FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

It is roughly 6 months since our last release. I am apparently the 'release manager' this time and have chosen the coming Equinox to be the very rough time for feature freeze and release, timing of course needs to be flexible.

EDIT
Feature freeze is on 23 March and will be roughly 2 weeks.

EDIT
Minetest features are semi-frozen as there is still much work to do on PRs essential for 0.4.14.
Devs are very busy with this work and are having to prioritise their time, as you may know we are understaffed.
Non-essential features will probably not be merged and less important PRs may have to wait for reviews.
No idea yet when feature freeze will be fully in effect, once it is it will be 2 weeks or more of bug hunting and fixing before release.

Woohoo! Can't wait to see what has been going on. Been inactive as I accidentally bricked my computer and have had to rebuild it. Pretty long process, which is impeded by school, hence lack of activity here.

Really am excited though...

(Edit: first post)

0.4.14 is out?!?!

Awesome!!!

Will it be a full release for linux, windows and android ??? We need all devices on the same version...

+1 @ TenPlus1

XD that's fun to say.

I just want this build ... right now.

Correction, it's going to be done.

I think I'll hold off on making an MT News episode 2 until it does come out, then make a long episode showcasing mods and new features.

I can't wait

Any hints on new features?

DatJohnDoe wrote:Any hints on new features?

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/commits/master

My favourites:

Lua API for http access
FPS/lag reductions (remove autoadujst, VBO, fix over setting shaders, fix meta data resending)
Player markers on minimaps, maybe even moddability by that point
Infotext for entities (you can see sign like text when hovering over an entity, eg a dropped item or mob)
Wielditem glitch fixed

Woah....I'm not sure which is a bigger relese, .13 or .14!


There's going to be plenty to talk about...

Yay! I've been checking for a new release weekly lately. It's great to have an estimate!

3 new core mapgens: flat, fractal and valleys.
The up to 21% fall in FPS when shaders are disabled has been reversed.

fractal mapgen … Is this the return of the math mapgen which has been nuked by proller previously?

DatJohnDoe wrote:Any hints on new features?

https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game/commits/master/
Now for some changes in the default game (list is not exhaustive):

• New item: Steel trapdoors [a trapdoor counterpart to the steel door, where only the player who placed it can open it and remove it]
• New tree: Aspen trees [another tree type for adding more variety; does not conflict with mods providing birch trees]
• Sound fIx: snow footsteps, snow dig, and door volumes lowered
• Character animations fixed [that means no more sliding feet when idle]
• Biome addition: gravel beaches in tundras
• New gravel texture ->
• Biome addition: Gravel beaches in tundras
• Removal: Mushroom spores
• Tree logs added in biomes where trees are prominent
• Creative inventory improved [has a search box and groups items and nodes]

0.0 this will be an epic update...
Still no better controls for Android? Freeminer also has minimap on android

The minimap can still be displayed on the Android version, but the minetest.conf file has to edited with the following lines:

Then, if you have a hardware keyboard with function [f*] keys or a soft input method providing those, [f9] by default will enable the minimap on the top-right corner, just like on the desktop version. See the screenshot attached below for proof.

Hi, I am new here so hopefully not over-stepping by commenting on a new release.
I think it would be great if there were a way to add a scroll feature to the inventory (so one could scroll through inventory rather then clicking on arrows).
I think this software is great and I am extremely thankful to all who made it so and maintain it as well as continue to make it better.
I am an artist and I am actually putting together two sets of images I hope to be able to make available as texture packs (just trying to teach myself some lua.
My daughter just recently got into minecraft and I was researching it and found minetest which my daughter and myself think is way better.
Anyway, cheers... and thank you

@thegreatone - Welcome to Minetest. I look forward to seeing your texture packs!

If you want to learn to mod then I suggest looking at rubenwardys modding book.
http://rubenwardy.com/minetest_modding_book/

Don wrote:@thegreatone - Welcome to Minetest. I look forward to seeing your texture packs!

If you want to learn to mod then I suggest looking at rubenwardys modding book.
http://rubenwardy.com/minetest_modding_book/

Thank you for the welcome and the link to the book.
I have been working on textures, swapping them out in another texture pack, trying to get a feel for how things work, most of my textures will be art-deco style for building (which is what I mainly do with minetest). My main goal is to be able to put a nice pack together with a lot of new blocks available for building so, probably not so much a texture pack but a mod, not really sure yet (maybe both a large mod with it's own tex packs?)
Anyway it's fun so far trying out different stuff. I am a perfectionist though, which is both a gift and a curse as it can impede my progress. Maybe I will upload some preview images in the mods or tex boards in a few days .
Anyway, can't wait for the new release

is there any info what the fractal mapgen does?
i tested it, and it only generates 1 large island with long extending arms where you spawn,
and the rest of the world is just ocean. there is no land at all, besides the spawn island and some frozen water when there should be a glacier.

firefox wrote:is there any info what the fractal mapgen does?
i tested it, and it only generates 1 large island with long extending arms where you spawn,
and the rest of the world is just ocean. there is no land at all, besides the spawn island and some frozen water when there should be a glacier.

Explore a little more. There are some crazy land masses. They go high above the clouds. It is like an alien planet.

Don wrote:

firefox wrote:is there any info what the fractal mapgen does?
i tested it, and it only generates 1 large island with long extending arms where you spawn,
and the rest of the world is just ocean. there is no land at all, besides the spawn island and some frozen water when there should be a glacier.

Explore a little more. There are some crazy land masses. They go high above the clouds. It is like an alien planet.

tested again with a different seed.
the island only extends in eastern direction, the rest is just ocean.
the terrain gradually gets higher and bigger, but once the connection has ended, there is just ocean again.
the longest part was around 9000 nodes long, now i'm exploring how wide it is at that part.
the left and right side are completely identical, only the randomly placed decoration differs.

in my map, the center part is just a giant chunk of ice, which is kinda boring, but the sides look more colorful.
let's see how it goes ...

The fractal mapgen all depends on the seed you put in. I got one that was a large 3D grid. Another was a completely crazy one with a bunch of spheres. Nonetheless, they can be fun, or horrible, depending on what you are looking for...

The fractal mapgen is very different to the old math mapgen, it is partly a replacement for that and partly so that Minetest doesn't miss out on the much developed fractal mapgen of Freeminer.

The world seed only affects the seabed and caves, the fractal itself is not generated from perlin noise.

See minetest.conf, there are a choice of Mandelbrot set type formulas and the corresponding Julia set for each formula. All formulas are from this excellent website http://www.bugman123.com/Hypercomplex/index.html which explores various 3D and 4D Mandelbrot set type fractals.

By default it is a 10000x8000x1000 (height) node island in a shallow sea with a noise-generated seabed, but there are many parameters that can shift, scale and stretch the fractal so you can easily make it fill the entire world.
Being fractal it has infinite detail so you can scale it up to zoom into detail, just remember to increase the number of iterations to increase the fine detail as you do this. The 4D fractals have a 'W-slice' parameter that is the 4th-dimension co-ordinate of the 3D slice generated.
So this mapgen actually has an infinite variety of possible structures.

The default island is designed to be playable, that's why it has been stretched horizontally to be wide and flat. I limited it's height to a reasonable 1000 nodes, this limited the horizontal size of the island because the stretch factor of 4:1 produces nice proportions.

The overall shape of the default island is fairly similar for some of the formulas, but it is the finer detail which shows more variation between formulas. The Julia sets add a huge amount of variation, being different structures for every 'julia co-ordinate' used. The Julias create those crazy ribbons seen in some Freeminer worlds:

Accidental double post.

Ahh... well, that was a development I wasn't previously aware of. Good to know you are still on the job paramat.

Thanks for the info paramat. I never knew it was that amazing. Now I can see why people keep seeing different things.

I spent some time looking for an interesting set of parameters for the default, but was overwhelmed by the possibilities so decided to make the default the basic symmetric 3D Mandelbrot shape. Essentially this mapgen more than any other is one where you need to experiment with the parameters, i don't find the default very interesting anymore but it's a good introduction and has a nice mini spawn island from where you can travel towards the larger part of the island.

A good method for exploring the possible shapes is to scale the island to a small size so you can get a quick idea of the entire shape, also set offset to zero so that you spawn near the fractal's centre:

Occasionally you may spawn buried so enable freemove and fly up.

Once you have found a shape you like you can then scale it up, stretch it and shift it.
Offset is used to move the fractal so that a suitable area of fairly low land is at (0, 0), this helps with player spawnng.
You can see how the default offset is set to make the mini-island on the main antenna be at (0, 0), this is why most of the island is Eastwards of world centre.
Because the Julia sets have a different structure it's a good idea to, at first, set offset to zero.

Occasionally you may spawn buried so enable freemove and fly up.

What, has this ancient bug still not been fixed yet? :-(
Or does it only happen with the new fractals map generator?


By the way @players, you don't have to edit the minetest.conf anymore since the developer version also has the extended settings menu.
IMO it would have been more convenient if the mapgen settings were in the world creation menu, but maybe this has to wait for another version or something. xD

By the way, I think the new map generators are great. :-)