Visualising minetest server content (snapshots/download)

[marvalis]

Summary: Allow players and servers to make snapshots of the world. Allow these snapshots to be exported to video and viewed in a client for exploring. This could bring more attention and players to minetest.


I have been playing on kray.dy.fi for two days now, and all I can say is: wow. I have been truly amazed by all the content created by players with very basic gameplay. Because travel was still a bit of a problem I suggest a home teleportation device (but that is not what this suggestion is about).

The logical thing to do in order to create more momentum for minetest would be to show this user created content to the world. I could for example create a video while flying trough the world. Here comes the problem: minetest itself is already consuming a lot of CPU and my computer cannot really handle that + recording. It seems kinda hard to control the viewing distance. Also, before I can show anything, I have to explore it first because the client does not remember anything. When you log out everything needs to be loaded again (and I have a slow connection to that server).

I think it would be good if someone with a better computer would make some nice video's and put them on various video hosting websites.

Time laps video's are also very interesting to show off what players have made. This is the suggestion: give the server some kind of ability to make snapshots and to export them to a video. Also, made a server that stores snapshots of other servers so you can go out and explore the static world (no digging and building). Yes, make a collection of snapshots from worlds made by a lot of players. I personally have no idea how to make these time laps video's, but someone should make them.

Making these kind of things is really good to attract more players, potentially more developers and generally more attention (both good and bad lmao grievers) to minetest.