Mirrored as part of a study of Minetest events of 2010 to 2019 and people involved, and in connection with a related book, events in 2017 to 2018, in particular, conferring upon host legal rights related to Fair Use.

The modifiable Minetest 0.4!

I have made available in github the first usable experimental version of Minetest 0.4. (A stable release will be made in the future.)

It has a Lua modding API. I call it a modding API because modding is awesomer than scripting.

0.4 is an engine update. I first dvelved into the deep dark corners of Minetest and made pretty much all content dynamically loadable at runtime. Then I pulled in Lua, created the necessary interfaces and finalized the thing to it’s current state with the help of a guy called Kahrl.

From now on, all content will be implemented as mods, and C++ holds it’s position as the engine language.

There is a very important speciality about the Minetest Lua modding API: All mods are run server-side. This means players can connect using the same client to any server and see whole new worlds, without worrying about downloading malicious or incompatible mods.

It also makes a simple modding API, because the modder doesn’t need to handle both sides of the networked system. It is not as flexible, but it is easy. This makes it unique.

It is by no means finished, there are bugs, the API lacks many things and the modding interface will still evolve for some time, but it is highly usable.

Documentation is lacking, but here is a start. Feel free to fill in some of the wiki as you explore the API and make some awesome mods!

Oh, and make sure to report any bugs and missing API features, for example in the forums or in github.

4 Responses to “The modifiable Minetest 0.4!”

  1. SirShadowdeath Says:

    Cool. Nice to see further progress.

  2. mofoo Says:

    nice. time to learn lua then!

  3. dArket Says:

    Hello from Russia! I often visit your blog and I am glad the prosperity of the project))) I think with such a large scale you will create a better game than minetsarft)) Good luck!

  4. SuperBlooper057 Says:

    Hurrah! Just found about this via /v/ and love it! Keep the updates a-coming!

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