FAQ

This is a collection of some frequently asked questions about Minetest.

General

Where can I ask questions?

In IRC and the Forum. It is recommended to search the archives, most questions were probably answered before.

How to install mods and texture packs?

See Installing Mods and Texture Packs.

What are the different game modes and how do I install them?

On a new install you should have “Minetest [minetest_game]” that is the main game, if you don't have it download it form github. “Minimal development test” is just for developers and is not intended to be playable. You can find several other game modes in the forum. To install them extract the pack and rename the folder to the name of the game (e.g. “minetest_game-master” to “minetest_game”), then copy the folder to the games folder.

How do I update Minetest?

The easiest way is just to download the newest version and move your worlds and mods to the new version. Depending on you operating system there are other ways too.

Servers

How do I use command XYZ?

See Server commands.

Gameplay

General

How big is the map?

As of 0.4.7, the map is a cube with a side length of 61840 node lengths. The map has thus a volume equal to the volume of 61840³ nodes = 236,487,637,504,000 nodes. The coordinates range from −30912 to 30927 in all dimensions.

See also Coordinates.

How to find my house again?

Minetest automatically generates a file called “debug.txt” in minetest/bin where you can see lots of text. Scroll down to its end and look for something like

singleplayer digs node * […]

Try to teleport to the positions you see in these lines until you find your home:

/teleport x,y,z

see also: Server commands#Player actions

Vanilla Minetest game

How to craft XYZ?

See Crafting. Or install a craft guide.

Are there any mobs?

No. Is is unlikely that they get added in the near future. But there are mods to add mobs.

Why don’t I find any dungeons/jungles?

They are disabled by default. You can enable them by adding “v6_jungles, dungeons” to mg_flags in you minetest.conf. That will enable them for new worlds. Also note, that dungeons are pretty rare.

How do I open or close doors?

You need to right click instead of left click to open doors as of 0.4.5.

For Minecraft players

Is there a crafting bench?

In the vanilla Minetest game: No. And you don’t need one. You already have a 3×3 crafting grid in your inventory menu (→Crafting#Crafting_grid_and_output_slot).

But there are mods that add a crafting bench.

How can I make Minetest be like Minecraft?

You can use the Minitest game.

Graphics and sound

How can I enable sound? (Windows)

You need to download OpenAL to play sound on Windows (the file needed is [1], you need to execute the program after it has finished downloading. Firefox and Chrome users may need to either save file or keep downloading, Internet Explorer users will need to just press run. Other browsers maybe the same or different. If one browser fails, try another.)

How do I fix it that everything in the game is in a weird color (particularly red), looks like rainbows, you can partially see through things etc.?

Turn off shaders. Shaders are not supported by your graphics card.

Error messages without crashes (“What does error message X mean?”)

“Unsupported texture format”

Don’t worry, this is completely normal. Minetest will still work.

“Generating dummy image for […].png”

It means that a faulty mod or texture pack does not supply an image for an object. Minetest will still work normally, but the specified object will use a replacement image (the “dummy image”); it will be a random color. This should normally be reported to the creator of the mod or texture pack.

Crashes (“How do I fix it that Minetest crashes?”)

All sub-section titles in double quotes here mean that Minetest crashed with an error message like that.

Any operating system

“Minetest can not load […]/init.lua”

Follow these steps, stopping when the mod works or if you reach the end Make sure the mod folder is correctly named. Find out the correct name by going to the mod's forum page and looking at what is in the [ ] in the title. Report the error to the mod owner by copying and pasting the section in debug.txt that starts with "=====ERROR FROM LUA=====" if any.

“Assertation '0' failed”

This is usually a mod error. Report it to the mod programmer or mod programmers. To find out the name of the mod, look for any error text directly above that gives a path to a mod's init.lua

 ERROR: An unhandled exception occurred: LuaError: error: mods/minetest/<modname>/init.lua:69: [...]

“ServerEnvironment::loadMeta(): EnvArgsEnd not found”

Put something like this in env_meta.txt in your world folder

 game_time = 40053
 time_of_day = 20068
 EnvArgsEnd

it doesn't matter much which numbers you use.

Windows

“MSCP2010.dll is not found” (or similar)

This is because Microsoft C++ Redistribute Package 2010 is not installed. [2]

Minetest doesn’t even start, how to fix this?

If it stops working before the main window even opens, and there are no error messages in debug.txt, then try restarting your computer. (sometimes it crashes with a 0x00005 error, which is caused by windows updates.) You can try looking in debug.txt for an error message or searching for a similar article in the forums.

“what()=Access Violation”

This is caused by the Direct3D driver. To fix, go to the minetest.conf file and find:

 video_driver = direct3d9

change it so that it says:

 video_driver = opengl

Linix

Problems on Arch

The Arch build seems to be broken. Try compiling Minetest yourself.