FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

#minetest-dev, 2014-04-17: (the discussion starting from there is really useful for those interested in mod and subgame interoperability.)


Minetest_game is in maintenance mode due to a variety of reasons. One if the issues with it's replacements is that it's unclear which of of them, and when, are ready for release.

If:
1) you are developing a subgame,
2) it is ready to be released to anyone who downloads Minetest,
3) it's name is not "minetest_game", "minetest", "minimal" or "minimal_game",
4) you aren't planning to discontinue it anytime soon,
5) it's released under a free license (permissive [preferably] or copyleft)

you should post it in this topic.

We will find a way to pick a couple of games to the next Minetest release (or the one after that; soon anyway) and get all possible Minetest packages to include the recommended bunch of games in a default install option.

The games will be picked so that there is minimal overlap, while the desires of most people are catered for, while keeping the package size reasonable. The recommended games will be reconsidered for each release, but it is very desirable that they don't need to be removed for a long time.

NOTE: This topic is not a vote. DO NOT VOTE OR SUGGEST ANYTHING HERE. All such replies have been and will be deleted.

You may vote for games in the other topic..

There are some 38 or so games on the forums (counting some games listed in the server sections such as VanessaE's game, RedCrab's and others) and there are some more in other places such as on OldCoders website. Alltogether there might be around 50 Minetest games posted somewhere. Are those above really the only ones with active developers that care/dare to suggest their game here?

edit: for reference, I have started to collect game names on the Wiki in a sortable list.

Dreambuilder is always being updated, but it is at the moment of this writing, stable. Given its size, it might be a candidate for some kind of "Holy crap, let's go for overkill!" build, but it's good in my opinion. :-)

twoelk wrote:There are some 38 or so games on the forums (counting some games listed in the server sections such as VanessaE's game, RedCrab's and others) and there are some more in other places such as on OldCoders website. Alltogether there might be around 50 Minetest games posted somewhere. Are those above really the only ones with active developers that care/dare to suggest their game here?

edit: for reference, I have started to collect game names on the Wiki in a sortable list.

Not really. IMO there might be some upcoming games (1 by me) which just need some more time for a first release. This new wave of subgames just began ;) Give it some more time...

twoelk wrote:There are some 38 or so games on the forums (counting some games listed in the server sections such as VanessaE's game, RedCrab's and others) and there are some more in other places such as on OldCoders website. Altogether there might be around 50 Minetest games posted somewhere. Are those above really the only ones with active developers that care/dare to suggest their game here?

My capture the flag game is no way complete enough to add.

After much debate and a fair amount of work to make sure most regularly obtainable things can be collected in game, I believe I can finally say that my "rolling release" of SkyTest is far enough along that it could be bundled with MT.

SkyTest

I do not have plans of dropping this game any time soon, and I of course will continue to keep updating it. Current filesize is 3.3 MB, compressed, so I don't think it is too bloated. I'm not adding any more gigantic mods soon either, so it should remain pretty close to that file size...

HeroOfTheWinds wrote:SkyTest is far enough along that it could be bundled with MT.

Huzzah!

So, are you going to combine SkyTest with UndergroundRealms as you discussed before?

Kilarin wrote:So, are you going to combine SkyTest with UndergroundRealms as you discussed before?

CaveRealms? I've been thinking this over for some time now, it would be quite difficult to accomplish, but (barely) feasible. I think I'd probably make a separate mod out of it though, at least to start. There are a few people who feel the two should be kept separate, but I think it'll boil down to whether I can get myself motivated to do it. If I do, I think I'll probably end up using a new island style akin to paramat's fracture mod, in other words, 3D noise floatlands. (SkyLands IS based on 3D noise, but it still uses a variety of 2D noise to make the structure flatter at the edges.) I could go on a rant about how I plan to go about it, but I don't think this is the right topic for it. ;) Save the theorizing for IRC...

HeroOfTheWinds wrote:CaveRealms?

Ugh! Sorry, mixed up the name because I haven't been playing that one, just watching it develop.

HeroOfTheWinds wrote: There are a few people who feel the two should be kept separate

Oh, I can certainly understand how some people would be primarily interested in just one or the other. But it seems to me that by very nature they can be combined and people can still just play one or the other. Caverealms from, say, +200 down to -32,000. Skylands from +200 up to +32,000. PERFECT game. Explore the surface, dig and find fascinating stuff all the way down, then start building bridges up and you STILL have interesting stuff to explore all the way up.

I can see why some folks might want SkyTest to remain purely floating islands all the way, but really, after you get a few thousand nodes up, does it even matter that there is ground somewhere down below? Still, the idea of a world with NOTHING but floating islands is pretty interesting. So, I guess I see both sides.

OH, so that's what you meant! Here I thought you meant hollowing out skylands and putting the caves inside. :P

I definitely want to have a game mode with both skylands and caverealms, believe me. :) However, I was thinking of doing that somewhere more along the lines of another game mode with a custom overworld gen as well... Almost ready to try my hand at a mapgen.

On a side note, run SkyTest with CaveRealms installed and use mgv6 instead of singlenode. BAM, you have your desired game. ;) (yes, the singlenode enforcer is broken right now, so go wild.)

HeroOfTheWinds wrote:run SkyTest with CaveRealms installed and use mgv6 instead of singlenode. BAM, you have your desired game. ;) (yes, the singlenode enforcer is broken right now, so go wild.)

Cool! Great to know that will work so simply!

I declare Tutorial to be ready to be bundled with Minetest.
This is a generic more or less subgame-“agnostic” tutorial for the basics of Minetest. It consists both of a subgame and a world.

It could be theoretically directly included into Minetest, and it would work out of the box.
But for unleashing the full potential, Minetest should not only bundle it, but also do some special integration with it.

For example, the Tutorial World should be entirely resettable to its initial state. This is because there could be a computer which is used by multiple people, and now someone else wants to use the tutorial. This someone of course needs a resetted Tutorial World.
One possibility would be that Minetest preserves the “clean” Tutorial World and players only act on a copy of that world. If the world is “resetted”, the copy is removed and a new copy of the “clean” Tutorial World is used.

Also, a nag window could appear for the first start of Minetest which takes newbies directly to the tutorial, if they agree.

If you have more ideas for integration, please share them!

I think that your idea is pretty polished, Wuzzy. I'm all for it.

Wuzzy wrote:For example, the Tutorial World should be entirely resettable to its initial state. This is because there could be a computer which is used by multiple people, and now someone else wants to use the tutorial. This someone of course needs a resetted Tutorial World.

I used to have map that said "disable saving" or something like that...You could do a lot of stuff and each time you logged in in kinda reset. Yet, I don't remember how it happened :P

philipbenr wrote:I think that your idea is pretty polished, Wuzzy. I'm all for it.

I'm new to minetest and I wish I had this tutorial to start with. It is super professional and polished. If I didn't know better I'd say valve developed this tutorial. I can't for the life of me think of a reason it isn't bundled right now.

Is there any legit reason why it shouldn't be?

leeminer wrote:Is there any legit reason why it shouldn't be?

I think the main problem is that you cannot reset the world and play the tutorial a second time.

I am aware of the problem but I don’t agree with that this is an inherent problem of the tutorial itself.

Yeah, I do not really want to modify the tutorial for that, I rather have the engine/main menu do the part of the job. Also, having a generic “reset” feature in Minetest would probably have other neat uses, who knows?
I personally consider my work on the tutorial done, I don’t currently see anything important what I could add. Only translations, minor tweaks and bugfixes at the moment.
Also, the problem when resetting the tutorial is done by the subgame itself is simply that you cannot simply save a tutorial any more. You would always have to start over; you would be forced to do the tutorial in one session. This would be especially odd since the normal behaviour of Minetest is that it autosaves worlds.

I have already discussed a possible and IMO better solution in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10312

But don’t let get this go too off-topic, please, just post in the tutorial threads instead, please. Thanks.

@Anyone: This is not the voting thread. The voting thread is here.

I guess i'm reviving a year-old thread, but nobody's made decent subgames since then anyway.

Pixture

That reminds me. Name changed but submission is still valid. The game improved a lot since then.

Voxelgarden

I didn't submit the original Eden to be bundled because it was just too large. It went all out trying to represent nature in as realistic way as possible. With Eden2 I went a different direction, the size is much smaller than Eden, and what it aims for is creating a world that has a lot of interesting things going on and is full of captivating things to explore. It also performs much better than the original. Just give it a try. There is just so much going on, you'll find yourself spinning stories as to why things are happening in the game. It's just flat out fun to play.

Eden2

Maybe Minetest NeXt!
It's revived and it could be the "NeXt" base game.

I would really like to see my game Minetest TNG bundled with Minetest!
There already voted other people for this game and I think TNG would make a good impression for Minetest!

Mobs, hunger, achievements and armor are already included.

I think you can use the "La-Test Version", if somebody adds it.

LNJ wrote:I would really like to see my game Minetest TNG bundled with Minetest!
There already voted other people for this game and I think TNG would make a good impression for Minetest!

Mobs, hunger, achievements and armor are already included.

I think you can use the "La-Test Version", if somebody adds it.

Aggreed!
I enjoy it as much as Wasteland
+1

Extreme Survival should be in the new release.
https://github.com/maikerumine/extreme_survival
It is maintained daily.
The main server is in the top 3 everyday and nearly full.
It is one of the most challenging games yet to date, if you don't believe me give it a go.
There are custom NPC's
Dangerous mobs, not your 15 hp mobs but 5 times stronger with special drops.
Custom biomes
Custom ores for very strong mining tools and weapons.
Special crafting using simple potions to heal, fix, and repair things.

All in all it is a very challenging yet fun game.

-mm

Is this where we ask for our subgames to be moved to realeased subgames? If so, I'd like my Noob Academy subgame from WIP mods to be moved here. Yes, I know you might be confused, but I just made that modpack into a subgame.

I don't think so, not sure where the proper place is though.

For an uninformed newcomer, why is it that no subgame then ever is bundled with the Minetest download? (apart from minetest_game of course) Being that the thread author is the founder of Minetest and all.