electronics, etc.

Here is a development build for Windows of what I have recently done:

minetest-0.3.dev-20111104-win32.zip

- Fixed: Frustum culling (previous versions have rendered too much stuff that is not actually visible (about 180 degrees, while should have been more like 100.))
- Added: Occlusion culling
- Added: “3d clouds” on/off checkbox in main menu
- Added: “opaque water” on/off checkbox
- Fixed: some random minor stuff
- Modified: Mipmapping turned off (This makes far-away textures a bit noisier but better looking)

The frustum culling fix and added occlusion culling make quite a large performance improvement.

This will be probably released as 0.3.1 if nobody reports significant problems in a few days. So make sure to test it well!

The profiler display in Minetest

You can press F2 to bring up a profiler display with a bunch of random statistics about rendering and in a local game about the server. Also, F1, F3 and F4 are useful in debugging and benchmarking.

The current development version has gone through quite a lot of testing and now it is time to release it as stable. It really is stable now, unlike the previous stable, which really isn’t stable even today. There are problems, of course, but they are known, minor and have workarounds.

Here is an image to make you interested!

Minetest-c55

This has practically nothing new compared to the previous development build. Here is the changelog:

0.3.0: (released on 2011-11-01)
- Some small fixes
0.3.dev-20111021:
- Modify dungeon masters to only try to shoot players
- Fix object duplication bug at block load/unload
- Improve network layer
0.3.dev-20111016:
- Locked chest
- Server user limit setting (max_users)
- Wielded tool is shown in HUD
- View bobbing
- Saplings that drop from leaf blocks and when placed on ground will grow to trees
- Optimized map saving (does not re-save everything all the time)
- New mob system and new mob: dungeon master
- Death/respawn screen

Compared to the previous stable (0.2.20110922), it contains lots of new things.

Additionally, in this Windows package, the textures have been mostly replaced by Cisoun’s texture pack. Linux users can install it separately, if they wish.

For Windows (XP/Vista/7), download it here: minetest-0.3.0-win32.zip

For other platforms, here is the download page.