CyFeb 2
Lost my thread, so here's a new one. I suddenly awakened from a terrible dream that I'd died out in the middle of nowhere and lost all my gear.

Shit, where's all my gear?

#gameplay #vidya #minetest #luanti #OpenSource #programming

https://fedicy.us.to/cy/p/1769904139.727099
Show threadCyFeb 2
Recovery went about as well as expected.
Show threadCyFeb 2
This beach of mineral sands looks familiar... oh hey more flax.

Not the good flax though.
Show threadCyFeb 2
Staying off the beach because sandstorms are a thing, and I fixed the trees so forests aren't completely impassable anymore. Oh, those sunflowers look familiar! Not that I died trapped against one or anything. No I'm a pro gamer with the skills.
Show threadCyFeb 2
Oh look, a fresh pile of bones of some poor explorer who is certainly not me, who perished carrying exactly the same stuff I was carrying. What are the odds?
Show threadCyFeb 2
A town nestled among the blasted sunflowers. This looks like an absolutely terrible place to live. They appear to be growing not potatoes, but I'll fix that.
Show threadCyFeb 2
Welcomed by the locals. Just made it inside. (He can't fit through the doorway.)
Show threadCyFeb 2
Exploring the area, I found a pig. Flying too high for me to catch though. Still looking for my ideal biome. Wait, is that...
Show threadCyFeb 2
It is! A Vault!
Show threadCyFeb 2
Oof... that's a lot of lava
Show threadCyFeb 2
OK first I leap a series of perilous parkour points, then hold onto a gap in the wall to make a longer leap, even though the minetest devs specifically changed their code to prevent that from working because they hate fun.
Show threadCyFeb 2
Then I leap, but the platform is blocked by a platform above, so I have to grab the lower platform and hop to the upper one, another thing the devs completely overhauled their movement engine to make sure you fall to your death.
Show threadCyFeb 2
Once I've grabbed onto that small ladder, I have to drop and coyote jump to the next platform. Another thing you can't do in minetest.
Show threadCyFeb 2
Next I leap into the lava and swim to grab the final ladder, climbing it before I take too much damage.
Show threadCyFeb 2
And finally, my reward is at hand!
Show threadCyFeb 2
Or I could just break through the wall and take the treasure. Ooh, mese!
Show threadCy
Obsidian! That will be useful for fluid pumps and terumet.
Feb 2 at 8:53pmWeb
Show threadCyFeb 2
I uh... toootally wasn't so fixated on the treasure that I stalled until it was night and then a skellington cut me down from behind. No, these bones are just... part of the treasure. Yeah!
Show threadCyFeb 2
And diamonds! That's ama—wait there's only 3 of them. I'm seriously 1 diamond short??

Maybe I'll find another vault. Or a tough monster that drops diamonds.

Hello badger do you drop diamonds? (He doesn't drop diamonds.)
Show threadCyFeb 2
Oh, this terrain is looking... pleasant. I took the liberty, by the way, of hacking the carpathian mapgen, because 3D terrain gen is stupid, so now it makes all sorts of interesting features. All I really need is "Some place flat, some place hilly" and that's what I get. I just wish I could figure out how to make flat plateaus at different heights. Minetest noise is value based, so you can't get the slope of how steep it is on every side. Well, you can, but then you run into a chunk boundary, and the neighboring chunk hasn't been generated. You could generate that one, but then on the other side of it, it wouldn't be able to tell the slop at the edge. So you generate the one beyond, and the one beyond... thus either I generate the whole 29,791,000,000,000 node map in one go, or I can't make my noise values steeper or flatter.

I suppose in theory if I was at a chunk boundary, then the node in the opposite direction would be approximately the same slope as the ungenerated one in front. Ehh... I'm bad at mapgen and I'm all by myself doing this, so I'll just leave it as far as I've gotten. Wish there was someone to work on this with...
Show threadCyFeb 3
When you leave your bed inside a basket like an idiot, and have to bury yourself into the hillside to escape the skellingtons, but you're pretty sure you probably dug out enough room to place the darn thing.

Notice I only have 3 diamonds still. It's going to be a long, boring trip down into the darkness with a lot of deaths if I can't find the 4th... the minetest worlds are so deep, digging straight down is the only way to get anywhere in any amount of time. Seriously they're stupidly deep; I would have done something different. Used some bitwise magic to make coordinates 17 by 14 by 17 bits, for a depth limit of 8,000, with a maximum world size of 131,000x131,000. Or y'know, just used 3 integers.

I'll implement my multi-map code before I do that, to allow for TRUE alternate dimensions, and no one will ever use it because I'm not an official minetest dev and you need a client that supports it.
Show threadCyFeb 3
This terrain is seriously awesome, when I get myself some cotton and some more diamonds, or iron maybe.
Show threadCyFeb 3
After passing through a mineral sands, high desert, I... wait. There in the upper middle.
Show threadCyFeb 3
It's a Vault!

These things are so dumb. Not even procedurally generated, someone just built it and saved the schematic, then probably told themselves they were totally coming back to this someday to make more kinds of vaults. It's fun finding them pop up around the map though. Usually spawn just slightly above ground!
Show threadCyFeb 3
Huh, seems that cooltrees generates after vaults and doesn't check if it's building into stuff.
Show threadCyFeb 3
Anyway, once again I'm going to brave the deadly lava, leaping with skill from—no, I'm just going to dig through the wall again.

Alright, 10 diamonds! Now thinks are looking up.
Show threadCyFeb 3
And would you look at that, another settlement past the vault.

I really wish the "working villages" mod was umh, working. I can't believe that someone did all that work to make Minecolonies, but I can't play that, since I don't like games I'm locked out of modding, myself.

Well, until then Minetest NPCs are gonna suck, so I don't bother with them.
Show threadCyFeb 3
The settlement name generator is fun. ♥ Makes it a little less lonely to play by myself. Wonder if... librekitty wants to play again. They didn't seem super into exploring all the crazy stuff I installed though, more overwhelmed and lost than anything, and of course no voice chat allowed.
Show threadCyFeb 3
Oops, forgot the picture.
Show threadLightFeb 3
@cy
I'd like to play with you once I have access to a device that can play Luanti.
Btw, what mods/game do you have installed?
Show threadCyFeb 3
It's a uhh modified minetest_game, with... uh... 231 mods. Notably there's everness and ethereal, some cave stuff, bunch of mob mobs, a heavily modified regional_weather that actually sorta works, some POI mods, moretrees and choppy, um... what modules are you looking for?
Show threadLightFeb 3
@cy
>what modules are you looking for?
Nothing in particular. Just curious.
Show threadLightFeb 3
@cy
> no one will ever use it because I'm not an official minetest dev
Is the NodeCore dev an "official Minetest dev"?
Show threadCyFeb 3
They're just making server mods, not a separate client, I thought?
Show threadLightFeb 3

@cy
I think I misunderstood. Nvm.

Have you tried sending the engine team patches/PRs? Did they explicitly say no?

Show threadCyFeb 3
Uhhh they... yes-ish? There was a time when I argued with them in vain. I know my PGP authentication patch was a little extreme, but it worked so much better than the dumb "type your password every time" strategy, and had potential for exchanging player-to-player signatures for any number of cool authentication ideas. Mostly I was trying to stop certain changes, like introducing Lua, or the movement overhaul, or the area protection, or the rubberbanding... man, it's been a long time.

In general, I tell the engine team that it's important to make the game fun, for players, otherwise no one will play it. Then they tell me no, this engine is to help server owners build their servers, as a community of fellow geeks running servers, not normie players. Then I throw my hands up and fuck off again.

Still remember when they added support for the protection mod. I dug random concealed pits around the server I was on, with a protection block and a sign on the bottom saying "Isn't area protection great?" Oh on another one I circled the current spawn and claimed a ring around the border of it. That was when I realized arguing with idiots is dumb and I shouldn't be putting so much effort into something no one wants.
Show threadLightFeb 3

@cy
> Then they tell me no, this engine is to help server owners build their servers, as a community of fellow geeks running servers, not normie players.
Wtf? Do you have a source for that?

PGP authentication sounds like a really cool idea.

Show threadCyFeb 3
Ugh, it's been years and my github account got suspended somehow. I might be able to find the discussion, will look later. Fair warning, my side of the argument is massively tongue-in-cheek.

PGP authentication is really cool, one step to enabling portals between servers where you keep your items. Though the GPGME library/wrapper is still crunk, I was surprised how straightforward it was to add in. And "gpa" can cache your password for some time, and you never transmit the password so it doesn't need to be as strong.
Show threadCyFeb 3
CC: @[email protected]

No luck, sorry. If any of my issues are still there, I can't search for them. I don't wanna stay on github any longer than I have to, anyway.