Time Nick Message 01:33 Gustavo6046 hello! 01:33 Gustavo6046 what's the name for the process that turns thermal differential into electricity (and back?) 01:34 Hawk777 The thermoelectric effect? 01:34 Gustavo6046 oh? 01:34 Hawk777 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect 01:34 Gustavo6046 like there is a plate that, when powered, becomes cold on one end and hot on the other 01:34 Hawk777 Yes. 01:35 Hawk777 I believe a Peltier device is a common way to do that in practice, though I’m not super-familiar with the field. 01:35 Gustavo6046 ah 01:35 Hawk777 Also not sure what that has to do with Minetest, but :shrug: 01:48 Gustavo6046 yeah, I just thought it could be the basis for sort of like a more versatile version of the geothermal generator from Technic 01:49 Gustavo6046 so (anything hot) + (anything cold) = energy + neutered forms of both inputs 01:49 Hawk777 Ah, yes, a reasonable idea. 01:49 Gustavo6046 though a relatively small amount of energy 01:49 Hawk777 I kind of thought the Technic generator was meant to work with any hot and cold items already? 01:49 Gustavo6046 uh, don't think so 01:50 Hawk777 I mean, any items it knows about, which is not very many, but… 01:50 Hawk777 Oh, hm, it does say only lava/water. 01:50 Hawk777 I think I must be thinking of something else then. 02:01 Gustavo6046 water? 02:01 Gustavo6046 wait 02:01 Gustavo6046 it has the (literally) cool part too? 02:01 Gustavo6046 cool! 03:17 Gustavo6046 oh yeah I forgot technic machines don't like hoppers :< 03:20 Gustavo6046 maybe they do with pipeworks though 10:50 MTDiscord try techpack/techage too 12:06 macaw It's sad that minetest never got close to the popularity of minecraft. Imagine the modding scene we'd have then... 12:06 * macaw got lost in daydreams. 12:07 MTDiscord Minecraft is Microsoft 12:07 MTDiscord Microsoft is popular 12:07 macaw SnowBall444: Minecraft was hugely popular before Microsoft's acquisition. 12:08 MTDiscord Oh 12:08 MTDiscord Not Microsoft 12:08 MTDiscord But Microsoft sells it 12:08 MTDiscord and other popular companies 12:08 MTDiscord minecraft was the first of its kind 12:09 MTDiscord or... well, not really, but the first to really take off 12:09 macaw I have a feeling we never got similar popularity because the base game lacks some (small amount of) needed gameplay elements. 12:09 MTDiscord yeah minecraft and minetest has completely different goals 12:09 macaw For this, I'd give the example of Skyrim. 12:10 MTDiscord minecraft is a full and complete game out of the box, minetest is a voxel engine with a boring game bundled with it 12:10 MTDiscord or well, I find some amount of enjoyment out of it without even any mods but I'm weird so there's that 12:10 macaw (Skyrim) The base game is weak, but the fantasy element is executed well enough to attract a big audience (willing to work with a propietary engine though an API). 12:12 macaw As you (Sublayer plank) said - the base gameplay is a bit lacking to attract enough people who would play even without mods. 12:12 MTDiscord yeah 12:13 macaw The goals may be different, but not making the base game a great experience is what keeps minetest from shining (creating a modding scene and exploding in popularity). 12:14 macaw IIRC, some time after Minecraft was acquired by Microsoft, they cracked down on modding, yet people still mod it, because it's the only "good" minecraft-like they can play with their friends. 12:14 macaw Such a shame... :/ 12:15 macaw And minetest has a good API and is 100% FOSS! It's mind-boggling it's not popular. 12:15 macaw And performant! 12:15 MTDiscord it sure as hell isn't 12:16 MTDiscord which is unfortunate 12:19 macaw Kind of a chicken-and-egg problem, isn't it? Popularity brings community = brings mods = variety. Base gameplay brings popularity. Minetest's goals are to be a good engine, but bringing good gameplay is somebody else's problem. Because of no popularity, noone is willing to take the torch and build good base gameplay. 12:19 sfan5 that's true 12:19 macaw People try, but the best attempts are hampered by the lack of good content to put in a base game. 12:57 celeron55 anyone is free to make a good base game 12:59 celeron55 i know, that's stupid comment, but it's shorter than all the questions that it brings to mind to anyone who reads it 12:59 celeron55 thi way i don't have to type the questions 8) 12:59 MTDiscord I read it 12:59 celeron55 this* 13:03 celeron55 well let's think for a bit 13:04 celeron55 i think making a good game requires a creative director of sorts, that is trusted by the team and who is very active in deciding non-technical things 13:06 celeron55 that comes naturally to independent projects 13:06 celeron55 but if an official game is made, the creative director has to be appointed 13:06 celeron55 i belive we all agree creativity by committee doesn't work 13:07 celeron55 or design by committee as it's more usually said 13:08 mmuller yes, though it's useful to have an engaged beta-test community providing feedback. 13:10 celeron55 well, it should happen at the creative director's discretion, but that would be a modern method for a creative director to use 13:10 celeron55 if you mean creative feedback 13:11 mmuller yes, and agreed. 13:12 celeron55 anyway, for this reason an official game is dependent on the right person to be found 13:14 celeron55 once upon a time i was doing those things in MT, but i dropped it when i wanted to explore the technical aspect in 0.4 and haven't picked it up since then 13:17 celeron55 if enough people directly said to me they wanted me to get back to it, i might have to consider. but it gets very personal, as time is very personal and i have projects lined up 13:19 MTDiscord A "good base game" would require you to define a specific target audience. 13:20 celeron55 it is an arbitrary decision from a technical standpoint, thus a thing for the creative director to choose 13:20 celeron55 of course we could cast a vote and lock the design to that audience beforehand 13:21 MTDiscord I don't see a reason why the MT project should limit itself to some specific segment of the potential audience, especially since not being a part of that audience was a big part of why I left MC modding in the first place. 13:21 celeron55 but trying to design a game by voting along the way is going to be a disaster. there will be so many things to disagree on 13:22 MTDiscord I rather like the "free marketplace of competing benevolent dictators" model, but that would require MTE to be more flexible especially in terms of packaging, maybe. 13:22 celeron55 i like it too, but it doesn't produce the end result many people would like to see 13:23 celeron55 and besides, both could coexist 13:23 MTDiscord It could, but there are few enough people putting real work into anything that the signal gets buried in noise right now. 13:29 MTDiscord I don't think MT could just appoint a creative director at this point. A few have arisen on the fringes, but there are a lot of limiting factors that keep their projects from moving fast. 13:30 sfan5 does MT really need a creative director? I thought we were talking about games 13:31 MTDiscord There was talk about a "base game." A creative director is needed for games. I don't think it's possible to have a successful single "base" game at this point. 13:31 MTDiscord more like a director with good suggestions 13:31 MTDiscord just instead of including the games why not just have them as ghost buttons that become real buttons if the game is installed via cdb 13:32 celeron55 sfan5: the engine not, but an official game would. that was my point 13:32 sfan5 what I'm thinking is that: suppose MTG is resurrected, then MTG would need a director but not MT 13:32 sfan5 yea 13:32 mmuller is MTG 13:32 mmuller "dead"? 13:32 MTDiscord I've had the idea brewing for a while of reworking how my own game is distributed and publish a version with the engine bundled, instead of having to tell players to get the engine and then install the game using it. 13:33 celeron55 that's not very difficult even though there's no official way. basically you just make a light fork with a modified main menu (if even that) 13:34 sfan5 mmuller: essentially yes, it's frozen for any feature changes 13:34 MTDiscord the most "notable" (not wikipedia definition of notable) and most "infamous" (outside of clone2/5) 13:34 MTDiscord I'm tempted to try it, and maybe even do no C+( modifications either so I can use existing compiled binaries... 13:34 sfan5 and coredev interest is so low that even bugfixes have a hard time 13:34 MTDiscord do i have to start throwing coins at you 13:36 MTDiscord I wonder if light forks should be encouraged. Maybe the engine could do things to make it easier. This would allow us to get instead of unproven PRs, features actually tested in the field. We could be a central Integration and exchange point for features to support an ecosystem instead of having to bikeshed over a bunch of stuff that nobody has any real world evidence of it's actual value... 13:37 MTDiscord or how about we accept that we really need to start actually eating the dogfood rather than storing it for the nuclear winter 13:39 MTDiscord A lot of ideas actually get killed off by the "that would require an engine change and there's no way they'd accept that" phase. If people felt more free to try their features out on their own then we could be merging mature and proven features instead of nascent ideas. 13:40 MTDiscord at the end of the day academic discussions have already run this projects contributor morale into the ground 13:40 MTDiscord Shadows for example could have gotten a lot of refinement circulating among some forks before they got upstreamed, and maybe some of the problems could have already been fixed by then. 13:41 MTDiscord Eh, morale may be low but those things wax and wane. 13:41 MTDiscord i've seen these same arguments crop up 13:41 MTDiscord continously 13:41 celeron55 i'm not sure most light forks would manage their changes in such a way that they could be extracted as PRs 13:41 MTDiscord Most of the discussions we have are things that we have discussed before, yes. 13:42 celeron55 50% change it'd be a giant mess 13:42 celeron55 chance* 13:42 MTDiscord A light fork that doesn't manage it's changes well is not a light fork anymore. They'll lose their ability to pull from upstream and that will probably be their doom in the longer run. 13:42 sfan5 the chance that forks make changes that make them incompatible with normal MT is also high 13:42 sfan5 not sure if you consider that a problem 13:43 MTDiscord 50% chance of a fork becoming a train wreck would be an improvement. 13:43 MTDiscord It's a problem for any specific fork, but not necessarily one for MT as a whole. 13:43 celeron55 i don't oppose trying. altough i'm not sure what exactly is the thing MT needs to do for that 13:43 celeron55 it's super easy already 13:44 celeron55 seems more like a cultural issue than a technical issue 13:45 celeron55 write a wiki page about it explaining what's possible? 13:45 MTDiscord I don't think the obstacles are so much technological as cultural. I'm not sure what or how to change there, though. I just know that if I were to embark on a fork project I would probably expect nothing but derision from the MT community because "forks bad" or something. 13:45 MTDiscord core devs don't even read the damned wiki 13:46 celeron55 if i were to make a game for minetest, i'd certainly try packaging a light fork and see how it fares 13:46 celeron55 i mean, no binary changes at all 13:47 celeron55 (C++ binary) 13:48 celeron55 well, one might want to change the window title 13:48 celeron55 maybe it should be a setting 13:49 celeron55 ok, 1 technical thing. but only 1 13:52 MTDiscord take it from me, a lot of the supposed problems from these features are a lack of KISS principle 13:54 MTDiscord A lack of simplicity doesn't imply someone lacked simplicity as a principle. 13:54 MTDiscord why would we want to introduce simplicity where it's really not needed 13:54 MTDiscord Simplicity is itself very complex, so it generally has to be built over time. 13:54 MTDiscord i meant complexity 13:55 MTDiscord You don't introduce complexity, you have to work to remove it. 13:55 MTDiscord sinus' being blocked makes me a crayon eater 13:56 MTDiscord Go for the cheaper crayons, they're more waxy, less pigmenty and easier to pass. 13:56 celeron55 often complexity comes from stupid decisions made elsewhere that you have to work around. one of such things are how complex building for many platforms gets, which results in ready-made binaries being very advantageous 13:57 MTDiscord The most complex engine is one that has no code at all, since you can do literally anything with it but you have to program everything from the ground up. 13:58 celeron55 in an ideal world the literal C++ standard would say how programs are built and any compiler could build a working executable for any platform 13:58 celeron55 we're pretty far from that 13:58 celeron55 and the proprietary folks are really enjoying it 13:58 celeron55 the harder, the better 13:59 mmuller I don't know that anyone really _wants_ that problem :-) 14:00 MTDiscord The "proprietary folks" are in the same boat we are, just hobbled by the fact that they rely on people to do the work who are only in it for the money. 14:01 celeron55 i mean the authors, not the users 14:02 celeron55 users have no idea what's going on so you can only blame them for ignorance 14:06 mmuller it seems like the initial hurdle here is finding someone with the motivation to make a complete game, though. 14:06 mmuller I mean, if engine changes are needed, that's a secondary matter. 14:13 MTDiscord Complete games are rare, but it's not like there aren't any out there. I myself maintain at least one. 14:13 MTDiscord It's actually one of the reasons why I'm thinking about light fork packaging, since being buried in the Content tab is sort of limiting its exposure. A lot of people who try MT just assume that MT is MTG. 14:14 MTDiscord There's a main menu redesign in the works but that still leaves us with a question of what to do in the meantime. 14:15 mmuller we need an MT-launcher ;-)/2 14:17 MTDiscord MT itself is sort of acting like a launcher, but I think the current design is still in the process of adapting to the new realities of the ecosystem. 14:17 celeron55 well, the main menu design is progressing slowly enough that you could fit a few more in between 14:19 celeron55 that's one good point, the menu could be split into a launcher and a menu 14:20 celeron55 some design options are kind of like that 14:20 celeron55 nobody has suggested having a separate launcher window though, like many big games do 14:21 celeron55 these days they of course integrate all kinds of shops and stuff into it 14:21 celeron55 well, all of this is kind of bikeshedding 14:22 MTDiscord It's not super hard to MAKE an external 3rd party launcher either, so maybe it's a problem we don't have to solve ourselves anyway. I mostly use --go shortcuts to launch MT myself, and have thought about making an actual UI for it. 14:23 mmuller well, in the course of exploring games and mods, I've often thought "gee it would be nice to have a simple front-end that managed all of this" 14:23 mmuller and thought about writing one (for about two seconds, before remembering all the other shit I need to do...) 14:24 mmuller and even if the main binary absorbs it, I could certainly see something like that being very useful in the interim - if only as an experiment for the ultimate goal. 14:27 celeron55 if someone has the time it's definitely worth experimenting with 14:28 celeron55 you're immediately faced with the world's most annoying software development choice: which language, which toolkit, which target platforms 14:29 celeron55 and then the second most annoying software development choice: the name 14:29 celeron55 after those there's only design and implementation left - easy 14:35 MTDiscord huh, minetest.net is timing out 14:35 MTDiscord seems to be an "affecting multiple people at least" scale issue. 14:36 celeron55 oh i guess that one is redirected by the vps still 14:36 celeron55 the ip changed lately 14:37 MTDiscord Oh, does that mean the DNS was stale and I'll need to wait for my local DNS cache to expire before it works again? 14:38 celeron55 and i can't use cname for this because the domain's mail server is at a different host 14:38 celeron55 yes, after i've changed this now 14:39 celeron55 now it's good 14:39 celeron55 the TTL for these is 5 minutes 14:39 MTDiscord nice, thanks! 19:27 beanzilla When was the waypoint HUD element added to Minetest? (I have a mod that uses it and want to know the version ranges I should use for ContentDB) 19:29 Krock beanzilla: definitely before 0.4.16 19:29 Krock just select 5.0.0 19:29 beanzilla Figured that, thank you very much. 19:29 Krock !next 19:29 MinetestBot Another satisfied customer. Next! 22:46 MTDiscord idea for discussion before opening an issue on github for it: To move minetest further in the direction of a game engine, stop distributing minetest-engine clients directly. Do continue to distribute them, but only as one of several options. Distribute the client with a template main menu, that games can easily convert. Make it easy to set up a custom server list for a specific game. Make it easy for games to send media and SSCSMs to the 22:46 MTDiscord client for that game in a seperate "update" that does not involve joining the server, and make it easy to check if a client is uptodate, prevent joining servers until updated (singleplayer still works) The idea is that each unique game will take the minetest client, define a serverlist (or serverlist subsection) for it, customise the main menu, and distribute its own client with optionally singleplayer only or server only. On the main minetest 22:46 MTDiscord page, instead of giving a download of the minetest-engine client, give a page of downloads for games made with the minetest engine, including minetest game. The majority of servers on the serverlist would fit into the category of minetestgame, therefore we convert the serverlist as it stands to the minetest-game serverlist. Nodecore gets its own serverlist, its own client, and its own download on minetest.net, or a link to its main webpage. Ofc 22:46 MTDiscord server owners can choose which server to broadcast their game on, or which serverlist section I guess, but they would do well to broadcast as the game that they are hosting. Mineclone would get its own serverlist section and special client, Exile would also... etc etc... benefits: 1)it makes minetest seem more like a game engine 22:47 MTDiscord 2) it makes client load times much quicker and allows preloaded media 22:47 MTDiscord 2) it makes it so unique games arent lost in the serverlist 22:47 MTDiscord 3)* 22:47 MTDiscord Problems: It decentralizes minetest, might break up the community 22:50 MTDiscord if the idea is naysayed by coredevs then I wont bother opening an issue for it to reduce clutter 22:53 MTDiscord ping celron55, @Warr1024 , sfan5 22:55 erlehmann lol MisterE 22:55 erlehmann why would you want to replace mix & match style of minetest with separate silos? 22:56 erlehmann or is this about deprecating minetest_game more? 22:56 MTDiscord to push it as a game engine, separate more completely with the idea of minetest as a game based on minecraft. I wasnt thinking about deprecating minetest_game more, if fact, if we do this, it should have its own silo 22:57 MTDiscord the idea is so that game devs can see that they can make publishable games with minetest 22:57 MTDiscord games that can go on itch.io or steam 22:58 erlehmann oof 22:59 erlehmann yeah thanks i kinda hate it already 22:59 MTDiscord the reason to replace the mix and match style is that "mix and match" is a good feature for an easily moddable game, not for a game engine 22:59 erlehmann optimizing for steam or itch.io stuff is has creepy capitalism vibes 22:59 erlehmann -is 22:59 MTDiscord nah tahts not the point 23:00 MTDiscord we should not optimise for steam or itch, but we should make it so games can be published standalone as a "game": thats what a game engine is for right? 23:01 erlehmann you can already do that though? 23:01 MTDiscord I would not care to optimise for any specific platform, or cater to their demands particularly. Its up to game creators to do that 23:02 MTDiscord you can already do that 23:02 MTDiscord but its hard 23:02 MTDiscord the menu api is hard to get into, and seems made just for the current menu 23:03 MTDiscord and minetest distributes a minetest-engine client, its doesnt do much point to individual games as it could 23:03 MTDiscord *do > so 23:03 MTDiscord so as others have said its in limbo 23:03 MTDiscord stuck between a game and an engine 23:04 MTDiscord maybe thats a good thing, but many people seem not to think so 23:04 MTDiscord this idea would shove it in the "game engine" direction 23:04 erlehmann so what is the actionable thought you want to put in the ticket? 23:04 erlehmann better menu API? 23:06 MTDiscord a few: yes, better menu api, different approach to distribution, add game_id checking to make sure that the client is the correct client, and also check that the client is up-to-date with the server, Have an "update" function that fetches all media and SSCSM and caches them (then make the client as "updated" anyhow its a rough idea that should be discussed and a better actionable ideas worked out from it 23:07 erlehmann game_id checking to make sure that the client is the correct client?? 23:08 MTDiscord if the server chooses to enable that 23:08 MTDiscord an idea 23:08 MTDiscord doesnt mean its a good one 23:08 MTDiscord ? 23:08 erlehmann wdym correct client 23:08 MTDiscord the clinet for that game 23:09 MTDiscord so, say I want to make a game that uses lots of media, and much of that media is client side 23:09 MTDiscord also a whole bunch of client side mods 23:09 MTDiscord also some extra libraries that I as the game dev decide to include in the client, such as voice chat for example. 23:10 MTDiscord I would want to distribute a client that can only connect to my game 23:10 MTDiscord because... otherwise a bunch of stuff wouldnt work 23:10 MTDiscord also I can then enforce certian client settings (or at least set their defaluts 23:11 MTDiscord to set the right style (such as font), or max_view_distance 23:11 MTDiscord it actually solves a bunch of problems with the server being able to control client settings: it make it so the game creator can set all the defaults for their game 23:12 MTDiscord it makes it so the client no longer is a minetest client, but now a "legends of voxels" client 23:12 MTDiscord or wahtever 23:12 MTDiscord with minetest as the engine 23:21 MTDiscord If interested, also check out the chat for this topic on element 23:34 MTDiscord otehr peoples' thoughts, especially minetest engine devs? I would prefer to have a goahead from aomeone who has been working on the engine before making an issue on the minetest repo goahead meaning lets talk about this on the issue tracker ? 23:41 MTDiscord Actually, a better idea is to post this in the partlyofficialenginedevelopment forum topic on the minetest forums. If core devs like the idea they can make an issue for it or any part of it 23:52 MTDiscord ok the forum discussion is here: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27360&p=401159#p401159 23:58 erlehmann > erlehmannBOT 23:58 erlehmann i am 23:58 erlehmann not 23:58 erlehmann a bot