Table of contents
Briefing
This month, there is big news regarding engine-related side projects. Shadows receive an update, and a couple games get major new features. Last but not least, the blog is becoming official!
Engine News
Where is Minetest lacking? You might be able to think of a few areas, but a big one is the available mapgens. Sure, we have stuff that is as good as Minecraft’s built-in maps: small scale mountains, repetitive landscapes. This is clearly an issue…
Jordach is making a more realistic C++ mapgen. Imagine deep, wide oceans spanning the map; getting lost at sea is a real danger. Small islands dot the expanse. Oceanic trenches yawn in the depths below. Long beaches snake the coastline. On the continents, crags kilometers high scrape the clouds, and the wide, low-lying plains are lightly crinkled by rolling hills, providing excellent building area.
In order to accomplish this, Jordach made a model of the entire map in blender, using the sampled noise sources encoded into images. He was then able to mix the noise sources in blender, designing them to produce the large-scale landscape in real-time. The mixing code was translated from blender to lua, and from lua to C++.
The mapgen is WIP, and will continue development until its ready for an engine PR.
Another area that we can agree needs improvement is Minetest’s main menu. Zughy and Giova are working on a detailed design for the menu. While they are not actually implementing it (just doing the planning and asset work); there are rumors that someone else is working on actual implementation. Stay tuned, this could go somewhere nice.
Concept art for the main menu redesign singleplayer new-game interface.
Paradust is trying to port minetest to run in a browser. The demo is playable (YMMV), though there are many bugs. Try seed 2222. Try it online here
Minetest 5.6 development is underway. After the team re-enabled dynamic shadows, x2048 began improving them. Shadows are now rendered on entities, and and api has been added to allow games to control shadow intensity.
Game News
Earlier this month, AiTechEye added added a new realm to XAenvironment. It contains macroscopic fauna and flora. You can use the game’s unique parkour system to explore among the towering grass and mushrooms, while avoiding being eaten by giant bugs.
In Talas’ ColourHop, there’s a new end-game construction that allows for mass-production of complex structures. It takes much study to figure out, and even more to master. There’s no official release yet, but its “coming soon”.
Mantar is preparing for an Exile release which will add a dye system.
Mod News
Apercy has made an official release of his Ju52 airplane. Also, many of his vehicles now have inventories.
Elceejo is experimenting with new ways to use his Creatura Api. The latest product is Spiradilus, a new Boss. It is heavily based on SCP-682. A public release is planned for early April.
wsor has been quietly working on mods in the mt-mods repo, making them game-agnostic. A few recently updated mods are: unified_dyes, basic_materials, steel, and pipeworks. That means that other mods that only depend on those can now be game agnostic as well.
BuckarooBanzai has developed a mod and server software called BlockExchange. It allows you to share and use your builds (schematics) across different worlds. (think: Thingiverse(tm) for Minetest builds) You can browse available builds here, and with the mod installed on singleplayer or on a server, you can download and place builds, or upload new builds.
Art and Builds
Atlas by GreenXenith
Lemente made this with imaging and an AI-generated picture
“MSS Faraday: Boldly going above Y = 20000”, by BuckarooBanzai
You can get the schematic here.
In Other News
The Minetest blog is going to be made official! Plans are being worked on to move the blog repository to the Minetest github account and possibly embed the latest posts on the Minetest Website. Stay tuned for changes.
Table of contents
Briefing
Minetest 5.5 was released last month, with some significant improvements. Colour Hop has received some major updates. Several mods received updates this month, and they look fun.
Engine News
Minetest 5.5.0 has been released!
While you may not see many visible changes, there’s been a considerable amount of work under the hood to improve the rendering system. Minetest now uses its own fork of the Irrlicht rendering library, which will make further improvement easier. It’s already allowed several longstanding bugs to be fixed.
Be warned: when you update to 5.5, it’ll upgrade worlds to a new map encoding (Maps will now take up to 20% less space!). This is irreversible, and will prevent you from running those worlds on older Minetest versions. If you aren’t sure about the upgrade, then backup your map beforehand.
There were some interesting changes to the modding API. Various features have been de-hardcoded, allowing mods and games more control. For example, liquid features have been decoupled from liquid drawtypes (making it easier to make things like spiderwebs). Player fall damage is also changeable using armor groups; you can avoid red flashes from disabled fall damage.
Possibly the most interesting change to the API was an upgrade to the dynamic media API. Modders and game creators can now send media to individual clients, and label it as “ephemeral”, meaning the client will forget it when they disconnect. Previously, dynamic media was sent to all clients, and became part of the media sent to clients on join. With the new version, individualized media is finally possible! The applications are huge, especially regarding background music (BGM), which used to extend login times enormously. BGM can now be sent one track at a time after the player has joined.
As always, you can check out the full changelog. Also see the official announcement.
Game News
talas has just released version 1.2 of Colour Hop! This includes some fundamental changes to the game, giving each player colour an activated ability. The story (or lack of) has been expanded upon and a completely new boss was added. There are some new advanced buildings that players can build, most are unrelated to the dragons. As usual, things are hidden and finding the new boss will take much exploration. The game is still a work-in-progress, but it’s getting closer to a complete game.
Super Sam Adventures is a WIP jump’n’run game by BuckarooBanzai that promises fun platforming for minetest. While it is obviously in early stages of development, it is already playable, and even slightly engaging, with secret areas, moving platforms, and several levels.
Mod News
ElCeejo has released a trio of updates to his animal mods, as well as a new mob api to base them on.
Draconis improves the gameplay of multiple Minetest games, like Minetest Game, Voxelgarden, and MineClone. It gives more incentive to traverse your worlds’ mountains and caves, and provides engaging mini-boss fights. After defeating a Dragon, you may find an Egg. The mysterious Egg-hatching process can be puzzling, but it rewards you with a new, destructive companion with which you can take to the skies when its old enough, and it unlocks a new tier of weaponry and armor. The Libri Draconis book can help you discover elements of the mod by unlocking certain objectives with the book in your inventory.
Animalia adds life and depth to experiences with livestock, pets, and ambient creatures. You can create farms for eggs, milk, and meat. You can use a Horse to quickly traverse ground, perhaps with a Wolf companion at your side. And you can enjoy ambient sounds of in-game Animals throughout most biomes. The builtin documentation, Libri Animalia, acts as a journal which you expand by clicking on animals with the book. There is currently a vote underway on the forums for which set of animals to add to Animalia next.
Creatura makes creating a new mob relatively easy, while not cutting corners on features. You can take advantage of the Utility Stack system for smooth decision making, enchance behaviors using Theta* Pathfinding for lifelike paths, and even use the implemented boids algorithm for realistic flocks and swarms.
Loosewheel has been updating lw_components with more mesecons devices. The latest additions were digilines-controlled storage, and a security camera that can actually take “photos”- rough representations of the scene in front of it that remind you of early maze graphics. One of the most exciting recent additions is a force field generator:
lw_components seems to be a real contender to other mesecons-compatible automation mods, and without the high entity-count, it may be a lower lag option.
OgelGames has released a mod that adds a wearable headlamp.
Zughy is modding again! He recently updated arena_lib, adding the ability to control the sky of minigames made with the library. It allows you to tweak clouds, sky colors, skybox backgrounds, and more!
Apercy has made another great vehicle mod. This time its Automobiles. These cars are two-seaters. They have working headlights. They have wheels and steering wheels that turn. They run on fuel. They detect elevation and tilt to match the elevation under them. Best of all, they are low-lag and extremely playable. The latest addition to the fleet is the coupe below:
Art and Builds
temhotaokeaha has been making cool banners for games:
The Dwarves of the YourLand server show off stonework: “An Essay in Dwarf-Sculpture”, built by debian44.
Server News
YourLand is preparing chat integration with discord. A nice side effect is a WIP matterbridge mod that will allow bridging server chat to any of discord, irc, matrix, and much more, all at once.
In Other News
This is the first post of our blog, y’all! We are actively looking for content submission for the next post, which will be in about a month, maybe sooner. Let us know what you are doing! If you are working on something great for Minetest in any of the following categories, please follow the easy instructions in the About page to submit content or contact MisterE on discord, matrix, or the forums to submit content without the hassle of the issue tracker (please use the issue tracker if you can, though!)
Categories:
- Engine
- Games
- Mods
- Art/Builds
- Server Spotlight
- Server News
- In Other News
The “In Other News” is the place for basically anything else Minetest related, so theres a place for everything here. Submissions must meet the submission guidelines on the About page, and are subject to editor review and revision.
Thanks to our post contributors this month: Rubenwardy, Talas, ElCeejo, Bastrubun, ExeVirus, Oakenshield, MisterE, Apercy
A Blog is a great way for a project to share updates and generate excitement for new featues among its community. Thats why we are starting a new blog for minetest! This will be a great way to stay up-to-date with the diverse parts of the community. Blog content will be solicited from community members, for Engine development updates, Mods, Games, Builds, Art, Servers and anything minetest related. Yes, this will include shills for people’s own projects, but they need an excuse such as a major update, great new feature, or event. See Contributing Guidelines
As for the release schedule, that depends on time available for the editors to review content, the number of active editors, and the amount of content submitted. We may aim for a weekly release schedule, though bi-weekly or monthly seems more sustainable. We need you to be an editor; if you have the time and the desire to help us edit this blog, please contact MisterE on the Forums.
Thats all for now; see you soon!