New Feature Hype Thread

[Wuzzy]

Let's get excited about new and upcoming features in Minetest.

Post about any feature that will come in the next stable release and why it's cool.

Please only post features that have actually made it into the main Minetest development line. Don't post stuff that hasn't been accepted yet.

[Wuzzy]

I begin:

Minetest 5.8.0 will bring a bunch of cool features.

Custom fog!
Games will be able to limit the fog range on a per-player based, finally allowing for actual fog weather. The "fog start point" can also be mofified.

Here's an example for very dense fog:

lowfog.jpg (25.04 KiB) Viewed 10003 times

This is what I mean with "fog start point":

lowfog2.jpg (39.16 KiB) Viewed 9999 times

As you can see, in these images, the fog distance remained the same, but the "fog start point" increase. The fog start point is how far from the player the fog will "start", relative to the view distance.

New texture modifiers
There will be new methods to modify textures:

• Fill the entire texture with 1 color
• Change contrast like in GIMP
• Change hue, saturation and lightness like in GIMP
• ... and more!

New player physics overrides

This is my feature. More aspects of player physics can be modified on a per-player basis:

• custom climb speed
• custom swim/dive speed
• custom sneak speed
• custom accelleration

Mod translation updater script

This is my feature. Long overdue, Minetest finally will come with a script that gives an official way to update the mod translation files automatically. It's called util/mod_translation_updater.py. Previously, we were forced to do that by unofficial scripts.

New settings page
The settings page has been completely reorganized. The giant tree is gone and there are now only like 2 layers of depth. Much easier to use.

newmenu.png (83.99 KiB) Viewed 10006 times

I'm sure there are many other features to hype, so let us know!

[ancientmariner]

Killing off MTG. Now people will download MT, and realise it's not a rubbish empty version of Minecraft, but has good games folk have made. Hopefully should help retention significantly. Maybe one day, architectural decisions won't be based on the fact that every PR has to absolutely support MTG, but nobody is allowed to touch MTG.

The settings stuff looks great also.

[Nininik]

daum! seems like were getting a huge upgrade! just like multicraft upgraded their gui stuff.....

[Wuzzy]

Another feature worth mentioning (5.8.0-dev):

The inventory will get a bunch of new useful shortcuts!

It will be easier to do things with item stacks in the inventory using various combinations of cursor click, movement, dragging and holding down the sneak key. These things will be available:

• Holding down Sneak+click while moving the mouse over item slots now continously moves items to other inventory (if available)
• Press Sneak+click on the crafting output slot to craft and move result to inventory
  • Left mouse button: Craft as many as possible
  • Mouse wheel: Craft 10 times
  • Right mouse button: Craft once
• Drag an item stack on the crafting grid to split stacks evenly
• Hold down Left mouse button while holding an item stack and move the cursor over the slots to pick up items of the same type
• Scroll the mouse wheel on top of a slot to pick up or put down items

The usefulness of this feature cannot be overstated. :-)

[Nininik]

MineTest finna Getting Them Ground-Breaking Changes, YAY!

[ROllerozxa]

5.8 brings new high-quality shader-based antialiasing (after the old MSAA antialiasing being broken in 5.7), namely SSAA which dramatically improves the quality of distant graphics:

[Blockhead]

https://files.voxelmanip.se/minetest/ss ... rison.webp

Right hand image looks like it is using default_grid, and possibly opaque texture mode ('fast leaves" - I could be wrong) so it doesn't make for a very good comparison.

[ROllerozxa]

https://files.voxelmanip.se/minetest/ss ... rison.webp

Right hand image looks like it is using default_grid, and possibly opaque texture mode ('fast leaves" - I could be wrong) so it doesn't make for a very good comparison.

Both sides have the exact same settings apart from the antialiasing, no idea what you mean by the leaves being opaque on the right side, they're supposed to be transparent on both but look opaque on the left due to the lack of detail (something SSAA fixes!). The texture pack is OhCeeDee.

[Blockhead]

Both sides have the exact same settings apart from the antialiasing, no idea what you mean by the leaves being opaque on the right side,

Oops I meant on the left

they're supposed to be transparent on both but look opaque on the left due to the lack of detail (something SSAA fixes!). The texture pack is OhCeeDee.

Well that makes sense, but I wasn't expecting a texture pack when one wasn't mentioned.

Closer to on-topic: Hypertext respecting font size is good.

[MirceaKitsune]

Happily subscribing to be notified of new ones posted here. I only run the Git version which I compile myself, but new features may not be obvious so a place where major ones are announced is very useful. Sun / moon shadows must be the most amazing thing to have happened recently, I hear someone is working on reflective / refractive water now... if only colored light sources could finally be supported at this stage, I keep dreaming it will happen one day.

[Wuzzy]

It will be possible to change what nodes and objects certain items can or can't point at. Additionally, it will also be possible to prevent pointing "through" a certain thing.

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/13992

[Hybrid Dog]

5.8 brings new high-quality shader-based antialiasing (after the old MSAA antialiasing being broken in 5.7), namely SSAA which dramatically improves the quality of distant graphics:

Minetest's SSAA is low-quality in my opinion because the downscaling is not gamma-correct. In this example, the checkerboard gets darker in the distance:

left: no SSAA, right: 8x SSAA

ssaa_off_on_gammaproblem.png (46.17 KiB) Viewed 7882 times

‪

‪‪‮
For reference, here is how a gamma-correct downscaling output from the GIMP looks like:

downscaling in image editor.png (9.46 KiB) Viewed 7882 times

I have implemented a different downscaling algorithm for SSAA in Minetest based on personal preferences:

[Wuzzy]

Mod, game and texture pack descriptions have become translatable:

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/12208

Remaining untranslatable texts:

• Game/mod settings (settingtypes.txt)
• A few special server messages

[Wuzzy]

L-system trees can now be placed as decorations:

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/14355

[Nininik]

L-system trees can now be placed as decorations:

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/14355

EPICC! NOW I CAN MAKE DIAMOND TREES :P

[Wuzzy]

There's now a function that allows you to get the *real* collision or selection or nodeboxes of nodes, as they are in the world, including rotation an all that:

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/13964

This will simplify a lot of things on the Lua side.

[TenPlus1]

I kinda wish that there was a way to get movedata for players so we could check their engine collisiondata like we do entities.

[Wuzzy]

It will be possible to force Minetest to load a particular mod of a game as the first one, and to specify a mod to be loaded as the last one.

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/14177

[v-rob]

It will be possible to force Minetest to load a particular mod of a game as the first one, and to specify a mod to be loaded as the last one.

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/14177

Oooh, that's a really useful one!

[Blockhead]

You'll be able to selectively hide objects from players, allowing nifty things like (as Zughy said) healthbars that only show up for teammates, or maybe a potion of selective invisibility, or hallucinations of pink elephants :P

[Nininik]

You'll be able to selectively hide objects from players, allowing nifty things like (as Zughy said) healthbars that only show up for teammates, or maybe a potion of selective invisibility, or hallucinations of pink elephants :P

AH YES time to add a schizophrenia mod. perfect.

[InterPotato]

What happened to the new animated model support (Idr the format)? It was supposed to be added in 5.9, but it's not mentioned anywhere in changelogs. Was it finally added or was it scrapped?

[rubenwardy]

What happened to the new animated model support (Idr the format)? It was supposed to be added in 5.9, but it's not mentioned anywhere in changelogs. Was it finally added or was it scrapped?

glTF - Work is ongoing. Non-animated support is likely to be in 5.10. Animated support is possible but less likely

[Wuzzy]

Well if glTF comes only with non-animated support, then unfortunately this doesn't gain us very much because we already have OBJ.

The reason we all wait for glTF is because of the nightmarish B3D support in modelling software and B3D is currently the only "practical" animated format in Minetest atm. glTF support in modelling software seems to be much better.

But if this format support arrives, WITH animation, that will be the ULTRA HYPE! :D