[0.3 Fork] Voxelands 2212.00-dev (looking for coders)

[rudzik8]

Voxelands 2212.00-dev [looking for coders]

Voxelands is a sandbox construction game based on Minetest 0.3, which was inspired by earlier "voxel world" games such as Infiniminer. Gameplay puts players in a fully destructible 3D game world where they can place and dig numerous types of blocks, items and creatures using a variety of tools. Inside the game world players can build structures, artworks and anything else their creativity can think of on multiplayer servers and singleplayer worlds across multiple game modes.

...what, sounds familiar? That's because Voxelands already was a thing, just abandoned 4 years ago by original developers. If it doesn't sound familiar for you, you can check this topic.

The thing is, I'm currently trying to revive it using fork by akien (latest thing I could ever find). I've already updated the README and made it Markdown instead of plaintext, updated CMakeLists by copying and pasting parts of Minetest's CMakeLists (now Voxelands can do VERSION_EXTRA, show whether the build debug or not in version and other things that latest Minetest can do in terms of CMake), added Voxelands Direction Document (basically which direction should the game take, look here) and other minor things. This project is hosted on Mesehub (Gitea-based git hosting for Minetest and Minetest-related projects) and attached to an organization named "oerkki".

However, I don't know C++, so I'm looking for coders who know it and want to revive Voxelands once again. I'll add you to the organization if needed. Most actual issues from original repo are already posted and milestone for 2212.00 was created, so Voxelands is ready for your contributions!

[rudzik8]

Links:

• Git Repository: oerkki/voxelands
• Roadmap: doc/direction.md
• Matrix Space: voxelands-room:matrix.org

[rudzik8]

Playing latest compiled version, catching bugs and glitches. And some weird sheeps.

[debiankaios]

Looks nice but think:

Code: Select all

                           ↓ We are here i think 
minetest---0.3---0.4---5.0---6.0
            |
voxelands   -------------------
        stop of work? ↑       |
new voxelands                 -------

That's many work but we'll see.

[rudzik8]

Looks nice but think:

Code: Select all

                           ↓ We are here i think 
minetest---0.3---0.4---5.0---6.0
                   |
voxelands   -------------------
        stop of work? ↑        |
new voxelands                 -------

That's many work but we'll see.

This scheme is wrong: Voxelands didn't start from 0.4, it started from 0.3. In sans serif used (i.e. without the code bbtag) this part is right, but "We are here" is wrong, we aren't on the 0.4 (but it's right in mono font used, with arrow between 5.0 and 6.0):




Anyways, yeah, that's one of the problems: being far from something maintained. My idea is that Voxelands should be more Minetest. Like, use IrrlichtMT (but IDK what to do with it after it will be swallowed; backporting it from minetest/minetest from time to time seems fine I guess?) instead of regular Irrlicht, make the files structure more MT-alike and so on. We still can track changes of specific files from the 0.3 times, see how they changed in Voxelands and in Minetest and backport what you need. However, Minetest became modular instead of monolithic, the structure differs A LOT, but it's the only way to keep Voxelands maintained.

BTW, Voxelands has a Voxelands Direction Document, just like Minetest has a Minetest Direction Document. It explains what's our goal and what we want to get later (roadmap basically). Currently it's a draft, but just because not much was done with the game to make it more serious. Check this out:
https://git.minetest.land/oerkki/voxela ... rection.md

[debiankaios]

Oops, i corrected it. Sorry

[cHyperspeed]

in the past members of this abandoned project did not make a new version of the game under windows!! is this still a problem or this situation solved? best regads to the new run of this great game! i will look with good greetings.

cu cHyper

[rudzik8]

in the past members of this abandoned project did not make a new version of the game under windows!! is this still a problem or this situation solved? best regads to the new run of this great game! i will look with good greetings.

Thank you for your reply! I'm glad to see that at least some people who touched old Voxelands (when it wasn't abandoned) are here :D

I'll probably fix this no-windows-release issue by dualbooting into Windows 8.1 (it's the last version of it that works smoothly on my PC) only to compile these :)
But 2210.00 still isn't done. After it'll be done (milestone on Mesehub will be closed) I'll try to compile it and then add new instructions to the README (Voxelands already has those in their plaintext README, but only as a link to their forums that are already dead...)

[cHyperspeed]

btw, somebody postet on his website - maybe it was oldcoder - that he wanna continue this game, but he never done it ;-)

[rudzik8]

btw, somebody postet on his website - maybe it was oldcoder - that he wanna continue this game, but he never done it ;-)

OldCoder have hosted his own Voxelands site, but now it's just a redirect to his server ("box") info page:

Code: Select all

voxelands.org

If it wasn't OldCoder then I wanna see that topic...

[cHyperspeed]

ok, oldcoder did link it to spam page... i never thought at any time that he will do his job and so ....
ok that is finished with him and this game.

hopefully this project here will be started and finished by any time the devs need ;-)

[cHyperspeed]

on my old laptop i have installed ubuntu linux (??) and there i can test the build very well and give feedback so far i can do.. so long...

[cHyperspeed]

Install dependencies. Here's an example for Debian/Ubuntu:
$ apt-get install build-essential libirrlicht-dev cmake libbz2-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg8-dev libxxf86vm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libsqlite3-dev

what is the correct code for this process? thx for help

[rudzik8]

Install dependencies. Here's an example for Debian/Ubuntu:
$ apt-get install build-essential libirrlicht-dev cmake libbz2-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg8-dev libxxf86vm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libsqlite3-dev

what is the correct code for this process? thx for help

Code: Select all

$ sudo apt install build-essential libirrlicht-dev cmake libbz2-dev libpng-dev libjpeg8-dev libxxf86vm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libsqlite3-dev

UPD: added this to the README

[Blockhead]

Serious question: What does Voxelands do that can't be done in current Minetest? Has mainline Minetest at least caught up a somewhat with what Voxelands could do when it was new?

[rudzik8]

Serious question: What does Voxelands do that can't be done in current Minetest?

Be a game and not an engine-game-launcher-moddingbase Frankenstein. Yeah, you can fork Minetest and try to make it just a single game, but it's about what can be done with current Minetest, not in it. That's the main thing that Voxelands does and Minetest doesn't (and won't)
Other things like voxels indeed can be done in Minetest but they won't be rendering so fast I guess. Basing on 0.3 has its' own benefits

I'm planning to add (with someone's help, of course) things that Minetest won't do (because history, ideology or just trying to be compatible with previous versions) - like packs (texturepacks/soundpacks/modelpacks/resourcepacks...) with ability to put them on top of each other (like in MC)
BTW, Voxelands Direction Document contains some more plans, check it out if you didn't already.

But the thing is that Voxelands isn't better or worse than Minetest, neither it tries to be better or worse; Voxelands and Minetest are different things, just with a common ancestor (MT 0.3). Minetest is an engine, Voxelands is a game. Voxelands can be made using current Minetest engine, but you'd need to do everything except for models, textures and sounds from scratch. There, on the forums, was a discussion about porting VL to MT, but it wasn't done anyways.

[rudzik8]

[rudzik8]

From our Matrix Space (link is in the 2nd post of this topic):

Some good news on the #1 and #10 issues (both are/were parts of the 2210.00 milestone)!

I've found the reason why 1st appeared: it was animated textures enabled actually. Quick-fix was commited (just hide that option from user for now)
10th appears to be some weird bug with how Voxelands stores the tools' durability, it bugs only when tool is 0% and user did a very specific sequence of actions I've described in a reply on it (check the link above!), or at least that's how I think it is.

Testing and researching really helps, yahoo!.. but there's definitely more things to do before releasing the thing.

[debiankaios]

I think a big change to minetest would be a bigger world size. So you could add more dimensions with big enough distance. It's much easier to do it at voxellands now then now in mt 5.6.1.

[rudzik8]

I think a big change to minetest would be a bigger world size. So you could add more dimensions with big enough distance. It's much easier to do it at voxellands now then now in mt 5.6.1.

I do recall finding a PR on Minetest's GitHub about making the size 2x larger (even with backward compatibility!), so I could try porting that I guess. But that's definitely won't be in 2210.00. Maybe 2212.00 (The Christmas Update)? Not sure, depends on how many devs there will be...

[debiankaios]

Ok. But some people want only remove coords under 0 so that there is 0 until 65536 or something like that. But i think the problem is that coords are saved in wrong variable. I still learning c but about variables there i know already much.

[rudzik8]

Ok. But some people want only remove coords under 0 so that there is 0 until 65536 or something like that.

I don't like coords being only natural. It's weird. X=0 and Z=0 traditionally means the center of the world, not an edge of it.

[debiankaios]

Yes i like this more too

[rudzik8]

Didn't make commits in a while. That's because I'm currently searching for some previous Voxelands devs (including forks) who can be interested. After I find some devs work on VL will continue as usual (and even better I hope!)

[comrad]

Wouldn't it be easier to port the voxelands functionality to Lua and recreate Voxelands as a Minetest Game instead of maintaining an old fork of the minetest engine?

Also Lua is way easier to learn and to handle than c++.