Games/Minetest Game

Minetest (technical name: “minetest_game”) is a Minetest game which is installed by default. Since early 2014 the Minetest-Game is semi-officially under feature freeze. It is not dropped and will be kept available in maintenance-mode as basis for all mods that depend on "default".

Function

As default game

This game is included by default to give some initial single player content when Minetest is downloaded in the single archive file from the download section of the homepage. It includes some basic mods that add enough game content to offer a simple playable game with control keys and basic gameplay activities set to be function similar to other games of the genre to make immediate playing possible.

The Minetest-Game is not needed to play on other servers as all game content is controlled and "served" by the hosting server. Only when running an own Minetest server is some playable content needed that is normally a collection of mod scripts in a “game” folder. “Single-player” may be viewed as a special case when the local Minetest program acts as local game-server, hosting a local game and then connects to its own self as client.

As basis for new games

The game-play can be modified considerably by Lua scripts organized in mods. As a lot of mods name “default” as dependency, the Minetest-Game is thought as the basic content on which game designers may build their own games. Thus if compatibility with most mods is the aim of a new game it is advisable to start building the new game by adding content to a copy of the default Minetest game.

As collection of modding examples

Although this may seem trivial this function of the Minetest game should not be forgotten as it often offers the first example of how to code things for modders.

Notable things not included

As the Minetest game is included in the download archive it is supposed to be lightweight and as gameplay-neutral as possible. It therefore often irritates new players that many things known from similar games are not included by default.

Although the default game offers rails, it does not include mine carts, boats or any other vehicles as such. No mobs or NPCs are included and no API for these is offered.

Content

It contains the following mods:

• Gameplay-related mods
  • default: This is the most important and biggest mod in minetest_game. It adds most blocks which occour naturally and most artificial blocks, ores, many basic crafts, furnace fuels, tools, items and all the stuff which is not covered by the other mods in this game
  • boats: adds boats
  • bones: adds bones
  • bucket: adds buckets
  • doors: adds doors and the trapdoor
  • dye: adds dye
  • farming: farming-related stuff: cotton, wheat, cotton seed, wheat seed, strings, flour, bread, hoes and soil
  • fire: adds fire
  • flowers: adds flowers
  • screwdriver: adds screwdriver
  • stairs: adds stairs and slabs
  • tnt: adds TNT and gunpowder
  • vessels: adds drinking glass, steel bottle, glass bottle and glass fragments
  • wool: adds wool in 15 colors
  • xpanes: adds glass panes and iron bars
• Setting-related mods
  • creative: when in creative mode, this mod enables, besides some other things, the creative inventory
  • give_initial_stuff: If the setting give_initial_stuff is true, then this mod gives new players a steel pickaxe, a steel axe, a steel shovel, 99 torches and 99 cobblestones
• Server commands
  • sethome: adds the server commands “sethome” and “home”. (See here)

Future development

The consensus of the Minetest developers seems to be that the Minetest-Game should be changed as little as possible (feature-freeze) and rather no new content added. Thus offering the most compatibility to old mods and leaving the bulk of game content for game designers to develop. To give more examples of the possibilities of the Minetest engine it has been discussed to include more example games in the download archive. The only other game that is included in the 0.4.9 versions of Minetest is Minimal, which is only recommended for testing purposes. Games suggested as example games have been Dwarves, PilzTest, Nostalgia, Realtest, Eden or a game based on the Ethereal mod. More recently BFD, Minetest NeXt and Carbone have been considered among others. The idea is to showcase a variety of different gameplay, environment and atmosphere concepts.