April - This Month in Minetest on the Minetest Blog

[rubenwardy]

This month, engine development picks up with regular meetings, NodeCore gets a 24/7 livestream, and the Minetest Blog is now official!

https://blog.minetest.net/2022/05/08/April/

[Wuzzy]

The Minetest blog is official? This is great! Also VERY nice to see some statistics about how many issues and PRs have been done. This is really nice to see the numbers go down fast enough, because issue and PR creators are also very fast on adding things.

One major change was adding proper transparency sorting, this has fixed many glitches related to viewing transparent materials through other transparent materials, such as liquids, glass, and leaves.

The significance of this can NOT be overstated. What this means is that the oldest known bug in Minetest has been fixed. Issue number #96 (yes, two digits), and it was a really, really old one, too. Really great news!

Development largely consisted of bug fixes, minor features, and continued improvements to the graphics pipeline.

It would be nice if the next post would highlight more bug fixes, at least briefly. Especially bugs that annoy many players. But yeah, fixing bugs is thankless work which doesn't gain you fame but it's important regardless. Obviously, the transparency thing was definitely worth mentioning, which you did.

Repixture
The part about Repixture 2.0.0 isn't 100% correct. The Repixture 2.0.0 release didn't have "almost no player-facing changes", it had no player-facing changes at all. It was purely a technical release. The goal of this release also wasn't actually about "making it easier to mod", as Repixture does not focus on moddability. I mean, you can mod Repixture, but this is and never was the core goal of it. The actual goal here was just paying the technical debt. Frankly, you just got through to me using the name "default" for the mod is bad. I also took the opportunity to split off the old default mod to several independent so that stuff like formspec handling, player model etc. itsn't all stuck in one giant ultra mod of overbloat. Untangling the overbloat is a good thing either way, no matter if there are external mods or not. I think expernal mods will have an easier time as well, but that's more like a nice side effect, rather than the goal. Repixture is not about modding, it's about having a standalone game first and foremost. External mods are just a bonus.
By the way, my reason for this release has nothing to with the brief ban on Repixture on ContentDB. I did not know about the ban until I was already knee-deep in the works. It was a concidence.

So, that's that. OK, this text might seem kind of angry, but I am not angry. I'm basically just nitpicking here and clarifying my intentions, that's the only reason, really. :D

Perlin Explorer
I have no objections about the part about Perlin Explorer. This is correct reporting.

[rubenwardy]

The significance of this can NOT be overstated. What this means is that the oldest known bug in Minetest has been fixed. Issue number #96 (yes, two digits), and it was a really, really old one, too. Really great news!

Yeah, definitely! It would have been nice to have a screenshot for it, visuals are generally a good way to convey stuff

It would be nice if the next post would highlight more bug fixes, at least briefly. Especially bugs that annoy many players. But yeah, fixing bugs is thankless work which doesn't gain you fame but it's important regardless. Obviously, the transparency thing was definitely worth mentioning, which you did.

That'll be good to keep in mind, thanks for the feedback

The part about Repixture 2.0.0 isn't 100% correct...

I've amended the bit about repixture to match this, hope this is better?

[sorcerykid]

I'm glad to see the blog is made official. It's looking great, so cheers to the editors. This will be a nice way to keep up with all the latest happenings, both on the development front and within the community.

Mad props for a job well done!

[Blockhead]

The blog is great as a serialised marketing tool. I hope more marketing improvements are on the way: for instance the blog isn't yet integrated into Minetest.net and we still only have screenshots of Minetest Game on there. Also, if you try to navigate to https://minetest.net/ i.e. without the www, it serves a self-signed cert instead of the Let's Encrypt certificate.

What's the deal with livestreaming players? There's no warning about that on the server browser, and wowee, what a wall of text when you join the NodeCore Public Server. That's a pretty decent barrier to entry I suppose.. Well clearly EVERYTHING is public on there..

[Zughy]

Speaking about making games and mods MTG independent, a big shout out to Wsor4305 who's been doing that with very big mods such as homedecor https://github.com/mt-mods/homedecor_modpack/pull/28

As always, great job, people

[rubenwardy]

The blog is great as a serialised marketing tool. I hope more marketing improvements are on the way: for instance the blog isn't yet integrated into Minetest.net and we still only have screenshots of Minetest Game on there.

I have a PR open for that, it just needs to be reviewed. Here's what it'll look like:

[Wuzzy]

Yes, the Repixture description is now correct. Thanks.

And I really like where this blog is going so far.

[debiankaios]

I would be happy about german translations(that you could set it up) I could help a bit too.

[Tim790]

Blood Test is getting a rewrite, the name was changed to Flesh Test but it might change soon, the game will have Tinkers Construct smelting mechanics and a unique boss summoning system, best of all it won't be a fork of MTG!!!

[Tim790]

I mean like kind of like Tinkers Contruct.

[rubenwardy]

I would be happy about german translations(that you could set it up) I could help a bit too.

I think this is too much of a commitment to make, it'll be unsustainable in the long run and make it take longer to release posts. We haven't even translated the main website yet, that's something that should be easier and is more important

[debiankaios]

ok, yeah you are right. We should be able to translate mainsite…

[ost]

I think this is too much of a commitment to make, it'll be unsustainable in the long run and make it take longer to release posts. We haven't even translated the main website yet, that's something that should be easier and is more important

is there efforts or something as a working group about translation of the website and documentation? i would like to help.
and regards translations of the blog posts, those doesn't have to be released at the same time as the official English version, the post are not so long, the translations would only take a couple of hours.
if the team behind the blog is interested i could translate the next post to Spanish :)

[Festus1965]

I would be happy about german translations(that you could set it up) I could help a bit too.

We haven't even translated the main website yet, that's something that should be easier and is more important

Didn't someone ask about that translations and offer this translated webpages already 3 years ago ? (Tue Mar 05, 2019 17:48)
Deutsch for Example (they are other about 10 languages) ... and the only response he got was about they are not .net and should ...

and special that one ! (on Mar 5, 2019)

Please don't make your site look like .net, as it will cause confusing

I don't see any problem with linking directly to the images from .net though, except that they may change without notice

now we just need to get you interested in translating the wiki :D

lol

I just prepared other things
* Thailand: th.minetest.one (ready and run)
* German: de.minetest.one (fertig und verfügbar)
* Vietnam: vn.minetest.one (sẵn sàng và làm việc)
* Laos: vn.minetest.one (ກຽມພ້ອມແລະເຮັດວຽກ)
* Malaysia: my.minetest.one (bersedia dan bekerja)
* Indonesia: id.minetest.one (bahasa Indonesia - siap dan bekerja)
* France: fr.minetest.one (français - prêt et disponible)

prepared or thought of
* Cambodia: hk.minetest.one (nothing in yet ...)
* Myanmar: mm.minetest.one (nothing in yet ...)
and what about well translated languages like
* Italia and Spain ... I have been so often for holiday.
... so Wiki, lolol ...
4th ? - is not helping about what I think first.

...