FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

So, we've had Minetest for about a week - "we" is 2 boys - ages 8 and 11 - who have made remarkable progress exploring and building shelters - all learning directly experiental. As their mom, "I" am the local "minetest tech support" LOL

The youngest one wants doors - I find a mod titled "Zipdoors" - download and extract the files and move these into minetest/mods/. We also got the Ambient (Sounds) mod.

I have looked and looked for the answer, amongst all kinds of googled links; but nothing tells me how in simple enough language. My apologies but I'm not really a gamer, or programmer, or code writer. I'm doing the best I can and suspect I will also get much better at all of this as we go along.

So, what we can't figure out is how to get these mods use-able into the single player world - either one or both boys (each has their own world - very different - as the older one loves living underground and occasionally dying due to unfortunate lava flows - and the younger one prefers "security", above ground in a cozy log dwelling. The younger one is the one who wants the doors and sounds. The older one isn't that interested, so far.

Also, while I'm at it - how do we increase the quantity of individual items in the inventory ? Oh, and one other thing - some of the icon "names/labels" don't seem to match the image - did something get scrambled ? Can it be "fixed" ?

Thank you for all kindness and patience, as we get up to speed. I think minetest represents infinite and awesome possibilities for these 2 boys going forward into the future. Thank you for the way it is designed and has been created.

The icons are meesed up because of limited video ram.

The mods require 0.4.x versions; as listed on http://c55.me/blog and use that version; you usually find mods that are working with the latest release, just make sure you have the same mods per world; you can keep the world by moving the world folder (like asdf which is the folder and the world name) and move it over. But be warned! That world MUST have the same mods installed.

ZLPDoors is an old mod now; I suggest you download from the blog, as I stated earlier, download it; extract it; and check the Creative Mode box in singleplayer tab or advanced tab. (You literally drag the item into your inventory)

Hope this covers some of your questions.

- Jordach

I use (L)ubuntu 11.10. I put mods I like to use in the following folder:
/home/TOPYWO/celeron55-minetest-d38b465_test 1/mods/minetest --> In the 'lowest' folder minetest, which is the folder where your mods should be, should be a document called "mods_here.txt"

Sometimes you need to rename the mod folder, most of the time by limiting it to the 'bare' name, without version numbers and author names.

Sometimes the mod and your minetest version are less or incompatible. (as Jordach mentioned for ZLPDoors)

You can increase the quantity of individual items by -not- playing in creative mode. However, tools like a pick_axe, cannot be stacked, so stay 1

I could find this thread about messed images, http://minetest.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1759, maybe it helps you.

P.s. Did you already try to play minetest (on a server)? :-)

Thank you both for quick responses. We do have the latest version of minetest and the mods are in the "lowest" folder for mods and each is in its own folder. I do remember seeing the txt file.

I will look at these suggestions tomorrow, with your answers and the program in front of me (on a different computer). I thought I had gotten the door from the correct place.

We have both Creative and Enable Danger, I think it is, checked in single player. Do they conflict with one another ? The suggestions about increasing the items in inventory and other remarks seems to indicate that.

Just the kinds of errors not knowing what one's doing results in ;-]

Thanks for helping ! ! !

debyemm wrote:
We have both Creative and Enable Danger, I think it is, checked in single player. Do they conflict with one another ? The suggestions about increasing the items in inventory and other remarks seems to indicate that.

Creative and Enable damage don't conflict with one another.

A checked enable Damage means you'll die and have to respawn when you go below 1/2 heart. An uchecked enable damage make you loose your hearts, but you don't die and don't have to respawn.

A checked Creative means that you have an ever refilling inventory, so no need to have more than 1 item, because it immediately refills. An unchecked Creative means that you have to dig for the resources yourself, they are not provided by your inventory. To build more than 1 block of the same material at a time, you can stack materials in your inventory up to 99. When over 99 it starts a second stack of the same material, and so on, until all the slots are filled. Then digging doesn't result in more material anymore.

Players that want to build a lot, but don't want to use (check) 'creative' and don't want to dig much, use the /giveme command ( http://wiki.minetest.com/wiki/Server_commands )

I hope the mods are going to work. If you still have problems with them, I can advice you to delete or rename your file called "debug.txt" (for me it's under my home directory) and create a new file called debug.txt. Then first exit to the OS, to completely restart minetest from the bin. Then start the world in wich the mods give problems. You'll be given an error message. Exit minetest. Open your debug.txt file. Go downpage, and then scroll up until you start finding "ERRORS", copy those lines and paste them here on the forum. (the reason to delete/rename debug.txt is that it becomes really big).

And just keep asking :-)

how i install mods if i see only a lua put it in games/ mods
if i see texters and sounds and lua i put it in mods

if you only have raw LUA code, you have to package it up into a mod, like this:

- create a folder in your_minetestfolder_/mods/minetest/THE_MOD_NAME
- put the code into a new file called init.lua

If it is already in an init.lua, and has a mod folder, simply copy it into the mods folder.

hope that helps.