Time Nick Message 00:00 Desour or do you mean when sending to an async env 00:00 MTDiscord fluxionary: see https://github.com/minetest/minetest_docs/blob/master/doc/persistence.adoc#minetestdeserializestr-safe 00:00 Desour then the function must have no upvalues 00:00 fluxionary ah. then why does it turn it into something like "loadstring(blahblah)" 00:01 MTDiscord fluxionary: because it doesn't know how / if you will deserialize it 00:01 MTDiscord though indeed a "safe" parameter for minetest.serialize, which would make it an error to attempt to serialize functions, might make sense 00:01 MTDiscord usually you shouldn't be serializing functions 00:04 fluxionary thanks. i wouldn't be doing it if i had a better solution in mind, but i'll think on my problem more 00:06 MTDiscord could you share your problem? :) 00:07 Mantar To get around this, I just stuffed the functions into a table with a string for a key, and serialized the string instead. Have the calling code look up the string in the table, and you get the function back 00:07 MTDiscord Such a "data-driven" approach is usually the way to go 00:08 MTDiscord Because when you're "serializing" Lua functions, what you're doing is dumping bytecode, and that's hacky as heck. 00:08 fluxionary i want to initialize an entity with a custom function that scales a value, but add_entity requires that the staticdata be a string 00:08 fluxionary i could of course modify the entity after initialization, but that's not how i'm doing it for a whole slew of other properties 00:09 MTDiscord can you probably express that function in terms of a couple of "data only" parameters? 00:09 fluxionary luatic: that's one option 00:09 MTDiscord the staticdata thing is annoying indeed 00:09 MTDiscord one thing you can do, which is however hacky as well, is to have a global / shared local (upvalue) 00:09 MTDiscord since lua is single-threaded nothing can go wrong ;) 00:11 MTDiscord and a mob API can hide this ugly hack, by having a custom "my_on_activate" which receives additional parameters and under the hood uses the local to receive them when on_activate is called 00:11 fluxionary probably i can manage without. i can specify a few kinds of scaling (constant, linear, etc) with a couple of parameters each. 03:19 migdyn I was banned from CDB by a rogue moderator 03:28 MTDiscord Actually it was a warrior/mage moderator. 03:32 migdyn You're making jokes about something this serious?! 03:32 migdyn Just shows how much you care about the well being of your users 03:35 MTDiscord We do care about the well-being of our users very much ... which is why you're not one of them anymore. 03:40 migdyn You are one of the most prententious people I ever had to deal with and this is why MineTest is dying 03:40 migdyn because of this kind of attitude 03:40 migdyn Please unban me 03:41 migdyn Or I will e-mail c55 03:44 MTDiscord Please, by all means, save us the wait and escalate things so you get banned from else. It's clear that you haven't learned from your past interactions so it's probably better for everyone not to drag the process out. 03:46 MTDiscord It's a shame that this has only become suddenly "serious" to you now that it's too late. Better luck next time I guess. 03:50 migdyn Whoever banned me did it out of spite and not because I violated any rules 03:53 MTDiscord The rules you violated to earn your ban are pretty obvious to everyone except apparently you. The fact that you can't imagine anybody doing anything for any reason other than spite is probably a big part of what got you where you are now, tbh. 03:58 migdyn Oh, was I banned because of what I said to StarNinjas? 04:02 migdyn If so, then why is he still not banned when he's the one who started the argument? 04:03 MTDiscord You were banned for a pattern of behavior that basically spans your entire tenure there. Actually, the fact that there are any MT community platforms you haven't been banned from (or actually an platforms from any community) is likely just a function of how much tolerance is afforded to you, not any kind of redeeming value you've shown. 04:10 MTDiscord StarNinja's behavior was fine. His negative review was apparently made in good faith. He is under no obligation to like your game, and he apparently didn't feel the need to elaborate on why very much, but he was not required to. 04:17 migdyn Let's say that, for the sake of argument, I apologized to him; would I be unbanned? 04:21 MTDiscord Your ban is permanent. As I understand that, it means that reversing it would require you to convince the moderation team that you've really fundamentally changed. I suppose an apology wouldn't be a bad thing, but that seems like a drop in the ocean compared to what you'd need to prove. It's just absurdly too early to consider talk of "unbanning" at this point. 04:31 MTDiscord "When people show you who they are, believe them." The person you are took many, many years to make. Many years in the future, who knows what kind of person you might become? But you aren't that person yet, you are who you are today. And today, that person is banned from CDB. 04:37 DeepThgt how many people who have contributed code, either mods or to the engine itself, have been banned since this project began? 04:38 DeepThgt is there a public list/moderation log of all actions/bans? 04:39 MTDiscord Banned from what specifically? We have only extremely rarely ever issued an "entire project" ban; people usually only get banned from specific platforms for their behavior ON those specific platforms, so you'd have to ask specifically. 04:40 DeepThgt ok, the parts that affect development and gameplay, so, contentdb and/or the github project 04:41 DeepThgt and does inappropriate discussion/comments on contentdb mean your content cannot be posted on it? or does that require something like actual malicious code 04:41 MTDiscord I see only about a dozen banned accounts on CDB, though those accounts represent a smaller group of people. 04:42 MTDiscord If you can't even be trusted not to comment maliciously on CDB then how are we supposed to trust your code? 04:42 DeepThgt by reading thee code? malicious commenting, and the tone of what someone says is subjective 04:43 MTDiscord Ah, yeah, that "thousand eyes" thing. We'll reconsider if we ever actually get those. 04:44 DeepThgt You are one of the most prententious people I ever had to deal with and this is why MineTest is dying 04:45 DeepThgt from an outside perspective, i may not agree with the pretentious part 04:45 MTDiscord If you believe that a banned user's mods are, despite other problems with that user, still in good faith, then, since the projects we allow on there in the first place are all FOSS, you can feel free to provide the auditing yourself when you post your fork. 04:45 DeepThgt but the stance of removing someones ability to cxontribute code, whenever this project needs developers, is a bad one 04:45 DeepThgt no, because i might say the wrong thing and end up banned myself 04:46 DeepThgt do you not see the chilling effect in action? 04:46 MTDiscord You could just ... not, then. 04:46 DeepThgt yep, as of now my modifications and engine work will remain unpublished 04:47 DeepThgt nobody with talent would take part in a popularity contest 04:47 MTDiscord I guess on some level I understand the idea of doubting whether one's own speech will be taken in good faith as it's intended, especially if you're particularly socially awkward, but (1) most users don't run into problems with this, and (2) the ones who are genuinely acting in good faith generally find a way to make that known before the repercussions become servere. 04:47 DeepThgt programmers arent known to be social butterflies 04:47 MTDiscord We do very much want contributions, but there are some prices that we are unwilling to pay for them. 04:47 DeepThgt social skills and programming talent are at opposing sides of the spectrum 04:48 DeepThgt allowing mod contributors from people you dont like is "too high a price"? 04:48 DeepThgt if you dont want them talking, ban their speech 04:49 DeepThgt not shoot the project in the foot because someone is awkward 04:49 MTDiscord You're starting to sound just like Mygdin here, equating having rules of civility with "just not liking some people." 04:49 fluxionary emotional potential energy is a thing. i got burned out for a while trying to moderate a busy minetest server, i will never automatically fault people for trying to cut to the chase on moderation 04:49 DeepThgt what does removing their ability to contribute code have to do with rules of civility? 04:49 MTDiscord That attitude wasn't itself what led him to get banned, but I suspect it underlies a lot of the choices that led to the behavior that got him banned ... so I wouldn't exactly recommend it. 04:49 DeepThgt so, what does that have to do with their code 04:50 MTDiscord flux: this was not a "cut to the chase," this was a LONG time coming. 04:50 DeepThgt so, what does that have to do with their code 04:50 MTDiscord I don't see what their code has to do with them getting banned. 04:50 MTDiscord As I mentioned before, their code is not banned from the platform. 04:50 DeepThgt can they submit new content to cdb? 04:50 MTDiscord No. 04:50 DeepThgt ok, so why not? 04:50 DeepThgt was their code bad? 04:51 MTDiscord because code cannot submit itself. 04:51 DeepThgt so, its impossible to remove just their commenting ability? 04:51 fluxionary Warr1024, oh totally, i'm guessing i would have lost my patience before now 04:51 DeepThgt or are they unable to submit code because you just don't like them 04:52 fluxionary DeepThgt, nothing to do with their code, just their social interactions 04:52 DeepThgt ok, so why can they not submit code? 04:52 DeepThgt why does bad social interactions mean their code isnt welcome? 04:52 DeepThgt just cut off the social interactions part 04:52 MTDiscord I suggested the idea of a "commenting-only ban" before, but the idea had already been considered and rejected, and I frankly found the reasons fairly convincing. If we can't trust a person, we can't trust a person, and we can't expect most ordinary humans to keep their actions separate between what they code and what they comment, especially in cases where their commenting rises to the extreme necessary to earn a ban. 04:52 fluxionary DeepThgt, because submitting code is inherently a social action 04:53 DeepThgt ok, so you ban the people from contributing if they dont meet your social norms 04:53 DeepThgt sounds like you bully people who arent neurotypical 04:54 fluxionary DeepThgt, social norms, yes. i'm not neurotypical but i generally don't have issues contributing code, so that's not it. 04:54 DeepThgt how is that not "banning people you don't like" again? 04:54 MTDiscord If this were a question of moderators' personal taste, I'd think that being neurotypical would be a huge liability, actually... 04:54 DeepThgt they arent bad contributors, you just dont like what they say 04:55 DeepThgt this is why ill never share my code 04:55 DeepThgt lol 04:55 fluxionary DeepThgt, it's not so much "people we don't like", but "people who's behavior we don't think is good for the community" 04:55 MTDiscord Seems .....interesting.... that the same time one account goes inactive, another suddenly becomes active 🤔 04:55 MTDiscord So are you suggesting that in order to ban somebody, we have to like them? You seem to keep harping on this "banning people we don't like" thing as if that's some sort of legitimate argument or something. 04:55 DeepThgt lol im not a sockpuppet wsor4035 04:55 MTDiscord lol, wsor, I was trying very hard not to think that 😆 04:55 DeepThgt warr1024 well there isnt a reason beyond your feelings about them socially 04:56 DeepThgt that they cannot contribute code 04:56 DeepThgt so, idk how else to state it. its accurate 04:56 DeepThgt either way, not my circus not my monkeys 04:56 fluxionary contributing code is always a two-way (or multi-way) street. there's got to be an ability to communicate. 04:57 MTDiscord A community is not just a collection of code. Arguably the code is the least important part. Code is the by-product of a strong community. 04:57 fluxionary if the communication channel is being poisoned, it's often better to just cut it off than to struggle to make it sensible 04:57 DeepThgt the community here is about as functional as your code 04:59 fluxionary DeepThgt, i missed what code this is even about. the core engine code is generally pretty readable 04:59 fluxionary this is about banning someone from the content db? 05:00 MTDiscord Yeah 05:01 fluxionary there's tons of terrible code in the content db, some of it in very popular mods. code quality beyond basic functionality is certainly not a criteria 05:01 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> Any pure survival mixed with tech. No spawn area no tutorials. Trying to find a good server. 05:01 fluxionary __vaxeral: try blocky survival or tunnelers' abyss 05:02 fluxionary __vaxeral: or pandora's box 05:02 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> thanks 05:03 MTDiscord Can recommend the first and third suggestion, but not the second 05:03 fluxionary __vaxeral: then again all of those servers have spawn areas... but all have ways to get away from spawn 05:08 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> What about a server where everything is free game? 05:08 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> I can destroy anything 05:08 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> not becuase i want to though 05:08 fluxionary __vaxeral: oh, an anarchy server? 05:08 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> Yeah 05:08 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> Are there any good ones like balanced ones 05:09 fluxionary __vaxeral: try oysterity maybe? that's the only one i know that people actually play on 05:09 fluxionary __vaxeral: i have no idea what a balanced anarchy server would be. most players on those use hacked clients 05:10 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> I think i just want to play a competitive civilization sim :D 05:10 fluxionary the balance depends on how good you are at hacking the minetest client, or whatever hacked client you can get your hands on 05:11 fluxionary hmmmm i've never seen anything i'd consider a "civilization sim". the future your your-land maybe goes there with cities and factions and war, but all of those features are not currently implemented 05:16 MTDiscord Search the (web) serverlist for servers with the player factions mod perhaps 05:16 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> It is too late im going on steam. 05:17 fluxionary going on steam for ... what? 05:17 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> Think im just in the mood to play something like starcraft 05:17 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> a compotitive civ game 05:18 fluxionary huh, yeah, i don't think i've ever seen anything like starcraft done in minetest 05:18 fluxionary fair 05:18 fluxionary it could be done roughly, but it might not be fun 06:01 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> Found a cool game for only 5 dollars 06:01 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> mindustry 06:01 MTDiscord <__vaxeral> You can actually get it for free if you build it from source. 09:58 appguru !tell DeepThgt Your premise is wrong. Consider Migdyn (aka MCL)'s latest "game", "devious licks". It's practically void of any gameplay. It's entire point is to make some weird semi-offensive point. There's no valuable code to be found there. Now consider the "game" before that, insane protestor. Pretty much the same story, though insane protestor at least had *some* seemingly quickly thrown together gameplay. 09:58 MinetestBot appguru: I'll pass that on when DeepThgt is around 09:58 appguru Its* 10:05 appguru !tell DeepThgt As for bans of *actual people who wrote actually tried to contribute something of value*, three cases come to mind. The most recent one is that of erlehmann, who was banned from participating in development, as I understood it, because of their influence being deemed counterproductive and at times rude towards other contributors. I was not in favor of this ban, so I won't comment further. 10:05 MinetestBot appguru: yeah, sure, whatever 10:08 appguru !tell DeepThgt The one before that is that of kilbith, who worked on quite a few interesting engine PRs and wrote some of the most popular mods (like i3 or xdecor). Unfortunately kilbith behaved absolutely unacceptably towards other contributors (search for the logs if you don't believe me), and I'm glad that the moderators stood up against it rather than enabling it just to appease kilbith; it would have not been a p 10:08 MinetestBot appguru: I'll pass that on when DeepThgt is around 10:11 muurkha heh, a warrior/mage moderator 10:12 muurkha appguru: from my point of view your line seems to end "it would not have been a p" 10:12 appguru muurkha: that is true 10:14 appguru !tell DeepThgt it would not have been a price worth paying from any perspective; even if you didn't care about your moral integrity and just wanted to maximize contributions, you would have to take care of moderation at some point as not to drive other contributors away. 10:14 MinetestBot appguru: I'll pass that on when DeepThgt is around 10:15 muurkha so, there's something to that, for sure; people tend to leave places where they're treated badly, and so having someone around who treats lots of people badly tends to be counterproductive 10:17 muurkha but I think it's also important to explain the ban decisions, for two reasons 10:18 appguru It definitely is 10:19 muurkha one is that people can, to a significant extent, choose their own behavior; if they know that behaving a certain way got someone else banned, they'll be less likely to behave that way 10:19 muurkha at least, if they have significant investment in participating in the community 10:20 muurkha the other is that people are less likely to make a significant investment in participating in a community if they think they might be banned from it for reasons beyond their control 10:21 muurkha especially if they have a history of accidentally violating social norms because they don't know about them 15:56 MTDiscord We don't necessarily publicize bans or reasons for multiple reasons. One of those is that just because we no longer accept a person's presence or participation doesn't mean we no longer respect their dignity or privacy, and we don't publicly shame people unless they choose to initiate it themselves. 15:57 MTDiscord Another reason is because it's basically always the same damn reason anyway. Somebody steps a little bit out of bounds, and then when a moderator has to correct them, instead of "oops" like 99% of users, their response is to escalate it into a personal war. 16:20 MTDiscord Ban reasons are tbh usually pretty boring. It's basically just a list of which of the rules they persistently broke, and some platforms like CDB only have like 3 rules to begin with. If you just read the rules then you will already know the superset of all existing ban reasons. 16:42 MTDiscord I understand the frustration of being held to social norms that you don't fully understand, and it's unfair that some people seem to just intuitively get them while others need them spelled out and have to put in real effort to understand how they work ... but at the same time we're not talking about some "Friday is Hawaiian shirt day, wear one or get banned" kind of norms, we're talking about "it's not okay to stab the other kids with 16:42 MTDiscord your pencil just because you're mad" kind of norms. If you don't get these, then I understand, but I also can't just ask everyone else to tolerate the occasional stabbing, and frankly, you shouldn't be worried about moderation anyway, you've got bigger problems. 17:11 MinetestBot 02[git] 04lhofhansl -> 03minetest/minetest: Avoid short overflow with large viewing ranges (#14175) 13bc33648 https://github.com/minetest/minetest/commit/bc336480e6317fec4eea03b055bcf9602ff633d7 (152023-12-28T17:10:11Z) 17:19 MTDiscord Nice, all we need to do is avoid large overflows with short viewing ranges and we should be in good shape. 17:36 Blockhead256 Anyone else remember when Minecraft didn't have item tooltips? I 'member 17:36 MTDiscord I forgot that it even got added into the game 17:36 Blockhead256 I just wonder if that would work in a game for Minetest any more 17:37 Blockhead256 there's a certain charm of mystery to not having the names on things 17:38 Blockhead256 though in the 2020s, everything of note gets pulled apart, wikified etc pretty quickly. With Minetest, people would just turn on the itemstring tooltips and go by those names 17:38 Blockhead256 I know I always play with the tooltips like that.. 17:39 Blockhead256 apparently it was Minecraft beta 1.0 that added tooltips 18:43 MTDiscord I've considered the idea of a game with no names, but it doesn't work with sandbox gameplay very well because it's kind of hard for players to say "I need more brown stuff, can anyone trade me for some of these yellow round things" 18:44 MTDiscord For certain game styles though it could work well, and as a bonus you can get decent i18n without an army of translators. 18:46 Desour you could also make the descriptions be something like "Brown Stuff" 18:47 Desour how should the character you play know what the stuff is, after all? 18:49 sfan5 would be clever to have descriptions change depending on how far you've gone forward when discovering e.g. science 18:52 jonadab I mean, you could take a page out of Rogue's book and shuffle the item appearances whenever a new world is started, so the player has to _learn_ what the "brown stuff" is and what it does, etc. 18:54 Desour you could also send half of the players one translation file, which says that the brown stuff is mud, and send the other half of players a translation file that says it's chocolate 18:55 Desour for confusion c:< 18:55 jonadab And if the player dies, the game rerolls their translation file? 18:56 Desour I don't think you can replace the translation file, yet. 18:56 Desour so you'd need to rejoin to change groups 19:02 MTDiscord I've been thinking about games where "names" are pictographic, as well. For example, in StarNinja's Veil of the Unknown, since the player is blind, the "visual" channel is unused, but you could just display textures as synesthetic analogs for the sense of touch. 19:04 Krock or give the items a ludicrous name, like: "Brown Undefined Mass Of Mixed Natural Ingredients For Fauna And Flora Growth" (aka dirt) 19:06 MTDiscord In a way you could even auto-generate names heuristically, like "brown crumbly stuff" or "yellow crumbly stuff that falls" or "grey cracky stuff" 19:07 Desour or let an AI generate the names 19:07 MTDiscord granted, texturepacks would throw heuristics for a loop 19:08 MTDiscord AI would just end up emulating what humans would do, rather than do something unique, though 22:54 hephaestus hello! Is possible to run two instances of minetest-server in the same server but with differente ports? 22:55 migdyn why wouldn't it be? 22:55 MTDiscord hephaestus: yes. Use --port to set the port from the command-line 22:55 hephaestus I see in the commands of terminal there is the option to port 22:55 migdyn then use it 22:55 hephaestus @migdyn, so just start with differente ports? 22:56 migdyn yeah 22:56 migdyn just start two instances 22:56 migdyn with two different ports 22:56 migdyn as simple as taht 22:56 hephaestus oh thank you, I was thinking it'll be need of docker 22:59 migdyn lmao 23:04 hephaestus one more thing, is there some script that alerts in my email if server shutdowns? 23:04 migdyn not that i know of 23:04 migdyn but you can easily write a shell script like that yourself 23:06 migdyn just ad a line at the end of the usual minetest server script to send a pre-generated e-mail 23:06 MTDiscord There's a UDP protocol you can use to ping your MT server if you want to watch availability. You can also poll the server list if you want to watch for things like it failing to be listed, or its uptime failing to build up or something. I actually monitor my own servers in a few ways like that. 23:08 migdyn or use this script: https://wiki.minetest.net/Setting_up_a_server#Linux_2 23:09 migdyn and add one extra line at the end 23:09 migdyn right before "done" 23:09 migdyn that e-mails you 23:10 MTDiscord That's a tad dangerous, unless you're okay with a bad mod update getting you stuck in a restart loop that sends you an email every 5 seconds. 23:10 migdyn like mailutils 23:10 migdyn then add a cap 23:10 migdyn so that if the server fails to start 3 times or so it shuts down permanentyl 23:10 MTDiscord That, and having the server shut down is not itself a problem necessarily; we often do this for updates, or for backups on simpler setups. It's just when it fails to come back up that it's a problem. 23:11 MTDiscord That also won't catch freezes, so if you run a risk of that, you'll need some other approach. 23:11 MTDiscord I've got a 60 second watchdog timer on my public servers specifically because of a history of freeze problems. 23:13 hephaestus I understand, so I must consider the risks and how much I know about networks :D 23:15 hephaestus I don't think I can do this yet, I need to study a little more about networks 23:54 GreenXenith FYI: 2 day extension to the game jam rating period! For both your and my convenience, in case holidays are difficult to work around :D