electronics, etc.

You may have stumbled upon this scenario: You have a server with large, reliable storage, and a bunch of computers that you use, with limited disk space. So you decide to store your music files on the server, because they fit nicely in there.

You may be familiar with MPD. It is a thing that lets you do this:

MPD Usage

…but how often do you actually want this? It’s useful only if your server is also your HTPC-kind of thing. My friend stumbled upon this issue, and came up with Musicd. It does this:

Musicd usage

That is, it streams music from your server to your computer, letting the server transparently do the storage thing, and your computer do the playback thing.

It’s a bit like hosting your own Spotify, Magnatune or so.

The current stable version (0.2.0) of Musicd allows you to connect to it using the qmdc client, which plays stuff, shows a playlist and handles the UI part of searching.

(There are no Windows clients, and musicd only works on *NIX systems.)

Experimental Awesomeness: HTTP Support

There has been some interesting development going on recently. More namely, a HTTP-based protocol. The github version does not have full HTTP support yet, but a fairly well working version is available at http://tsundere.fi/b/musicdhttpdev.tar.

You may need to start it up with the –enable-http option. Input goes as GET parameters, output comes as JSON and audio streams.

You can test it by using eg. curl and mplayer:

curl "http://localhost:6800/tracks?search=Rick%20Astley"
curl "http://localhost:6800/tracks?album=derp&artist=herp"
curl "http://localhost:6800/artists"
curl "http://localhost:6800/albums"
curl "http://localhost:6800/albumimg?album=4"
mplayer "http://localhost:6800/open?id=39"


There is a browser client in the works, but it hasn’t been released yet.

Clementine Support
I picked up the awesome Clementine-player source code and added Musicd-HTTP support to it.

You can find my work here: https://github.com/celeron55/clementine/commits/master

After building it, launch it up and select the “Internet” side tab, right click “Musicd”, and then “Configure Musicd”. After setting the server address, use “Refresh library” from the same context menu, and you’re good to go.

Also, in case somebody wants to discuss stuff, we created the IRC channel #musicd @ Freenode.net. (beware of the occasional Finnish speaking in there)

It turns out it has been 1 year since the release of Minetest 0.3.1, and the development of 0.4 was started exactly one year before tomorrow. Cool. 8)

The beginning of Minetest 0.4

Here is how the website looked back then!

Minetest website, 2011

Windows package: minetest-0.4.3-win32.zip
Others: http://minetest.net/download.php

EDIT: I am not sure, but the automatic rendering range control doesn’t seem to work properly in this. If it seems so, report it in the comments and use the + and – keys or the R key to force it higher than it otherwise is.

Forum thread: http://minetest.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2953

This is mostly a bugfix release on top of 0.4.2-rc1.

0.4.1 -> 0.4.2-rc1:

• Wool (somewhat compatible and based on jordach’s original mod)
• Dyes (a simple mod which thoroughly defines how dyes and other mods should interact)
• New kind of creative inventory
• Increase node id field from 12 to 16 bits
• /mods command
• Fix a bug in zlib wrapper code
• Rollback support; disabled by default; enable with “enable_rollback_recording = true” and use /rollback and /rollback_check
• Some random bugfixes
• Lua API:
  • minetest.get_modnames()
  • Formspec menus
  • Detached inventories

0.4.2-c1 -> 0.4.3:

• Animated torches (obvious) and vessels (a few standard bottles) included (VanessaE)
• Fix crash when furnace is full
• Shift is now the default “climb down” key; can be toggled in key configuration menu
• A few small Lua API additions:
  • InventoryList width property for having different-sized crafting grids (0.4.2 fails with this) (thexyz)
  • Added new kind of node behavior to engine via groups: disable_jump, fall_damage_add_percent, bouncy
  • Add overridable function for changing node drop behaviour
  • Move remaining chat commands to Lua (matttpt)
• Smooth transition between deserts and grass (by some guy called Sergey Gilfanov)
• Fix and improve key configuration menu (frozon + me)
• Fix inventory behaviour in some cases of moving items
• Reorganize rendering code for a bit more performance (can be from +0% to +200% FPS, depending on how slow your GPU is at switching textures)
• Lots of other bugfixes

Version incompatibility
0.4.3 can connect to 0.4.2-rc1 servers if they have “strict_protocol_version_checking = false”; 0.4.2-rc1 cannot connect to 0.4.3 due to a stupid forward-compatibility breaking mistake (that hanged around in the code since October 2010). 0.4.2 release is skipped due to the incompatibility with 0.4.2-rc1.

I spent this weekend making a game for Ludum Dare 24 .

Genvaders

Your goal is to shoot as many aliens as you can. After you get rid of one bunch, an evolved bunch of aliens appears.

The aliens evolve based on how well they hit you and how long they stay alive. You can prevent the aliens from taking too much advantage of it by killing the nastiest ones first.

Download, read more, rate or whatever at the LD24 entry page.

A screenshot timelapse of me making it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDBGpFPWFOk

2012-12-15: The genvaders source code is hereby released under WTFPL, to allow usage of it as a base in future competitions.

Just throwing this mingw development build here. Beware and report the bugs. I think this is lacking sound because of a missing DLL file the name of which I don’t remember. If you have OpenAL globally installed, sound will work (and in some other cases too).
http://minetest.net/packages/nightly/minetest-0.4.2-rc1-d38b465-win32.zip

Refer to github for changes.

Also an experimental mobs mod which doesn’t do much now, which I have been fiddling around a few hours sometimes for… I guess during multiple months. This is NOT included in the 0.4.2-rc1 download.
http://c55.me/random/2012-07/mobs.tar.gz

An experimental mob cave / dungeon / vault / whatever in Minetest. See the chest? 8)