MyBlocks: Mod enabling user created content

[Neuromancer]

Sure there's hunting for resources and crafting of materials, but the primary reason most people seem to be playing Minetest is to be able to be creative and build really cool stuff. To do that we need to load a bunch of Mod's to get a wide variety of cool building materials. I haven't loaded that many mods, but I get this errror
09:51:13: ERROR[main]: TextureSource::buildMainAtlas(): Atlas is full, not adding more textures.
After I got this error I've been noticing that none of the textures I put into the texture folder load any more, and worse yet for wooden planks, I don't even get the default texture, I just get unknown block.

I thought that the forking of MadBlocks into many mods would alieviate my issues, but I find myself needing a few blocks from every mod. I thought about this a while and I think I have a solution.

What if there was a mod called MyBlocks that would allow users to pick and choose just the blocks they wanted? They could do this by copying existing textures out of mods or create their own textures. Then they could put these textures into the MyBlocks texture folder, and the lua code would loop through the folder, look up the name of the file and build simple blocks based on all the textures in the folder. The code would use the filename as the name of the new block. For example if I dropped a texture file called "HinduTemple.png" in the MyBlocks(mb) texture folder, all I would have to do is type "/giveme mb:HinduTemple 99" and I would have 99 of that block to use.

People would no longer complain about textures they don't like because they would be getting exactly what they wanted and needed. Most people aren't technically able to write mods for themselves, but just about anyone can open up a paint program and create a texture file.

Eventually the mod could get more sophisticated, like allowing specialty blocks to be created:

Xpattern blocks: e.g. apple, madblocks:bell
45 degree slant: slanted rail tracks, madblocks:awnings
special: madblocks:fancy_bracket
These would be handled with a config file or a special folder.

If the user wanted one of the sides to use a different texture, they could add a texture like "HinduTemple_top.png" _front, _back, _bottom

Another neat feature would be a toggle enabling stairs, slabs, and column shaped blocks for any texture in the folder like in the stairsplus mod.

Or even do things like play a sound when the block is hit. Just add a sound with the same name as the texture into the sound folder.

Wow, with this the sky would be the limit. Everyday users would be empowered to create their own content and there would be an explosion of user created content for Minetest without any worries of overloading the Atlas, because everyone could choose exactly what they needed.

[mauvebic]

the reason i split madblocks up in the first place is because there are too many nodes. Running all the seperate mods together doesn't help the situation, nor do the now many mods offering too many colors/tones of every node. :-/

[Nubelite]

What about something like this.

Jump to :40 the blueprint part

Using basic blocks players could make their own ingame setups. But instead of just a large scale like this one which can cause problems what about one that is confined to the size of a normal block. I am not sure as to how this could possible be done program wise.

[Neuromancer]

What about something like this.

Jump to :40 the blueprint part

Using basic blocks players could make their own ingame setups. But instead of just a large scale like this one which can cause problems what about one that is confined to the size of a normal block. I am not sure as to how this could possible be done program wise.

Great minds think alike. I suggested the same thing here http://minetest.net/forum/search.php?search_id=1866608363
The video doesn't even do justice to the power of Mythruna's blueprint. It just looks like someone is building a house, and it doesn't show that a person is really building their own custom 3d mini forniture type blocks out of bigger blocks using tools far simpler than CAD tools. I believe a mod could be done to do something like this. It could be simple at first, just place a bunch of square blocks using the existing engine to build their own nodeboxes like furniture etc. But it could grow to allow users to place any shape any texture blocks like Mythruna. (Right now all of this could be done in Minetest nodeboxes except for mixing textures) I'm thinking the multinode mod could be altered to do something like this. When you mark your 2 positions, and save an area, one option could be SaveAsNodeBox.

And while I really think a blueprint like mod should be done at some point, that is much more sophisticated than what I'm asking for here. Just dump a texture into a folder and create a simple block. All the attributes could be set with defaults. Hit it with a pickaxe to remove/grab it. Basically steal the madblocks code and write some code to scan for files in the mod's textures folder.