Hi,
first of all many thanks for your extensive reply.
That's good! But what's mainly needed is the game as such. Singleplayer is fine, but not everyone needs to run a server :-)
The cat image might be broken. Best ask on IRC about it.
I just saw a thread about the broken wiki registration. I will ask for an account there.
Who needs an UI for that? :-) There's an irc mod out there that adds a bot connected to your server to an irc channel. You can give the server commands over that. To learn more about it, best join irc and i.e. talk to VanessaE. She runs several servers.
I guess you were talking about
https://github.com/kaeza/minetest-irc ? That looks interesting indeed. Thanks. I think an administrative UI for server commands is still something that is badly needed for Minetest. Imagine all the non-techie folks out there, that just want to give players some items. I find it quite counter-intuitive to assign certain items to players. e.g sometimes I have to type /give player default:diamond and sometimes I can omit default? Why? What is the name/item string of this item...*looks in wiki.minetest.net*. I mean I would expect tab-completion at least. :-)
Minetest is currently in a state where early MMO's were at the beginning of the last decade. They all had a powerful command-line but when I first played World of Warcraft and saw this excellent and user-friendly user interface, after ten minutes I knew that this game would become the reference for all further MMOs. So in regard to Minetest I would wish that there was a simple GUI to select players and perform commands and actions on them. This might not only be useful for the server admin but for other players too, who have been granted only a subset of the server's privileges.
Apo wrote:Is there already a mod that announces custom messages to all players such as "The server is going down for maintenance in 5 minutes"?
Krock did a mod for that specific message on his server. Works very well.
Thanks. Will do a search for his mod.
That depends a lot. Sadly, my first impression of your server was bad: It looks like one of these unmaintained, griefed servers, where one turns away fast and doesn't start building because there's no point. Griefed buildings, 1x1 pillars, chaos.
Please install a /spawn command and add a spawn building. It may be as simple as a plaza with a wall where the rules are listed and the server is introduced. There ought to be a craft guide hanging there as well so that players can find out how they can create new blocks. A sign explaining how to craft the craft guide itshelf and how to protect land might also be a very good idea. You also ought to explain /home and /sethome.
I think I should better explain my intentions for this server. First of all it is not manageable for me to supervise the server all the time. Only a group of players (guild, clan) are able to fulfill this task efficiently. I have done this a lot in the past but for this project with 13 different games already, I have other plans. The servers should usually run open for the public and should require as little interaction as possible. Usually the games support features like /vote or /setmaster, so players are able to choose their prefered style of gaming. I currently listen a lot to players to find out what they want and I then install the required mods for that purpose, if they are stable and efficient enough. I also grant privs like /give or /kick to regular players, so that they can protect their buildings and they can also use the protector mod to prevent other players from destroying their buildings.
Your idea with a customized spawn is great and some of the players already started to work on that and I tried it too. The problem is that this requires additional mods whereby I feel that the game would benefit from implementing an indistructible spawn by default. It simply shouldn't be possible to modify the area around the spawn point and to trap other players. The crafting guide is invaluable and should also be part of the default game. In general all those points you mentioned apply to all game servers, so naturally it makes sense to fix this issue on "the game level" itself. It shouldn't be part of the server administrator's job to explain the game to the players. A good game should always be self-explaining or in case of MMOs be explained by the players to other players.
Eventually, start anew with a new map. The current one doesn't seem to contain anything worth keeping. In general, servers ought to keep their map forever and only move the spawn point elsewhere if it gets too crowded, but in this case a plain new map will be a lot nicer. There's also the option to choose another mapgen with diffrent biomes. I'd love to see a server with the forrest mapgen.
At the moment I intend to stick to the map because there are players who built "a fortress" or some other objects and my general impression is that they enjoy the game and I don't want to start anew just because some other parts of the map are less maintained at the moment. However I think you are right that I should better explain how they can protect their buildings but as I wrote above this should not require the server admin's intervention.
It's probably best if you try out a few mods in singleplayer and visit a couple of servers in order to get an idea what works and what doesn't. Players also tend to require a lot of attention; there'll be all these tablet users, and most of them will be small children. Expect to hear "I'm bored" with an implicit "do your duty and entertain me now!" quite frequently :-/ A noguest/no bad usernames mod is also extremly helpful. It keeps those players away that can't be bothered to think of a name for themshelves.
The noguest mod is a good idea. I will install that. I know that there are lot of young players on the server and that's fine. They have to figure out themselves how they would like to play the game. I see myself merely as the administrator who makes sure that the server runs stable and installs the necessary mods to enjoy the game.
Unlike Minecraft servers, Minetest servers usually do not compete against each other, and server owners and moderators will be more than willing to help new collegues get their server running well.
That's great and I appreciate any help or suggestions for this server. Linuxiuvat is about promoting free software games and I just want to show that there are a lot of good free multiplayer games. Of course this project does not compete with anybody. It's just about having fun. Cheers.