Releases guidelines to make the section more usable, shout it out.

by **Death Dealer** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:20

celeron55 wrote:Do not update the wiki page; the place for mods is the Mod Releases section of this forum. There needs to be no other place.

Can't you people understand?

its not very user friendly..... i know there called dev snapshots for a reason, but the game with out mods (no offense) really sucks. and minetest.com is linking everyhing back to this forum (download link lead to forum page) so i dont see how its hurting anything.

by **bgsmithjr** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:24

I think that there should be no other posts on the a released mod's topic other than from the creator. The it defeats the purpose of having the problem section, because everyone just ask for help. And I know this is not a good solution but it was very annoying when the materials line got updated and instead of the new posts being "Updated" it was day after day of "of does this work?", " I have error", " I have error also", and bug confirmed, I still may never know if the mods were ever updates to work with the new groups.

by **Death Dealer** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:25

bgsmithjr wrote:I think that there should be no other posts on the a released mod's topic other than from the creator.....

i dont know about that..

by **bgsmithjr** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:27

Everytime you see a new post on More Ores, mod you go to look and it is not "updated", It is "i have bug". I use the new posts flag often. And it is time-consuming for me. Many junk posts.

by **Death Dealer** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:28

bgsmithjr wrote:Everytime you see a new post on More Ores, mod you go to look and it is not "updated", It is "i have bug". I use the new posts flag often. And it is time-consuming for me. Many junk posts.

thast very true. any new guy with a problem witch can be alot.. will post on the mod itself: /

by **bgsmithjr** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:38

Well I don't want to go off an complaining rant but also it's the design of the forum and the game. You can tell the forum was designed for techies, because of the words bug and development. So bugs and problems, would lead me to believe problems with game, but where would I post user-error. There is no "Help", so it seems like it not designed for the average user. And then all this average users only want to use the stuff for techies and you get crap like that. Because 0.3 is not as good, and it has no forum. This whole thing is just terrible UN-organised and cluttered and not very help-ful. There should be only the main site and wiki, this whole forum Idea is bad. Why can't they talk on servers? Now no-one wants to play on servers because the forum is the new scene for techies and not new users. What if I had my computer a week, and then only liked the 0.4-dev and cruised this forum. This forum would not help at all. If celeron got too many emails from the website or wiki, it would be so much easier to change the tech-support email, than give one these shady characters your names and passwords for all your accounts. And Forums are not the right idea for a game that already brings people together. They are alright for things you do alone. But if the game is getting together with people and the forum is getting together with people, you are going to want to be alone. It would be better for celeron and the minetest fans. If there was just a wiki and minetest.com. He has a blog to update, a website to update, the game to update, the wiki to update, real friends, maybe a girlfriend, a job and A LIFE, a forum does no benefit for anyone and just makes it harder on himself.

by **Death Dealer** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:44

the forum does have benifits:D its so people can discuss mods and things about the game while he is at his "work/with firends/ girlfriends/etc.."

by **Jordach** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 16:53

No man can do everything at once, I like to do things one by one until the job is adequate, that's what Celeron must've done, how can he C++ and HTML(5) at the same time, no man can run the world, it's impossible, either way, he could do with the help, eg, lets get to work.

by **RAPHAEL** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 02:31

I just want to see a single "page" (don't care how it's done) listing all working mods with links to forum post of mod.

by **wokste** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 16:26

Good point. Here are my requirements for a mod list.

True, as a user I want to know:

What is this mod supposed to do?
Is it working?
License
For what version is this mod?
Are there updates? (notifications)

The rest (opinions, edc) is a problem for me.

As a developer I want to

Develop Mods.
Spend the least amount of time on promoting. (A.K. the wiki doesn't get updated)
Have control over the posts.

My suggestion sounds simple. Clear the release forum and allow only the starter to make posts. (I don't know if it is possible with the punBB)

by **Saxony** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 09:40

RAPHAEL wrote:I just want to see a single "page" (don't care how it's done) listing all working mods with links to forum post of mod.

I'm going to be very forward here, but this is not going to happen. Why? Becuase it's a ridiculous amount of work to keep updated.

The only way it would realistically happen is if either:
A) One person kept the page updated, modders would just have to make their forum posts.
B) The modders themselves keep a single page updated with all the various information for each mod.

A) won't happen because no one is going to spend that much time keeping that updated unless they're being paid, it's just too much work.

B) won't happen either because unless it's literally made a rule at least 50% of them won't bother adding their mod to the list. Most modders would also likely forget to update it each time they updated their mod.

So, this is where minetest.com comes in. You can see all the mods that people have rated on one page there, if a mod is rated it's pretty much guaranteed to work. It doesn't have all the info on one page though, because like I said keeping that updated would be crazy.

I honestly think this is the best compromise unless someone is going to volunteer to keep a single page updated.

Sax

by **bgsmithjr** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:21

My suggestion sounds simple. Clear the release forum and allow only the starter to make posts. (I don't know if it is possible with the punBB)

That is exactly what I said, but I only want to know the name and the download link. If I am crossreferencing to another list, or another game, or what I have. Everything just slows me down. And what it does needs to be decipherable by reading the name. Versions?? Get real. The only item to post that is worth mentioning is the recipes.

by **Death Dealer** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 15:47

And sax is saying the download link needs to lead to this forum. So it stays up to date. If I posted a download link to the mod itself and the mod maker updated his link, not only would i have an outdated link, but the link might even be deleted. So download link have to link to its respective thread. To keep it up to date.

by **celeron55** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 18:27

I do think that what we have currently is already WAY better than nothing - and it has gotten a lot of work for me to get it up to what it is now. But sure, there is room for improvement.

Death Dealer wrote:
bgsmithjr wrote:Everytime you see a new post on More Ores, mod you go to look and it is not "updated", It is "i have bug". I use the new posts flag often. And it is time-consuming for me. Many junk posts.

thast very true. any new guy with a problem witch can be alot.. will post on the mod itself: /

It is possible to disable posting replies in topics on Mod Releases - I wonder if that would be beneficial...

Also, I *could* create a "Help" forum section. Dunno how "Bugs and Problems" would then work like.

by **Saxony** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 23:16

celeron55 wrote:It is possible to disable posting replies in topics on Mod Releases - I wonder if that would be beneficial...

Also, I *could* create a "Help" forum section. Dunno how "Bugs and Problems" would then work like.

My 2c: you should disable replies on topics in Mod Releases and create a "Modding Help" or "Modding Problems". That way mod creators can have the mod releases forum for easy updating, and people can create bug reports/problems etc with the mod in the Modding Help section.

by **Jeija** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 05:53

I don't think disabling replies is a good idea. There would have to be 2 threads for each mod. Newbies would open a new thread for their own problem. How should a mod dev still find all these threads?

If there is a new version of a mod (maybe just on git) I'll have to write this in the first post of the mod release thread. How should users figure out what has changed? What if the update is not stable yet?

In my opinion you should keep it like that. The only other way is that people write their bug reports directly on GitHub, but I guess most of them won't and don't know how.

by **bgsmithjr** » Sat Apr 07, 2012 05:57

I guess it's not major, once minetest is stable, but while it's in dev, its imparative to know when mods are updated. And it checking every single new post is time consuming, when most of the new posts on a mod page are just conversation.

FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Here mod devs, focus on making this wiki page epic..

Here mod devs, focus on making this wiki page epic..

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡o ͜ʖ ͡o) [$ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) $] ( ͡$ ͜ʖ ͡$) ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ

Who is online